Finalists for the Endeavour Award have been announced: Merlin Redux, Dave Duncan (Night Shade) Shadow Stitcher, Misha Handman (EDGE) What the Wind Brings, Matthew Hughes (Pulp Literature) Middlegame, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing) The Witch’s Kind, Louisa Morgan (Redhook) The award is given to “a distinguished science fiction or fantasy book, either a novel or a single-author collection, created by a writer living in the Pacific Northwest.” Winners receive $1,000 and

Peter S. Beagle has been awarded the Jack Trevor Story Memorial Prize/Prix du Goncourt by judges Jean-Luc Fromental, Rick Klaw, Guy Lawley, Michael Moorcock, Linda Steele, Lili Sztajn, and Brandy Whitten. The prize is “typically for excellence in humorous writing,” and named for author Jack Trevor Story, who died in 1992. Beagle will receive a memorial cup and a $500 prize, which must be spent in a ‘a week to

A Children’s Bible, Lydia Millet (Norton 978-1-324-00503-2, $25.95, 224pp, hc) May 2020. Lydia Millet’s 12th novel, A Children’s Bible, may feature some of the worst parents ever committed to prose. We’re not talking a single mother or father (like Queen Gertrude from Hamlet or Jack Torrance from The Shining) or even a couple (like Ma and Pa Wormwood from Matilda) but rather a gaggle of horrible parents who, with their

The James White short story competition will not be held in 2020, due to “technical issues with the current website, and problems caused by a certain global crises.” The competition, founded in 2000, is open to non-professional writers. Winners receive £200 and publication in Interzone. Award administrator Martin McGrath said, We have been put off this decision for months, hoping (perhaps increasingly foolishly) that we could come up with a fix

Epic fantasy gets a new take in Lavie Tidhar’s BY FORCE ALONE and Gene Wolfe’s THE WIZARD KNIGHT, plus continuing series in A CHORUS OF FIRE, THE LAST UNCHARTED SKY, and SORCERY OF A QUEEN.

Dragon Con has announced the ballot for the 2020 Dragon Awards. Voting is open to the public at the Dragon Awards website; registration for voting is open until September 4, 2020. Winners will be announced at Dragon Con, to be held online September 3-7, 2020. Best Science Fiction Novel The Testaments, Margaret Atwood (Nan A. Talese) The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow (Redhook) Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn

Head of Zeus announced a new imprint, Ad Astra, which will publish “the best high-concept SFF our world can offer.” Cixin Liu will be Ad Astra’s “talisman.” Ad Astra will launch six books on October 1, 2020: Attack Surface by Cory Doctorow; Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott; Hold Up the Sky by Cixin Liu; Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea by Sarah Pinsker; The Lost Colony by A.G.

Thin Places, Kay Chronister (Undertow 978-1-988964-18-8, $14.99, 140pp, tp) May 2020. The final, eponymous story in Kay Chronister’s debut collection Thin Places explains what is meant – in this context anyway – by the phrase ”thin places”: Thin places are parts of the world where the barrier between the clay and the mist is more fragile, where it can be broken…. Things happen in thin places that can’t happen anywhere

Over the past few months, as I’ve struggled to write the fourth and final book in my epic fantasy series, Earthsinger Chronicles, I’ve thought a lot about endings. Recently, popular culture has seen the end of several long-running series: Game of Thrones, Star Wars, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Two of those series ended in ways that were wildly disappointing to many fans and should serve as cautionary tales to

The Dream Foundry short story contest “for beginning professionals” is open to submissions from August 10 – October 11, 2020. The contest is open to writers who have published, in total, fewer than 4,000 words, earned less than $320, and have never been nominated for a major award. Contest coordinators will select ten finalists, and judges will select first, second, and third-place winners from those finalists. First prize is $1,000,

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

Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic returns to three lists after dropping off a couple weeks ago.

