Winners of the 2020 Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) Amateur Writing Contest were announced during Capclave, held online October 17-18, 2020. 1st Place: “The Dragon Who Refused to Fly”, Mary Harrigan 2nd Place: “Starling”, Alexander Dzwonchyk 3rd Place: “A Tale from the Harmonium”, Miguel O. Mitchell The contest is open to non-professional writers residing or attending school in Maryland. The first place winner receives $250, second place receives $100, and

Settling the World: Selected Stories 1970-2020, M. John Harrison (Comma Press 978-1912697281, £9.99, 288pp, tp) August 2020. Harrison’s acute and sometimes merciless fasci­nation with couples who don’t quite know what they’re doing also shows up in two of the most memorable stories in Settling the World: Selected Stories 1969-2019, his first real retrospective collection since Things That Never Happen back in 2003. “The Gift” describes the parallel stories of Sophia,

J. Michael Straczynski announced that he was appointed executor of the Harlan and Susan Ellison Trust. He says, Looking after all this, and seeing to Harlan and Susan’s wishes, is something I will likely be doing for the rest of my life. Everything that Harlan ever owned, did or wrote will be fiercely protected. Steps are being taken to certify Ellison Wonderland as a cultural landmark, ensuring that it will

V.E. Schwab’s The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (Tor) debuts strongly on three lists. Novels by Alice Hoffman, Dean Koontz, and Megan Whalen Turner also debut.

The Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College will host an online event on October 21, 2020 at 2 p.m. Eastern time, celebrating the winners of the 2020 Neukom Literary Awards. The event is free and open to the public, and will include a panel discussion with winners Ted Chiang and Cadwell Turnbull, 2020 judge Sam J. Miller, and awards director Dan Rockmore. An author Q&A will follow. For

Submissions for Spectrum: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art #28 have been delayed until 2021, due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cathy & Arnie Fenner, who recently replaced John Fleskes as directors of the Spectrum Fantastic Art competi­tion and editors of the annual art book, said, We believe the responsible thing for us to do is to delay opening Spectrum 28 for submissions until after the first of the

Naomi Katherine Kritzer was born April 23, 1973 in North Carolina and lived in Indiana and Texas before age five; she grew up in Madison WI and lived in London for a year at 13. She moved to Minnesota to attend Carleton College and remained there after graduating in 1995, settling in St. Paul. She is married with two children. Kritzer’s first SF story was “Faust’s SASE” (1999), and she

Burn, Patrick Ness (Harper Teen 978-0-06-286951-7, $18.99, 384pp, hc) June 2020. The first half of Patrick Hess’s thrilling alt-history, Burn, is set in a small rural Washington State town in 1957. Sarah Dewhurst and her father are barely holding their farm together, still mourning the recent death of Sarah’s mother and struggling to find a way to be a family without her. Gareth Dewhurst cannot af­ford the men he needs

“The Partisan and the Witch” by Charlotte Honigman (Skull and Pestle: New Tales of Baba Yaga) is the winner of the 2020 Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA) Small Press Award for Short Fiction. Other finalists were: “The Blighted Godling of Company Town H”, Beth Cato (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/3/19) “The Weight of Mountains”, L. Deni Colter (DreamForge 6/19) “The Sound of Distant Stars”, Judi Fleming (Footprints in the Stars) “Give the

The winners of the inaugural Ignyte Awards, which “seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre,” were announced during FIYAHCON on October 17, 2020. Best Novel — Adult WINNER: Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Del Rey) Kingdom of Copper, S.A. Chakraborty (Harper Voyager)

My Favorites, Ben Bova (Blackstone 978-1094000923, 352pp, $24.99, hardcover) October 2020 Ben Bova turns 88 in November of 2020. He also just published a new novel, Uranus, a few months ago. Two statements of this general import are not usually compatible. Writers who continue to maintain their productivity—and personal standards of quality—so late in life form a small elite. In our field, we note such towering figures as Jack Vance

» NY Times: Amal El-Mohtar reviews C.L. Polk, V.E. Schwab, Susanna Clarke » Slate: Cory Doctorow: The Dangers of Cynical Sci-Fi Disaster Stories: I’m changing how I write fiction—for the benefit of the real world. » Guardian: Eric Brown reviews Andrzei Sapkowski, Tony Ballantyne, Peter F. Hamilton, Kate Elliott, Graham Masterton » Polygon: Andrew Liptak selects 15 recent sci-fi books that forever shaped the genre and other articles in its

QueerSciFi.com has announced the winners of their annual flash fiction contest, with 300-word stories inspired by a one-word theme (2020’s theme was “Innovation”). The top three winners are Devon Widmer (first place), E.M. Hamill (second), and K.A. Masters (third), and the top 120 stories were published in the Innovation anthology. For more: <www.queerscifi.com>. While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation.

