» LA Times: Scott Bradfield reviews Alec Nevala-Lee’s Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction » Guardian: Colin Burrow reviews The Black Prince by Adam Roberts – wonderful homage to Anthony Burgess » Scott Edelman’s World Fantasy Convention Guest of Honor Speech, about inclusion

Winners for the 2018 Ignotus Awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Hugo Awards), honoring the best works published in Spain last year, have been announced. Novela extranjera (Foreign Novel) WINNER: Las estrellas son legión [The Stars Are Legion], Kameron Hurley (Alianza) Fuego [The Fireman], Joe Hill (Nocturna) La quinta estación [The Fifth Season], N.K. Jemisin (B) Detrás de sus ojos [Behind Her Eyes], Sarah Pinborough (Alianza) El archivo de atrocidades

The longlist for the 2019 International Dublin Literary award has been announced, and includes numerous titles and authors of genre interest: Stay With Me, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ (Knopf) 4321, Paul Auster (Henry Holt) The Heart’s Invisible Furies, John Boyne (Hogarth) A Long Way From Home, Peter Carey (Knopf) Terra Nullius, Claire G. Coleman (Small Beer) Smile, Roddy Doyle (Viking) Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan (Scribner) American War, Omar El Akkad (Knopf) The

  Brandon Sanderson’s young-adult novel Skyward (Delacorte) debuts on three lists.

Israel, I am informed, seems to be having an SF moment. Or, from the unexpectedly enthusiastic early reviews of the anthology I co-edited with Emanuel Lottem, Zion’s Fiction: A Treasury of Israeli Speculative Literature, SF may be having an Israel moment. As well it should. After all, the Jewish State drew inspiration from a knock-off of Edward Bellamy’s late 19th-century utopian romance, Looking Backward, 2000-1887, notably, Zionist ideologue Theodore Herzl’s

Return to the Hollow Earth, by Rudy Rucker (Transreal Books 978-1940948324, $22.95, 270pp, trade paperback) August 2018 Like Adam Roberts, a peer whom he matches in speculative chops and daring, Rudy Rucker seldom repeats himself. Yes, he’s given us a couple of series—the Ware Tetralogy and the duology consisting of Postsingular and Hylozoic—but the bulk of his output has been singletons, with each book utterly different from all the rest—barring

Books Inc. in Burlingame CA will close in early 2019, with CEO and president Michael Tucker saying, “We are saddened to leave our long term customers in Burlingame, but changes in the retail environment on Burlingame Avenue have made it untenable to remain.” The local chain has ten other locations in the San Francisco Bay Area, and will attempt to transfer affected employees to other locations when possible. They will

Space Unicorn Blues, T.J. Berry (Angry Robot 978-0857667816 $12.99), 384pp, tp) July 2018. Cover by Lee Gibbons. I finished reading T.J. Berry’s debut novel, Space Unicorn Blues, and said to myself (and several other people): “Maybe Angry Robot Books is becoming the publisher of queer, feminist, sometimes-angry, sometimes-funny, anti-imperialist novels that we didn’t know we deserved.” Because Berry’s Space Unicorn Blues can join a list that includes (in the UK,

The European Union has decided after years of debate that member states may lower the value-added-tax (VAT) rate on ebooks to the same rate they charge for printed books (which are tax free in some countries). The October 2, 2018 decision by the Economic and Financial Affairs Council is “the final step to ensure that the unequal treatment of the two products – paper versus digital – becomes a thing

Infinity’s End, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Solaris 978-1-78618-106-0, $14.99, 347 pp, tp) July 2018. Cover by Adam Tredowski. For seven years and six volumes, editor Jonathan Strahan has been devising a con­sistently strong original anthology series that has engineered, reached, met, and bridged infinity from the edge onward (or inward?), and even gone to war in it. Now, in the seventh and last of the Infinity Project anthologies, we have reached

Amazon has announced plans to raise their minimum wage for US workers to $15 an hour after public condemnation for their poor pay practices, including criticisms from Vermont senator Bernie Sanders. CEO Jeff Bezos – the richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of over $155 billion, who declared earlier this year that “the only way that I can see to deploy this much financial resource is

Winners of the Shimmer Program’s Worldcon Attending Fund for Chinese Fans for Worldcon 77 in Dublin, Ireland have been announced. Hu Yue (Constance Hu) and Chen Xuchang (Amelia Chen) will each get the support of RMB 10,000 for attending and staffing the con. They are expected to gain experience in the Worldcon organizational work and help with future Chinese bids. The fund is available only to Chinese citizens who live