Tochi Joshua Onyebuchi was born on October 4, 1987 in Northampton MA to Nigerian immigrant parents, and grew up in Newington and New Britain CT. He studied political science at Yale, earned a MFA in screenwriting from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a master’s degree in global economic law from the Instituts d’études politiques in France. He attended law school at Columbia, and after graduation worked in civil

Little Eyes, Samanta Schweblin (Oneworld 978-1-786-07792-9, £14.99, 256pp, hc) March 2020. (Riverhead Books 978-0-525-54136-3, $26.00, 256pp, hc) May 2020. In 2017 Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin caught the attention of English-language readers, critics, and the judges of the International Man Booker Prize with Fever Dream, a nightmarish novella that, amongst other things, critiqued the environmental effect of pesticides. She followed this up in 2019 with a collection of short fiction, Mouthful

In June, John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan, sent a memo to staff outlining plans to change their leadership structure. “It is clear that we have to change who occupies the seats at the table when the important decisions are being made.” They plan to create a new Trade Manage­ment committee with 13 members “who will meet regularly to decide on the key issues for Macmillan” and “focus on running the

FIYAHCON has announced the creation of the Ignyte Awards “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.” Awards will be given in categories such as “Best Novel – Adult,” “Critics Award,” and “Best in Creative Nonfiction.” The awards also include “The Ember Award for Unsung Contributions

The World Fantasy Convention 2020 committee is ”hard at work designing an online convention that includes many of the elements you’ve come to identify with World Fantasy Convention – and maybe a few new ones.” They ”hope that our virtual convention will be attended by a diverse membership, many of whom are using their craft to create literature and art that not only entertain but introduce fantasy enthusiasts to a

Science Fiction: Documents of Contemporary Art, Dan Byrne-Smith, ed. (The MIT Press 978-0262538855, $24.95, 240pp, pb) April 2020. The question of who the intended readership is for the non-fiction anthology Science Fiction, edited by Dan Byrne-Smith for the Documents of Contemporary Art MIT Press series, kept nagging at me throughout. The series, we are told, focuses on subjects ‘‘of key influence in contemporary art internationally’’ and seeks to provide access

The Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) has announced the shortlists for the 2020 Dagger Awards, including several titles and authors of genre interest. Ian Fleming Steel Dagger The Whisper Man, Alex North (Michael Joseph) Sapere Books Historical Dagger Metropolis, Philip Kerr (Quercus) Short Story Dagger “The New Lad”, Paul Finch (Exit Wounds) “The Washing”, Christopher Fowler (Invisible Blood) “Easily Made”, Syd Moore (12 Strange Days of Christmas) Dagger in the Library

Of Ants and Dinosaurs, Cixin Liu (Head of Zeus 978-1-789-54611-8, 256pp, £18.99, hc) April 2020. Cixin Liu’s satirical novel Of Ants and Dinosaurs seems to have a complex history. A novella with this title was published in China in 2004, later appearing as a standalone book in 2012, translated by Holger Nahm. This was included in Liu’s 2013 collection The Wandering Earth published in Beijing – but not in the

Wicked As You Wish, Rin Chupeco (Sourcebooks 978-1-4926-7266-1, $17.99, 400pp, hc) February 2020. Rin Chupeco’s Wicked As You Wish is a sometimes dizzying combination of classic fairy tales and alternate history that draws heavily from the real world and somehow manages to include everything from the Snow Queen to King Arthur to Wonderland to ICE. (Here’s the unlikeliest quote to appear in a YA fantasy novel ever: ”So ICE now

Terrorists in space! Resistance fighters in space! Space pirates! Lesbian necromancers in space! This week’s new books!

The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino CA has created a new Octavia E. Butler Fellowship. The Huntington is the repository of the literary archive of Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006), the first science fiction writer to receive a prestigious MacArthur “genius” award and the first African-American woman to win widespread recognition writing in that genre. Applicants may be working from a variety of disciplinary perspectives on

Things We Say in the Dark by Kirsty Logan (Harvill Secker) is on the shortlist for the 2020 Polari Prize, given to writers born or based in the UK and Ireland “for emerging and established LGBTQ+ literary talent.” The shortlists were announced in an online ceremony July 31, 2020, with winners to be announced in October. The Polari Prize is sponsored by DHH Literary Agency, and the winner will receive

FIYAHCON, an online convention for BIPOC+ in SF/F publishing, is accepting programming pitches until August 21, 2020. Programming ideas can be submitted directly through their website. Over at FIYAH Literary Magazine, we’ve wanted to host a convention almost since our inception and now we’re in a place to pull it off. Our mission for the convention is to reach beyond the magazine’s origins centering Black voices, to celebrate the contributions