UK small press PS Publishing has launched a new imprint, Absinthe Books, with author/editor Marie O’Regan serving as managing editor. The imprint’s “remit is to publish a wide range of authors and material, predominantly but not exclusively new to PS Publishing.” The first titles are novellas Mr. Sandman by S.J.I. Holliday, Broken Things: A Tale of Durstan by George Mann, and On the Shoulders of Otava by Laura Mauro, launching

Barnes & Noble warned customers via email to be “on high alert” following an October 10 data breach. While we do not know if any personal information was exposed as a result of the attack, we do retain in the impacted systems your billing and shipping addresses, your email address and your telephone number if you have supplied these… It is possible that your email address was exposed and, as

The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird was held online August 14-16, 2020 for 232 registered attendees, organized by Anya Martin, co-producer of The Outer Dark podcast hosted by This Is Horror. Scheduled programming featured 12 reading sessions with Mike Allen, Gregory Norman Bossert, Gabriela Damián Miravete, and others. Panels included “From Yellow Wallpaper to Spectral Hues: Color in Weird Fiction” with Daniel Braum, Craig Laurance Gidney, Brian Hauser,

Tender Is the Flesh, Agustina Bazterrica (Scribner 978-1-982-15092-1, $16.00, 224pp, tp) August 2020. Tender Is the Flesh, by Argentinian author Agustina Bazterrica (and wonderfully translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses), is not for the faint of heart. The novel is set sometime in the future, when animals across the world have been infected by a virus that’s made them poisonous to eat. In response, governments cull their livestock, empty

Time magazine has released a list of the “100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time“, curated by Time editors and a panel of authors consisting of Tomi Adeyemi, Cassandra Clare, Diana Gabaldon, Neil Gaiman, N.K. Jemisin, Marlon James, George R.R. Martin, and Sabaa Tahir. The list is presented in chronological order, starting with 9th-century The Arabian Nights and ending with Woven in Moonlight by Isabel Ibañez (Page Street), released January 2020. For the full list and

The six-title shortlist for the 2020 Goldsmiths Prize has been announced, including the following titles of genre interest: The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, M. John Harrison (Gollancz) Meanwhile in Dopamine City, DBC Pierre (Faber) The Mermaid of Black Conch, Monique Roffey (Peepal Tree) The £10,000 is given for a book by a British or Irish author that “breaks the mould or extends the possibilities of the novel form.”

MILESTONES HOWARD V. HENDRIX‘s home near Shaver Lake CA was destroyed in the Creek Fire in September 2020, shortly after the area received an evacuation order. He and his wife are “displaced persons staying in a motel in Fresno.” He wrote about the experience for the San Francisco Chronicle: <www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/Disaster-hits-home-for-volunteer-firefighter-in-15567282.php>. FRAN WILDE is the Fall 2020 Pearl S. Buck Writer in (remote) Residence at Randolph College, beginning in October. DAVE

Clarkesworld 7/20 Lightspeed 8/20 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 7/2/20, 7/16/20 July’s Clarkesworld starts with a straightfor­wardly science fictional Michael Swanwick story. In “Artificial People” Raphael is an android turned on and off repeatedly as an entrepreneurial roboticist struggles to come up with a commercially successful product. Raphael loves, loses, goes to war, gets rich, and has to make some interesting decisions with the power that his later days have given him,

A fresh batch of young mutants has arrived, but don’t call them X-Men just yet, and don’t call them superheroes, either. After surviving a freak storm that kills every person on her reservation, including both of her parents, Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt) finds herself in a nearly abandoned hospital occupied by four other teenagers — Rahne (Maisie Williams), Illyana (Anya Taylor-Joy), Roberto (Henry Zaga), and Sam (Charlie Heaton) — and

