The 2019 Illinois Science Fiction in Chicago (ISFiC) short fiction contest for unpublished writers of science fiction and fantasy is open to submissions through September 1, 2019. First prize includes $300 and publication in the Windycon 2019 program book and on the ISFiC website. For details and rules, see the ISFiC site. While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We

The North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation (NCSFF) announced the winner of the 2019 Manly Wade Wellman Award on July 12, 2019 during ConGregate 6 held at the Red Lion Hotel in High Point NC. The award recognizes “outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy novels written by North Carolina authors.” WINNER: Empire of Silence, Christopher Ruocchio (DAW) In the Night Wood, Dale Bailey (John Joseph Adams) Pride and Prometheus, John

Carol Emshwiller (1921-2019) is the winner of the 2019 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, intended to bring attention to lesser-known SF and fantasy authors. This year’s judges were Barry Malzberg, Mike Resnick, and Robert J. Sawyer. The award was announced July 12, 2019 during Readercon 30 at the Quincy Marriott in Quincy MA. For more information about the award, see the Cordwainer Smith Foundation website. While you are here, please take

Tasha Suri won the Brave New Words Award on the strength of her debut novel Empire of Sand  (Orbit). The award was announced by Starburst magazine at a ceremony during the Edge-Lit 8 festival, held July 13, 2019 at QUAD in Derby, UK. The award goes to an individual, not a specific work, so the titles listed are “examples that most define the creators output.” Other finalists were: Origamy, Rachel

The 2018 Shirley Jackson Awards winners have been announced. The awards — for outstanding achievement in horror, psychological suspense, and dark fantasy fiction — were presented July 14, 2019 at Readercon 30 at the Quincy Marriott in Quincy MA. Novel WINNER: Little Eve, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) In the Night Wood, Dale Bailey (John Joseph Adams) Social Creature, Tara Isabella Burton (Double Day) We Sold Our Souls, Grady Hendrix

Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers (Del Rey) debuts on two lists.

Rebecca F. Kuang was born May 29, 1996 in Guangzhou, Chi­na. Her family moved to the US in 2000. She grew up in Dal­las TX, and went to college at Georgetown in Washington DC, where she studied history. She took a year off as an undergrad to live in Beijing and teach debate to high school students; in her free time, she worked on her first novel. She attended the

Lightspeed 4/19 Clarkesworld 3/19 Strange Horizons 3/19 Tor.com 2/19, 3/19 The strongest story in April’s Lightspeed magazine is Caroline M. Yoachim‘s “The Archronology of Love“. In the space of a short novelette, Yoachim does three things and does them very well: introduce a complicated new concept, develop a mystery plot, and portray a woman almost broken by grief over the death of her partner. The new concept is “Archronology,” where

The War Within, Stephen R. Donaldson (Berkley 978-0-399-58616-3, $28.00, 564pp, hc) April 2019. Steven R. Donaldson has been putting his characters through hell for decades. The War Within, the second volume of The Great God’s War, does not provide any relief. This book is set 20 years after the first volume. Prince Bifalt married Princess Estie, and they’ve become the rulers of their respective kingdoms, Belleger and Amika, working together

Not for Use in Navigation, Iona Datt Sharma (Self-published, $5.25, 210pp, eb) March 2019. Cover by Katherine Catchpole. I read Iona Datt Sharma’s short-fiction collection Not for Use in Navigation almost by accident, at the end of a chain of happy coincidences that both led me to learn about its existence and to read it in a single sitting. Datt Sharma is a writer at the beginning of their career,

WisCon 43 was held May 24-27, 2019 at the Concourse Hotel in balmy Madison WI, with Charlie Jane Anders and G. Willow Wilson as guests of honor. There were 940 full memberships sold, plus 51 teen/youth/child memberships (including many donated and assisted memberships). Programming offered 109 panels, solo presentations, and roundtables, focused on SF/F literature, diversity, feminism, disability, criticism, and more. There were 14 group readings plus GoH readings for

F&SF 3-4/19 Galaxy’s Edge 3/19 Zyzzyva Winter ’18 Interzone 3-4/19 Mythic Journeys, Paula Guran, ed. (Night Shade) May 2019. Sometimes I fail to mention stories that may not be earthshaking, but are good fun. In the March-April F&SF, for example, I enjoyed several stories greatly, without necessarily, say, putting them on my prospective Hugo Award nomination list. To wit: Gregor Hartmann‘s “The Unbearable Lightness of Bullets” is a detective story

