The Blacktongue Thief, Christopher Buehlman (Tor 978-1250621191, $25.99, 416pp, hc) May 2021. Author of five previous novels, Christopher Buehlman had not previously fallen across my radar screen. But certainly my enjoyment of his newest, The Blacktongue Thief, will propel me to search out his earlier books. What he has delivered in this sixth of his tales is a glorious overstuffed “secondary world” fantasy that manages to balance the picaresque mode

Carnegie Hall is putting on a city-wide Afrofuturism festival, scheduled to begin February 2022 in New York City. The official announcement says, Across New York City, leading cultural organizations present multidisciplinary programming that touches African and African diasporic philosophies, speculative fiction, mythology, comics, quantum physics, cosmology, technology, and more. A diverse range of online offerings also includes film screenings, exhibitions, and talks with some of the leading thinkers and creatives

The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (Harper) won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in the Fiction category. The award, given for “distinguished fiction published in book form during the year by an American author, preferably dealing with American life,” comes with a prize of $15,000. The judges called the winner a “majestic, polyphonic novel about a community’s efforts to halt the proposed displacement and elimination of several Native American tribes in

Winners for the 2020 Australian Shadows Awards have been announced. The award is given by the Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA) for “the finest in horror and dark fiction published by an Australasian within the calendar year.” Novel WINNER: Deception Pass, Matthew Tait (Dark Crib) The Crying Forest, Venero Armanno (IFWG) Flyaway, Kathleen Jennings (Picador) Gutterbreed, Marty Young (Eclectic Trio) Long Fiction WINNER: “By Touch and By Glance”, Lisa L. Hannett

The Planetbreaker’s Son, Nick Mamatas (PM 978-1-62963-834-8, $14.00, 118pp, tp) Febru­ary 2021. With all the venues featuring original short fiction these days, one that might be easily overlooked is PM Press’s Outspoken Authors series of chapbooks, each a potpourri of stories and essays, along with a quirky interview with series editor Terry Bisson. It has featured authors as diverse as Ursula K. Le Guin, Nalo Hopkinson, Karen Joy Fowler, Kim

Stéphane Marsan, co-founder of major French SF imprint Bragelonne, has been accused of inappropri­ate behavior and sexual harassment by more than 20 people, including authors and former employees. The investigative report was published by French journal Mediapart in April 2021. Marsan wrote an extensive letter in reply, denying any wrongdoing and threat­ening legal action for defamation. Bragelonne was founded in 1995 by Marsan and Alain Névant, and is widely credited

Clarkesworld 3/21 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/25/21, 3/11/21 Lightspeed 3/21 My two favorite stories in Clarkesworld in March are “Homecoming is Just An­other Word for the Sublimation of the Self” by Isabel J. Kim and “The Orbiting Guan Erye” by Wang Zhenzhen (translated by Carmen Yiling Yan). Kim’s story features an amazingly appropriate use of second-person perspective as “you” are a first-generation Korean immigrant to the US in a world where immigrants

Winners of the 2021 Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) Poetry Contest have been announced. 1st Place: “It is a Father’s Tale”, Eric Nicholson 2nd Place: “Memories of a Mermaid”, Natascha Graham 3rd Place: “Cygnus”, Ryan E. Holman Honorable Mention: “Milicent Patrick Speaks of Monsters”, Laura Shovan Honorable Mention: “The Catty Hours”, Adele Gardner The first place winner receives $100, second place receives $75, and third place receives $50, with all

The Ladies of Horror Fiction (LOHF) writers’ organization is accepting applications for its annual grant program now through August 31, 2021. Nine grants of $100 each are available “to all women (cis and trans) and non-binary femmes who have reasonably demonstrated a commitment to writing in the horror genre.” Winners will be announced on September 15, 2021. For more information, including how to apply or contribute, see the LOHF website.

