close
The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20220115160749/https://locusmag.com/author/locusmag/

Dave Wolverton (1957-2022)

Writer Dave Wolverton, 64, who also wrote as David Farland, died January 14, 2022 in St. George UT after suffering a severe head injury falling down the stairs the previous day.

He was best known for his Runelords series, written as David Farland: The Sum of All Men (1998; published in the US as The Runelords), Brotherhood of the Wolf (1999), Wizardborn (2000), The Lair of Bones (2003), Sons ...Read More

Read more

Russell Letson reviews Invisible Sun by Charles Stross

Invisible Sun, Charles Stross (Tor 978-1-250-80709-0, $27.99, 285 pp, hc) September 2021. Cover by Neil Lang.

Partway into Charles Stross’s Invisible Sun, a harried intelligence/security chief says, “We’ve got a lot of balls in the air,” a condition that might apply as well to a number of his fellow characters and to Stross himself in his authorial role. This ninth and final entry in what is now called ...Read More

Read more

World Fantasy 2022 Guests of Honor

The 2022 World Fantasy Convention (WFC) announced its guests of honor in a press release on January 12, 2021.

Guests of honor are: Ginjer Buchanan, Andrei Codrescu, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Victor LaValle, Jo Walton,  and Toastmaster Ursula Vernon. An artist guest of honor is pending.

World Fantasy 2022 chair Tom Hanlon said, “We are working hard to ensure that our guests and our program are representative of a variety of ...Read More

Read more

Joel Gay Creative Fellowships

Roxane Gay has announced the Joel Gay Creative Fellowship, designed “to support three emerging writers over the course of the year as they develop and publish a newsletter on the Substack platform.”

Fellows will receive a $25,000 stipend, paid monthly from the initial publication of their newsletter, as well as up to $15,000 in services from Substack, including editorial support, design assistance in developing a logo for your newsletter, access ...Read More

Read more

Colleen Mondor reviews Within These Wicked Walls by Lauren Blackwood

Within These Wicked Walls, Lauren Blackwood (Wednesday Books 978-1-250-78710-1, $18.99, hc 336pp) November 2021.

The publicity materials for Lauren Blackwood’s Within These Wicked Walls describe the book as an “Ethiopian-inspired debut retelling of Jane Eyre.” If you aren’t a fan of Charlotte Bronte’s classic this might put you off the book, whereas, if you are a fan, you might be instantly concerned that the marketing machine is overreaching. ...Read More

Read more

Strahan Calls for BIPOC Authors

Editor Jonathan Strahan has put out a call for submissions for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color) authors for his anthology The Book of Witches (Harper Voyager). The anthology is “a big, inclusive, illustrated anthology of fiction and poetry, this time looking at ‘witches’, more specifically your witch and what it means to you.” He says,

So far writers who have agreed to contribute to the book include ...Read More

Read more

2022 MWA Awards

The Mystery Writers of America (MWA) announced several awards.

Laurie R. King has been named Grand Master, which “represents the pinnacle of achievement in mystery writing and was established to acknowledge important contributions to this genre, as well as for a body of work that is both significant and of consistent high quality.”

Reviewer Lesa Holstine won the 2022 Raven Award, which “recognizes outstanding achievement in the mystery field outside ...Read More

Read more

Karen Burnham reviews short fiction: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Tor.com and Strange Horizons

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 10/7/21 Clarkesworld 10/21 Tor.com 9/8, 9/15, 9/29, 10/13, 10/20/21 Strange Horizons 9/13/21

Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a strong, high-quality venue, week in and week out, but on anniversaries and big milestones editor Scott Andrews pulls out the stops. For the 13th Anniversary we get a double issue filled with magic. First up is “The Burning Girl” by Carrie Vaughn, an alternate history in which ...Read More

Read more

New Books: 11 January 2022

Anderson, Kevin J.: Gods and Dragons

(Tor 978-1-250-30220-5, $29.99, 496pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, January 11, 2022)

Epic fantasy novel, the third in the Wake the Dragon series. Nations which have been at war for a thousand years must set aside generations of hatred to form an alliance against a new, more deadly, enemy.

