Many publishers have once again paused, postponed, or rescinded their plans to open offices for in-person employees, this time in response to the rise of the omicron variant of COVID-19.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
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
The Best of Lucius Shepard Volume Two, edited by Bill Sheehan (Subterranean Press 978-1645240358, hardcover, 844pp, $50.00) December 2021.
When Subterranean Press gifted us all with The Best of Lucius Shepard in 2008, the author still walked among us, with some six productive years left in his wide-ranging, extravagant, hectic, and literarily prolific life. (He died in 2014 at the too-young-but-still-amazing-for-his-profligate-ways age of seventy.) One can presume Shepard had ...Read More
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Finalists for the 2021 Children’s and Young Adults Bloggers’ Literary Awards (Cybils) have been announced. Books of genre interest follow.
Young Adult Speculative Fiction
A Practical Guide to Conquering the World, K.J. Parker (Orbit 978-0316498616, $17.99, 384pp, tp), January 2022.
A Practical Guide to Conquering the World winds up the Siege trilogy K.J. Parker started with Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City. While that first book and the second, How to Rule an Empire and Get Away with It, were amusing and engaging on their own terms, the third installment ...Read More
The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, ed. (Jembefola Press, $6.99, eb) September 2021. Cover by Maria Spada.
Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. You’ll want to remember the name because if the recent past is anything to go by, then you’ll be coming across it often, very often. Ever since he burst on the scene – with a Nommo Award for his 2018 story “The Witching Hour” – he’s ...Read More
The Washington Science Fiction Association is now accepting nominations of works “published for the first time in the English language” in 2021 for its Small Press Award, given annually to an outstanding story of “imaginative literature” (17,500 words or fewer) published in the small press. The deadline for nominations is March 31, 2022.
Authors and small-press publishers are among those eligible to nominate, and need not be members of WSFA. ...Read More
As we reported last month, the United States Department of Justice filed a lawsuit on November 2, 2021 to stop the proposed merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, citing concerns that the deal could lessen competition, lead to a highly concentrated publishing market, and reduce advances for authors, especially of “anticipated top-selling books.”
PRH filed their initial response in December 2021, countering that the DoJ “invents a ...Read More
A Few Last Words for the Late Immortals, Michael Bishop (Fairwood Press 978-1933846125, trade paperback, 250pp, $17.99) November 2021.
Fairwood Press has become the classy home to many of Michael Bishop’s fine books from his large and exciting backlist. They have now issued a dozen of his titles, all extensively revised by the author. But this latest compilation is something very different, a brand-new assemblage of poetry and flash ...Read More
The Second Shooter, Nick Mamatas (Solaris 978-1-78108-926-2, $14.00, 400pp, tp) November 2021.
Having skewered everything from late-stage capitalism to America’s political and cultural malaise in his last novel, Sabbath, Nick Mamatas boldly turns his attention to the intractable issue of gun violence and mass shootings with his highly entertaining follow-up, The Second Shooter.
The story centres on journalist and hack-for-hire Mike Karras as he travels across America ...Read More
Lit Hub has announced its 48-title list of the best books of 2021. Titles and authors of genre interest follow.
God of Mercy, Okezie Nwọka (Astra House 97801-66260-0-838, $27.00, 304pp, hc) November 2021.
Content warning: child abuse.
Supreme beings, elders, and ancestors clash in Okezie Nwọka’s God of Mercy, a decolonized, magical realist novel about a young girl named Ijeọma who can fly. Uncertain if her power is a curse or a blessing from feuding gods, a cast of bitter family members, sage elders, and violent pastors attempt ...Read More
Tusla City-County Library’s African-American Resource Center and the Tusla Library Trust have named Walter Mosley as the winner of the 2022 Sankofa Freedom Award.
The Sankofa Freedom Award is given to “a nationally acclaimed individual who has dedicated his or her life to educating and improving the greater African-American community.” It includes a $10,000 prize and an engraved medallion. The award will be presented in a ceremony on February 12, ...Read More
Penguin Random House, Amazon, and a number of authors including Sylvia Day, RL Stine, Stuart Woods, and John Grisham, have been awarded a total of $7.8 million after suing Ukrainian ebook pirate site Kiss Library.
They sued the site after copyrighted works were made available at discounted prices without permission, and without the publishers or authors receiving payment for the sales.
The judge said, “Given the extent of the piracy ...Read More
Bad Witch Burning, Jessica Lewis (Delacorte 978-0-593-17738-9, 352pp, $17.99, hc) August 2021.
“I’m painting Will’s nails when she asks me to talk to her dead grandma.” Jessica Lewis opens her debut young adult fantasy Bad Witch Burning with a killer hook that, once you have finished the novel, you realize is packed with worldbuilding tidbits. Katrell is our protagonist, and she can communicate with the dead. When she’s not ...Read More
Nature’s Warnings: Classic Stories of Eco-Science Fiction, edited by Mike Ashley (British Library Publishing 978-0712353571, trade paperback, 320pp, $16.95) November 2021.
Being an anthologist is much like being a party host. If you have excellent taste in people (or stories) and know a lot of interesting people (or stories) and can instinctively or cleverly create harmonious or synergistic or even antagonistic assemblages of people (or stories), you ...Read More
Dream Foundry, a “non-profit dedicated to bolstering the careers of nascent professionals working with the speculative arts,” has announced the winners of its 2021 writing contest.
Writing Contest
Other finalists were
Buzzfeed has announced its 22-title list of the best books of 2021. Titles and authors of genre interest follow.
For the full list of Buzzfeed‘s recommendations, see their post.
While you are here, please take a moment to support ...Read More
Mercury Boys, Chandra Prasad (Soho Teen 978-1-64129-265-8, $18.99, 360pp, hc) August 2021.
When Saskia Brown persuades her friend Lila to let her “borrow” a daguerreotype from the library archive where she works, neither girl can imagine that the old photograph will be a vehicle for time travel, romance, and a near-death experience. The twist in Chandra Prasad’s Mercury Boys is that the nightly adventures in the past are not ...Read More