Novelist, playwright, and screenwriter William Goldman, 87, died November 16, 2018 of colon cancer in Manhattan. Goldman is best known in SF circles for his novel The Princess Bride (1973), and for writing the script for the classic 1979 film adaptation. Other novels of genre interest include Control (1982) and The Silent Gondoliers (1983). He is widely famous for his Academy Award-winning screenplays like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Gail Carriger, Competence (Orbit US 978-0-316-43388-4, $26.00, 309pp, hc) July 2018. Cover by Don Sipley & Michael Roberts. The steampunk fun ramps up in this third volume in the Custard Protocol series, a spin-off from Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series. This time, the main focus shifts to Primrose Tunstell, purser of the airship The Spotted Custard and style-conscious friend of Captain Prudence Akeldama. Their airship needs repairs, and the damage is

Winners for the 2018 National Book Awards have been announced and include authors and works of genre interest. Isabel Allende received the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters lifetime achievement award, presented by author Luís Alberto Urrea. Fiction WINNER: The Friend, Sigrid Nunez (Riverhead) Florida, Lauren Groff (Riverhead) The Great Believers, Rebecca Makkai (Viking) Young People’s Literature WINNER: The Poet X, Elizabeth Acevedo (HarperTeen) The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge, M.T. Anderson

Exit West by Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead) is on the six-title shortlist for the 2018 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. The $25,000 prize “is open to authors of any ethnicity or nationality as long as the writing is about South Asia and its people.” The judges for 2018 are Claire Armitstead, Firdous Azim, Tissa Jayatilaka, Rudrangshu Mukherjee (chair), and Nandana Sen. The winner will be announced at the Tata Steel

The 2018 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards were presented October 1, 2018 at Dartmouth College, with winners Lavie Tidhar, Corinne Duyvis, and Juan Martinez in attendance, along with judge Maria Dahvana Headley and award creator Dan Rockmore, director of the Neukom Institute. The $5,000 award is open to submissions until December 31, 2018. For more information, see the Neukom website. While you are here, please take a moment to support

Tor.com 6/20/18, 7/11/18 Clarkesworld 7/18 Fireside 7/18 Giganotosaurus 7/18 Strange Horizons 7/30/18 July also brings a special issue of Strange Hori­zons, with six stories guest edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Erin Roberts & Rasha Abdulhadi. The issue focuses on the Southeastern USA and writing by black, indigenous, and POC authors. I only saw four before this issue went to press, but they all pack a punch. Christopher Caldwell‘s “Hide Me

Winners for the 2018 Books Are My Bag (BAMB) Readers Awards have been announced, including some titles and authors of genre interest in the following categories: Novel WINNER: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, Stuart Turton (Bloomsbury) The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, Imogen Hermes Gowar (HarperCollins) Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie (Riverhead) Tin Man, Sarah Winman (Putnam) Young Adult WINNER: La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust Volume One, Philip Pullman

Shortlisted stories for the inaugural FutureBook short fiction contest, in partnership with The Pigeonhole reading app, have been announced: “Flying Lessons”, Fire Bird “The Once and Future Book”, Ian Green “The Paper Pages”, Jamie Groves “Living Fiction”, Louise Harnby “On Developments in Book Delivery Systems”, Ian Sansom Finalists were chosen from 36 entries, judged by FutureBook associate editor Molly Flatt, The Pigeonhole founder Anna Jean Huges, and Arthur C. Clarke

HARDCOVERS Months on list Last month 1) Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik (Del Rey) 2 1 2) Brief Cases, Jim Butcher (Ace) 3 2 3) Serpentine, Laurell K. Hamilton (Berkley) 1 – 4) Rogue Protocol, Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing) 1 – 5) The Fall of Gondolin, J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) 1 – 6) Alternate Routes, Tim Powers (Baen) 1 – *) Kill the Farm Boy, Delilah S. Dawson & Kevin

Condomnauts, Yoss; translated by David Frye (Restless Books 978-1632061867, $16.99, 208pp, tp) July 2018. The instant I saw the cover of Yoss’s Condom­nauts on Twitter I knew I was going to read it. Cherry red lips caught in a moment of ecstasy; the teeth and tongue replaced by a starfield. It’s a cover, matched with a lurid title, that promises alien sex, not a subgenre I generally gravitate toward –