“Treason Properly” by J.J. Cragun won the sixth annual Baen Fantasy Adventure Award, announced July 6, 2019 during SpikeCon in Layton UT. Second place went to “In the House of Rain and Gale” by Joelle Douthit and third place went to “In the City of Dreadful Joy” by Misha Burnett. Other nominees were: “The Laughing Folk”, Steve DuBois “The Storm Stone”, Kevin Harkness “Breach of Contract”, Anne Leonard “The Dragon

Editor Stephen Jones celebrated the publication of Best New Horror #29 (PS Publishing) – his 150th book! – at a signing in London on June 8, 2019, with contributors Kim Newman and Reggie Oliver. This photo story and more like it in the July 2019 issue of Locus. While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations

The British Library has acquired the 300-box archive of Granta, covering 40 years since the relaunch of the magazine in 1979. The archive contains back issues as well as correspondence and manuscripts from authors including Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, J.G. Ballard, Angela Carter, Kazuo Ishiguro, Doris Lessing, and Susan Sontag. Granta publisher and editor Sigrid Rausing said: I am delighted that the Granta archive has found a permanent

Joanna Ruth Meyer, Echo North (Page Street 978-1-62414-715-9, $17.99, 391pp, hc) January 2019. Fairytales, myths, and even a ballad mix in this lyrical young-adult novel about a young woman lured by a wolf to his magical house, where she finds herself trapped, forced to stay. Echo’s an interesting character: scarred on her face as a child by a wolf she tried to free from a trap, she’s grown up used

Sourcebooks sold 45% ownership of the company to Penguin Random House. PRH will be a “collaborative inves­tor,” with founder and CEO Dominique Raccah working closely with Madeline McIntosh, CEO of Penguin Random House US. Both have seats on the newly created board of directors. There are no immediate changes planned to “leader­ship, management, publishing autonomy, or entrepreneurial culture” at Sourcebooks, which hopes to double in size. While you are here,

Exhalation, Ted Chiang (Knopf 978-1-101-94788-3, $25.95, 358pp, hc) May 2019. It’s not exactly as though Ted Chiang’s prolificacy is getting out of hand, but it might be worth noting that his long-awaited new collection Exhalation contains nine stories, while his previous collection Stories of Your Life contained only eight. On the other hand, that earlier collection covered the first 11 years of his career, while the new one covers some

Cressida Cowell has been named the 2019-2021 Waterstones Children’s Laureate. “Selected by a panel made up of librarians, critics, writers, literature development workers and booksellers, the role is awarded to an outstanding children’s author or illustrator with a passion for fostering a new generation of writers, artists and readers.” Cowell said: I’m honoured to be chosen to be the 11th Waterstones Children’s Laureate and I will try and justify your

“Skinned” by Lesley Nneka Arimah (McSweeney’s #53) won the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing. The £10,000 prize “is awarded for a short story by an African writer published in English” and was announced during a ceremony on July 8, 2019 at the University of London’s Senate House in London, UK. Additionally, four shortlisted authors each received £500. Judges for 2019 were Sefi Atta, Peter Kimani (chair), Margie Orford, Scott

Kids hunting ghosts, firefighters battling dragons, a mathematical genius who fights crime, and a family defeating Lucifer! 12 new books this week: New titles this week are by Ann Aguirre, Craig Davidson, Sean Grigsby, S.L. Huang, Mercedes Lackey, Elizabeth Lim, Cherie Priest, Jonathan Strahan, Michael J. Sullivan, Tade Thompson, Felix Timmermans, and Eric Van Lustbader.

Collision, J.S. Breukelaar (Meerkat Press 978-1-946154-17-0, $16.95, tp, 220pp) March 2019. You may have encountered a story by J.S. Breukelaar here and there, or even her novels American Monster (2014) or Altheia (2017). Whether her name is familiar or not, her debut collection, Collision: Stories, should be on your “must read” list. Breuke­laar, an American living in Sydney, Australia, writes in a clean, incisive style with razor-sharp opening hooks, while

It’s been 22(!) years since the release of Men in Black, a stretch of time that encapsulates three sequel movies and an animated TV show, and throughout it all the original film has held up as the strongest installment of the franchise. This latest, Men in Black: International, does not come close to being the strongest in the series, but nor is it the weakest. International continues with the secretive

