Masterworks and Other Stories, Simon Jacobs (Instar Books 978-1682199053, $20.00, 208pp, hc) August 2019. Until recently, Simon Jacobs has enjoyed the coveted honour of being on the list of authors whose books I own but whom I’ve never read. I purchased his first novel, Palaces, more than a year ago because it looked right up my alley and, since then, it’s been collecting virtual dust on my Kindle app. Rather
It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks! Jonathan Strahan chooses Tim Maughan’s debut novel, Infinite Detail: “the sharpest, smartest most on-point science fiction novel of the year. If you ever wanted to know what the author of Neuromancer would have been doing if he was writing a first novel in 2019, it’s this. Infinite Detail deserves to win the Hugo and Nebula, and would if it was left to
» The New Yorker: How William Gibson Keeps His Science Fiction Real » The Nation: The Rest Is Up to Us: Ted Chiang’s science fiction helps us look past the power of technology » New York Times Magazine: How Chinese Sci-Fi Conquered America, about Ken Liu » Wall Street Journal: Tom Shippey picks his Best Science-Fiction of 2019 by David Walton, Daniel Suarez, Cory Doctorow, Erin Craig, Michael Swanwick »
The History of Living Forever, Jake Wolff (Farrar, Straus, Giroux 978-0-374-17066-0, $27.00, 384pp, hc) June 2019. Jake Wolff’s The History of Living Forever isn’t really science fiction, but it isn’t really not science fiction, either. It falls into that interstitial space. (And a hat tip to Ellen Kushner and friends for popularizing that term.) Most of the story is set in a world we all recognize, especially if we’ve been
It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks! Russell Letson picks Rule of Capture by Christopher Brown, “A near-future legal thriller with disturbingly contemporary overtones.” You can read his review online or in the August 2019 issue of Locus.
A Dead Djinn in Cairo, P. Djèlí Clark; Suehyla El-Attar, narrator (Macmillan Audio 978-1-25062446-8, $1.99, digital download, 1.75 hr., unabridged) August 2019. The Haunting of Tram 015, P. Djèlí Clark; Julian Thomas, narrator (Recorded Books 978-1-9800-3186-4, $13.99, digital download, 3.25 hr., unabridged) February 2019. The Black God’s Drums, P. Djèlí Clark; Channie Waites, narrator (Recorded Books 978-1-9800-3186-4, $13.99, digital download, 3 hr., unabridged) March 2019. I first encountered P. Djèlí
It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks! Reviews editor Jonathan Strahan recommends The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow: “I adore this book beyond all reason. Wonderfully written, this immediately engaging, multiversal tale of books and doors that open on new worlds is filled with intrigue, magic, and delight. Perfect for everyone you know who ever loved a book, even for a moment, or ever dreamt
Macmillan CEO John Sargent sent a letter to librarians in late October, addressing their concerns about Macmillan delaying sales of ebooks to libraries for eight weeks after publication: “First, I would like to apologize. It is clear to me that I should have written to all of you directly with our terms change. I meant no disrespect…. Please know that this change was well considered and deeply discussed with over
The Time Machine Hypothesis: Extreme Science Meets Science Fiction, Damien Broderick (Springer 978-3030161774, $27.99, 244pp, pb) July 2019. J. Richard Gott III’s epigraph in Damien Broderick’s engaging survey may contain a mission statement of sorts: “To appreciate what scientists are studying now, an excellent first step is to explore major time-travel themes in science fiction, where many ideas in this arena were first advanced.” Broderick undertakes this exploration with commendable
Europa SF, the “Pan-European Speculative Fiction Portal,” announced that it will shut down effective December 20, 2019 after seven years of providing English-language news and information covering European fandom. In a Facebook announcement, they cited hosting costs and portal maintenance as the main reasons, and are asking for anyone interested in taking over the portal and domain name to contact them. [via File770] While you are here, please take a
It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks! For the young adult reading crowd, Locus staff selects Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All by Laura Ruby as one of the top titles of the year. “If literature exists to make us think, to broaden our minds, to make a difference, then there can be no better a book to read right now.” Check out Colleen Mondor’s review of this book
The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, H.G. Parry (Redhook/Orbit 978-0-316-45271-7 $26, 464pp. hc) July 2019. The idea of a reader being able to bring fictional characters to life is hardly a new one – Jasper Fforde, Jim C. Hines’s Magic Ex Libris series, Genevieve Cogman’s The Invisible Library, and, for younger readers, the Inkworld series by Cornelia Funke come readily to mind – but H.G. Parry’s twist in The Unlikely
It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks! Our non-fiction reviewers recommend Aliens in Popular Culture, edited by Michael M. Levy & Farah Mendlesohn. You can read Alvaro Zinos-Amaro’s review of it online and in the August 2019 issue of Locus. He says, “I heartily recommend this volume to anyone who wishes to learn more about the whys and wherefores of our pop culture renderings of aliens.”