Uncanny 3-4/21 Weird Tales #364 The March-April issue of Uncanny is pretty remarkable. All of the stories are strong. Catherynne M. Valente opens with “The Sin of America“, which expands on the “sin eater” concept in purposefully American fashion, with a bit of the vibe of Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery” to boot. American fashion here is repre­sented by a clichéd upper Midwest diner and way too much food (though it

Andrews, Claire: Daughter of Sparta (Little, Brown/Jimmy Patterson 978-0316540070, $18.99, 384 pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, June 8, 2021) Young-adult reimagining of ancient Greek mythology, where a headstrong girl does whatever it takes to rise up and become the most powerful fighter her people have ever seen.   Aryan, Stephen: The Coward (Angry Robot US 978-0-85766-888-2, $14.99, 400 pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, June 8, 2021) Fantasy novel, book

Hachette Book Group published their annual diversity update, covering 2020. They announced increases in staff diversity at all levels in the company, the largest being a 31% increase among senior managers, including directors and higher (though they’re still almost 80% white). Employees identifying as BIPOC increased seven percent in 2020. Acquisitions saw a bump, too: new authors and illustrators of color made up 29% of book deals, compared to 22%

A.M. Dellamonica, Amal El-Mohtar & Kelly Robson have co-written fantasy/horror play Dressed as People, a “Triptych of Uncanny Abduction,” directed by Mary Ellis, performed by Margo MacDonald, and featuring music by SIESKI. The play premieres during the Ottawa Fringe Festival, June 17-27, 2021. For more information, and to buy tickets to view online, see the Ottawa Fringe Festival website. While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus

A few authors of genre interest are on the six-title shortlist for the Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award: “The July War”, Rabih Alameddine “A Prolonged Kiss”, Jonathan Gibbs “The Irish Wedding”, Elizabeth McCracken The £30,000 award is given to a single story “of 6,000 words or less” published in the UK or Ireland. Judges for 2021 are Romesh Gunesekera, Andrew Holgate, Yiyun Li, David Mitchell, and Curtis Sittenfeld. Five

Like most authors, I have more experience writing beginnings than I do endings, but perhaps not in the way one would expect. Some of this is an artifact of the linear way we have evolved to see time. It’s how many of us were taught to approach narrative. For many years I began every story with a scene, an inciting incident, a mood, a situation, and wrote until I figured

The City of Good Death, Priyanka Champaneri (Restless Books 978-1-632-06252-9, $28.00, 448pp, hc) February 2021. Priyanka Champaneri’s debut, The City of Good Death, winner of the 2018 Restless Book Prize for New Immigrant Writing, explores the rituals and customs of death from a non-Western perspective. The story is set in the holy city of Banaras, also known as Kashi, on the banks of the River Ganges, where the Hindu faithful

Congressional Democrats Ted Lieu (California) and Teresa Leger Fernandez (New Mexico) have introduced a new bill, “The 21st Century Federal Writers’ Project”, which proposes $60 million in funding to non-profit organizations, libraries, news organizations, and writing-related unions to sup­port writers who lost income during the pandemic. The proposed legislation is inspired by the Federal Writers’ Project from 1935, which employed thou­sands of writers during the Great Depression. One goal of

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) announced winners of the 2020 Nebula Awards at the 56th Annual Nebula Banquet during the 2021 SFWA Nebula Conference. Nalo Hopkinson became the 37th Damon Knight Grand Master, for her contributions to the literature of science fiction and fantasy. The Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award was presented to Connie Willis. The Kate Willhelm Solstice Award was presented to Ben

The sale of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s publishing company, HMH Books & Media, to News Corp (parent company of HarperCollins) is complete… and doesn’t include the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt name, which the original parent company intends to keep for its technology business. HarperCollins says they will phase out use of the name, ending a legacy that began over a century and a half ago when Boston printer Henry Houghton branched out

Day Zero, C. Robert Cargill (Harper Voyager 978-0062405807, $27.99, 304pp, hc) May 2021. This era seems a Golden Age for fictional examinations of artificial intelligence, plumbing the deeper meaning of robot consciousness and even silicon emotions. With recent novels such as Today I Am Carey, Set My Heart to Five, Barren Cove, and The Hierarchies, along with films like Ex Machina, Zoe, Blade Runner 2049, and Chappie, contemporary science fiction