Write a trilogy, they said. It’ll be fun, they said. *sigh* I should start by saying that the Verity Fassbinder series began as a standalone short story. “Brisneyland by Night” was written at Clarion South in 2009 and caught the eye of someone who helpfully suggested it would make an excellent series if I could manage it. Ignorance is not only bliss but also a kind of protective Teflon coating

Columbus 2020 NASFiC has won the bid to host the next North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC), to be held August 20-23, 2020 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and Convention Center in Columbus OH. There were no other registered candidates. Confirmed guests of honor include author guests Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson, artist guest Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, editor guest Christopher J. Garcia, science guest Marc Millis, fan guests Sue

The Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS) has announced the winner of the 2019 Prometheus Award for Best Novel, honoring works published in 2018 that “examine the meaning of freedom.” Best Novel Award WINNER: Causes of Separation, Travis Corcoran (Morlock) Kingdom of the Wicked [Book One: Rules and Book Two: Order], Helen Dale (Ligature Pty Limited) State Tectonics, Malka Older (Tor.com Publishing) The Fractal Man, J. Neil Schulman (Steve Heller) The Murderbot

The 2019 Chesley Awards winners have been announced: Best Cover Illustration: Hardcover WINNER: Jon Foster for I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land, Connie Willis (Subterranean) Tommy Arnold for Red Rising, Pierce Brown (Subterranean) Jensine Eckwall for Soulless: Illustrated Edition, Gail Carriger (Orbit) Michael Komarck for Low Chicago, George R.R. Martin, ed. (Tor) Maurizio Manzieri for The Tea Master and the Detective, Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean) John Jude Palencar

Winners of the Heinlein Society’s annual undergraduate scholarships for the 2019-2020 academic year were announced July 7, 2019. This year’s winners are Charles Boyle, Rosemary Lach, and Faith Rovenolt. The scholarship awards $2,000 to each recipient. Lach received the Virginia Heinlein Memorial Scholarship, which is dedicated to female candidates majoring in engineering, math, or science. Rovenolt received the Dr. Jerry Pournelle Memorial Scholarship, and Boyle received the Dr. Yoji Kondo

Benjamin Allen H. Winters (he added the “H” after he got married; it’s the first letter of his wife’s maiden name) was born June 14, 1976 in Washington DC and grew up in Maryland. He attended Washington Univer­sity in St. Louis MO. Winters played in a punk band and wrote and performed in theater be­fore switching his focus to writing. He’s lived all over the country, and currently resides in

The Chaos Function, Jack Skillingstead (John Joseph Adams 978-1-328-52615-1, $24.00, 294pp, hc) March 2019. Jack Skillingstead’s The Chaos Function invites us to think about the tangle of paths that lead into or away from any given Bad Place, and how hard it is to avoid going down them. It is set ten years from now in a world that differs from the present mainly in improvements in smartphone technology. The

Titles by Sarah Gailey and Blake Crouch debut on the L.A. Times list this week.

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

Beneath Ceaseless Skies #273, #274 Mithila Review #10 Diabolical Plots #47, #48 Mad Scientist Journal Winter 2019 Beneath Ceaseless Skies #273 brings us two coming-of-age stories, although they’re very different. “Through the Doorways, Whiskey Chile” by S.H. Mansouri is told in a twisted landscape of weirdo magic and a moonshiner Whiskey King. Brady Nokes is the king’s son; his Momma died when he was young and his father disappeared. Together

» The New Yorker on Liu Cixin’s War of the Worlds » NY Times Book Review: Charles Yu reviews Neal Stephenson’s Fall » Guardian: Eric Brown reviews Priest, Hardy, Hall, Teintze, Caldecott » Financial Times: James Lovegrove reviews Gladstone & El-Mohtar, Chiang, Marrs, Wendig

Fleet of Knives, Gareth L. Powell (Titan Books 978-1-785655210, $14.95, 406pp, pb). February 2019. Fleet of Knives is the sequel to BSFA Award-winning author Gareth L. Powell’s Embers of War, in which sentient ex-warship Trouble Dog and her crew – including Captain Sal Konstanz – fell face first into trouble associated with their job for the House of Reclamation (an apolitical interstellar organisation dedicated to search and rescue), causing their

The 2019 SFWA Nebula Conference was held May 16-19 at the Warner Center Marriott Woodland Hills in sunny Califor­nia for the first of two years. There were 465 warm bodies of the record-breaking 475 registered members, compared to 356 in 2018. The hotel was comfortable, with spacious mingling areas, a well-appointed bar, and eateries within a few (albeit large) blocks. Each attendee received a logo-adorned bag stuffed with books. The