Audible.com has announced their Best of 2019 lists, selected by their editorial team. Titles of genre interest include: Science Fiction WINNER: This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Simon & Schuster) Andrea Vernon and the Superhero-Industrial Complex, Alexander C. Kane (Audible Originals) The Future of Another Timeline, Annalee Newitz (Macmillan) Forward: Stories of Tomorrow, Blake Crouch, ed. (Brilliance) The Deep, Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs,
The Best of Uncanny, edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas (Subterranean 978-1596069183, $40, 680pp, hardcover) December 2019 In this challenging, ever-mutable internet era, when publishers are continually searching for ways to find an audience and stay alive, a magazine can take many forms. Some remain old-school print-only. Some are exclusively web-based. Others are hybrids on a regular basis. But one other interesting business model for zines that
Winners of the 2019 Ignotus Awards (the Spanish equivalent of the Hugo Awards), honoring the best works published in Spain last year, were announced at the 2019 Hispacon. Novela extranjera (Foreign Novel) WINNER: El largo viaje a un pequeño planeta iracundo [The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet], Becky Chambers (Insólita) El portal de los obeliscos [The Obelisk Gate], N.K. Jemesin (Nova) El visitante [The Outsider], Stephen King (Plaza
Winners of the 2019 Goodreads Choice Awards for the “best books of 2019” as chosen by users of the site, have been announced. There are several winners of genre interest: Best Fiction The Testaments, Margaret Atwood (Nan A. Talese) 98,291 votes Best Fantasy Ninth House, Leigh Bardugo (Flatiron) 53,430 votes Best Science Fiction Recursion, Blake Crouch (Crown) 41,261 votes Best Horror The Institute, Stephen King (Scribner) 75,717 votes Best Young
Four fantasy books and one SF art book on this short list of new titles!
Desdemona and the Deep, C.S.E. Cooney (Tor.com Publishing 978-1-250-22983-0, $14.99, 222pp, tp) July 2019. Cover by Kathleen Jennings. I’ve been looking forward to C.S.E. Cooney‘s Desdemona and the Deep for quite a while, and having arrived, it doesn’t disappoint. This is the third of her Breakers novellas (though it stands completely alone), centered around a set of houses called Breakers in three different worlds: the human world, the world below,
Publishing firm Blue Corn Creations has gifted $1,000 to create a scholarship for writers of Native American descent who wish to attend the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Blue Corn Creations owner Rob Schmidt said, We’re excited about developing the next generation of Native superhero, science fiction, and action/adventure stories. To do that, we also need to develop the next generation of Native writers. This scholarship will help accomplish that. The
It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks! Josh Pearce picks The Wandering Earth as a top science fiction film: “Definitely worth seeing. It’s a scale of science fiction we don’t see in cinema.” You can read his review with Arley Sorg online here.