Random House Children’s Books has announced a new middle grade and YA imprint, Labyrinth Road, with a focus on contemporary fantasy and realistic literary novels. Liesa Abrams will serve as vice president and editor-in-chief of the imprint, effective November 9, 2020. Abrams was most recently vice-president, editor-at-large at Simon & Schuster. In a statement, she says, Labyrinth Road is a home for books about epic journeys—both fantastical and emotional—that give

Drowned Country, Emily Tesh (Tor.com Pub­lishing 978-1-25075-660-2, $13.99, 160pp, tp) August 2020. This time last year, I reviewed Emily Tesh’s debut novella, Silver in the Wood. It was an enchanting little book, full of love and darkness and the flutter of green leaves against one’s cheek. It can only be good news that this year we have a second Emily Tesh novella, con­tinuing the story of Silver in the Wood

The World Fantasy Convention 2020 committee has revised its program descriptions after facing public criticism and attendee withdrawals from members of the industry. According to a press release, WFC Chair Ginny Smith engaged the help of three well-respected members of the fantasy community, two people of color and a well-regarded writer and sensitivity advisor, to review the offensive and insensitive programming language. They have completed their review and the revised

The digital age gets a second look with a new drug-tech experience, the latest from Cory Doctorow, and ZOEY PUNCHES THE FUTURE IN THE DICK!

F&SF 9-10/20 Asimov’s 7-8/20 Analog 7-8/20 Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet 6/20 Galaxy’s Edge 7/20 Leah Cypess returns with another strong fairy tale-derived story in the latest F&SF. Like her previous F&SF story, “Stepsister”, “Of Them All” is sharply focused on the moral effects of fairy magic – or, rather, on human choices that may or may not be at­tributable to fairy gifts. The protagonist’s gift is that she will only

» LA Times: 5 paths to continue your Octavia E. Butler discovery after ‘Parable of the Sower’ » Guardian: ‘There is no planet B’: the best books to help us navigate the next 50 years, by Kim Stanley Robinson » Guardian: 25 years of His Dark Materials: Philip Pullman on the journey of a lifetime » Washington Post, Michael Dirda: Can’t get enough Game of Thrones or Star Wars? New

Jim Butcher’s latest Dresden Files novel, Battle Ground (Ace), debuts at #2 on three print lists. Novels by Matt Haig and Naomi Novik also debut.

New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, edited by Nisi Shawl (Rebellion) won the Brave New Words Award, announced by Starburst magazine during Octocon 2020, the National Irish Science Fiction Convention, held online October 9-11, 2020. Other finalists were: Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers, Sady Doyle (Melville House) This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Saga; Quercus) The Imaginary Corpse, Tyler Hayes

Winners for the 2020 Geffen Awards for best science fiction and fantasy published in Hebrew were announced by the Israeli Society for Science Fiction and Fantasy during Icon 2020, held online October 6-8, 2020. Best Translated Fantasy Book WINNER: Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik, translated by Yael Achmon (Tamir) Fire & Blood, George R.R. Martin, translated by Zafrir Grosman (Opus) The Rot / The Might, Siri Pettersen, translated by Yonatan Bar

I spent all summer building a pond in the backyard with my spouse. It was the perfect project to take my mind away from the world outside of the fence, a world I increasingly only experience virtually. I could try and avoid the news, but the news is the world around me. The news is neighbors who have big parties. The news is the asshole at the grocery store who

Deeplight, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children’s Books 978-1-509-83695-6, £12.99, 448pp, hc) October 2019. (Abrams 978-1-419-74320-7, $19.99, 432pp, hc) April 2020. Author Frances Hardinge’s latest fantasy, Deeplight, takes elements of Charles Dickens and Jules Verne and blends them into a world where the old and mysterious gods are now just carcasses in the depths of the sea, and a young teen must rely on his wits to survive. The adventures of 14-year-old

