Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Dam­aged Glory: Stories, Raphael Bob-Waksberg (Knopf 978-1524732011, $25.95, 256pp, hc) June 2019. Back in June IndieWire published an article list­ing the best TV shows of the last decade. BoJack Horseman was ranked number four behind three deserving and ground-breaking productions: Breaking Bad, Fleabag, and The Leftovers. BoJack Horseman, though, could easily have finished in the top spot. The story of a horse,

American Science Fiction: Eight Classic Novels of the 1960s, Gary K. Wolfe, ed. (Library of America 978-1-59853-635-5, $75.00, 1,500pp, hc, boxed set) November 2019. Also available as American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1960-1966 (Library of America 978-1-59853-501-3, $37.50, 738pp, hc) November 2019 and American Science Fiction: Four Classic Novels 1968-1969, (Library of America 978-1-59853-502-0, $37.50, 762 pp, hc) November 2019. Covers by Paul Lehr. Reviewing is generally a venture

Winners for the 2019 Geffen Awards for best science fiction and fantasy published in Hebrew have been announced by the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy. Best Translated Science Fiction Book WINNER: Artemis, Andy Weir (Armchair) The Heart Goes Last, Margaret Atwood (Kinneret Zmora Dvir) Provenance, Ann Leckie (Sial) Nexus, Ramez Naam (Yaniv) A Man Lies Dreaming, Lavie Tidhar (Modan) Best Translated Fantasy Book WINNER: The Alloy of Law,

Stephen & Tabitha King have received city council approval to rezone their Bangor ME home as a non-profit, with plans to turn it into a museum. Stephen King’s personal archives, previously housed at the University of Maine, will be moved to the home and made available to scholars and other visitors by appointment. A house next door, also owned by the Kings, will accommodate up to five writers-in-residence at a

The Dark 5/19, 6/19 Nightmare 6/19, 7/19 Apex 5/19 The Dark #48 offers two new stories. In Angela Slatter‘s “The Wilderling“, isolated, bored, childless LP is fascinated with a feral child who visits her yard. One might expect LP to do something other than what she does for or with the savage kid. Mystery grows as LP’s actions defy expectation. Slatter, with perfect pacing and accomplished writing, teases our hopes

My Beautiful Life, K.J. Parker (Subterranean 978-1-59606-930-5, $40.00, 112pp, hc) November 2019. Unlike the long tradition of disruptive but fundamentally decent rogues, K.J. Parker’s invidious protagonists, who are often his narrators, can almost seem ingratiating in their forthrightness and cynicism – until we catch on to what sort of ruthlessness they are really capable of. It’s not giving anything away to point out that Parker’s new novella My Beautiful Life

Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight, Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean 978-1-59606-952-7, $40.00, 384pp, hc) September 2019. Cover by Maurizio Manzieri. Aliette de Bodard’s Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight is a collection from an author whose work possesses both breadth and depth. Published by Subterranean Press, this volume largely collects works from her Hugo Award-nominated Xuya continuity – including award-winning stories “The Shipmaker” (BSFA Award), “Immersion” (Nebula and Locus Awards),

The Horror Writers As­sociation (HWA) has announced Mick Garris as media guest of honor for StokerCon UK, to be held April 16-19, 2020 at the Royal and Grand Hotels in Scarborough, UK. He joins previously announced guests Kim Newman, Grady Hendrix, and Gillian Redfearn, with A.K. Benedict as mistress of cer­emonies and Robert Lloyd-Parry as special guest. For more <stokercon-uk.com/guests.htm>.   While you are here, please take a moment to

The Locus Bestsellers for October include top titles Fall; or, Dodge in Hell by Neal Stephenson (Morrow), Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (Morrow), and Star Wars: Thrawn: Treason by Timothy Zahn (Del Rey). HARDCOVERS Months on list Last month 1) Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, Neal Stephenson (Morrow) 2 1 2) Wanderers, Chuck Wendig (Del Rey) 1 – 3) Exhalation, Ted Chiang (Knopf) 3 3 4) A