Writer Andrew Weiner, 70, died December 3, 2019, in Toronto, after a short illness. He published over 40 SF stories and two SF novels. His first sale was “Empire of the Sun” to Harlan Ellison’s Again, Dangerous Visions (1972), and other work appeared in Asimov’s, F&SF (including the cover stories in August 1987 and September 1992), and Interzone. Two collections of his fiction were published: Distant Signals and Other Stories
The 30th annual Galaxy Awards for Chinese science fiction were announced November 22, 2019 at the China Science Fiction Conference in Chengdu, China. Best Novel The Door of the Machine, Jiang Bo (Sichuan Science and Technology Publishing)
The Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS) has named the finalists for the 2020 Prometheus Hall of Fame Award for Best Classic Fiction. “Sam Hall”, Poul Anderson (Astounding 8/53) “As Easy as A.B.C.”, Rudyard Kipling (London 3-4/1912) “The Trees”, Rush (Hemispheres) A Time of Changes, Robert Silverberg (Orb) “Lipidleggin’”, F. Paul Wilson (Asimov’s 5-6/78) All members of the LFS are eligible to vote. The winner will be presented during the 2020 NASFiC
The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has named Lois McMaster Bujold the 36th recipient of the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. SFWA president Mary Robinette Kowal said Bujold “has had an undeniable influence on the field of science fiction and fantasy. From the the Vorkosigan Saga, to the Chalion series and the Sharing Knife series, she finds new ways to explore the genre, mixing and matching everything
Matthew Hughes was born May 27, 1949 in Liverpool, England. His family emigrated to southern Ontario, Canada when he was five years old, and then moved to Vancouver when he was 13. He attended Simon Fraser University but left school before graduating. He has worked various jobs, but spent most of his career as a freelance writer, including nearly 40 years as a speechwriter for various Canadian politicians and corporate
Nora Roberts’ The Rise of Magicks (St. Martin’s), third in her Chronicles of the One, and Brandon Sanderson’s Starsight (Delacorte), second in his YA Skyward series, both debut strongly.
Last Bus to Everland, Sophie Cameron (Macmillan Children’s Books 978-1-509-85318-2, £9.99, 288pp, tp) May 2019. (Roaring Brook Press 978-1-250-14993-0, $17.99, 327pp, hc) June 2019. After last year’s thoughtful Out of the Blue, author Sophie Cameron returns again to her native Scotland with Last Bus to Everland. In this “magical doorway” fantasy (that title was chosen for a reason), teenager Brody Fair finds the place he has always wished for in
It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks! Editor-in-Chief Liza Trombi picks Longer by Michael Blumlein as a top title of the year: “he folds idea upon idea and builds distinct characters who are in constant and subtle movement.” You can read Adrienne Martini’s review online and in the June 2019 issue of Locus.
Stealing Worlds, Karl Schroeder (Tor 978-0-7653-9998-4, $29.95, hc) June 2019. Cover by Stephane Martinière. Thanks to its depiction of a tech-based, street-smart, stick-it-to-the-man counterculture, Karl Schroeder’s Stealing Worlds will inevitably be compared to classic cyberpunk, but the vibe is quite distinct and not nearly as noirish. The setting is a just-over-the-horizon heterotopian future that nevertheless had me thinking of the much more exotic and farther-out worlds of Schroeder’s earlier novels,
It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks! Arley Sorg picks Jordan Peele’s Us as his science fiction film of the year, one with “a lot of really lovely creepy visuals and creepy moments.” You can read his review with Josh Pearce online here.
Vonda N. McIntyre (1948-2019) has left her literary assets to Clarion West, expressing her wish that “the organization manage her literary copyrights in perpetuity.” She also left a bequest of $387,129 to the program, the largest single financial gift in the organization’s history: “The bequest will bolster the Clarion West endowment, strengthening our mission and ensuring our financial stability for years. Vonda’s extraordinary generosity will allow Clarion West to continue
The Municipalists, Seth Fried (Penguin 975-0-14-313373-5, $16.00, 268pp, tp) March 2019. Cover design by Lucia Bernard. Imagine Metropolis, the fictional comic book-based city that feels loosely based on Manhattan. Now imagine, instead of Superman flying around and saving the day, the hero is a city planner, one who only feels satisfaction when the sewer system’s efficiency is improved by 4.73 percent, which is .03 percent above requirements. In Seth Fried’s
It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks! Tim Pratt selects This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone, about two time-traveling agents from warring futures. You can read Liz Bourke and Amy Goldschlager’s reviews of it online or in the September and October 2019 issues of Locus.
Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected, Nnedi Okorafor (Simon & Schuster 978-1-5011-9547-2, $16.99, 96pp, hc) June 2019. Nnedi Okorafor’s surprisingly and sometimes achingly personal account of her battle with scoliosis and post-surgical paralysis, Broken Places & Outer Spaces, isn’t exactly a literary memoir, but one anecdote strikes me as ironically emblematic of her unique relationship with SF: when she was hospitalized, she was given an old
It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks! Adrienne Martini chooses Ben H. Winters’ Golden State, “a remarkable blend of detective tropes, solid worldbuilding, humor, and heart.” You can read Adrienne and Ian Mond’s reviews of it online, or in the April 2019 issue of Locus.