Bloomsbury Publishing in the UK has purchased independent publisher Head of Zeus (HoZ) for £8.5 million (just over $12 million), including payments of pre-existing loans. Head of Zeus publishes genre authors including P.C. Cast, Terry Goodkind, Cixin Liu, Ken Liu, Lavie Tidhar, and many others. Bloomsbury’s official announcement said, “This acquisition will provide a strong addition to Bloomsbury’s thriving Consumer division and support our long term Consumer growth strategy, with

Reiko Murakami is a US-based concept art­ist and illustrator specializing in surreal fantasy and horror art. With her subtle and expressive gesture drawings she focuses on capturing moments filled with unspeakable emo­tions. Her illustrations have appeared on many projects such as Tor.com, Magic: the Gathering, and Basketful of Heads (Hill House Comics, DC). Her work has been exhibited at Nucleus Portland, Helikon Gallery, Krabjab Studio, Light Grey Art Lab and

The Gilded Ones, Namina Forna (Delacorte Press/Penguin Random House 978-1-984-84869-7, $18.99, 432pp, hc) February 2021. If you are in search of a feminist, epic fantasy filled with formidable girls healing from their trauma, killing monsters in the style of 300, and discovering their inner power despite the patriarchy, you may want to start with The Gilded Ones. All 16-year-old Deka wants is acceptance from her village, even if that means

Winners of the 2021 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, honoring the best SF/F work published in France in 2020, have been announced:

The Memory Theater, Karin Tidbeck (Pantheon 978-1-5247-4833-3, $25.95, 240pp, hc) Febru­ary 2021. One of the more memorable figures in Karin Tidbeck’s Crawford Award-winning collection Jagganath was the title character of the story “Augusta Prime”, an epically supercilious aris­tocrat whose idea of entertainment was to smash her croquet ball into the face of an attending page. Augusta lived in a kind of polder (in the John Clute sense), a garden in

Five hundred years before the start of Raya and the Last Dragon, the vibrant land of Kumandra is attacked by the Druun, monsters that turn their victims into stone. Kumandra’s guardian dragons band together to defeat the Druun, but in doing so are petrified, leaving behind only a magic gem infused with their power. In the struggle for control of the dragons’ power, Kumandra splits into five tribes — Heart,

At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop, translated by Anna Mocschovakis (Pushkin), has won the 2021 International Booker Prize. The award is given “every year for a single book that is translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland.” The £50,000 prize is divided equally among the author and translator. Shortlisted authors and translators each receive £1,000. Judges for 2021 were Aida Edemariam, Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Neel

The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book, Kate Milford (Clarion Books 978-1-328-46690-7, $17.99, hc, 384pp) February 2021. Kate Milford returns to the world of her Greenglass House novels with the be­guiling puzzle that is The Raconteur’s Commonplace Book. Set in a 19th-century-esque time period, the new title focuses on the 15 people waiting out an endless rain in the Blue Vein Tav­ern. The roads are flooded by the rising Skidwrack River and the

Winners for the 33rd Annual Lambda Literary Awards (the “Lammys”), celebrating “the best lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender books,” were announced on June 1, 2021 during the virtual 33rd Annual Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony. Winners of genre interest include:

PodCastle co-editors Jen Albert and Cherae Clark are stepping down from their positions in order to focus on other career and time commitments. Replacing them will be PodCastle associate editor and copyeditor Eleanor R. Wood, and Voodoonauts cofounder Shingai Njeri Kagunda. The upcoming stories through the rest of the year will likely be some combination of stories that Jen and Cherae picked out from the submissions periods of 2020, and the stories that