Patricia Briggs, Storm Cursed (Ace 978-0-425-28129-1, $27.00, 358pp, hc) May 2019. Cover by Daniel Dos Santos. The 11th novel in the Mercy Thompson series finds Mercy back home in Washington’s Tri-Cities area, and a little more in the public eye than she cares for, thanks to having publically declared the area under the Columbia Basin pack’s pro­tection a couple of books back, so now she gets called to deal with

Three books on this list were recently reviewed by Locus: THE DOLLMAKER, ESCAPING EXODUS, and THE ROSEWATER REDEMPTION. Check out these and other new releases this week! New titles this week are by Nina Allan, Harold Bloom, Elizabeth Bowen, Daniel Braum, John Connolly, Nicky Drayden, S.C. Emmett, Derek Künsken, Joel Levy, Laurence MacNaughton, Benjamin Percy, Madeleine Roux, Priya Sharma, and Tade Thompson.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood (Vintage, Chatto & Windus) and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton) were announced as joint winners of the 2019 Booker Prize during a ceremony held October 14, 2019 at the Guildhall in London, UK. The Booker rules forbid splitting the prize, but chair of judges Peter Florence said, “We were told quite firmly that the rules state we can only have one winner.

The winners for the 2018 Sidewise Awards for Alternate History have been announced. Long Form WINNER: The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor) Summerland, Hannu Rajaniemi (Tor) The Trial and Execution of the Traitor George Washington, Charles Rosenberg (Hanover Square) Unholy Land, Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon) Short Form WINNER: Codex Valtierra, Oscar (Xiu) Ramirez & Emmanuel Valtierra (self-published) “The Secret City”, Rick Wilber (Asimov’s 9-10/18) In addition, the judges announced a

Trace, Pat Cummings (HarperCollins 978-0-06-269884-1, $16.99, 320pp, hc) April 2019. Sometimes, readers want a gentle story with big-hearted characters that manages to convey powerful drama in a subtle plot. Trace by Pat Cummings is exactly that, a ghost story that combines an unfolding historical mystery with a heartfelt coming-of-age tale. It is a muted novel, as much about the struggle of adapting to a new family situation as it is

At first glance you might think this topic is too comic-nerdy for you, but I promise there’s a universal theme that applies to any reader. Oh, and comic nerds? Spoiler alert. For the uninitiated, Thor is a character from Marvel comics, created in 1962 by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber and Jack Kirby. The easiest thing to say about the origins is that Thor was inspired by Norse mythology by way

Literary critic Harold Bloom, 89, died October 14, 2019 in a New Haven CT hospital. Bloom was one of the most famous and controversial critics in America, writing and editing bestselling, influential volumes like The Anxiety of Influence (1973), Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998), The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (1994), and How to Read and Why (2000). In all he wrote more than

Winners for the 2019 Imadjinn Awards were announced during Imaginarium 2019, held October 11-13, 2019 at the Ramada Plaza Hotel and Conference Center in Louisville KY. Categories of genre interest include: Best Science Fiction Novel WINNER: Storm Forged, Patrick Dugan (Falstaff) The Shadow Beneath the Waves, Matt Betts (Severed) Jurassic Jail, William Alan Webb (Dingbat) Best Fantasy Novel WINNER: Fey West, Michael J. Allen (Bell Bridge) Winter’s Heir, Sarah Joy

The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award has been renamed the Otherwise Award, announced by members of the Tiptree Motherboard on October 13, 2019. In a statement, they said: The Tiptree Award was named as a joyful joke, 28 years ago. James Tiptree, Jr/Alice Sheldon is a complicated figure who has grown more so as participants in the sff world have gained more diverse perspectives and more acute critical analyses. In

Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust, Volume Two: The Secret Commonwealth (Knopf) debuts this week, ranking high on two children’s lists and ranking #18 on the combined USA Today list.