Nomads, Dave Hutchinson (NewCon Press 978-1-912950-00-3, £15.99, 84pp, hc) February 2019. Cover by Peter Holinghurst. Morpho, Philip Palmer (NewCon Press 978-1-912950-01-0, £15.99, 117pp, hc) February 2019. Cover by Peter Holinghurst. The Man Who Would Be Kling, Adam Roberts (NewCon Press 978-1-912950-04-1, £15.99, 57pp, hc) March 2019. Cover by Peter Holinghurst. Macsen Against the Jugger, Simon Morden (NewCon Press 978-1-912950-07-2, £15.99, 63pp, hc) March 2019. Cover by Peter Holinghurst. Since 2017

David Drake, The Storm (Baen 978-1-4814-8369-8, $25.00, xii+274pp, hc) January 2019. Cover by Todd Lockwood. Lord Pal of Beune returns for more far-future Arthurian adventures in this sequel to The Spark. Pal’s still not entirely comfortable among the lords and ladies in Dun Add, where Jon the Leader rules the Commonwealth of Mankind. Pal’s happy to be a Champion, and believes in Jon’s vision of many lands united by a

Blanca & Roja, Anna-Marie McLemore (Feiwel & Friends 978-1-250-16271-7, $17.99, 367pp, hc) October 2018. Anna-Marie McLemore follows up her gorgeous­ly crafted novel Wild Beauty with an equally lush and luminous take on the fairy tale of “Snow White and Rose Red”. Blanca & Roja is the story of two sisters who labor under a generational curse. One is light and the other is dark. One is agreeable, the other difficult.

Apocalypses aplenty for your Fourth of July week! Find them in THE HEART OF HELL; a skin-sealing epidemic; IMMUNITY from contagion; TYGER BURNING; a post-apocalyptic landscape called the Misery; zombies; ALPHA AND OMEGA; and a sleepwalking epidemic. New titles this week are by Wayne Barlowe, Bradley P. Beaulieu, Naomi Booth, Erin Bowman, Neil Clarke, Jennifer Estep, Charles E. Gannon, Duncan M. Hamilton, Marko Kloos, T.C. McCarthy, Ed McDonald, Peter McLean,

The Booker Prize has a new sponsor: charitable foundation Crankstart, created by venture capitalist Sir Michael Mortitz and his wife Hariett Heyman. They have agreed to sponsor the prestigious awards for five years, beginning in 2020. Crankstart takes over from the former sponsor, hedge fund Man Group, which has contributed £25 million to the prize since its sponsorship began in 2002, including £1.6 million for the 2019 prize. The Booker

Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice (ECW Press 978-1-77041-400-6, $14.95, 224pp, tp) October 2018. Moon of the Crusted Snow is a book on the cusp. It’s not a preface to apoca­lypse, and it’s not the postscript; it takes place during the moment in which a society realizes that one kind of life is over, and another kind of life is going to be the norm. Rice isolates and stretches

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller (Ecco) is this year’s John W. Campbell Memorial Award winner for the best science fiction novel published in 2018, and “When Robot and Crow Saved East St. Louis” by Annalee Newitz (Slate.com 12/18) is the winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short fiction of 2018. Other finalists were: John W. Campbell Memorial Award Semiosis, Sue Burke (Tor) A Spy in

Several times over the 13 years that I’ve been writing this column, I’ve railed against the toxic myth that science fiction is a predictive litera­ture, a way to know the future. Science fiction writers are not fortune tellers, and that’s obvious because no one is a (real) fortune teller, because the future is unknowable, and because the future changes based on what we do. With that said, there are two

The Black God’s Drums, P. Djèlí Clark (Tor.com Publishing) September 2018. Alice Payne Arrives, Kate Heartfield (Tor.com Publishing) November 2018. Alice Payne Rides, Kate Heartfield (Tor.com Publishing) March 2019. Aeota, Paul Di Filippo (PS Publishing) February 2019. The recent Nebula Award nominations alerted me to some work I’d missed. A couple of the novella nominees came out from Tor.com Publishing late last year. Both are very enjoyable. P. Djèlí Clark‘s

The trade paperback of Richard Powers’ The Overstory still ranks on three lists.