Kirkus has announced its selections for Best Fiction of 2018, including titles and authors of genre interest in several categories: Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Vita Nostra, Marina & Sergey Dyachenko (Harper Voyager) The Grey Bastards, Jonathan French (Crown) Night Fall, Simon R. Green (Ace) How Long ‘Til Black Future Month?, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit) Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller (Ecco) State Tectonics, Malka Older (Tor.com Publishing) Dark State, Charles Stross (Tor)

Welcome, visitors to Earth! Tour our celestial arks; enigmatic schools of magic; a dangerous forest called The Circle; the Empire of Sand; and wherever it is that Jeff VanderMeer takes you, all in these 12 new books Amazon.com’s Favorite SF/F book of 2018, Christelle Dabos’ A Winter’s Promise; the final “Novel of the Change” by S.M. Stirling, The Sky-Blue Wolves; a nonfiction study of the works of Jeff Vandermeer; and

The first anniversary of the Galactic Philadelphia reading series was held October 9, 2018 at the Irish Pub in Philadelphia PA, with readers Laura Anne Gilman and Lawrence M. Schoen. Sally Wiener Grotta curated the evening, and SFWA sponsors the series. 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,

Redemption’s Blade, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Solaris 978-1781085790, $11.99, 520pp, tp) July 2018. Redemption’s Blade, like Adrian Tchai­kovsky’s unrelated 2016 novella Spi­derlight, is heavily influenced by the Tolkien tradition in epic fantasy. Unlike Tolkien, though, Tchaikovsky’s work is interested in – for want of a better word – the humanity of people on both sides of a war between “light” and “darkness”: the flaws and the good points on both sides of

» Amazon’s Best SF and Fantasy Books of 2018 are led by Christelle Dabos’ A Winter’s Promise » NYT Book Review: Hugo Lindgren’s Everyday Weirdness reviews Shaun Tan, including his new book Tales From Outer Suburbia » NYT Book Review: Marjorie Ingall reviews YA fantasies by Nova Ren Suma, Neal & Jarrol Shusterman, Alex London, Kendra Fortmeyer » NYTRB last week: Alec Nevala-Lee on What Isaac Asimov Taught Us About

Amazon.com published its yearly array of lists to promote the best books of 2018, with editors’ selections in various cat­egories. A Winter’s Promise by Christelle Dabos (Europa) was the editors’ pick for best science fiction and fantasy book of the year. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt) was the editors’ pick for best young adult book of the year. For complete lists in each category, see

Cixin Liu was presented with the Imagination in Service to Society award during the Arthur C. Clarke “Unleash Imagination” awards ceremony and dinner, November 8, 2018 at the Sidney Harman Hall in Washington DC. The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation also presented its Lifetime Achievement award to Irwin Jacobs and the Innovator award to Jill Tarter. For more information, see the Clarke Foundation website. While you are here, please take a

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) announced changes to the Nebula Awards rules, effective November 15, 2018: associate members of SFWA have been granted full voting privileges, where previously this was limited only to active members, and Game Writing has been added as a new Nebula Award category. Further updates were also announced, including changes to the Ray Bradbury and Andre Norton Awards. For more information, see

Prometheus Books has sold SF imprint Pyr and crime fiction imprint Seventh Street to Start Publishing. Prometheus was founded in 1969, exclusively publishing non-fiction, before launching Pyr in 2005 and Seventh Street in 2011. Publisher Jonathan Kurtz said the sale will allow Prometheus “to more fully engage with the diverse readers in our core categories and maximize the potential of our extensive back catalog.” Start Publishing president Jarred Weisfeld told

Legendary comics writer and editor Stan Lee, 95, died November 12, 2018 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles CA. During his long tenure at Marvel Comics, Lee helped create iconic characters like the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, and Spider-Man. His groundbreaking collaborations with artist Jack Kirby include the Avengers and Thor. Lee popularized the “Marvel Method” of comic writing, which emphasized close collaboration between writers and artists. Under

  Stephen King’s short novel Elevation (Scribner) debuts strongly, ranking #1 at the New York Times.