The Ruin of Kings launched the Chorus of Dragons series, and book two, The Name of All Things, is out soon. Tell us about the series. Fortunately for me, A Chorus of Dragons really IS about dragons. Also: gods, demons, prophecies, so much magic, and the poor fools caught in the middle of that whirlwind. But dig a little deeper and the series is about the way massive systems corrupt and

Analog 7-8/19 Asimov’s 7-8/19 F&SF 5-6/19 I’ve always thought that if Analog was truly the central bastion of hard SF among our magazines it ought to be publishing Greg Egan but, with the exception of “Beyond the Whistle Test” 30 years ago, his work has not appeared in the magazine. Until now! And “The Slipway” qualifies as pure a hard SF story as you might want – so much so

The Thousand Demon Tree, Jeffrey Alan Love (Flesk 978-1-64041-010-7, $29.95, 93pp, hc) Au­gust 2019. Cover by Jeffrey Alan Love. In The Thousand Demon Tree, Jeffrey Alan Love follows up his popular Notes from the Shadowed City (Flesk, 2017) with a powerful 96-page wordless graphic novel. Love has painted an eloquent tale whose haunt­ing silhouettes and strange atmospheric effects create a timeless eerie story in which the reader is an active

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, the long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, was under a worldwide embargo until Sep­tember 10, 2019. Amazon shipped “a small number” of copies a week early to customers who’d pre-ordered. A Penguin Random House spokesperson said the books “were distributed early due to a retailer error which has not been rectified. We appreciate that readers and booksellers have been waiting patiently… in order to ensure our

Necropolis PD, Nathan Sumsion (Parvus Press 978-0-99978-423-5, $15.99, 412pp, tp) April 2019. “Why am I always a few steps behind every conversation I get into?” asks Jake Green, the protagonist of Nathan Sumsion’s Necropolis PD, about halfway through this overlong, rudimentary novel. The potential answers to this question: Jake is an idiot, or Sumsion relies on thin narrative strategies to maintain tension. Or both. Although the novel moves quickly and

New issues of Abyss & Apex, Aphelion, Aurealis, Clarkesworld, The Dark, GigaNotoSaurus, Kaleidotrope, Lightspeed, and Nightmare

The American Library Association launched a petition to protest Macmillan’s “recent efforts to limit library access to ebooks.” The petition reads, in part, Beginning November 1, 2019, Macmil­lan Publishers will allow libraries to pur­chase only one copy of each new eBook title for the first eight weeks after a book’s release. Readers cannot stay silent! We need your help! This embargo would limit libraries’ abil­ity to provide access to information

Midnight at the Organporium, Tara Campbell (Aqueduct Press 978-1-61976-163-6, $12.00, 112pp, tp) March 2019. Tara Campbell’s Midnight at the Organporium (Conversation Pieces: Volume 67) is a more eclectic collection, showcasing an array of moods and story-telling techniques. In the opening piece, “Death Sure Changes a Person”, Harlan is visited by his dead wife, Lucille, who orders him to start dating again. This surprises Harlan, not because the advice is coming

Dazzling by Chikọdili Emelumadu has won the inaugural Curtis Brown First Novel Prize. Emelumadu will receive £3,000 and an offer of representation from the Curtis Brown agency. The Wickedry of Mrs Wood by Lucy Barker was runner-up, and Barker will also receive an offer of representation; Monkeyflower by Debra Hills won a special commendation prize, earning Hills “a place on a three-month novel-writing course.” Curtis Brown Creative received “more than

The latest Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) Deep Dish Reading series was held August 8, 2019 at Volumes Book Cafe in Chicago IL. Co-hosted by Mary Anne Mohanraj & Chris Bauer, the event featured readings by Scott Woods, S.L. Huang, and T.J. Martinson. Other readers included Dawn Bonanno, Richard Chwedyk, Beth Kander, and Aurelius Raines II. These events are sponsored by the SLF with assistance from SFWA grants. The next reading

