And… we’re back! Neo (Keanu Reeves) and Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) are still stuck in the Matrix. Versions of Morpheus and Agent Smith return, played by new actors (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jonathan Groff, respectively). There are new characters, such as Bugs (Jessica Henwick) and the Analyst (Neil Patrick Harris). Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson) reappear, though their characters are essentially unrecognizable. That’s about it. It’s The

The Core Committee Recognizing Excellence in Children’s and Young Adult Science Fiction, a division of the American Library Association (ALA), announced the selections for its 2022 Notable Lists. Hal Clement Notable Young Adult Books List The Electric Kingdom, David Arnold (Viking Books for Young Readers) This Is Not the Jess Show, Anna Carey (Quirk) Hunting, Stars, Cherie Dimaline (Amulet) The Curie Society, Heather Einhorn, Adam Staffaroni & Janet Harvey (MIT Press)

The trade paperback of Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (Vintage) rises or reappears on a couple lists, including NYT‘s, as the Station Eleven miniseries has played on HBO over the past month.

The American Library Association (ALA) announced the results of the Youth Media Awards during their LibLearnX conference, held online January 21-24, 2022, including some works of genre interest. The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera (Levine Querido) is the 2022 John Newbery Medal winner “for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature,” and also won the won the Pura Belpre children’s author award. A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie

The American Library Association (ALA) named The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin (Little, Brown and Company) as the winner of the the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in the Fiction category, for the best work “for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year.” A prize was also presented in the Nonfiction category. Winners receive $5,000 and a medallion. The awards were announced at

You started reviewing short fiction for Locus in the February 2002 issue, 20 years ago. What a career! What’s the origin story for you as a reviewer; what brought you into this? I started reviewing for the short fiction reviewzine Tangent – back when it was a print fanzine. Dave Truesdale posted a notice somewhere saying he was looking for reviewers, and I thought, ‘‘I like short fiction’’ – even

The Horizon, Gautam Bhatia (HarperCollins India 978-9354227639, ₹499.00, 468pp, tp) October 2021. It’s always tricky to review the second volume of a duology without loading it with spoilers for readers who may not have read the first volume, or who might quite reasonably have decided to wait until the complete work was available (authors have been known to leave you hanging, after all, sometimes in ways that make you want

We Light Up the Sky, Lilliam Rivera (Bloomsbury 978-1-5476-0376-3, $17.99, hc 240pp) October 2021. In what is likely one of the first pandemic-related novels for teens, author Lilliam Rivera’s We Light Up the Sky drops an alien invasion into the lives of three Los Angeles teens who are still reeling from COVID. (It’s important to note that the pandemic is not caused by the aliens; they just happen to show

Author Alice Sebold, who wrote fantasy The Lovely Bones (2002), has been in the news recently because a man who went to prison based on her testimony was released and had his conviction overturned. In Sebold’s 1999 memoir Lucky, she described her sexual assault and the trial of alleged perpetrator Anthony J. Broadwater. Broadwater, 61, spent 16 years in prison and was a registered sex offender after his release, but

Public voting is open for the Analog Science Fiction and Fact Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) and Asimov’s Science Fiction Readers’ Awards, covering works published in their 2021 issues. Readers can select three favorite choices from each magazine in novella, novelette, short story, poem, and cover categories, as well as a “Best Science Fact” article from Analog. The deadline to vote is February 1, 2022. For more information, see the Analog and

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is partnering with United for Libraries, Book Riot, and Booklist for the fourth annual Summer Scares Reading Program. The program “introduces readers and librarians to new authors and helps start conversations extending beyond the books from each list and promote reading for years to come.” Special guest author Alma Katsu and a committee of five librarians, Carolyn Ciesla, Kelly Jensen, Julia Smith, Becky Spratford, and

The Death of Jane Lawrence, Caitlin Starling (St. Martin’s Press 978-1250272584, $27.99, 368pp, hc) October 2021. Cover by Colin Verdi. Caitlin Starling’s The Death of Jane Lawrence is a horror Gothic with romance elements that relies on much more than atmosphere and a crumbling manor to hook readers and keep them glued to the pages. Between dark magic and gore, this is a novel with a historical angle that feels

As part of its attempts to improve diversity, Penguin Random House has published its “phase one” study on the demographics of authors, illustrators, and translators of works published from the start of 2019 to the end of 2021. They received 3,415 responses, and concluded that the company’s ‘‘contributor demographics do not reflect U.S. reader demographics when it comes to race and ethnicity. Black, Hispanic, and Indigenous representation is low, while

The 36th Annual Asimov‘s Readers’ Awards ballots are now open for voting. The winners “join the pantheon of Asimov authors who represent the Who’s Who of science fiction writers over the past thirty years.” The voting is open from now until February 1, 2022. For more information about the awards and how to vote, see the announcement here. While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with

The Jewish Book Council has announced the 2021 National Jewish Book Award winners. The awards “rec­og­nize out­stand­ing works of Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture” and include several authors of genre interest. Joshua Cohen won the JJ Greenberg Memorial Award for Fiction for The Netanyahus, and Helen Wecker won The Miller Family Book Club Award in Mem­o­ry of Helen Dunn Wein­stein and June Keit Miller for The Hid­den Palace. Gordon Korman won the Middle