Susan Ellison, 60, died August 1, 2020 at home, in the “Lost Aztec Temple of Mars,” in Sherman Oaks CA. Susan Toth was born in 1960 in the British Midlands. She met Harlan Ellison at a convention in Scotland in 1985 and they married in 1986. She was his fifth wife and the love of his life: the two were inseparable for the next 32 years, until his death in

The Locus Awards took place online on June 24-27, 2020 in their first virtual-only iteration; Connie Willis and Daryl Gregory co-emceed the ceremony. There were over 150 registrations, and paid members received a Locus t-shirt and a print program book. Despite struggling with whether to go forward with the Locus Awards events (usually held on the ground in Seattle), and ignoring their total lack of technical experience with webinar platforms,

Creatures of Charm and Hunger, Molly Tanzer (John Joseph Adams 978-0-358-06521-0, $16.99, 320pp, tp) April 2020. When Molly Tanzer introduced her ”Diabolist’s Library” trilogy with Creatures of Will and Temper back in 2017, she combined the sharply insightful coming-of-age tale of two contrasting sisters finding their way in Victorian London with a cleverly gender-swapped version of Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Then, with a skillful narrative sleight-of-hand, she shifted

When I was sixteen, I skipped my appointment to get sworn in as a U.S. citizen because I was taking an Advanced Placement exam.   The instant the test was over, the Principal spoke over the intercom and called me down to his office, where I was mortified to see my mom waiting for me and mystified to find her in a rage. How could I miss that appointment? What

Numerous upcoming conventions and literary events have been postponed or canceled as part of efforts to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus that causes respiratory illness COVID-19. The situation remains in flux as the full extent of the pandemic remains to be seen. We will update this story and our convention listing with further information about cancellations and postponements as it becomes available. The Romance Writers of America Annual

Charlize Theron, as Andy, anchors a squad of immortal mercenaries in The Old Guard, a movie based on Greg Rucka’s graphic novels of the same name. Joining her are Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe (Marwan Kenzari), and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) as fellow immortals who have fought by Andy’s side for hundreds of years. Also sharing these powers are Nile Freeman (KiKi Layne) — a Marine who is quite surprised to discover

“Humanslayer” by Scott Huggins won the sixth annual Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, announced August 2, 2020 during the Baen Virtual Roadshow, broadcast live on Facebook. Second place went to “The Chilling Account of the Wolf-Bann of Krallenburg” by J.E. Tabor and third place went to “Seidh” by Morgan Welch. Other nominees were: “Hero”, L.R. Braden “The Strength of Summer Storms”, Evey Brett “A Hole in the Gut”, M.T. Kadisin “From

The shortlists for the 2020 Norma K. Hemming Award have been announced. Short Fiction (stories up to 17,500 words) “Like Ripples on a Blank Shore”, J.S. Breukelaar (Collision) “The Mark”, Grace Chan (Verge 2019: Uncanny) “‘Scapes Made Diamond”, Shauna O’Meara (Interzone 3-4/19) “The Promise of Saints”, Angela Slatter (A Miscellany of Death & Folly) Winter’s Tale, Nike Sulway & Shauna O’Meara (Twelfth Planet) “Rats”, Marlee Jane Ward (Kindred: 12 Queer

Mike Ashley is the winner of the 2020 Munsey Award, presented annually by PulpFest “to an individual or institution that has bettered the pulp community.” Nominees are selected by the general pulp community, and the winner is selected by a vote of past Lamont, Munsey, and Rusty Awards winners. Ashley received a fine art print by David Saunders as his award. Since PulpFest 2020 has been canceled, the award was

Lindsay Ellis’ debut novel Axiom’s End (St. Martin’s) debuts solidly on three lists.