Finder, Suzanne Palmer (DAW 978-0-7564-1510-5, $26.00, 400pp, hc) April 2019. Hugo Award winner Suzanne Palmer’s Finder gets off to slow start, despite its action packed opening scene. Fergus Ferguson, an Earth-born repo man/thief/finder of lost things, is traveling in a cable car between space habitats. The other passenger in the car, Mother Vahn, assures him that the ride will smooth out soon. It doesn’t. Instead, they are attacked, the cable

Polish author Olga Tokarczuk has won the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature “for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life.” Her genre work includes Flights (Riverhead) and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (Riverhead). Austrian author Peter Handke was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature “for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the

Twelfth Planet Press announced two winners of the 2018 D Franklin Defying Doomsday Award, given in recognition of “work in disability advocacy in SFF literature”: R.B. Lemberg for blog post “Sergeant Bothari and Disability Representation in the Early Vorkosiverse” (Strange Horizons 7/16/18) and Ace Ratcliff for blog post “Staircases In Space: Why Are Places In Science Fiction Not Wheelchair-Accessible?” (io9 7/31/18). The prize is judged by Tsana Dolichva, Holly Kench,

Yoshitaka Amano: The Illustrated Biography/Beyond the Fantasy, Florent Gorges (Dark Horse 978-1-50670-753-2, $49.99, 336pp, hc) November 2018. Cover by Yoshitaka Amano. The illustrated biography of Yoshitaka Amano is another hefty, handsome volume, so large that it seems to have required two sub-titles besides its main title. The 335-page retrospective pays homage to the revered Japanese fine artist, il­lustrator, character designer, and scenic and costume designer. Amano began his remarkable artistic

Clarkesworld 6/19 Fiyah Spring ’19 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/6/19, 6/20/19 Clarkesworld starts its June issue with a gut punch of a story, “The Painter of Trees” by Suzanne Palmer. Colonizers of an alien world have a society with very strict protocols. As their terraforming efforts kill off the last of the indigenous population, one colo­nizing individual maintains contact with the last representative, Tski, hoping to gain insight from them and

Audible was recently sued by seven publishers who allege that the audiobook publisher’s new “Captions” feature, which scrolls machine-generated text along with audio narra­tion, violates their copyrights. Audible agreed not to enable the feature “for all audiobooks for which Publishers own, or are the exclusive licensee of, the text or audiobook rights” until the court rules on the plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction. Audible also notified its self-published authors

Lovely War, Julie Berry (Greenwillow 978-0-451-46993-9, $18.99, 468pp, hc) March 2019. From the cover, Lovely War by Julie Berry appears to be the historical novel that it is. You have a young woman in period dress, a photo of WWI soldiers in the background, and a statue of the Eiffel Tower encircled with biplanes in the woman’s hands. There is nothing to suggest fantasy from the cover, but rest assured

» Washington Post: Michael Dirda celebrates anniversaries, including the 70th anniversary issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction » Washington Post: Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar discuss The weird, the wacky, the underappreciated: A new look at science fiction and fantasy » NY Times Book Review: Danielle Trussoni reviews horror by Paul Tremblay and Naomi Booth » NY Times: Dwight Garner reviews Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein

Hollywood North, Michael Libling (ChiZine Publications 978-1-77148-490-9, $17.99, 360pp, trade paperback) September 2019 After winning a World Fantasy Award in 2015, ChiZine Publications has continued even more strongly than before as a powerhouse of offbeat fantastika, publishing dozens of titles from such visionary luminaries as Bracken MacLeod, Helen Marshall, and David Nickle. Their latest is the debut novel of Michael Libling, based on his award-nominated short with the same title.