 

Bedford, Jacey: The Amber Crown

(DAW 978-0-7564-1770-3, $20, 480pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, January 11, ...Read More

Read more

Philip K. Dick Award 2022 Finalists

The 2022 Philip K. Dick Award finalists have been announced:

  • Defekt, Nino Cipri (Tordotcom)
  • Plague Birds, Jason Sanford (Apex)
  • Bug, Giacomo Sartori, translated by Frederika Randall (Restless)
  • Far from the Light of Heaven, Tade Thompson (Orbit US)
  • The Escapement, Lavie Tidhar (Tachyon)
  • Dead Space, Kali Wallace (Berkley)

The award is presented annually to a distinguished work of science fiction originally published in paperback form in the United States. The

...Read More Read more

Jane E. Hawkins (1951-2022)

Author and conrunner Jane E. Hawkins, 70, died January 7, 2022 in Seattle WA. Best known as a convention organizer, she also wrote gaming tie-in novel Quantum Gate (1996).

Jane Emily Hawkins was born March 11, 1951 in Davenport IA and showed an early aptitude for advanced mathematics. She attended Case University as part of the first engineering class to admit women, and worked at Bell Labs in computing. She ...Read More

Read more

NEA 2022 Creative Writing Fellows

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) has announced the 2022 Creative Writing Fellows, winners of the Literature Fellowships in Creative Writing which “provides $25,000 grants to published creative writers that enable the recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel, and general career advancement.”

This year’s recipients of genre interest include:

  • Steve Almond
  • Yohanca Delgado
  • Calvin Gimpelevich
  • Alexis Pauline Gumbs
  • Aubrey Hirsch
  • Nalo Hopkinson
  • Violet Kupersmith
  • Peyton Marshall
...Read More Read more

The Best Horror of the Year Call for Submissions

Ellen Datlow is accepting submissions for her 15th The Best Horror of the Year anthology, to be published by Night Shade Books and covering material appearing in 2022.

I am looking for stories and poetry from all branches of horror: supernatural, uncanny, sf horror, psychological, dark crime, terror tales, or anything else that might qualify. This is an all reprint anthology, so I’ll only consider material published in 2022. Deadline ...Read More

Read more

John Jos. Miller (1954-2022)

Author John Jos. Miller, 67, died January 5, 2022 at his home in Albuquerque NM. Miller was best known for his work in the long-running (since 1987) Wild Cards shared-universe series of original anthologies and novels, edited by George R.R. Martin.

John Joseph Miller (who wrote as John Miller, John J. Miller and John Jos. Miller) was born March 28, 1954 in central New York. He started reading the works ...Read More

Read more

Rich Horton reviews short fiction: F&SF, Cossmass Infinities and Fusion Fragment

F&SF 11-12/21 Cossmass Infinities 9/21 Fusion Fragment 9/21

F&SF’s final 2021 issue is at hand. The marquee name is Nalo Hopkinson, the newest SFWA Grand Master, with her first appearance in the magazine. (One result of new editor Sheree Renee Thomas taking the helm has been lots of first appearances.) “Broad Dutty Water: A Sunken Story” is an example of “cli-fi,” but a science fiction writer’s approach ...Read More

Read more

Simon Jimenez: Resonance

Simon Emmanuel Jimenez is a Filipino-American author born in 1989. He spent time in Canada and the Philippines growing up, and attended Emerson College, where he earned an MFA in cre­ative writing.

Jimenez has published short fiction in literary venues. Debut novel The Vanished Birds appeared in 2020, and was a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award and a British Fantasy Award. Epic fantasy novel The Spear Cuts Through ...Read More

Read more

Maya C. James reviews After the Dragons by Cynthia Zhang

After the Dragons, Cynthia Zhang (Stelliform Press 978-1-77709-174-3, $19.99 160pp, tp) August 2021. Cover by Wang Xulin.