Results of the 2020 Fantastiknovelltävlingen, a Swedish “Fantastic Short Story Competiton” organized by writers’ email list SKRIVA, have been announced. First, second, and third place all resulted in ties. First Place “Tretton dagar i underjorden” [“Thirteen Days Underground”], Elin Frykholm “Möbhell AB” [“Furniture Hell Inc”], Lukas Renklint Second Place “Rose-Majs stickning” [“Rose-Maj’s Knitting”], Frank Berger “Sjöjungfrun i Fyrisån” [“The Mermaid in the Fyris Creek”], Tony Elgenstierna Third Place “Min vän Frasse”

Former Barnes & Noble CEO Demos Parneros has failed in his defamation suit against the company. Judge Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil dismissed his claim, saying “there is no genuine dispute about the truth of the statement that Parneros was terminated for violations of the company policies.” The judge denied B&N’s motion for summary judgement on the good faith and fair dealing claim, however: “Parneros raises a triable question as to

Five percent of Hough­ton Mifflin Harcourt’s employees (166 people) agreed to take part in a voluntary early retire­ment incentive program. The offer was open to all US employees age 55 or up with at least five years at the company (about 18% of employ­ees qualified). Most left effective September 4, 2020. The cost of the incentives is around $13.5 million, and should save HMH 17 or 18 million dollars per

The World Fantasy Convention 2020 committee issued an apology via Twitter on October 7, and added to the thread in subsequent days: Regarding the program that went out this week:  We are sorry that our program caused hurt and concern, thank you to those that commented. We are working with our team and panelists to amend this and will be revising it as an ongoing process. We have removed the

Born in London, England, Ho Che Anderson was named after the Vietnamese and Cuban revolutionaries Ho Chi Minh and Che Gue­vara. Anderson began his career as the author of nu­merous graphic novels, including King, a biography of the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.; the horror thriller Sand & Fury; and the science fiction action-adventure Godhead. Anderson wrote and directed his first feature in 2018, the supernatural heist thriller Le

Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Blum­house Books/Anchor Books 978-0-525565-75-8, $16.95, 480pp, tp) June 2020. Ellen Datlow anthologized cinema-related horror in 2014 tapping reprints in The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen. This time she compiles original stories written for Final Cuts. Up-to-date stories allow for the use of new media, and a few of the authors do just that. It’s

Winners for the 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards for Speculative Fiction have been announced: Open Category WINNER: Exhalation, Ted Chiang (Knopf) The Divers’ Game, Jesse Ball (Ecco) Naamah, Sarah Blake (Riverhead) And Go Like This, John Crowley (Small Beer) The Archive of Alternate Endings, Lindsey Drager (Dzanc) Tears of the Trufflepig, Fernando A. Flores (MCD x FSG Originals) Zero Bomb, M.T. Hill (Titan Books) War Girls, Tochi Onyebuchi (Razorbill)

American Poet Louise Glück has won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal.” Glück was named US Poet Laureate in 2003 and often draws inspiration from classical mythological figures. The 2020 prize amount is 10 million Swedish kronor, equal to about 1.1 million USD. Glück will give her Nobel lecture in the United States due to coronavirus travel

The administrators of the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF) have decided that “it’s not feasible or sensible to run a 2021 race” due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The general expectation of expert epidemiologists is that the pandemic will continue to rage well into 2021. For example, the British government has announced that they expect severe restrictions, including the bans on public events, to be in place for another half year. We

Results for the British Fantasy Society’s (BFS) short story competition have been announced: First place: “Thought Surgery”, Richard Webb Second place: “Fairy Cattle”, Patrick Creek Third place: “One Direction”, Beverley Haddon First prize is £100 and a year’s membership in the BFS. Second prize is £50 and a year’s membership. Third prize is £20. All three stories will be published in BFS Horizons. Judges this year were Charlotte Bond, Lucy Hounsom, Shona Kinsella, Megan

Tor.com 6/24, 7/1, 7/8, 7/15, 7/22/20 Strange Horizons 6/29/20 Abyss & Apex 2nd Quarter ’20 Deep Magic Spring ’20 As usual, Tor.com‘s stories range far and wide, across and over and through genres as it suits them and their team of editors. “The Night Soil Sal­vagers” by Gregory Norman Bossert describes the creatures who help maintain a city by hauling away its waste; we get a taste of their stories,