These new books include THE FORBIDDEN STARS by Locus‘s own Tim Pratt, and THE RISE AND FALL OF AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION by Locus film reviewer Gary Westfahl! New titles this week are by Jennifer L. Armentrout, Julia Armfield, Leigh Bardugo, Kristen Berg & Tori Bosch, Delilah S. Dawson & Kevin Hearne, Dave Duncan, K. Eason, Christopher Hinz & Etan Ilfeld, John Horner Jacobs, Robert Jordan, Tim Pratt, Philip Pullman, Kate

LaShawn M. Wanak is the new editor of GigaNotoSaurus, taking over from Elora Gatts. As previously announced, Gatts had assumed the role in December of 2018. Wanak is a book reviewer for Lightspeed and served as an associate editor at PodCastle from 2013 to 2015. She says, I know it’s been a while since GigaNotoSaurus has published a new story. Therefore, I’ll be closing submissions this Friday, August 9, 2019,

Finalists for the National Book Awards (NBA) have been announced, including titles of genre interest. Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James (Riverhead) is a finalist in the Fiction category. The Young People’s Literature category includes Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (Make Me A World) and Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby (Balzer & Bray). The Translated Literature category includes The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated by

Everything is Made of Letters, Sofía Rhei (Aqueduct 978-1-61976-149-0, $12.00, 152pp, tp) February 2019. Since 2004, Aqueduct Press has published a small paperback series, called Conversation Pieces, that aims to “document and facilitate the grand conversation” of feminist science fiction. The more than 60 volumes issued so far collect essays, poetry, novellas, and short fiction authored by an impressive range of writers, a veritable who’s who of the field including

The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) has selected Barbara Hambly as this year’s recipient of the Forry Award for lifetime achievement in the SF field. The award, named for Forrest J Ackerman and given annually since 1966, will be presented by LASFS president Marty Cantor at Loscon 46, to be held November 29 – December 1, 2019 at the LAX Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles CA. [via File 770]

One of the ironies of the writing craft is that the more novels many of us write, the more difficult it is to write a novel. This appears to be a contradiction, but I hear it again and again from other professional writers, and I encounter it in my own work. It’s as if, once you know how to write a book, it gets easier to see the flaws in

Claire Eliza Bartlett, We Rule the Night (Little, Brown 978-0-316-41727-3, $17.99, 390pp, hc) April 2019. Young women get the unprecedented chance to serve in the military as pilots in this thrilling young-adult tale set in a magical version of WWII Soviet Russia, and based on actual history. The Union of the North faces an enemy with superior technology, includ­ing deadly aircraft powered by forbidden Weave magic. The Union, strapped for

Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer (One World) jumps to the top of print lists this week, pushing Stephen King’s The Institute to #2 and Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments to #3 on both the New York Times and Publishers Weekly lists.

The winners for the 2019 Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic have been announced: Adult Fiction WINNER: Plum Rains, Andromeda Romano-Lax (Penguin Random House Canada) Sodom Road Exit, Amber Dawn (Arsenal Pulp) Armed in Her Fashion, Kate Heartfield (ChiZine) Annex, Rich Larson (Orbit) Trickster Drift, Eden Robinson (Penguin Random House Canada) Young Adult Fiction WINNER: Tess of the Road, Rachel Hartman (Penguin Random House Canada) Spellslinger,

The Electric State, Simon Stålenhag (Skybound 978-1-5011-8141-2, $35.00, 141pp, hc) September 2018. Cover by Simon Stålenhag. The Electric State is a fascinating work, an il­lustrated novel in which the art carries the burden of the narrative. The tale is one of an alternative reality in the recent past in the western US where the accelerated development of AI and VR in the wake of a civil war has led to

If, Then, Kate Hope Day (Random House 978-0-52551-122-9, $26.00, 272pp, hc) March 2019. Kate Hope Day’s debut novel, If, Then, is a sliding doors narrative revolving around a group of characters living in the same neighborhood, all of whom have reached a gloomy kind of breaking point in their personal lives. Ginny, a neurosur­geon, is working herself to death and inhabits a marriage that’s on life support. Her husband, Mark,