Andrew Robert Duncan was born September 21, 1964 in Columbia SC. He earned a BA in journalism from the University of South Carolina in 1986, and worked as a reporter and editor for seven years. He entered North Carolina State University’s graduate English program, studying under John Kessel and earning his MA in 1995. He attended Clarion West in 1994, and received his MFA in fiction from the University of

The Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), which administers the prestigious Carnegie Medal and Kate Greenaway Awards for the best British children’s books, has promised to take immediate action to improve the diversity of their selections. The award, launched in 1935, has never been won by a black, Asian, or minority ethnic (BAME) writer, and the 20 authors on the 2017 longlist were all white. After an outcry

K.D. Edwards, The Last Sun (Pyr 978-1-63388-423-6, $17.00, 363pp, tp) June 2018. Cover by Micah Epstein. The last scion of a once-powerful house works as an investigator/agent in this entertaining first novel, a sort of urban fantasy set in a world that mixes modern technology (cell phones) with a strangely different culture. In this world, refuges from war-torn Atlantis used money and magic to turn Nantucket into New Atlantis, mostly

New issues of Abyss & Apex, Aphelion, Aurealis, Clarkesworld, The Dark, Galaxy’s Edge, GigaNotoSaurus, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Shimmer, and Uncanny

Members of the British Science Fiction Association may nominate works for the 2018 BSFA Awards until December 31, 2018. Nominations may be made online here. BSFA has changed the rules for the Best Novel category: To bring it into line with all the other awards, we are dropping the publication location requirement for novels. Previously novels were only eligible if they were published for the first time in the UK

F&SF 7-8/18 Stonecoast Review Summer ’18 Fireside Quarterly 9/18 Pulp Literature Summer ’18 The July-August F&SF features an im­pressive novella from a new writer, L.X. Beckett, “Freezing Rain, a Chance of Falling“. Drow Whiting is a journalist and (for now) failed musician, and he’s in serious trouble, because a prominent singer just tried to commit suicide because of a bad review he wrote. That’s bad enough (says this reviewer!), but

The winner of the 2018 Endeavour Award has been announced: WINNER: The Cold Eye, Laura Anne Gilman (Saga) CrossTown, Loren W. Cooper (Xeno) Ironfoot, Dave Duncan (Night Shade) Portal of a Thousand Worlds, Dave Duncan (Open Road) A Secret History of Witches, Louisa Morgan (Orbit) The award “honors a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book, either a novel or a single-author collection, created by a writer living in the Pacific

Estcon 2018 was another wonderful summer event, held in the same location, Udu Farm in Estonia. Estcon is possibly the only science fiction convention in the world held primarily in the open air. The farm offers a camping area and two large farmhouses with multiple bedrooms as well as two dozen “camping huts,” each fitted with three beds, a small refrigerator, and a covered area with picnic bench and grill

David G. Barnett will be awarded the 2019 J.F. Gonzalez Lifetime Achievement Award by Splatterpunk Awards founders Wrath James White and Brian Keene. The Lifetime Achievement Award “honors individuals who have upheld, impacted and contributed to the sub-genres of Splatterpunk and Extreme Horror.” The award will be presented during the second annual Splatterpunk Awards, presented during Killercon 2019 in Austin, Texas. For more information, see the official announcement. [via File770]

The Dragon’s Child, Janeen Webb (PS Pub­lishing 978-1-786363-19-0, £15.00, 208pp, hc) May 2018. Janeen Webb’s novella The Dragon’s Child opens with Lady Feng, a wealthy Hong Kong businesswoman, deciding to “stretch her claws” on the first day of Chinese New Year (The Year of the Dragon). Assuming her true dragon form, Lady Feng circles a remote village where she spies a tasty morsel of meat. It’s only after she gobbles

Founder and publisher Marc Gascoigne has announced that he will be leaving Angry Robot Books at the end of 2018, saying, “After more than ten years building AR up into a popular, worldwide sci-fi imprint, it’s time for a new challenge. I’m looking forward to getting my teeth into a new project soon.” Angry Robot was created in 2008 as an imprint of HarperCollins before becoming an independent imprint of

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 6/21/18, 7/5/18, 7/19/18, 8/2/18, 8/16/18, 8/20/18 Starting out a new-to-me short fiction reviewing column, I find myself in the enviable position of having a lot of issues of Beneath Ceaseless Skies to catch up on. The blend of fantasy, dark fiction, and dreams present throughout the stories gives BCS a par­ticularly strong character. September marks its tenth anniversary, and editor Scott H. Andrews has brought out a

Circe by Madeline Miller (Little, Brown) is on the eight-title shortlist for the 2018 Waterstones Book of the Year award. Established in 2012, the award is given to an “exceptional book which simply must be read, judged from the quality of its writing to the sheer beauty of its production.” Shortlisted titles are nominated by Waterstones booksellers. The 2018 winner will be chosen be a panel headed by James Daunt