I got fall-down drunk a week or so ago; literally falling on the stairs and knocking down a piece of art, and the next day, I had a panic attack so severe I had to take a break from work and have a lie down. Clearly, I have been processing a lot of emotions – or not processing, which is why my body decided to express how I felt after

Race to the Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Disney Hyperion 978-136802466-2, $16.99, 298pp, hc) January 2020. Cover by Dale Ray DeForest. Rick Riordan’s already impressive Disney Hyperion imprint has another winner with Rebecca Roanhorse’s adventure, Race to the Sun. Sporting a southwestern setting and Navajo protagonist while executing a traditional hero/heroine’s journey with aplomb, Race to the Sun hits all the right notes while giving readers an excellent look at some Navajo

SF, fantasy, and alter­nate reality game writer Sean Stewart has written an interactive online farce called Roundabout: “A love triangle gets even more complicated when three digital beings decide they want to go back into bodies – and the audience chooses who goes where.” You can watch (and participate!) at <twitch.tv/NIDA-Roundabout> on August 6, 7, and 8 at 6 p.m. PST. Stewart created the play in collaboration with the National

The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again, M. John Harrison (Gollancz 978-0575096356, 272pp, hardcover) June 2020 One does not merely read a novel by M. John Harrison; rather, one inhabits it. Or perhaps the uncanny novel inhabits the lucky reader. For the duration of the reader’s immersion in the text (or the immersion of the text in the reader), his or her consciousness is erased and supplanted with Harrison’s elaborate

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

Barnes & Noble fired unspecified number of employees from its head­quarters in New York who’d been on furlough since March – including longtime SF/fantasy and graphic novel buyer James Killen and fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley. A spokesperson said, “It is with great regret that a number of employees in the corporate office have left our employment. As with so many companies, we evaluate our needs in circumstances much changed by

Winners for the Hugo Awards, the Lodestar for Best Young Adult Book, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer were announced by CoNZealand, the 78th Worldcon, on August 1, 2020 during an online ceremony. Best Novel WINNER: A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (Tor; Tor UK) The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor; Titan) The Ten Thousand Doors of January, Alix E. Harrow (Redhook;

The inaugural longlist 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. Titles and authors of possible genre interest include: Best Children’s Tin Boy, Steve Cole, illustrated by Oriol Vidal (Barrington Stoke) The Mysterious Melody, SP K-Mushambi, illustrated by Kudzai Gumbo (Naniso Create) Best Young Adult The Deathless Girls, Kiran Millwood Hargrave

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, Zen Cho (Tor.com 978-1-250-26925-6, $19.99, 160pp, hc) June 2020. Cover by Sija Hong. After decades of movies, games, manga, and TV, it might well be that contemporary audiences are more familiar with the conventions of wuxia than with the classic American Western – not that there isn’t a fair amount of overlap. The crucial opening scene of Zen Cho’s The Order

CoNZealand Site Selection announced that Chicago has won the site vote and will host the 80th Worldcon, Chicon 8, to be held September 1-5, 2022, winning 517 of the 587 ballots. The con will take place at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. Guests include author guest of honor Charles de Lint, artist guest of honor Floyd Norman, fan guests of honor Edie Stern and Joe Siclari, First Fandom guest of honor Erle

Winners for the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel Awards have been announced by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ). Best Novel WINNER: The Dawnhounds, Sascha Stronach (Little Hook) The Blacksmith, Barbara Howe (IFWG Australia) The Prince of Secrets, A.J. Lancaster (Camberion) Solar Federation, S.E. Mulholland (self-published) Into the Ashes, Lee Murray (Severed) Best Youth Novel WINNER: The Clockhill and the Thief, Gareth Ward (Walker Australia) Light in My Blood, Jean

Interlibrary Loan, Gene Wolfe (Tor 978-1-250-24236-5, $25.99, 308pp, hc) June 2020. There was already something of a valedictory tone about Gene Wolfe’s 2015 novel A Borrowed Man, which portrayed a glum, diminished future in which authors survive as helpless ”reclones” who could be checked out of libraries like books (or cubes or disks) – but who could casually be incinerated if they aren’t checked out frequently enough. In that novel,

Winners of the 1945 Retro Hugo Awards, honoring work from 1944, have been announced by CoNZealand, the 78th Worldcon. Best Novel WINNER: “Shadow Over Mars”, Leigh Brackett (Startling Stories Fall ’44) Land of Terror, Edgar Rice Burroughs (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.) The Golden Fleece, Robert Graves (Cassell) “The Winged Man”, E. Mayne Hull & A.E. van Vogt (Astounding Science Fiction 5-6/44) The Wind on the Moon, Eric Linklater (Macmillan) Sirius,