Blake, Adrienne: Pride and Paranormal (City Owl Press 9781648980671, $14.99, 316pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, June 1, 2021) Paranormal romance novel about witches and warlocks, inspired by Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.   Boekweg, Sheena: A Sisterhood of Secret Ambitions (Macmillan/Feiwel and Friends 978-1-250-77098-1, $18.99, 352pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, June 1, 2021) Young-adult alternate/secret-history SF novel set in a world where women manipulate history behind the scenes, and the

Departure Mirror Quarterly has announced it will cease publication after the Spring 2021 issue. It published three issues of SF/F fiction and poetry billed as “a departure from and a mirror on reality.” Editor-in-chief Arthur Robert Tracy IV cited readership decline, low ad response rate, and day job commitments as factors for the closure. A big part of our decision to start the magazine was that I kept seeing great

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) will livestream the 56th Nebula Awards ceremony on June 5, 2021 at 5 p.m. Pacific Time. The ceremony will be available to the public on YouTube and Facebook, and will be hosted by Aydrea Walden. Award presenters include Tobias S. Buckell, Jeffe Kennedy, Mallory O’Meara, Mark Oshiro, Carrie Patel, Adam Savage, Nisi Shawl, and Troy L. Wiggins. For more information, see

FIYAH magazine has announced the establishment of four grants “intended to assist Black writers of speculative fiction in defraying costs associated with honing their craft.” Three $1,000 grants will be awarded as part of Juneteenth every year. The Rest Grant will be given “for activists and organizers with a record of working on behalf of the SFF community, but who are in need of respite or time to recommit to

The Locus Selected Books by Author list has been updated on our Forthcoming Books page, with information from the June 2021 issue covering upcoming titles from genre houses slated through March 2022. Find out about your favorite authors’ upcoming books! For the complete list of books by publisher, subscribe to our print magazine or purchase the June issue in print or digital editions, available June 1, 2021. While you are

Bacchanal is a richly imagined historical fantasy. Tell us a bit about the book: the world where it takes place, and the characters who inhabit that world. Bacchanal is set against the backdrop of The Great Depression and culminates with the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. At the center of this maelstrom is an unusual young woman, Eliza Meeks. She’s alone, ostracized and struggling to navigate her reality – a family that

The shortlist for the 2021 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, given by The Orwell Foundation to novels and short story collections published in the UK which explore major political and social themes through a fictional lens, includes two titles of genre interest. Leave the World Behind, Rumaan Alam (Bloomsbury) The Death of Vivek Oji, Akwaeke Emezi (Faber) The judges for 2021 are Bea Carvalho, Mark Ford, Delia Jarrett-Macauley (chair), and

The African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS) has announced the shortlist for the 2021 Nommo Awards, given to works “by Africans as defined by the ASFS and Nommo Awards Guidelines.” Best Novel Soul Searching, Stephen Embleton (Guardbridge) The Death of Vivek Oji, Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead) Club Ded, Nikhil Singh (Luna) Best Novella Guardians: The Awakening, David A. Atta (Makere) A Fledgling Abiba, Dilman Dila (Guardbridge) “Ife-Iyoku: The Tale of Imadeyunuagbon”, Oghenechovwe

The Library of the Dead is the first book in a new series from Tor. Tell us a bit about it — the world where it takes place, and the characters who inhabit that world My new book, The Library of the Dead, is the first in a brand-new series called Edinburgh Nights. It tells the story of Ropa Moyo, a young girl who delivers messages from ghosts to the

In the Empty Quarter, G. Willow Wilson; Soneela Nankani, narrator (Brilliance Audio, $1.99, digital download, 1.5 hr., unabridged) January 2021. In this short story, Great Neck NY housewife Jean accompanies her oil exec husband to a city in an unnamed Middle Eastern country in the 1950s, believing that her self-perceived openness to the culture and her association with a local prince makes her superior to the other ex-pat wives. A

The Cretaceous Past, Cixin Liu (Subterranean 978-1645240150, $40.00, 192pp, hc) May 2021. One of the amazing things about Cixin Liu’s writing, as I observed when I reviewed his short-story collection To Hold Up the Sky, is that “he is at once a radical and a conservative, an optimist and a pessimist, a member of the Old Guard and of the New Wave simultaneously.” His tales have a way of looking