“Shaolong. Throat scorch. Caused by long exposure to poor air quality, especially common in cities with high pollution indexes and poor environmental regulations – the same disease that killed his grandmother.”

Cynthia Zhang’s After the Dragons is a queer SFF novella that follows Xiang Kaifei (Kai), a jaded college student, and Elijah ...Read More

Read more

Publisher Reopenings Pushed Back

Many publishers have once again paused, post­poned, or rescinded their plans to open offices for in-person employees, this time in response to the rise of the omicron variant of COVID-19.

Macmillan was scheduled to reopen its offices in New York City on January 10, but the opening has been postponed indefinitely. Employees will receive 30 days notice before they have to come back. Vaccinated staff may continue to come in ...Read More

Read more

Fantastika Report

Since a Certain Bug from outer space or wherever stopped last year’s national Swedish con, the year 2020 was added to the 2021 Swecon. The event took place in Dieselverk­stan, Stockholm, November 19-21 with guests of honor Peadar Ó Guilín (Ireland), Adrian Tchaikovsky (UK), Eva Holmquist (local writer), and Maria Nilsson (local scholar). But we were lucky! Despite having Europe’s lowest virus curves – with cases dropping – our ever-so-wise ...Read More

Read more

Ian Mond reviews Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith

Build Your House Around My Body, Violet Kupersmith (Random House 978-0-81299-332-5, $27.00, 400pp, hc) July 2021.

Violet Kupersmith’s debut novel, Build Your House Around My Body, is a beautifully wrought, non-linear tale of ghosts, missing girls, and revenge set against the backdrop of colonial and post-colonial Vietnam. It’s not a spoiler to say that one of those disappearing girls is Ngoan Nguyen (though she prefers to go by ...Read More

Read more

Angry Robot Upgrades

Angry Robot has a new logo and an updated website:

We are happy to share our shiny “Maschinenmensch” inspired logo… designed and created by Kate Cromwell, a senior designer at Watkins Media. The logo goes hand in hand with our new website, which we’ve been soft launching for the past few weeks, and will be featuring on our books, starting with Ciel Pierlot’s Bluebird in February 2022. We feel that ...Read More

Read more

Paula Guran Reviews Short Fiction: Weird Horror, The Deadlands, The Dark, and Apex

Weird Horror #2 The Deadlands 10/21 The Dark 9/21, 10/21 Apex #125

I’m still not convinced that its title matches its content, but Weird Horror’s second issue offers a couple of very good stories. Stephen Volk scores high with fantasy “Adventurous”: when Carole’s sexual encounter with Collin is interrupted by her mum’s unexpected return home, the young man hides in the wardrobe. It proves to be much more ...Read More

Read more

New Science Fiction Exhibition

The Science Museum in South Kensington, London, has announced plans for a new “Science Fiction: Voyage into the Unknown” exhibit in autumn of 2022. The exhibit is planned as an interactive experience that “invites visitors to discover how scientists and science fiction creators have inspired each other to imagine and build new worlds to better understand our own” and explores “connections between significant scientific objects and authentic items from celebrated ...Read More

Read more

Gary K. Wolfe reviews The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction: Volume 2 by Tarun K. Saint, ed.

The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction: Volume 2, Tarun K. Saint, ed. (Hachette India 978-9391028626, ₹699.00, 488pp, hc; $10.99, eb) September 2021.

The first volume of Tarun K. Saint’s The Gollancz Book of South Asian Science Fiction (reviewed here in June 2019) seemed to serve two purposes: to present the variety of South Asian SFF to the world at large, and – equally important, to judge from Saint’s ...Read More

Read more

Willie Siros (1952-2022)

Fan, conrunner, and bookseller Willie Siros, 69, died January 5, 2022.