The Fantastic Fiction of Hannes Bok, Hannes Bok (American Fantasy Press 978-0990784678, $45, 448pp, hardcover) March 2020 As a kid, I used to confuse the artwork of Hannes Bok and Boris Artzybasheff. There’s a surface similarity, but when examined closer, Bok’s paintings and drawings exude a kind of Art Deco romance that Artzybasheff’s more cold and clever and satirical drawings never did. We can tell that one man was a

A digital copy of Aurealis #132, the All-New Zealand issue, will be sent free to anyone who emails <editor@aurealis.com.au> with the subject line “Aurealis #132 All-New Zealand” during CoNZealand, July 29 – August 2, 2020.   While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and would like to keep

Several awards for services to SF fandom were presented during the CoNZealand opening ceremonies, held online July 28, 2020. First Fandom Hall of Fame Award Roger Sims First Fandom Posthumous Hall of Fame Award Chad Oliver Sam Moskowitz Archive Award John Carter Tibbetts David A. Kyle Big Heart Award Janice Gelb and Stephen Boucher While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring

Neal Asher, The Human (Night Shade 5/20; Mac­millan UK 4/20) The master of weird SF returns to the Polity universe in this concluding volume of his Rise of the Jain trilogy, “full of outsize heroes and monsters, gigantic spacecraft, godlike artificial intelligences, and horrific large-scale and close-up combat sequences…. I declare myself satisfied and entertained and impressed.” [Russell Letson]   Algis Budrys, Beyond the Outposts: Essays on SF and Fantasy

Honeybones, Georgina Bruce (TTA Press 978- 1-9163629-1-8, £7.00, 90pp, tp) May 2020. Honeybones, the sixth in TTA Press’s novella series, deals with ugly subjects in beautifully written prose. Georgina Bruce immediately plunges the reader into young teen Anna Carew’s befuddled mind and places us in a ”house of mirrors… entangled with its selves, a pattern looping inwards, up stairs and through doorways and round corners…” haunted by ”endless girls, faces

CoNZealand Fringe, “a project of many genre fiction fan communities” which is “not endorsed by CoNZealand,” has created “a complementary programming series to the annual science fiction convention Worldcon,” accessible on their website and free to watch on YouTube. Programming events will livestream on YouTube from July 28 – August 2nd (PDT) at “European-friendly times.” Panelists include Jeannette Ng, Gareth L. Powell, DongWong Song, Alasdair Stuart, Bogi Takács, and many

Winners for the 2019 Ladies of Horror Fiction Awards have been announced: Best Collection WINNER: Little Paranoias, Sonora Taylor (self-published) Collision, J.S. Breukelaar (Meerkat) Out of Water, Sarah Read (Trepidatio) Ghosts of You, Cathy Ulrich (Okay Donkey) Best Debut WINNER: The Luminous Dead, Caitlin Starling (Harper Voyager) Little Darlings, Melanie Golding (Crooked Lane) The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, Sarah Read (Trepidatio) Theme Music, T. Marie Vandelly (Dutton) Best Poetry Collection WINNER: Choking Back the

What happens after? After a pandemic, after an industrial accident, after a supernova? Find out in these new books!

The 13-title longlist for the 2020 Booker Prize has been announced, including several titles and authors of possible genre interest: The New Wilderness, Diane Cook (OneWorld) The Mirror & The Light, Hilary Mantel (4th Estate) Love and Other Thought Experiments, Sophie Ward (Corsair) How Much of These Hills Is Gold, C Pam Zhang (Riverhead) The £50,000 prize is “open to writers of any nationality, writing in English and published in

The preliminary ballot for the 2020 Ditmar Awards for Australian SF has been announced: Best Novel Claiming T-Mo, Eugen Bacon (Meerkat) The Year of the Fruit Cake, Gillian Polack (IFWG) Best Short Fiction Into Bones Like Oil, Kaaron Warren (Meerkat Shorts) “Whom My Soul Loves”, Rivqa Rafael (Strange Horizons 11/11/19) Best Collected Work Collision, J.S. Breukelaar (Meerkat) Best Fan Publication in Any Medium Be the Serpent SF Commentary Best Fan