The Tiptree Motherboard, the seven-member committee in charge of the James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award for books “encouraging the exploration and expansion of gender,” has an­nounced plans to change the name of the award in the future. In a post titled “Alice Sheldon and the name of the Tiptree Award” updated on Sep­tember 11, 2019, they wrote We said we would be listening and we have. We’ve read your thoughtful

Aliens in Popular Culture, Michael M. Levy & Far­ah Mendlesohn, eds. (Greenwood 978-1440838323, $94.00, 335pp, hc) March 2019. Back in the antediluvian days of high school, I’d look forward to lazy Saturday mornings spent perusing Peter Nicholls & John Clute’s landmark The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. I mention this not merely for nostalgia’s sake, but because my recent experience reading the encyclo­pedic volume on hand is the closest I can

Author J.A. Pitts, 54, died October 3, 2019 in Bellevue WA. He is best known for the Sarah Beauhall urban fantasy series: Black Blade Blues (2010), Gaylactic Spectrum Award winner Honeyed Worlds (2011), Forged in Fire (2012), and Night Terrors (2016). He also published short fiction (including a collaboration with Ken Scholes), starting around 2006, sometimes as John A. Pitts. Some of his short work was collected in Bravado’s House

Dublin 2019, the 77th World Science Fiction Convention, took place August 15-19, 2019 at the Convention Centre Dublin in Ireland. Guests of honour were Diane Duane, Ginjer Buchanan, and Ian McDonald; other guests of honour were astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, fans Bill & Mary Burns, and game creator Steve Jackson. There were 6,024 attending memberships purchased, with 5,814 warm bodies, compared to San Jose’s 5,440 attending members and Helsinki’s 5,949.

Other Words for Smoke, Sarah Maria Grif­fin (Greenwillow 978-0-06-240891-4, $17.99, 331pp, hc) March 2019. Let’s talk about a very creepy book, shall we? Other Words for Smoke by Irish au­thor Sarah Maria Griffin is about witches, a haunted house, a mysterious “other” world, Ireland’s history of abusing unwed mothers, and the seductive allure of power. It’s also about a cat and an owl who are most certainly not just a

Shortlists for the 2019 Books Are My Bag (BAMB) Readers Awards have been announced, including some titles and authors of genre interest in the following categories: Novel The Binding, Bridget Collins (Morrow) Washington Black, Esi Edugyan (Knopf) Circe, Madeline Miller (Little, Brown) Lanny, Max Porter (Graywolf) Poetry The Girl Aquarium, Jen Campbell (Bloodaxe) Poems to Fall in Love With, Chris Riddell, ed., illustrated by Chris Riddell (Macmillan) Children’s Fiction Rumblestar,

Jesmyn Ward will give this year’s annual Eudora Welty Lecture, celebrating “creative origins in the spirit of Welty’s treasured One Writer’s Beginnings.” The event is sponsored by the Eudora Welty Foundation and will be held October 16, 2019 at the Folger Theatre in Washington DC. For more information, see the Folger website. While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely

The 2020 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award contest is open until February 1, 2020. Co-sponsored by Baen Books and the National Space Society, the contest focuses on stories of near-future space exploration. The grand prize includes publication on the Baen website at “normal paying rates for professional story submittals,” an engraved award, an assortment of Baen books, free admission to the 2020 International Space Development Conference, a year’s membership

Radio Dark, Shane Hinton (Burrow Press 978-1941681602, $16.99, 130pp, tp) August 2019. Shane Hinton’s debut novel (really a debut novella) Radio Dark is a mostly run-of-the-mill post-apocalyptic story, but with an arresting image at is centre. From the long menu of end-of-the-world scenarios, Hinton chooses a condition – possibly a virus – that leaves people catatonic. Memphis, who works as a janitor at a local radio station, first comes across

Aphelion, Aurealis, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Black Static, Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, The Dark, Galaxy’s Edge, GigaNotoSaururs, Interzone, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Tor.com, Uncanny.