Bowker has updated their self-publishing statistics with numbers from 2017 – the first year with more than one million self-published books carrying ISBNs. Bowker counted 1,009,188 ISBNs issued to self-published authors, a 28% increase over 2016. (That’s doubtless far lower than the actual number of self-published books, as many ebook authors don’t bother with ISBNs at all since Amazon, the dominant ebook retailer, doesn’t require them.) The increase comes from

Scarlett Thomas, The Chosen Ones (Canongate 978-1-78211-930-2, £12.99, 368pp, hc) April 2018; (Simon & Schuster 978-1-4814-9787-9, $17.99, 374pp, hc) May 2018. Cover by Erwin Madrid. Effie Truelove and her friends continue their efforts to understand the world of magic while working around obstructive adults, in this second book in the quirky middle-grade Worldquake tril­ogy. Effie Truelove wants to get back to the magi­cal Otherworld, but things keep going wrong; one

The Prime Minister and Arts Minister of Australia announced the shortlists for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards on October 17, 2018. The awards “celebrate outstanding literary talent in Australia and the valuable contribution Australian literature and history makes to the nation’s cultural and intellectual life.” The winner receives A$80,000 and each runner-up gets A$5,000. Finalists of genre interest follow. Fiction A Long Way from Home, Peter Carey (Penguin Random House)

This long list of new books lets us discover the monsters within, with surgically-reformed murderers, screaming angels, vampire mothers, a voidwitch, fractured fairy tales, garden of eldritch delights, airborne zombie plague, and Someone Like Me Dave Hutchinson’s Europe at Dawn, Glen Hirshberg’s Nothing to Devour, Andy Duncan’s collection An Agent of Utopia, and titles by Tamara Berry, Amanda Bridgeman, M.R. Carey, James Alan Gardner, Christopher Golden, W.L. Goodwater, Kate Heartfield,

The Buried Ark, James Bradley (Pan Macmil­lan Australia 9781743549902, A$14.99, 272pp, tp) May 2018. James Bradley’s The Buried Ark begins where the first book of The Change, The Silent Invasion, ends: Callie is lost in the Zone, confused and frightened until she hears the impossible voice of her father say her name. For those of you who haven’t read The Silent Invasion (you really should because it’s terrific), the Zone

Winners of the 2018 BookNest Fantasy Awards have been announced: Best Traditionally Published Novel WINNER: Bloody Rose, Nicholas Eames (Orbit) Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt) The Girl In The Tower, Katherine Arden (Del Rey) Iron Gold, Pierce Brown (Del Rey) A Time of Dread, John Gwynne (Pan) Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik (Del Rey) Master Assassins, Robert V.S. Redick (Talos) Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson (Tor) Age of War,

The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar (Harvill Secker) and Elmet by Fiona Mozley (John Murray) are among the four shortlisted titles for the Sunday Times/Peters Fraser + Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award, for work by British or Irish authors 18-35 years old. The 2018 shortlist consists of two novels and two works of nonfiction. The winner receives a £5,000 prize, and each runner-up receives £500. The judges for 2018 are Susan Hill, Andrew

Results for the British Fantasy Society’s (BFS) short story competition have been announced: First place: “The Evaluation”, Mark Kilner Second place: “The Age When Magic Begins”, Ying Ping Low Third place: “Travesty”, Jasmine Brown 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. The contest was judged by Allen Ashley. For more

Winners of the Prix Utopiales were announced at the Nantes International Science Fiction Festival held October 31 – November 5, 2018 at the Nantes Convention Center in Nantes, France. The awards honor works published in French. Prix Utopiales Européen (Utopiales European Awards) WINNER: L’âme des horloges, David Mitchell (de l’Olivier) L’Or du diable, Andreas Eschbach (L’Atalante) Espace Lointain, Jaroslav Melnik (Agullo) Station: La chute, Al Robertson (Denoël) Amatka, Karin Tidbeck

Kevin J. Anderson won Mexico’s National Literature Award in the science fiction category, Orson Scott Card won in the fantasy category, and Laura Esquivel won in the mainstream fiction category. The award is given by Grupo Amatl (the “Mexican Association of Publishing Houses”) and the Federal Government of Mexico. Winners will be honored at an event to be held at the House of Representatives in Mexico City on November 9, 2018.