By Force Alone, Lavie Tidhar (Head of Zeus 978-1838931278, £18.99, 516pp, hc) March 2020. (Tor 978-1-250-75345-8, $27.99, 416pp, hc) June 2020. Sometimes while reading a Lavie Tidhar novel, there comes a point when you feel like he’s grabbed the wheel, grinning as he drives you aggressively into oncoming traffic and somehow pulls off moves that by all rights ought to be fatal. That’s never been more the case than in

A group of SF professionals and fans, led by Anna Smith Spark, have written the following open letter to the World Science Fiction Society and Worldcon 2020 chair Norman Cates: Dear WSFS Board members, and dear Norman, As writers, publishers and readers of science fiction and fantasy, we are writing to express our concern that Saudi Arabia has been accepted as a potential host site for the 2022 World Science

When I got serious about writing in my teens, my literary opinions involved a lot of eyerolling.   Black and white false dichotomies attracted me, as they do many thirteen-year-olds eager to become Serious Artists™. One creed I held to be especially dear was that fake writers treat stories like games of pretend, and real writers remain conscious of their task—making art—at all times.   Adulthood shrunk my head a

A Fall in Autumn by Michael G. Williams (Falstaff) won the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award, announced by the North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation (NCSFF) on July 27, 2020. The award recognizes “outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy novels written by North Carolina authors.” Other nominees were Where Oblivion Lives, T. Frohock (Harper Voyager) The Women’s War, Jenna Glass (Del Rey) The Twisted Ones, T. Kingfisher (Saga) Breaking Gods,

The 2020 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards were announced at Comic-Con@Home online on July 26, 2020. Winners of SF/F interest include: Best Continuing Series Bitter Root, David Walker, Chuck Brown & Sanford Greene (Image) Best Limited Series Little Bird, Darcy Van Poelgeest & Ian Bertram (Image) Best New Series Invisible Kingdom, G. Willow Wilson & Christian Ward (Berger Books/Dark Horse) Best Graphic Album—Reprint LaGuardia, Nnedi Okorafor & Tana Ford (Berger Books/Dark

The World Fantasy Awards ballot for works published in 2019 has been announced. The awards will be presented during the virtual World Fantasy 2020 (WFC) convention, scheduled for October 29 – November 1, 2020. The Life Achievement Awards, presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field, will go to Karen Joy Fowler and Rowena Morrill. The World Fantasy Awards finalists are: Best Novel Queen of

Rick Raphael (1919-1994) is the winner of the 2020 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, intended to bring attention to lesser-known SF and fantasy authors. The jury particularly cites Raphael’s 1966 fixup novel Code Three (composed of three shorter works, including two Hugo Award finalists) and 1960 humor novella “Make Mine Homogenized”. This year’s judges were Barry Malzberg and Robert J. Sawyer. For more information about the award, see the Cordwainer Smith Foundation

Jim Butcher’s Peace Talks (Ace) debuts strongly on four lists; David Mitchell’s Utopia Avenue (Random House) also debuts.

The 2019 Aurealis Awards winners, recognizing the best in Australian speculative fiction, have been announced. Best Science Fiction Novel WINNER: Aurora Rising, Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff (Allen & Unwin) The Subjects, Sarah Hopkins (Text) The Trespassers, Meg Mundell (University of Queensland Press) The Year of the Fruit Cake, Gillian Polack (IFWG Australia) The Glad Shout, Alice Robinson (Affirm) Daughter of Bad Times, Rohan Wilson (Allen & Unwin) Best Science

The Eleventh Gate, Nancy Kress (Baen 978-9821-2458-8, $16.00, 344pp, hc) May 2020. Cover by Bob Eggleton. Ideological, familial, and generational tensions have figured prominently in Nancy Kress’s stories as far back as the Beggars sequence of the 1990s, and now in The Eleventh Gate they become major plot drivers. The new novel combines elements of space opera with quasi-dystopian political conflict and intrigue among a collection of extrasolar colonies. A

Uncanny 3-4/20 Black Static 3-4/20 Nightmare 3/20, 4/20, 5/20 The Dark 3/20, 4/20 Let’s start with Uncanny #33. Alix E. Harrow‘s ”The Sycamore and the Sybil” is flat-out marvelous. It has the immutabily of myth, the magic of lore, and the power of modern wonder. The narrator is a sycamore who was once a woman (if you know about Daphne, you’ll have no problem accepting that) who has concluded, ”It