Unauthorized Bread, Cory Doctorow; Lameece Issaq, narrator (Macmillan Audio 978-1-25022316-6, $10.99, digital download, 3 hr., unabridged) April 2019. Selima, a Libyan immigrant, is grateful to leave the refugee shelter in Arizona for a subsidized, fully furnished studio apartment in Boston’s Dorchester Towers, even if she is only allowed to use the elevator when the building’s market-value tenants don’t require it. Then the company supplying her internet-equipped ap­pliances – which only

The American Library Association (ALA) has announced the longlist for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence for “the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year,” including the following titles and authors of genre interest: Fiction The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates (One World) The World That We Knew, Alice Hoffman (Simon & Schuster) Inland, Téa Obreht (Random House) Lanny, Max Porter

Halloween is coming! Check out things that go bump at high noon in STRAIGHT OUTTA DEADWOOD; the end of the world in THE RAMPANT; a sea captain ghost in THE SHAPE OF NIGHT; and the monstrous women in the new Theodora Goss. Plus HEX LIFE, THE TWISTED ONES, FRANKISSSTEIN, and, fittingly, a book called OCTOBER. New titles this week are by David Boop, Patricia Cornwell, Charlotte Nicole Davis, Julie C.

In January 2019, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America announced that their mini­mum payment rate for professional short fiction markets (“the SFWA pro rate”) would increase to eight cents per word on September 1, 2019, and that rate has now gone into effect. Only stories sold at 8¢/word or above can qualify authors for membership in SFWA, though writers applying for membership qualify on the basis of the

First Cosmic Velocity, Zach Powers (Putnam 978-0525539278, $26, 352pp, hardcover) August 2019 Thirty years after the fall of the Soviet Union (counting from the initial revolts of the satellite nations in 1989, albeit not from the official dissolution date of 1991)—and ignoring all the present complicated realities that remnant Russia entails on the geopolitical scene—the era of the Communist empire (roughly starting in 1917) seems—at least to my perceptions, and,

The Science Fiction Poetry Association has announced the 2019 Dwarf Stars and Elgin Awards winners. The Dwarf Stars Award is given by the SFPA to recognize the best speculative poem of one to ten lines published in the previous year. Winners will have their work reprinted in the 2019 Dwarf Stars Anthology, edited by John C. Mannone. First Place: “embalmed”, Sofía Rhei, translated by Lawrence Schimel (Multiverse: An International Anthology

Debut collection We Show What We Have Learned by Clare Beams (Lookout) won the Bard Fiction Prize. The $30,000 annual prize is awarded by Bard College “to a promising emerging writer who is an American citizen aged 39 years or younger at the time of application.” Beams also receives a one-semester residency at the college. Applications for next year’s prize are open now through June 15, 2020. For more information,

Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments and Stephen King’s The Institute flip on two lists, King moving into 1st place, Atwood running-up. Meanwhile, Joe Abercrombie’s A Little Hatred (Orbit) debuts on three lists.

Trapped in the R.A.W., A Journal of My Experiences during the Great Invasion by Kaylee Bearovna, Kate Boyes (Aqueduct 978-1-61976-159-9, $20.00, 312pp, tp) July 2019. Every once in a while, a novel seems to drop in from out of nowhere, with little to go on but a promo let­ter and – in the case at hand – the reputation of the publisher. Aqueduct Press has earned a reputation not only

Air Logic, Laurie J. Marks (Small Beer Press 978-1-61873-160-9, $17.00, 400pp, pb) June 2019. Cover by Kathleen Jennings. You might not believe me, but this is the truth: Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic books are as good as Elena Ferrante’s monumental Neapolitan Quartet. They achieve the same depth, the same spellbinding quality, and the same sense of falling entire into a world on the page, tethered to real life by

CBS and Viacom are merg­ing, becoming one company again after their sepa­ration in 2006. As a result, their publishing divi­sion Simon & Schuster will report to Viacom CEO Robert Bakish (it previously reported to the head of CBS). S&S head Carolyn Reidy told her staff, “I always say that with change comes opportunity, and we will now be proudly associated with an even more formidable portfolio of brands and content.