Spellswept and Snowspelled, Stephanie Burgis; Emma Newman, narrator (Tantor Audio 978-1-40012121-2, $19.99, digital download, 7.25 hr., unabridged) May 2019. I have a great fondness for those stories where the romance and the fantasy genres kiss and commingle. Snowspelled, book one of the Harwood Spellbook, and its prequel novella, Spellswept, definitely hit that sweet spot for me. This previously self-published series is set in an alternate world in which the British
Can*Con 2019 was held October 18-20 at the Sheraton Hotel in Ottawa, Canada. There were 452 registered memberships; 436 members were in attendance. There were seven guests of honour: Charlie Jane Anders, Lee Harris, DongWon Song, Kelly Robson, and Science Literacy guests Brock Dickinson, Stephen Leahy, and Deborah Raji. Programming featured 164 panelists at 134 sessions, discussing science, writing, publishing, literature, and more, including “Behind the Scenes of Grant Applications”,
The Last Supper Before Ragnarok, Cassandra Khaw (Abaddon Books 978-1-78108-645-2, $11.99, 352pp, pb) June 2019. What an odd book Cassandra Khaw has written. It’s extraordinarily immediate, inherently diverse, jammed with whip-fast wisecracks, and peppered with language so precise and sophisticated it awes. But the book is also chaotic, unevenly characterized, and weakly plotted. The difficulty comes in judging the book as a whole, because its elements divide so steeply between
It’s Locus’s 2019 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks! Russell Letson picks for a top 2019 title The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie, a “mashup of Hamlet and sword-and-sorcery adventure… a thoughtful reimagining of a genre.” You can read Russell’s and Adrienne Martini’s reviews of it online here, or in the February 2019 issue of Locus.
Rituals are important for every community. For Israeli fandom there is an annual ritual after each ICon in which people rant on Facebook about how the venue is too small and we should find another place to hold ICon. They do have a point, but it’s a good thing — ICon is getting bigger each year. This time over the three days of the festival some 450 events were held,
Mission Critical, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Solaris 978-1781085806) July 2019. Jonathan Strahan’s new anthology is Mission Critical. The theme is characters responding to desperate situations, when something goes pear-shaped. Oddly, many of the stories, all well executed, seem a bit too much the same in adhering to the theme. The best are “Hanging Gardens” by Gregory Feeley, and “Cyclopterus” by Peter Watts. Feeley’s story is set on Mars, as a terraforming
The Locus Selected Books by Author list has been updated on our Forthcoming Books page, with information from the December 2019 issue covering upcoming titles from genre houses slated through September 2020. Find out about your favorite authors’ upcoming books! For the complete list of books by publisher, subscribe to our print magazine or purchase the December issue in print or digital editions, available December 1, 2019. While you are
Administrators Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest Bradford announced that Writing the Other‘s financial aid program has been renamed the “Vonda N. McIntyre Sentient Squid Scholarship.” The scholarship began in 2016 when McIntyre donated anonymously to the Writing the Other online classes, and was originally named the Sentient Squid Scholarship in honor of a character from her Starfarer series of books. “To date, the Sentient Squid Scholarship has provided over $15,000
As Good as New, Charlie Jane Anders; Frankie Corzo, narrator (Macmillan Audio 978-1-25062443-7, $1.99, digital download, 0.75 hr., unabridged) August 2019. The President’s Brain Is Missing, John Scalzi; P.J. Ochlan, narrator (Macmillan Audio 978-1-25062438-3, $1.99, digital download, 0.75 hr., unabridged) August 2019. This World Is Full of Monsters, Jeff VanderMeer; Vikas Adam, narrator (Macmillan Audio 978-1-25062445-1, $1.99, digital download, 1.5 hr., unabridged) August 2019. Warm Up, V.E. Schwab; Jeremy Arthur,
The 45th World Fantasy Convention was held October 31 – November 3, 2019 at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott in a still-smoky California. Guests of honor were Margo Lanagan, Beth Meacham, Reiko Murakami, Sheree Renée Thomas, and Tad Williams, with toastmaster Robert Silverberg. Life Achievement Awards winners were Hayao Miyazaki and Jack Zipes. Attendance was down from the prior year, with 660 warm bodies out of 762 total memberships purchased,
Find a West African-inspired magical world, Tales of Alternative Beatles, and DEAD ASTRONAUTS on this long list of new books!