Dawn Frederick, owner of St. Paul MN-based agency Red Sofa Literary, is at the center of an ongoing controversy. On May 28, 2020, during protests following the death of George Floyd in the Twin Cities, Frederick tweeted, “The gas station at the END OF MY BLOCK is officially getting looted. Calling the police right now to let them know as someone will need to board up this place.” (Her Twitter

Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing 978-1-25022-986-1, $26.99, 352pp, hc) May 2020. Cover by Jaime Jones. Martha Wells has been writing excellent books since 1993, when Tor Books published her The Element of Fire. The Element of Fire, in its revised 2006 version and Wells’s The Wheel of the Infinite (2000) would feature in a list of my 100 favourite books of all time, so it may be that when

Made to Order, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Solaris) March 2020. Anthropocene Rag, Alex Irvine (Tor.com Publishing) March 2020. I don’t think there can be any doubt that the best currently working original anthologist of science fiction is Jonathan Strahan. (Ellen Datlow probably retains that title for fantasy and certainly for horror.) Strahan’s new anthology is Made to Order, on the subject of robots and mostly their desire for liberation, for autonomy,

DisCon III, the 79th World Science Fiction Convention, to be held August 25-29, 2021 in Washington DC, has announced John Harris as artist guest of honor, join­ing author guest of honor Nancy Kress, editor guest of honor Toni Weisskopf, fan guest of honor Ben Yalow, and special guests Malka Older and Sheree Renée Thomas. For more: <www.discon3.org>. While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a

Anne Bishop, The Queen’s Bargain (Ace 978-1-9848-0662-8, $27.00, 414pp, hc) March 2020. Bishop returns to her popular Black Jewels series with an eighth novel that picks up with the surviving main characters a few years later. The issues of sexual power and abuse remain prominent, but they get a couple of new twists here, with the introduction of a young Warlord, Lord Dillon, who was promised marriage and used sexually

Flights of Foundry, a completely online speculative media conference, took place May 16-17, 2020. The event was co-founded by Jessica Eanes and Cislyn Smith, and featured 8,300 minutes of programming, which ran non-stop from midnight on Friday to midnight on Sunday. Guests of honor included Suzanne Walker, Wendy Xu, Ken Liu, Liz Gorinsky, An­drea Phillips, Rachel S. Cordasco, Grace P. Fong, and Alex Shvartsman. Not wanting to crowd out or

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/26/20 Clarkesworld 4/20 Tor.com 4/8/20, 4/22/20, 4/28/20 Beneath Ceaseless Skies has had a heck of spring. After a pair of double issues for their biennial science fantasy run, they wrapped up March with a major milestone, issue #300. This is another oversized collection, including two bonus novelettes and a bonus novella. My favorite story of the issue was the first, ”The Hummingbird Temple” by C.C. Finlay, which

The CoNZealand programme is now available to view. There are 772 events scheduled. The opening and closing ceremonies, Hugo Awards, and the Masquerade will run at 11:00 a.m. NZST. At this time, login to the virtual con is unavailable. Once the login is available, you will be able to sign-in to the CoNZealand Grenadine site and start tailoring your own CoNZealand experience. You’ll be able to sign up for programme

The Last Emperox, John Scalzi (Tor 978-0-7653-8916-9 $26.99, 320pp, hc) April 2020. The Last Emperox is dedicated ”to the women who are done with other people’s shit.” That alone is a great summation of what drives the plot of the third book of John Scalzi’s Interdependency trilogy, which includes The Collapsing Empire and The Consuming Fire. While the dedication may be aimed at the reader, it also succinctly describes the

The Center for Fiction has released the long list for its 2020 First Novel Prize, “to honor the best debut fiction of the year.” Titles and authors of possible genre interest include: Conjure Women, Afia Atakora (Random House) The Illness Lesson, Clare Beams (Doubleday) Bestiary, K-Ming Chang (One World) Things You Would Know If You Grew Up Around Here, Nancy Wayson Dinan (Bloomsbury) Temporary, Hilary Leichter (Coffee House) Sharks in

The Locus Bestsellers for July include top titles The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin, Dune by Frank Herbert, This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, and Star Wars: Thrawn: Treason by Timothy Zahn.