The Best of World SF: Volume 1, Lavie Tidhar, ed. (Head of Zeus 978-1838937645, $39.95, 624pp, hc) June 2021. In his incisive introduction to The Best of World SF: Volume 1, a kind of follow-up to the Apex Book of World SF volumes, which appeared over nearly a decade until 2018, Lavie Tidhar takes ironic note of the various meanings of “world science fiction” over the years. Originally a grandiose

Shortlisted titles for the 2021 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize have been announced in the Illustrated Books, Younger Readers’, and Older Readers’ categories, including the following of genre interest: Older Readers’ Wranglestone, Darren Charlton (Stripes/Little Tiger) Raybearer, Jordan Ifueko (Amulet; Hot Key) Category winners each receive £2,000 and the overall Waterstones Children’s Book of the Year title winner will receive an additional £3,000. Winners will be announced on July 1, 2021.

The Sentient, Nadia Afifi (Flame Tree Press 978-1-787-58432-7, $14.95, 304pp, tp) Septem­ber 2020. Nadia Afifi’s debut novel The Sentient is the kind of science fiction narrative that comfortably inhabits the realm of plausi­bility. There is superb technology on display here, including ways of dealing with trauma that would be very useful today, but human suffering, stress, death, and the dark side of religious fanaticism are at the core of the

Hold Fast Through the Fire, K.B. Wagers (Harper Voyager 978-0062887818, $26.99, 416pp, hc) July 2021. Hold Fast Through the Fire is the second NeoG novel by K.B. Wagers (acclaimed author of the Indranan War and the Farian War space opera trilogies). While it can be satisfying as a stand­alone, I believe it benefits from having read A Pale Light in the Black, Wagers’s first novel in this setting. It helps

Paladin’s Strength, T. Kingfisher (Argyll Pro­ductions, 978-1-61450-530-3, $34.95, 424pp, hc) February 2021. Red Wombat Studio 978-1614505303, $5.99, 478pp, eb) February 2021. Those who deeply enjoyed T. Kingfisher’s Pala­din’s Grace, the first book in the Saint of Steel series, likely hit “buy” the instant they saw the listing for book two. These are the readers who know the drill: T. Kingfisher is the pen name Ur­sula Vernon uses when writing for

The Bridge, J.S. Breukelaar (Meerkat Press 978-1-946154-44-6 $15.95 227pp, tp) June 2021. J.S. Breukelaar’s The Bridge may be a challeng­ing read for some, but it is certainly a rewarding one. Breukelaar immediately immerses the reader in a complex world with a complicated protagonist. Information is integrated seamlessly into the plot and everything becomes clearer only as one continues to read. Meera is a “Made” – created by the “Father” through

The Return of the Sorceress, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Subterranean 978-1-64524-030-3, $40.00, 96pp, hc) June 2021. Cover by Fang Xinyu. Since her first novel Signal to Noise was pub­lished in 2015, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s career has traced an impressive curve – award nomina­tions for Gods of Jade and Shadow (2019), a major bestseller and Hulu deal with last year’s Mexican Gothic. Moreno-Garcia’s affinity for weird fic­tion is evident in all these, as well

Gold SF, a new imprint of Goldsmith Press, is calling for submissions. The imprint is “dedicated to discovering and publishing new intersectional femi­nist science fiction, promoting voices that answer to the unprecedented times in which we find ourselves.” They are interested in books dealing with anti-ratio­nalism and the rise of the alt-right; the climate crisis and feminism in the Age of the Anthropocene; global movements of populations and refugees; new

Wendy Aldiss, My Father’s Things (Pannoval Press 12/20) Brian Aldiss’s daughter Wendy took still-life photos of her father’s things after he died – every­thing from art and books (and a few issues of Locus) down to the junk drawer and garden shed – and put a substantial selection of them in this photography/art book for a fascinating, quirky portrait of an influential author. C.L. Clark, The Unbroken (Orbit US 3/21)