The ninth annual Xingyun awards for Chinese science fiction were presented by the World Chinese Science Fiction Association on November 3, 2018 in Chongqing, China. Gate of Memories by Jiang Bo won Best Novel, The Monster Reunion by Chen Qiufan won Best Novelette, and “Memories of Chengdu” by Baoshu won Best Short Story. For more information, see the Xinhua website. While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on

Terry Gilman and Maryelizabeth Yturralde are seeking new owners for Mysterious Galaxy, their San Diego CA bookshop: When we opened Mysterious Galaxy in 1993, we did so with the belief that it was essential to create a sustainable environment for years to come. Mysterious Galaxy and its immensely qualified and experienced booksellers are well-positioned to ensure that books and author events will remain a vital part of our community. The

  Sarah J. Maas’ Kingdom of Ash (Bloomsbury) debuts strongly on two lists, ranking #1 on the Publishers Weekly children’s list, and #2 on the combined USA Today list. And George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones (Bantam), due November 20, is selling on all three Amazon sites this morning.

The internet operates on a revolutionary principle, underpinned by a revolutionary principle, overlaid by a revolutionary principle. Is it, therefore, revolutionary? The revolutionary principle the internet runs on is this: the “end-to-end” principle, which states that any person using the internet can communicate with any other person on the internet without getting any third party’s permission. If you want to connect to my webserver, you simply connect to it: you

Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) has been selected for the One Book, One Chicago program by the Chicago Public Library. Numerous events – including book discussion groups, panels, talks, and film screenings – will be held from October 2018 to April 2019. Notable events include N.K. Jemisin and Mikki Kendall discussing the importance of diverse voices in storytelling on November 14, 2018, and Alec Nevala-Lee

The World Fantasy Awards winners for works published in 2017 were announced November 4, 2018 during the 2018 World Fantasy Convention (WFC), held at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore MD. The Lifetime Achievement Awards, presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field, went to Charles de Lint and Elizabeth Wollheim. The World Fantasy Awards winners are: Best Novel (tie) WINNER: The Changeling, Victor

All the Fabulous Beasts, Priya Sharma (Under­tow 9781988964027, $17.99, 288pp, tp) May 2018. “The Crow Palace”, the opening story in Priya Sharma’s luminous debut collection, All the Fabu­lous Beasts, begins with its protagonist revisiting a childhood memory. When she was young, Julie tells us, living with her parents and twin in a large house in the English countryside, her father built a bird table, an arrangement of large shelves on

Writers’ organization PEN America is suing Donald Trump for violating first amendment rights by making “threats and retaliatory actions” against his opponents in the press, and for praising those who’ve committed acts of violence against journalists. PEN American president Jennifer Egan says, “It would be shocking at any time for the President of the United States to congratulate someone for an act of violence against a journalist, but right now,

An issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction in tribute to Gardner Dozois, a new issue of Intergalactic Medicine Show, and October issues and posts at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Daily SF, Strange Horizons, and Tor.com.

K.R. Richardson, Blood Orbit (Pyr 978-1-63388-439-7, $18.00, 492pp, tp) May 2018. Cover by Maurizio Manzieri. Richardson, who has written urban fantasy as Kat Richardson, now turns to SF mystery in this first volume in the Gattis File series, set on the corpo­rate-owned planet Gattis, where corporate profits take precedence over justice. Rookie security ofiçe (not officer) Eric Matheson stumbles across a mass murder at a nightclub, and is assigned to

One of the perils of themed conventions, as most conventions in Israel are, is that the program might be one-dimensional. For a convention like ICon, which is aimed at large and diverse audiences, it can be particularly problematic. Avoiding this requires choosing the right theme combined with hard work of the programing team, and the ICon team did a great job this year. The theme, “Love,” meant that the possibilities

The Ones Who Are Waving, Glen Hirshberg (Cemetery Dance 9781587676314, $40.00, 208pp, hc) March 2018. “Freedom is Space for the Spirit”, the first story in Glen Hirshberg’s excellent collection, The Ones Who Are Waving, is a tale of returns. It begins when Thomas, its protagonist, receives a telegram from Vasily, a friend from his youth, requesting his return to St. Petersburg. As a university student, Thomas left then-East Germany for