Big Giant Floating Head, Christopher Boucher (Melville House 978-1612197579, $16.99, 224pp, tp) June 2019. In his new novel, Big Giant Floating Head, Christoper Boucher takes us to the fictional town of Coolidge MA where his alter-ego, also named Christopher Boucher, is struggling to cope with his wife’s decision to leave him. As Boucher informs us, the news came unexpectedly via Twitter. “You can go back on her timeline and read

Gollancz and author Ben Aaronovitch, in partnership with NaNoWriMo and the Good Literary Agency, have announced a writing prize “to support Black, Asian & ethnic minority writers in the UK in the genres of scifi, fantasy & horror.” Submissions for short story or novel beginnings from 5,000 to 10,000 words will open October 1, 2019 and close January 31, 2020. Prizes will include £4,000, a critique, and a year-long mentoring

The annual Clarion West writing workshop was held June 23 – August 2, 2019 in Seattle WA. This story and more like it in the September 2019 issue of Locus. 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 paywall free, but WE

Girls with Sharp Sticks, Suzanne Young; Caitlin Davies, narrator (Simon & Schuster Audio/Black­stone Audio 978-1-50828140-5, $39.99, 9 CDs, 10.5 hr., unabridged [also available as a digital download]) March 2019. I hesitate to mention just which classic early 1970s book, adapted into a well-known film and a bad remake, and now an indelible part of our popular culture, that this new YA novel reminds me of, because it’ll spoil the plot

The Silver Wind, Nina Allan (Titan 978-1789091694, $14.95, 368pp, trade paperback) September 2019 There’s a certain kind of SF that no one does better than the British. Eerie, ambiguous, sly, multivalent, sensitive to the nuanced emotional weather of the protagonists, highly naturalistic despite the weirdness…. If I mention the names Christopher Priest, Brian Aldiss, D.G. Compton and, on the horror end of the spectrum, Robert Aickman, I think you’ll have

A City Made of Words, Paul Park (PM Press 978-1-629-63642-9, $14.00, 128pp, tp) June 2019. Paul Park has always had a rather sidewise relationship with science fiction and fantasy. His early novels demonstrated a sophisticated awareness of the literary possibilities of the far-future, dying-Earth theme, and his vastly underappreciated A Princess of Roumania series was as carefully worked-out an alternate history as you could ask for – except that it

Gavin Grant & Kelly Link of Small Beer Press are taking over White Square Books in Easthampton MA, and will reopen the shop as Book Moon in early October 2019. The store will carry new and used books, with a specialty in Small Beer Press titles. Grant says, “Small Beer Press will continue to publish books — we have titles planned for the next 2-3 years and don’t anticipate much

The winner, finalists, and honorable mentions for the Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction have been announced: Winner “The Puppetmaster”, Kehkashan Khalid Honorable Mention “The City of Mitr”, Sadia Khatri Finalists “Compound”, Umair Khan “The Third Feather”, Fatima Taqvi The Salam Award, “a short story award to promote science fiction and related genres of writing in Pakistan,” is an annual award open to original fiction of 10,000 words or fewer written

The Cascade Writers workshop was held July 19-21, 2019 in Bremerton WA. This story and more like it in the September 2019 issue of Locus. 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 paywall free, but WE NEED YOUR FINANCIAL SUPPORT to

Raphael Bob-Waksberg, Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory (Knopf 6/19) Offbeat, absurd, and often hilarious looks at love fill this original collection of 16 stories, a long poem, and a set of vignettes. Several stories fall into the realm of SF or fantasy, with such elements as superheroes, alternate realities, and a canine narrator. This is the first collection from Bob-Waksberg, better known as the creator