Black Static 7-8/19 Uncanny 7-8/19 Nightmare 8/19, 9/19 The Dark 7/19, 8/19 Cemetery Dance 7/19 An outstanding issue of Black Static (#70) leads off with Ralph Robert Moore‘s novelette “I Write Your Name“. Roger was 14 when he met infant Mia. They meet again when Roger turns out to be 30-year-old Mia’s next-door neighbor – not that they recall their initial encounter. They fall in love and marry. Time goes
The Guardian announced its list of best science fiction and fantasy books in 2019, selected by Adam Roberts:
The China Science Fiction Research Institute was jointly established by Sichuan University, the Sichuan Association for Science and Technology, and Science Fiction World magazine with “the aim of supporting the development of the sci-fi industry and related literary and artistic endeavours,” and was announced during the fifth China Science Fiction Conference in Chengdu, China. Chengdu is currently supporting a bid to host the 2023 Worldcon. The institute will also publish a
Alison Scott is the winner of the 2019 Rotsler Award for “long-time wonder-working with graphic art in amateur publications of the science fiction community.” The award was announced during Loscon 46, held November 29 – December 1, 2019 at the Marriott Los Angeles Airport Hotel in Los Angeles CA. The award is sponsored by the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests, and includes an honorarium of $300 and a plaque.
Applications for Clarion West’s six-week summer workshop are open now through March 1, 2020. The workshop will be held June 21 – July 31, 2020 in Seattle WA, and will feature Ted Chiang, Neil Clarke, Tina Connolly, Andy Duncan, Eileen Gunn, Nalo Hopkinson, and Caroline M. Yoachim as instructors. For more information, see the Clarion West website. A.T. Greenblatt has announced that she will cover the application fees for two
Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea reaches #1 on the Los Angeles Times hardcover fiction list.
I grew up thinking it wasn’t cool to care too much about things. Caring about something too hard made you vulnerable. Weak. Care too much for a person, and they can hurt you emotionally. Care too much about a cause, and it will let you down. Care too much about a piece of media or an institution, and it opens you up to ridicule. The world was full of opportunities
Wounds, Nathan Ballingrud (Saga Press 978-1-534-44992-3, $26.99, 288pp, hc) April 2019. Wounds, Nathan Ballingrud’s stellar sophomore collection, is bracketed by a pair of stories concerning Hell. In “The Atlas of Hell”, an antiquarian bookseller is sent by a local gangster deep into the Louisiana bayou to retrieve the titular object; while in “The Butcher’s Table”, a group of 18th-century diabolists undertake the perilous sea voyage to the near shore of
Vultures, Chuck Wendig (Saga 978-1481448772, $27.99, 416pp, hc) January 2019. Chuck Wendig’s Vultures is the sixth and final book in his Miriam Black series. If you’re already familiar with this “take-no-shit, give-no-fucks kinda lady,” as she describes herself, you know if her foul mouth and pitch-black sass are your jam. Wendig sticks the landing on the series – and, possibly, sets up a tangential new series, should he so choose
Aconyte Books, the fiction publishing imprint of Asmodee Entertainment, made a multi-year deal with Marvel Entertainment to publish tie-in novels based on Marvel Comics properties. Publisher Marc Gascoigne says, “The Marvel comic book universe has featured a host of great characters and storylines crying out to be told over the years, and now is the time to step into the spotlight. You can look out for legends from Asgard, several
Ivory Apples, Lisa Goldstein (Tachyon 978-1-61696-298-2, $15.95, 276pp, tp) September 2019. In a career now well into its fourth decade, Lisa Goldstein has made something of a habit of confounding expectations: she made a stunning debut with her Holocaust fantasy The Red Magician, veered off into student revolutions and Surrealism in The Dream Years, dabbled with dystopia in A Mask for the General and her own brand of magical realism
To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton 978-1-473697164, £12.99, 140pp, hc) August 2019. (HarperVoyager 978-0-062-93601-1, $12.99, 176pp, tp) September 2019. I wish I had enjoyed Becky Chambers’s To Be Taught, If Fortunate nearly as much. Where Chambers’s previous works (The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, and Record of a Spaceborn Few) took place in her space opera Wayfarers continuity, a