The Hound of Justice, Claire O’Dell (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-269933-6, $15.99, 328pp, tp) July 2019. Cover by Brandon Bourdages. Claire O’Dell burst onto the near-future science fiction scene last year with A Study in Honor, the opening volume in the Janet Watson Chronicles. A Study in Honor, which I reviewed for this publication, was a tense, compelling near-future thriller, set in a United States in the throes of a second civil

The Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners of the 2019 Locus Awards during the Locus Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, June 29, 2019. SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL WINNER: The Calculating Stars, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor) Record of a Spaceborn Few, Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager US; Hodder & Stoughton) If Tomorrow Comes, Nancy Kress (Tor) Revenant Gun, Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris US; Solaris UK) Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller (Ecco; Orbit

New issues of Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Strange Horizons, and June posts at Daily Science Fiction and Tor.com

Nightmare 2/19, 3/19 The Dark 1/19, 2/19 Uncanny 1-2/19 Black Static 1-2/19 Six weeks into 2019 (as I write) and I’m at the fast dwindling point where I foolishly feel I have a handle on most of the new fiction…. Nightmare #77 offers two original stories: “Quiet the Dead” by Micah Dean Hicks and “58 Rules to Ensure Your Husband Loves You Forever” by Rafeeat Aliyu. “Quiet the Dead”: There’s

This year marks the 10th Anniversary of Hal-Con Japan, which took place at the Kawasaki International Center, April 13-14, 2019, with international guest of honor Lavie Tidhar and Japanese guest of honor Misato Hisa. Past years have included writers like Ken Liu, Ann Leckie, Hannu Rajaniemi, Joe Haldeman, and Alastair Reynolds, with the goal of broadening the science fiction community here in Japan and fostering a more inclusive approach to

Dark Constellations, Pola Oloixarac (Soho Press 978-1-61695-923-4, $26.00, 216pp, hc) April 2019. Pola Oloixarac’s second novel, Dark Constellation, translated by Roy Kesey, spans a one-hun­dred-forty-year period, beginning in 1882. Plant biologist Niklas Bruun is the youngest member of an expedition charting the archipelago of Juba and specifically the volcanic crater of Famara. There he discovers a plant, Crissia pallida, whose properties will, enigmatically, “remain all but unknown until the beginning

Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, K.J. Parker (Orbit 978-0316270793, $15.99, 384pp, tp) April 2019. K.J. Parker (AKA Tom Holt) does just what it says on the tin in Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. In true Parker style, he comes at the topic from an unexpected angle. The perspective is not a royal, nor a peasant, nor a proper soldier. Instead, our hero is Orhan, a high-ranking

Nathan Ballingrud, Wounds (Saga 4/19) This collection – “Six Stories from the Border of Hell” – gathers some of the author’s best dark work, including original story “The Butcher’s Tale” and “The Visible Filth” (2015), adapted as 2019 horror film Wounds. His first collection, North American Lake Monsters (2013), won a Shirley Jackson Award and was nominated for British Fantasy, Stoker, and World Fantasy Awards.   Ashok K. Banker, Upon

Big Cat and Other Stories, Gwyneth Jones (NewCon 978-1-912950-15-7, £24.99, 240pp, hc) April 2019. Cover by Vincent Sammy. Gwyneth Jones has been writing fiercely intelligent SF for decades, and, despite a few high-profile awards (a Clarke, two World Fantasy Awards, a BSFA, a Tiptree, and a Philip K. Dick), she never seems to have attained the broad, appreciative readership that her fiction warrants (in 2001, she even received one of

Mark Teppo has announced that Underland Press is open to novel submissions. He’s looking for SF, fantasy, dark fantasy, and “noir mystery with a tinge of otherworldliness,” between 75,000 and 100,000 words in length. Submit to <editors@underlandpress.com> with a brief cover letter “that hits the highlights.” Teppo also welcomes submissions to anthology Eighteen in his “loosely tarot-themed” series, due out in late 2020. The 18th tarot card, the Moon, is

A 17-year-old girl who discovers she’s a synthetic person by Jay Kristoff; new Hexarchate Stories by Yoon Ha Lee; teenage survivors of an attempted alien invasion, by Pittacus Lore; and a half-human pilot of a sentient mechanical dragon by Michael Swanwick!