Tor.com 1/27/21, 2/3/21, 2/10/21, 2/24/21 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/28/21, 2/11/21 Strange Horizons 2/8/21, 2/15/21 Aurealis #137 Fantasy Magazine 2/21 The stories in Tor.com I read this month leaned heavily toward horror, with three edited by El­len Datlow and the fourth a vampire story edited by Jonathan Strahan. “Shards” by Ian Rogers is a cabin-in-the-woods story in which four friends violently murder the fifth friend, due to a demonic artefact. In

Mark Kelly’s regular Periodicals posts have been discontinued. We will list online and print magazines seen by Locus each month.

Chaos on Catnet, Naomi Kritzer (Tor Teen 978-1-25016-522-0, $18.99, 304pp, hc) April 2021. Naomi Kritzer’s Chaos on Catnet is a direct sequel to her Lodestar Award winner Catfishing on Catnet, and it does exactly what a sequel should do: expand the stakes, introduce a few important new characters, reveal some secrets and puzzles left over from the first novel, and deepen the tone a bit. The trick is to manage

Winners of the Omega Sci-Fi Awards, presented by Sci-Fest LA and the Light Bringer Project, were announced in an online ceremony. Roswell Award First place: “Imagine Dandelions”, Andrea Goyan Second place: “Biomimicry”, Ven Pillay Third place: “Realtiger”, Susan Wachowski Tomorrow Prize First place: “Star Sailor”, Gwendolyn Lopez Second place: “Returning Home”, Sofia Orduno Third place: “EP-1M Contamination”, Britney Cruz “Corn” by Sienna Koizumi won the 2021 Green Feather Award competition, and received $250.

The Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror (AEFCFT) has announced the finalists for the 2021 Ignotus Awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Hugo Awards). Novela extranjera (Foreign Novel) Un poco de odio [A Little Hatred], Joe Abercrombie, translated by Manu Viciano (Alianza) Una órbita cerrada y compartida [A Closed and Common Orbit], Becky Chambers, translated by Alexander Páez & Antonio Rivas (Insólita) Los últimos días [Last Days], Brian

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the winners for the 2020 Bram Stoker Awards: Superior Achievement in a Novel WINNER: The Only Good Indians, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga) The Deep, Alma Katsu (G.P. Putnam’s Sons) Devil’s Creek, Todd Keisling (Silver Shamrock) Malorie, Josh Malerman (Del Rey) Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey) Superior Achievement in a First Novel WINNER: The Fourth Whore, EV Knight (Raw Dog Screaming) The Taxidermist’s

We Are Satellites, Sarah Pinsker (Berkley 978-1984802606, $16.00, 400pp, pb) May 2021. Can science fiction—so often seen as the literature of the cosmic, the outré, the wide-screen perspective, populated by larger-than-life loners—ever be successfully hybridized with the naturalistic, domestic novel—the artistic glorification of the mundane, the quotidian, the miniaturist perspective, populated by uniquely average and intriguingly commonplace interrelated folks? This is a question famously asked by Ursula Le Guin in

The Tower of Fools, Andrzej Sapkowski; Peter Kenny, narrator (Hachette Audio 978-1-54910162-5, $24.98, digital download, 19 hr., unabridged). October 2020. After the popularity of the Witcher novels, games, and Netflix series, it’s no wonder that US publishers would seek out Sapkowski’s other works. Originally published in Polish in 2002 and newly translated into English by David A. French, this is the first in the Hussite Trilogy, a historical fantasy set

Peaces, Helen Oyeyemi (Riverhead 978-0-593-19233-7, $27.00, 272pp, hc) April 2021. Peaces is my second encounter with Helen Oy­eyemi’s work. The first book of hers I read was 2016’s What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, a col­lection of stories that Kirstyn McDermott and I discuss at length on The Writer and The Critic podcast. I found reading the collection to be an invigorating experience, inspired by Oyeyemi’s embrace of the