My gratitude and appreciation to Natalia Burianyk, Anastasia Rohoza, Natalie Kononenko, Christine Worobec, Rachel Cordasco and Svitlana Taratorina for their input and support. All misunderstandings and misinterpretations are mine. In American Gods, Neil Gaiman has Mr. Wednesday say of Czernobog and his family, “They’re not Rom. They’re Russian. Slavs. I believe.” Why would they be confused with the very un-Slavic Rom (“gypsies”)? Why is Czernobog, more often associated with Western
The Memory Police, Yoko Ogawa (Pantheon 978-1-101-87060-0, $25.95, 288pp, hc) August 2019. The Memory Police is, by my count, the fifth book by Yoko Ogawa to be translated into English (all by Stephen Snyder). These include The Diving Pool: Three Novellas, which was shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award back in 2008. While it’s only a small slice of a career that spans three decades and the publication of more
CoNZealand, the 78th Worldcon to be held July 29 – August 2, 2020 in Wellington, New Zealand, has opened the competition to design the base for the 2020 Hugo and 1945 Retro Hugo Awards. The competition is open to artists “living and working in New Zealand.” The deadline to submit proposals is January 17, 2020, with a winner to be selected by early February. The winner will receive a membership
Analog magazine is celebrating its 90th anniversary with “An Astounding 90 Years of Analog Science Fiction and Fact: The Fourth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium”, to be held in conjunction with City Tech College on December 12, 2019 in New York NY. There will be an author reading and panel, an editorial panel including Trevor Quachri and Stanley Schmidt, a keynote speech from Michael F. Flynn, and various presentations
Joe Abercrombie, A Little Hatred (Orbit US 9/19) Abercrombie makes a welcome return to the grimdark world of the First Law trilogy, giving it fresh flavor as he picks up with a new generation in this first book in the Age of Madness trilogy. Industrial revolution has dawned, with accompanying social change and unrest, leaving young people to find new ways to prove themselves – but trouble always remains.
Escaping Exodus, Nicky Drayden (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-286773-5, $15.99, 300pp, tp) October 2019. On a generation ship, two young people from different classes meet and fall in love. One rises, one falls, and their complex and forbidden relationship causes a major rupture in the society. This is a classic SF trope: Drayden takes it to new places. In Escaping Exodus, people use a pod of space whales as generation ships to
The Financial Times has released its Books of the Year 2019 lists, selected by “FT commentators, critics and guests.” The Best Books of 2019: Science Fiction were chosen by James Lovegrove: Exhalation, Ted Chiang (Picador) The Warehouse, Rob Hart (Bantam) Always North, Vicki Jarrett (Unsung Stories) Cold Storage, David Koepp (HQ) Emily Eternal, M.G. Wheaton (Hodder & Stoughton) While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with
Dream Foundry, a “non-profit dedicated to bolstering the careers of nascent professionals working with the speculative arts,” has announced the winners of its inaugural writing contest, “open to anyone with a completed short story who had not yet been professionally paid for their work”: First place: Jamie Adams Second place: Claire Whitmore Third place: Rose Wachowski Honorable mention: Samantha Lynne Sargent The contest coordinator was William Ledbetter. Judges for 2019
The winners of the Deutscher Phantastik Preis were announced on November 23, 2019 during BuchBerlin in Berlin, Germany. Best Novel in German Vermächtnis der Grimms – Wer hat Angst vorm bösen Wolf?, Nicole Böhm (Drachenmond) Best Debut Novel in German Der fünfte Magier: Schneeweiß, Christine Weber (self-published) Best YA Novel in German Loa – Die weiße Mambo, Petra Reneé Meineke (Sad Wolf) Best International Novel Elfenkrone [The Cruel Prince], Holly
Writer Aidan Moher has reported on Twitter that he and all other freelancers writing for the Barnes & Noble Sci Fi and Fantasy Blog have been let go, effective immediately: All freelancers at B&N SFF Blog were informed today they’d no longer be contracting work and to invoice for outstanding work immediately. I’ve LOVED my time writing for @BNSciFi, and I’m bummed to see it come to an end. Writer
New titles this week, some released earlier in the month, are by Gwyneth Jones (on Joanna Russ), Mercedes Lackey, James Lovegrove, Robert Markley (on Kim Stanley Robinson), Marissa Meyer, Natasha Ngan, Malka Older, Brandon Sanderson, Jamie Sawyer, Maggie Stiefvater, and Kurt Vonnegut & Suzanne McConnell.
Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Saga 978-1-53441-346-7, $32.99, 816pp, hc) August 2019. Ellen Datlow has delved into ghost story-themed anthologies twice before: the all-original The Dark: New Ghost Stories in 2003 and Hauntings, a reprint compilation, in 2013. This massive (over 200,000 words in 816 pages, 30 stories) tome is one of the best works yet by Datlow – and, considering her stellar track record,
The 2021 World Fantasy Convention (WFC) has announced its guests of honor: Nisi Shawl is author guest of honor; John Picacio is artist guest of honor; André-François Ruaud is editor guest of honor; Owl Goingback and Yves Meynard are special guests; and Christine Taylor-Butler is toastmaster. WFC 2021 will be held November 4-7, 2021 in Montréal, Canada. The theme is “Fantasy, Imagination, and the Dreams of Youth.” Attending memberships are
The new novel by Daniel H. Wilson, apparently correctly titled Michael Crichton: The Andromeda Evolution (Harper), debuts on three lists, as high as #10 on the Publishers Weekly fiction hardcover list.
L.X. Beckett is a pen name for Alyxandra Margaret Dellamonica, who also writes as A.M. Dellamonica and Alyx Dellamonica. Born February 25, 1968 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, they studied theater at the University of Lethbridge, and now teach creative writing at UCLA and other institutions. They are currently studying for a MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Dellamonica married author Kelly Robson in an “outlaw wedding”
A Song for a New Day, Sarah Pinsker (Berkley 978-1984802583, $16.00, 336pp, tp) September 2019 Readers of Sarah Pinsker’s Nebula Award-winning novelette “Our Lady of the Open Road” (included in her collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea, reviewed here in March) might be as curious as I was to learn more about the gritty near-future America of that story, and in particular of the plight of live
The New Voices of Science Fiction, edited by Hannu Rajaniemi & Jacob Weisman (Tachyon 978-1-61696-291-3, 432pp, $17.95) November 2019 In the deep past of our genre, how did one become a notable new writer? The first step back then was always the same as it is now: publish some good, standout stories as your apprentice and journeyman work. But subsequent public recognition in the days when print magazines dominated the
The legal battle continues over Audible’s planned Captions program, which would display computer-generated text concurrent with audiobook narration. The Authors Guild and the Association of Authors’ Representatives filed a joint amicus brief to support the seven publishers who have sued to block the Captions program, saying the “feature presents a significant threat to the rights and livelihoods of authors and their representatives…. Audible seeks to bypass its glaring infringement of
Growing Things, Paul Tremblay (Morrow 978-0-06-267913-0, $25.99, 352pp, hc) July 2019. Growing Things is Paul Tremblay’s latest short fiction collection, after Compositions for the Young and Old and In the Meantime, some of whose contents it shares. It’s also his first book after a trio of novels – A Head Full of Ghosts, Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, and The Cabin at the End of the World – that have placed
Gahan Allen Wilson, 89, died on November 21, 2019 from complications of dementia. A widely published cartoonist and artist, he was best known for his dark humor and macabre sensibilities. Gahan Wilson’s work first appeared in Amazing Stories in 1954, but he became nationally known through art in slick magazines including Colliers, Playboy, and later The New Yorker. In 1964, he began a continuing association with F&SF, as cartoonist and occasional reviewer. His long series of
Hachette UK has restructured, with a new trade publishing operations unit overseeing all imprints, headed by Ben Groves-Raines (COO of Orion and Little, Brown UK) as publishing operations director, reporting to Hachette deputy CEO Richard Kitson. Lucy Hale (deputy CEO of Hodder & Stoughton, Headline, Quercus, and John Murray Press) has “decided to leave,” and her position has been eliminated. The managing directors of the trade publishing imprints have joined