Originally pitched as “a Russian Alien,” this low-budget SF horror film opens on a promising scene: it’s 1983, and two cosmonauts orbit the Earth in a Soyuz capsule. Their spacesuits are exactingly replicated from the real deal, and the Soyuz interior is also Cold War authentic, down to the fonts on the control panel. A wooden doll floats gently around the two men, serving as a zero gravity indicator. Then

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) will discontinue science fiction and fantasy imprint John Joseph Adams Books, launched in February 2016. Editor John Joseph Adams says, We’ve still got several books forthcoming, and those will still be published, but nothing new beyond those, alas. Cheers to all of the authors who went on this ride with me, and to all who bought & read. The imprint published work by Bryan Camp, Hugh

Tor/Tom Doherty Associates announced that executive editor Beth Meacham will be retiring at the end of 2020. Meacham joined Tor in 1984 as editor-in-chief. Tor president and publisher Fritz Foy said, We’re delighted that Beth will continue to edit a small number of projects for us on a consulting basis. But most of her list will be moving to other editors as she prepares for her retirement.   While you

The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, M. John Harrison (Gollancz 978-0575096356, £20.00, 272pp, hc) June 2020. Despite the watery spectacle implied by the title, there are no lost continents dra­matically erupting from the waves in M. John Harrison’s The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, but there is a lot of water. The title comes instead from a rather obscure lecture called “Thoughts in a Gravel Pit” by the

“The Grotesques” by Sarah Hall won the 2020 BBC National Short Story Award. The award comes with a £15,000 prize and was announced live on BBC Radio 4 Front Row on October 6, 2020. This year marks the fourth time Hall was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, and she is now the first writer to ever win the award twice, having previously won in 2013. Judges for

Choose the portal fantasy for you in these news books! You can go OVER THE WOODWARD WALL, explore THE ARCHIVE OF THE FORGOTTEN, travel THE HOLLOW PLACES, or even end up ELSEWHERE.

N.K. Jemisin is one of 21 MacArthur Foundation Fellows selected for 2020. Each “genius grant” recipient receives a no-strings-attached “stipend of $625,000… paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years.” Jemisin is broadening the spectrum of participants in speculative fiction’s creation and surrounding fandom through her published works as well as her world-building workshops, frequent interviews, and active presence on social media. While engaging readers with grippingly paced narratives,

The Loop, Ben Oliver (Chicken House 978-1-338-58930-6, $18.99, 369pp, hc) April 2020. In Ben Oliver’s The Loop, Luka has been in the prison known as The Loop for 736 days. Every day he wakes up in his solitary cell; works out; eats forgettable food; talks to the computer that runs the prison; spends one hour outside where he cannot see anyone but at least can speak to his fel­low prisoners;

Finalists for the National Book Awards (NBA) in the Fiction, Young People’s Literature, and Translated Literature categories have been announced, including titles of genre interest. The Fiction category includes Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam (Ecco), A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet (Norton), and Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (Pantheon). The Young People’s Literature category includes King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender (Scholastic) and The Way Back by Gavriel Savit

The 2020 Illinois Science Fiction in Chicago (ISFiC) short fiction contest for unpublished writers of science fiction and fantasy is open to submissions through November 13, 2020. First prize includes $300, publication in the Windycon 47 program book and on the ISFiC website, and membership and accommodations for Windycon 47. Up to two honorable mentions will each receive an “American 1 oz. Silver Coin.” The contest is open to applicants

The European Science Fiction Society (ESFS) Hall of Fame Awards, Achievement Awards, and Chrysalis Award winners were announced during Futuricon, the 2020 Eurocon, held online October 2-4, 2020. European Grand Master Franz Rottensteiner (Austria) Hall of Fame Awards: Best Author WINNER: Milena Benini (Croatia) Philippe Curval (France) Marc Elsberg (Austria) Anna Kańtoch (Poland) Maura McHugh (Ireland) Claude Peiffer (Luxembourg) Victor Pelevin / Виктор Пелевин (Russia) Gheorghe Sasarman (Romania) Johanna Sinisalo

Three Kings, George R.R. Martin & Melinda M. Snodgrass, eds. (HarperVoyager UK 978-0-00-83614-8, £20.00, 560pp, hc) May 2020. Three Kings is a mosaic novel by five authors: Melinda M. Snodgrass, Peadar Ó Guilín, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Caroline Spector & Peter New­man, published, for now, only in the UK (a US edition from Tor won’t be out for at least a year). It is the 29th volume in the Wild Cards

Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi (Bloomsbury) hits #1 on the Los Angeles Times list.