An Illusion of Thieves, Cate Glass (Tor 978-1-250-31100-9, $16.99, 352pp, tp) May 2019. Cover by Alyssa Winans. When I first heard about Cate Glass’s An Illusion of Thieves – a fantasy novel, part heist, part political thriller, and part coming-of-age story in a setting inspired by late medieval Italy – I had no idea that Glass was a pen name for notable author Carol Berg, whose novel-writing career began with

Shortlists for the 2019 Prix Utopiales and Prix Utopiales Jeunesse Awards have been announced: Prix Utopiales BonheurTM, Jean Baret (Le Bélial) Colonies, Laurent Genefort (Le Bélial) Helstrid, Christian Léourier (Le Béllial) Les derniers jours du Nouveau-Paris, China Miéville (Au diable vauvert) Dans la toile du temps, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Denoël) Prix Utopiales Jeunesse In Real Life: Déconnexion, Maiwenn Alix (Milan) La Voie Verne, Jacques Martel (Mnémos) Le Cirque interdit, Célia Flaux

Destroy All Monsters, Sam J. Miller (Harper Teen 978-0-06-245674-8, $17.99, 400pp, tc) July 2019. I suppose the first thing to be noted about Sam J. Miller’s third novel, Destroy All Monsters, is that it has nothing to do with the venerable Toho kaiju film with that title, even though there are a few dinosaurs wandering about. They mostly show up in the “Darkside,” a ver­sion of reality occupied by a

Kaaron Warren was born July 3, 1965 in Melbourne Australia. She began publishing SF with “White Bed” in 1993, and has since published over a hundred stories, including Aurealis Awards winners “A Positive” (1998) and “Air, Water and the Grove” (2013); Ditmar Award winners “Fresh Young Widow” (2005), “The Grinding House” (2005), and “Crisis Apparition” (2018); Stoker Award finalist “All You Can Do Is Breathe” (2011); and World Fantasy Award

Blake Crouch’s Recursion (Crown) debuts on three lists.

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster; Rainn Wilson, narrator (Listening Li­brary 978-1-98488701-6, $25.00, 4 CDs, 4.75 hr., unabridged [also available as a digital download]) March 2019. There’s plenty of humor and wisdom for the adult listener to discover in this new recording of the classic Phantom Tollbooth, one of the most beloved books from my childhood. Young Milo finds most things that adults want to teach him dull, silly, or confusing.

The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull (Blackstone 978-1538584644, $26.99, 290pp, hardcover) June 2019 The nations of the Caribbean are so close to the USA, and share such a rich, tangled, fraught history with the States, that one would imagine many writers would have capitalized on the consanguinity to set their fantasies or futures there. And yet the bibliography at the handy website Caribbean SF lists titles for only thirty-some relevant novels.

Edges, Linda Nagata (Mythic Island 978-1-937197-27-8, $18.00, 411pp, tp) April 2019. Cover by Sarah Anne Langton. [Order from MythicIslandPress.com, PO Box 1293, Kula HI 96790-1293; <mythicislandpress.com>.] Linda Nagata’s first four novels – Bohr Maker (1995), Tech-Heaven (1995), Deception Well (1997), and Vast (1998) – constituted a long future history, eventually labelled the Nanotech Succession. Edges is the first volume of an exten­sion of that series, a sequence bearing the overall

New issues of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Bestselling author Nora Roberts filed a lawsuit in a Rio de Janeiro, Brazil court on April 24, 2019, accusing Brazilian author Cristiane Serruya of multiple counts of plagiarism. She alleges that Serruya copied text from Roberts and other writers for her novels, which are “a literary patchwork, piecing together phrases whose form portrays emotions practically identical to those expressed in the plaintiff’s books.” Roberts is seeking damages for 3,000 times

Fiyah Winter ’19 Lightspeed 3/19 Future Tense 1/19 Abyss & Apex 1st Quarter ’19 Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores 1/19 Fiyah has its first unthemed issue with #9, which also marks a transition as founding editor Justina Ireland moves on and DaVaun Sanders joins Troy L. Wiggins on the editorial team. The stories here are all over the genre landscape, from fantasy to SF with more than a little surrealism

The Book of Flora, Meg Elison (47North 978-1-54204-209-3, $14.95, 322pp, tp) April 2019. Meg Elison’s The Book of Flora is the final novel of a trilogy that began with The Book of the Un­named Midwife, one of my favourite novels of 2014 and a deserved winner of the Philip K. Dick Award. A plague of post-apocalyptic proportions has wiped out most of humanity, but particularly mothers and newborns. As a