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-293694-2, $27.99, 336pp, hc) April 2021. Becky Chambers’s Wayfarers series, which is concluding with The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, is a nice warm cup of tea when the weather outside is terrible. Sure there are conflicts and sadness but all of that unpleasantness is always outweighed by decency and honesty. It would be tempting to also claim that Chambers’s

SF writer and editor Don Sakers, 62, died May 17, 2021 of a heart attack in Maryland. He published many novels and stories beginning in the ’80s, and was a review columnist for Analog starting in 2009. He was also a frequent convention guest. Sakers was born June 16, 1958 in Yokosuka Japan, though he grew up in the US. He worked as a librarian at the Anne Arundel County

I’m Waiting for You and Other Stories, Kim Bo-Young (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-295146-5, 336pp, $26.99, hc) April 2021. Between the films of Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Snowpiercer, Parasite) and Yeon Sang-ho (Train to Busan, Peninsula) and its various series on Netflix (Kingdom, Sweet Home, Uncanny Counter, etc.), South Korea has lately become a significant player in SF/F media, but South Korean fiction has so far enjoyed far less visibility. A good

MILESTONES ALICE BELL is now repre­sented by Stevie Finegan of Zeno Agency. AWARDS JEAN-CLAUDE MOURLEVAT won the 2021 Astrid Lindgren Me­morial Award, honoring children’s and young adult literature, which includes a prize of five million krona ($572,000). MICAIAH JOHNSON‘s The Space Between Worlds (Del Rey) won the 2021 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award for the “best debut novel in the science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres.” The $1,000 award will be

The Locus Bestsellers for May include top titles A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury US), Dune by Frank Herbert (Ace), The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (Tor), and Star Wars: The High Republic: Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule (Del Rey).

The Alien Stars and Other Novellas, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot Books 978-0857669285, $12.99, 200pp, tp) April 2021. Cover by grandfailure. Tim Pratt’s Axiom trilogy (The Wrong Stars, The Dreaming Stars, and The Forbidden Stars) is a trio of excellent, modern, space-opera pulp adventures, with a compelling cast and a satisfying amount of solv­ing problems by blowing them up. I’m gutted that there don’t seem to be any plans for more

Announcing the cover reveal for They Met in a Tavern by Elijah Menchaca! A brand new fantasy adventure novel from CamCat Books, featuring cover art by Maryann Appel. From the publisher: They used to be heroes… and it was all downhill from there. The Starbreakers were your classic teenage heroes. Using their combined powers and skills, they were the most successful group of glintchasers in Corsar. But that all changed the

Finalists for the 2020 Australian Shadows Awards have been announced. The award is given by the Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA) for “the finest in horror and dark fiction published by an Australasian within the calendar year.” Novel The Crying Forest, Venero Armanno (IFWG) Flyaway, Kathleen Jennings (Picador) Deception Pass, Matthew Tait (Dark Crib) Gutterbreed, Marty Young (Eclectic Trio) Short Fiction “Hideous Armature”, Joanne Anderton (Midnight Echo #15) “Vision Thing”, Matthew

Hummingbird Salamander, Jeff VanderMeer (MCD 978-0-374-17354-8, $27.00, 368pp, hc) April 2021. With due regard to Jeff VanderMeer’s ear­lier work, which I adore, his new novel, Hummingbird Salamander, contin­ues an extraordinary run of books that began with the publication of Annihilation in 2014. Having given us existential horror, modernist science fiction, and portal fantasy, VanderMeer turns the genre dial to the hard-boiled end of the scale with a tale of the

Writer and editor Marvin Kaye, 83, died May 13, 2021 in hospice care in New York. Kaye was best known as a prolific editor and anthologist, and was also an accomplished fiction writer and playwright. Marvin Nathan Kaye was born March 10, 1938 in Philadelphia PA. He attended Penn State, graduating with a BA in 1960 and a master’s in English literature and theater in 1962. He worked as a

The Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) announced the new Convention Support Grant for fantasy, science fiction, and literary conventions with significant speculative literature content. Grants of $500 to $1,000 will be awarded throughout the year, for a total of $10,000. For conventions taking place between June 1 and December 31, 2021, the application period is May 15–June 15, 2021. For conventions taking place between January 1 and May 31, 2022, the

Nghi Dong Vo was born December 4, 1981 in Peoria IL. She lived there until attending college at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, where she studied political science and media studies. In 2007 she settled in Milwaukee WI. Vo’s first story was “Gift of Flight” in 2007, and she has since pub­lished almost 20 stories in various publications. Her first book was Crawford Award winning novella The Empress of

The Godel Operation, James L. Cambias (Baen 978-1982125561, 288pp, $16.00, tp) May 2021. Readers of a certain vintage might recall that before the term “cyberpunk” crystallized and assumed critical dominance, there were proposals to call the cutting-edge SF of the 1980s “Radical Hard SF.” I’d like to now propose that we invent or recognize a sub-genre called “Radical Fun SF,” and that we put James Cambias at the top of

The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales, Angela Slat­ter (Tarturus 978-1-912586-24-0, £40.00, 452pp, hc) March 2021. Cover by Kathleen Jennings. We are barely into 2021 and Angela Slatter is already having quite a year. A novel (All the Murmuring Bones as A.G. Slatter) and a collection of microfiction (Red New Day and Other Microfictions) were both reviewed here last month. Add The Tallow-Wife and Other Tales to the list. It is a

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, Lev Gross­man; Michael Crouch, narrator (Hachette Audio 978-1-54910912-6, $5.00, digital download, 1.75 hr., unabridged) February 2021. Of course, the individual publication of this story, the audio production of this story, and the Amazon Prime film based on this story all came out February 2, 2021. This trapped-in-a-time-loop YA fantasy and its author pay explicit homage to Groundhog Day and several similar works. In this

Curiosities Winter ’20 Cossmass Infinities 9/20 On Spec #115 Analog 3-4/21 Asimov’s 3-4/21 It is always a surprise – unfairly so – to find a small new magazine and realize that it’s re­ally quite good! I had that experience with the previous issue of Curiosities, and now I see the Winter issue, and it does not disappoint. Konstantine Paradias offers “And the Faces Screamed in the Galleries” – a really

Writer Jan Stirling, 71, died May 8, 2021. She was best known for her Terion & Feric stories. Janet Cathryn Moore was born April 6, 1950 in Milford MA. Her debut story “Were-Wench” appeared in 1995 in Chicks in Chainmail. She published five other stories on her own, plus another half-dozen in collaboration with her husband, SF writer S.M. Stirling (married 1988). Stirling, who lived in New Mexico, was a

Author Alexander Chee and translator Edward Gauvin are among the 2021 Guggenheim Fellows, announced by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Fellowships were awarded to 184 recipients across 49 fields of study “on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise.” The Foundation was started in 1925 and has awarded grants totaling nearly $400 million. Fellowships are through two annual competitions: one for citizens and permanent residents of the US

Orion was named Publisher of the Year and Orion’s genre imprint Gollancz was declared Imprint of the Year at the 2021 British Book Awards. The Bookseller announced the winners on May 13, 2021 during a virtual event. Several titles of genre interest were also included in the shortlist. Known as the “Nibbies,” the British Book Awards “honours and celebrates the commercial successes of publishers, authors and bookshops” with nominees in

Analog has announced the launch of the Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices, open to “any writer over 18 years of age who customarily identifies as Black, has not published nor is under contract for a book, and has three or less paid fiction publications.” Submissions will be read blind. Please remove all identifying information from the document before sending it. The file name should be the title of the story. Submissions should

It’s a little dangerous, after selling a story to a professional science fiction or fantasy publi­cation, to start calculating the odds of pulling in an award nomination. The draw is inexorable though – the Nebula Awards, the Hugos, World Fantasy, Locus. It’s the stuff of legends. Through the years, now-familiar SF/F names have stood to accept these awards, held them up to the light and heard that applause. It’s accomplish­ment,