New issues and posts at Abyss & Apex, Aphelion, Aurealis, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Daily Science Fiction, The Dark, Galaxy’s Edge, GigaNotoSaurus, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Tor.com, and Uncanny

Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower (Grand Central), first published in 1993, appeared on the New York Times bestseller list at #14 on the paperback fiction list for the week ending August 29, 2020 (printed September 13, 2020). It was her first appearance on the list. Butler, who died in 2006, was a MacArthur Fel­low and winner of numerous literary and genre awards. While you are here, please take

Penguin Random House US released the results of company’s demographic analysis. CEO Madeline McIntosh says, “I don’t think any of us is likely to be surprised by the data, which show that our company, like our industry, is far too homogeneous. But seeing what we generally know to be true documented this way is hard: the distance we have to travel to become a truly diverse company feels all the

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) announced Howard David Ingham and Claire Fitzpatrick as recipients of the 2020 Rocky Wood Memorial Scholarship for Non-fiction Writing. The fund committee is empowered annually to award a “flexible amount.” The fund is named for a former president of HWA who died in 2014. Most of the other HWA scholarships were previously announced. For more information, including rules for applying for HWA scholarships (many of

The inaugural shortlist for the Diverse Book Awards, created “to highlight the best of the diverse voices published in the UK during 2019, both traditionally and self-published,” has been announced. Works of genre interest follow. Best Children’s Tin Boy, Steve Cole, illustrated by Oriol Vidal (Barrington Stoke) Best Young Adult The Tunnels Below, Nadine Wild-Palmer (Pushkin Children’s) Best Adult Do You Dream of Terra-Two?, Temi Oh (Saga) The 2020 judges

Selkie Summer, Ken MacLeod (NewCon Press 978-1-912950-63-8, £9.99, 141pp, tp) May 2020. Cover by Ben Baldwin. In Selkie Summer, Ken MacLeod has given us – or me, anyway – something quite unlike what I would have expected from the deviser of Newton’s Wake: A Space Opera or The Execu­tion Channel. Its first half operates as a romance with metaphysical/supernatural complications: university student Siobhan Ross, working a sum­mer B&B job on

Powell’s Books has named Patrick Bassett as its new CEO. Bassett is a business consultant and was previously working with Powell’s as an adviser. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Powell’s permanently closed its store location at Portland International Airport. The store in Beaverton OR is the only Powell’s location to have fully reopened since shutting in March 2020. Its main store in downtown Portland OR remains partially open, and the

Temporary by Hilary Leichter (Coffee House) and How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C Pam Zhang (Riverhead) are on the seven-title shortlist for the 2020 First Novel Prize, given by the Center for Fiction “to honor the best debut fiction of the year.” The shortlist and winners are decided by “a committee of distinguished American writers.” The winner will be announced during the Center’s Annual Benefit & Awards

Shortlists for the 2020 Books Are My Bag (BAMB) Readers Awards have been announced, including titles and authors of genre interest in the following categories: Fiction Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, Cho Nam-joo (Scribner) The Devil and the Dark Water, Stuart Turton (Bloomsbury) Poetry Sylvanian Family, Summer Young (Bad Betty) Children’s Fiction Gargantis, Thomas Taylor (Walker) Young Adult Fiction Children of Virtue and Vengeance, Tomi Adeyemi (Macmillan) Cinderella is Dead, Kalynn

Tell us about your debut novel Scarlet Odyssey. What’s it about, and what inspired you to write it? Scarlet Odyssey follows a young man whose bookish nature and affinity for magic puts him at odds with the rest of his society, in which the path of books and magic is considered feminine, while the art of warfare is seen as the worthiest masculine pursuit. As the first-born son of a

The Adventure of the Naked Guide, Cynthia Ward (Aqueduct Press 978-1619761797, $9.99, 116pp, tp) February 2020. Five years ago, I would never have believed that I’d coincidentally read for review, back-to-back, four books, in every one of which there’s a romance between two women. But the increased frequency with which I read such books means that I no longer so desperately look for them to be good: I no longer