Irene Gallo has been promoted to Vice President, Publisher of Tor.com, effective immediately. Gallo joined Tor 26 years ago where she rose to become head of the art department. She was also one of the founders of the Tor.com website and involved in the creation and launch of the Tor.com imprint. Gallo says, To all my art friends. For better or worse, you are not rid of me! I will be

Godzilla: King of the Monsters has a lot of things in it that will please Godzilla fans, and plenty that will piss them off. It is a sequel to 2014’s Godzilla, which was directed by Gareth Edwards, and picks up shortly after that movie’s destruction of San Francisco and Godzilla’s subsequent disappearance. Mark Russell (Kyle Chandler), who lost his son in the attack, wants Godzilla and all other “Titans” dead,

Cast in Oblivion, Michelle Sagara (Mira 978-0-7783-0784-6, $16.99, 538pp, tp) February 2019. Cover by Glenn Mackay & Shane Rebenschied. Michelle Sagara has a long career behind her under at least two names. Her House War series as Michelle West is ongoing, and she’s been writing the Chronicles of Elantra series as Mi­chelle Sagara for going on 15 years now. Cast in Oblivion comes to us as the 14th novel in

Norwescon 42 was held April 18-21, 2019 in SeaTac WA at the DoubleTree by Hilton Seattle Airport. The theme was “Never Forget Your Towel.” Guests of honor were Mary Robinette Kowal (writer), Tran Nguyen (artist), Dan Koboldt (science), and Nancy Pearl (special guest). Subterranean Press was the spotlight publisher, represented by COO and managing editor Yanni Kuznia. Neil Clarke was honored professional. Norwescon 43 will be held April 9-12, 2020

The Locus Bestsellers for June include top titles Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James, That Ain’t Witchcraft by Seanan McGuire, The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, and Star Wars: Thrawn: Alliances by Timothy Zahn.   HARDCOVERS Monthson list Lastmonth 1) Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James (Riverhead) 2 1 2) Tiamat’s Wrath, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US) 1 – 3) The Raven Tower, Ann Leckie (Orbit US) 2 7

Analog 3-4/19 Asimov’s 3-4/19 Uncanny 3-4/19 Black Infinity Fall ’18 The March-April issue of Asimov’s is a spe­cial issue in memory of their great former editor Gardner Dozois, who died about a year ago. As such, it includes his Nebula Award-winning story “The Peacemaker“, many brief memoirs of his effect on writers, and, of course, plenty of new stories. There is a novella from Greg Egan, “Instantiation“, a sequel to

The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-267249-0, $26.99, 432pp, hardcover) June 2019 The history, culture, folklore, politics and superstitions of Middle Europe — otherwise Central Europe or, more exotically, Mitteleuropa, countries including Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Switzerland, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, the Republic of Macedonia, and Albania — offer a rich mine of narrative and thematic possibilities. The same goes for the lands

Locus senior editor Tim Pratt has a new book coming out in October: The Forbidden Stars (Angry Robot), the dazzling space opera sequel to Philip K. Dick Award finalist The Wrong Stars and The Dreaming Stars! Here’s a first look at the cover, with art by Paul Scott Canavan. From the publisher: The ancient alien gods are waking up, and there’s only one spaceship crew ready to stop them. Aliens

Talking goats, subway monsters, and a wooden automaton: Check out these 13 new SF/F books! New titles this week are by Doug Dandridge, Jackson Ford, Max Gladstone, Mark Haddon, Alexis Hall, Greg Keyes, Reed King, James S. Murray & Darren Wearmouth, Nnedi Okorafor, Karl Schroeder, Emily Tesh, Ren Warom, and Michelle West.

Winners for several Society of Authors (SoA) fiction awards were announced June 17, 2019 during the Society of Authors’ Awards and Summer Party at Southwark Cathedral in London, UK. The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gower (Harvill Secker) and The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh (Hamish Hamilton) were among the six Betty Trask Award winners, each receiving £2,700. The award is given “for a first novel by a

Ninth Step Station, Season 1, Episodes 1-8 (of 11), Malka Older, Fran Wilde, Jacqueline Koyanagi & Curtis C. Chen; Emily Woo Zeller, narrator (Serial Box, 1.99 per episode/$13.99 per season, digital download, aprox. 1.5 hr. per episode, unabridged) January–March 2019. A devastating earthquake, followed by war with both North Korea and China, have left Japan in general, and Tokyo in particular, partially controlled by the Chinese as well as partially