William Siros was born August 1952 in El Paso TX. He earned a BA in political science in 1974, and briefly attended graduate school for political theory. He began attending conventions in 1974, and chaired early Texas SF conventions Solarcon I and II (1975 and 1976). He produced a fanzine, Cambion, around the same time. Siros co-founded the Fandom ...Read More

Read more

Karen Burnham reviews short fiction: Lightspeed, Mithila Review, Common Tongues, and Bards & Sages

Lightspeed 10/21 Mithila Review 3/21 Common Tongue 8/21 Bards & Sages 10/21

October’s Lightspeed has plenty of stories with chewy premises to enjoy. “Stowaways” by Andrew Dana Hudson is a flash piece told in the form of a museum sign explaining an art piece. This dangerous piece of art can “install” itself in viewers’ brains whenever enough “infected” people gather nearby. Its main effect is to generate companion ...Read More

Read more

New Books: 4 January 2022

Blake, Kendare: In Every Generation

(Disney/Hyperion ‎978-1368075022, $15.99, 400pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio, January 4, 2022)

Tie-in novel, the start of a next-generation series set in the world of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

 

Brandt, Gerald: Threader War

(DAW 978-0-7564-1642-3, $11.99, 384pp, formats: ebook, audio, January 4, 2022)

SF novel, second in the Quantum Empirica series, set in an alternate earth where quantum Threads can alter reality.

 

Chan, Jessamine: ...Read More

Read more

Heinlein Scholarship Applications Open

The Heinlein Scholarships are open for applications. There are four $4,000 scholarships awarded to “undergraduate students of accredited 4-year colleges and universities.”

The Virginia Heinlein Memorial Scholarship is “dedicated to a female candidate majoring in engineering, math, or biological or physical sciences.” The other three awards, The Robert A. Heinlein, Dr. Yoji Kondo, and Dr. Jerry Pournelle scholarships, “may be awarded to a candidate of any gender.”

The deadline for ...Read More

Read more

Ian Mond reviews Undiscovered Territories by Robert Freeman Wexler

Undiscovered Territories, Robert Freeman Wexler (PS Publishing 978-1-786365-89-7, £25.00, 326pp, tp) October 2021.

Although Undiscovered Territories is not Robert Freeman Wexler’s first collection – that would be 2008’s Psychological Methods to Sell Should Be Destroyed – it is his most complete, featuring most of the short fiction he’s published over the last two decades in magazines like Electric Velocipede, Polyphony, and The Journal of Experimental Fiction. The fourteen stories ...Read More

Read more

Elizabeth Miller (1939-2022)

Dracula scholar Elizabeth Miller, 82, died January 2, 2022 in Toronto, Canada.

Her non-fiction volumes include A Dracula Handbook (2005), Reflections on Dracula: Ten Essays (1997), Dracula: The Shade and the Shadow (1998), Dracula: Sense & Nonsense (2000), Dracula, a Documentary Volume (2004), and Bram Stoker’s Notes for Dracula (2008, with Robert Eighteen-Bisang). She co-edited The Lost Journal of Bram Stoker (2012, with Dacre Stoker). Miller was the founding editor ...Read More

Read more

New A.C. Bose Grant

The Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) and DesiLit have announced the new co-sponsored A.C. Bose Grant, which “will annually give $1,000 to a South Asian / South Asian diaspora writer developing speculative fiction. It supports adult fiction, but work that is also accessible to older children and teens will be given preference in the jury process.”

The grant is open for submissions until January 31, 2022. The jurors aim to announce ...Read More

Read more

Heffner Wins Nicholls Prize

The Science Fiction Foundation has announced Kathryn Heffner’s “More Work for Mimeo-Mothers: Femme-Fans’ Labour in Post-War Fan Cultures” as the winner of the 2022 Peter Nicholls Essay Prize. The prize was inaugurated in 2001, and is “awarded to the best submission by a postgraduate or non-tenured researcher. (The latter within five years of their PhD.) The essays can be on any area of science fiction studies.”

For more information about ...Read More

Read more