The winner, finalists, and honorable mentions for the 2020 Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction have been announced: Winner “The Smokecense of Pluvistan“, Nihal Ijaz Khan Finalists “Door One-Seventy-One”, Hira Awais “Into The Light”, Zunaira Nadeem Honorable Mentions “Visions of Host”, Eman Kamran “Jinns”, Mehak Khan “Of Sweet Seas and Starlight”, Zahra Mukhi The Salam Award, “a short story award to promote science fiction and related genres of writing in Pakistan,” is an

In the tradition of classics Dirty Harry and Death Wish, Jaime Foxx is Art, an ex-soldier tracking down the people who kidnapped his daughter, using extreme force along the way. The kidnappers are also pushing a drug that grants superhero-like powers for five minutes, and things get complicated when Art runs into Robin (Dominique Fishback), a charismatic but shy teen with big dreams who sells the drug just to get

Edited By, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Subterranean 978-1596069671, 632pp, $45, hardcover) September 2020. When does one properly offer a career retrospective for a creative person? Certainly it’s safe to issue one when the creator is dead. Then the career is etched in stone, with no further additions possible, and also with no dissents or quibbles from the creator! And if enough time goes by between the creator’s passing and the publication

James Patterson is continuing the Patterson Partnership with Scholastic Book Clubs for a sixth year, this time pledging $2.5 million to libraries in classrooms. He will give 5,000 teachers grants of $500 each (with Scholastic Book Clubs offering matching funds in the form of bonus points) to buy books for the classroom. The 5,000 winners were chosen from over 100,000 entries. For more information, including the complete list of recipients, see

Ghost Wood Song, Erica Waters (Harper Teen 978-0-06-289422-9, $17.99, 360pp, hc) July 2020. While urban fantasy is a thriving fantasy sub­genre, its rural counterpart has been far less explored. Erica Waters goes all in with Ghost Wood Song, a contemporary title not only set in a small, woodsy Florida town, but also cen­tered around bluegrass music. Her protagonist is a fiddle-playing teen determined to uncover family secrets, who turns to

Let’s get multi-generational with violent teenagers, magical boarding school students, BESTIARY by K-Ming Chang, and a woman searching an infinite library for a life worth living!

The Four Profound Weaves, R.B. Lemberg (Tachyon 978-1-61696-334-7, $14.95, 192pp, tp) September 2020. For nearly a decade, R.B. Lemberg has been developing their Birdverse world in a number of stories and poems, and I confess to having seen only a handful of them prior to reading their first novel The Four Profound Weaves. But the novel provides most of what you need to know about this universe, which worships the

Winners for the 2020 Imadjinn Awards, including several titles of genre interest, were announced on September 27, 2020, the last day of the Imaginarium 2020 Virtual Conference and Convention. Best Science Fiction Novel WINNER: Harvest Day, R. Kyle Hannah (Jumpmaster) Things They Buried, Amanda K. King & Michael R. Swanson (Ismae) Best Fantasy Novel WINNER: Things They Buried, Amanda K. King & Michael R. Swanson (Ismae) The Amulet of Elements,

C.L. Clark has been named the new blog editor for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), taking over from Todd Vandermark. The role “is responsible for soliciting and publishing online content to support SFWA’s goals of informing, supporting, promoting, defending, and advocating for writers of SF/F.” Clark is currently a co-editor of PodCastle. SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowal said, Todd Vandermark has done years of wonderful work

The Sunburst Award Society has announced that the Sunburst Awards for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic will be on hiatus in 2021, as a consequence of the COVID-19 shutdown: The Sunburst Awards Society members plan to use this time to re-imagine the most effective means available to them for continuing to highlight the stellar work done by Canadians in the field of speculative literature. Since its inception, the

Architects of Memory, Karen Osborne (Tor 978-1-250-21547-5, $17.99, 336pp, tp) August 2020. Imagined futures where corporations have remade societies so that they always provide a profit are a common backdrop for speculative fiction. That isn’t a value judgement, mind. There are only so many backdrops to go around, and this future feels increasingly likely with each passing day. In Karen Osborne’s version, Architects of Memory, Ash is a former indentured

Christopher Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (Tor) and Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi (Bloomsbury) debut strongly this week.