Publishers Weekly has announced its list of the best books of 2018, including “100 best adult titles and 50 for children and teens.” The best books in the SF/Fantasy/Horror category are: Temper, Nicky Drayden (Harper Voyager) The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor) Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller (Ecco) The Merry Spinster: Tales of Everyday Horror, Daniel Mallory Ortberg (Henry Holt) Witchmark, C.L. Polk (Tor.com Publishing) The Sisters of the

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) has named Ann K. Schwader as their newest Grand Master. The title is given “to an individual living at the time of selection whose body of work reflects the highest artistic goals of the SFPA, who has been actively publishing within the target genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy for a period of no fewer than 20 years, and whose poetry has

The Astonishing Color of After, Emily X.R. Pan (Little Brown 978-0-316-46399-7, $18.99, 462pp, hc) March 2018. The unreliable narrator has a long and il­lustrious career in fiction, taunting readers with questions of fantasy versus reality in novels ranging from We Have Always Lived in the Castle to Gone Girl. Either because they are shameless liars, accidental embellishers, or suffering from a degree of mental illness or trauma, unreliable narrators lead

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is partnering with United for Libraries, Book Riot, and Library Journal/School Library Journal to launch the Summer Scares Reading Program, “an annual list of recommended horror titles for adult, young adult (teen), and middle grade readers.” Each year, a special guest author and a committee of four librarians will announce the selection of nine fiction titles on February 14. The guest author for 2019 is

The Immaculate Void, Brian Hodge (ChiZine 9781771484374 $17.99, 232pp, tp) May 2018. For the last several years, Brian Hodge, always one of his generation’s leading writers of horror, has been having something of a renaissance, writing stories which have been among the highlights of anthologies including The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu, Children of Lovecraft, and The Devil and the Deep. The Immaculate Void, his gripping new novel, has its origins

Theory of Bastards, Audrey Schulman (Europa Editions 978-1609454371, $18.00, 416pp, tp) April 2018. There’s quite a bit to chew on in Audrey Schul­man’s magnificently titled Theory of Bastards. It’s a novel that tackles chronic pain, our reliance on technology, climate change, and the mating rituals of humans and bonobos. The thread that ties these issues together is the field of Evolution­ary Psychology, the attempt to understand human nature through the

Author Dave Duncan, 85, died October 29, 2018 from a brain hemorrhage caused by a fall the previous week. Duncan was a founder and honorary lifetime member of SF Canada (Canada’s National Association for Speculative Fiction Professionals). He won the Aurora Award in 1990 for West of January and in 2007 for Children of Chaos. He was inducted into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2015.

Explore the end of the world in this list of 12 new books: an uncharted sea, a border wall. Impending cataclysms, post-apocalypses, and humanity’s war with aliens. Stephen King’s Elevation, Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition illustrated by Charles Vess, Lavie Tidhar’s Unholy Land, and titles by Jennifer L. Armentrout, Shaun Barger, Seth Dickinson, Victor Godinez, Jonathan Maberry, Garth Nix & Sean Williams, Eliot

Sarah Sparrow, A Guide for Murdered Children (Blue Rider 978-0-399-57452-8, $27.00, 385pp, hc) March 2018. Murdered children take over the bodies of re­cently deceased adults in order to get revenge on their murderers in this truly strange novel. Ex-police detective Willow Millard Wylde is retired at 57, messed up with booze and pain pills and iffy health, in rehab when first encountered. Trying to do better for his grown daughter

Akwaeke Emezi, author of Freshwater (Grove; Faber and Faber), and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Friday Black (Mariner), have been selected as “5 Under 35” honorees. Each year the National Book Awards selects five debut authors under age 35 whose works promise “to leave a lasting impression on the literary landscape.” Emezi, Adjei-Brenyah, and the other honorees will each receive $1,000 and will be celebrated at an invitation-only ceremony in

» Publishers Weekly’s Best Books of 2018 includes SF/F/H titles by Sam J. Miller, Mary Robinette Kowal, Daniel Mallory Ortberg, Rena Rossner, Nicky Draden, Lavie Tidhar, and C.L. Polk; the YA list includes Tomi Adeyemi, Neal and Jarrod Shusterman, Tillie Walden, and others » NYT Book Review: Gilbert Cruz reviews Stephen King’s Elevation; Danielle Trussoni reviews horror from Sarah Perry, Edward Carey, Ellen Datlow, John Ajvide Lindqvist, and Andrew Michael

  John Scalzi’s The Consuming Fire (Tor) debuts on three lists this week, ranking as high as #15 on the list at Los Angeles Times (where Scalzi is a columnist).