Nominations are now open for the 2022 Hugo Awards, the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book. The 2022 Hugo Awards will be presented at the 80th World Science Fiction Convention, Chicon 8, to be held September 1-5, 2022 at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Chicago Illinois. Members with an attending or supporting membership for Chicon 8 or DisCon III are eligible

The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) has announced the finalists for the 2021 NBCC awards. Authors and titles of genre interest are below: 2021 Leonard Finalists Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters (One World) 2021 Fiction Finalists The Netanyahus, Joshua Cohen (NY Review) Second Place, Rachel Cusk (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Burntcoat, Sarah Hall (Custom) The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (Harper) Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead (Doubleday) Winners

We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) has announced the winners of the 2022 Walter Dean Myers Awards, to “recognize diverse authors whose works feature diverse main characters and address diversity in a meaningful way.” in the Teen and Young Readers categories. They have announced one winner in each category, and two honorees. Titles and authors of genre interest include: 2022 Walter Honors, Teen Category Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Malinda

Lies My Memory Told Me, Sacha Wunsch (Inkyard Press 978-1-335-01827-4, $18.99, hc 320pp) October 202 1.   Sacha Wunsch’s just slightly futuristic debut Lies My Memory Told Me offers up an excellent technological twist with the invention of “Enhanced Memory.” People no longer have to spend the money to travel, take the time to learn a new skill, or risk their lives on activities like racing cars. They can just

Author Colm Tóibín has been named the new Laureate for Irish Fiction by the Arts Council of Ireland. He takes over from Sebastian Barry, and his three-year term begins this month. The Laureate position “seeks to acknowledge the contribution of fiction writers to Irish artistic and cultural life by honouring an established Irish writer of fiction, encouraging a new generation of writers, promoting Irish literature nationally and internationally and encouraging

The Mystery Writers of America (MWA) announced the 2022 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, “honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television,” with numerous authors and works of genre interest. Best Novel The Venice Sketchbook, Rhys Bowen (Lake Union) Razorblade Tears, S.A. Cosby (Flatiron) No One Will Miss Her, Kat Rosenfield (Morrow) Best First Novel By An American Author Never Saw Me Coming, Vera Kurian (Park Row) Best Paperback Original

The Cabinet, Un-Su Kim (Angry Robot 978-0-85766-917-9, $14.99/￡9.99, 400pp, tp) October 2021. The publication of The Cabinet is a second (not a first) for both the author, Un-Su Kim, and publisher Angry Robot. While The Cabinet is Kim’s debut novel (winning South Korea’s Munhakdongne Novel Award back in 2006), it’s his second book to be translated into English. Somewhat confusingly, but typical for works in translation, English audiences were first

The Locus Bestsellers for January include top titles The Last Graduate by Naomi Novik (Del Rey), Dune by Frank Herbert (Ace), and Star Wars Visions: Ronin by Emma Mieko Candon (Del Rey).

Paladin’s Hope, T. Kingfisher (Red Wombat Studio 978-1-61450-551-8, $34.95, 270pp, hc), October 2021. Paladin’s Hope is the third book in T. Kingfisher’s (AKA Ursula Vernon’s) Saint of Steel series. Like Paladin’s Grace and Paladin’s Strength before it, Paladin’s Hope is a fantasy romance at its core. There are gods and clerics and gnoles set against a medieval-esque city and countryside. The two main characters are destined for each other but

The Book of All Skies, Greg Egan (Greg Egan 978-1-922240-38-5, $12.99, 236 pp, tp) September 2021. Speaking of skies – when Greg Egan leaves our familiar cosmological or geometrical framework, he really leaves it, as he does in The Book of All Skies, which is set on a planet that has been sliced up like a spiral-carved ham by structures called Hoops. (At least that’s what I get from the

Writer Ron Goulart, 89, died January 14, 2022. Goulart was a prolific author in multiple genres, producing more than 180 titles in his long career. Ronald Joseph Goulart was born January 13, 1933 in Berkeley CA, and worked in advertising after college. His first SF story, “Letters to the Editor”, appeared in 1952, and he published a number of stories before debut novel The Sword Swallower (1968), first of his Barnum

SF writer J. Brian Clarke, 93, died January 17, 2022. James Brian Clarke was born May 23, 1928 in Birmingham, England, but spent most of his life in Canada. He began publishing genre work with “Artifact” in Analog in June 1969, where he continued to publish stories for the rest of his career. Debut novel Expediter (1990) includes material first published there, as does second book Alphanauts (2006), winner of

The Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) has announced that artist Michelle Feng is the winner of their 2022 Illustration of the Year. “Feng’s winning piece will be featured throughout 2022 on the Speculative Literature Foundation’s website and on social media. In addition, it may be featured in limited edition SLF-related marketing materials, such as bookmarks and pins.” Feng wanted to “combine visual elements from traditional village living structures with futuristic elements

Two titles debut this week: Claudia Gray’s Star Wars novel The Fallen Star (Del Rey), on three lists; and James Rollins’ The Starless Crown (Tor), on two.

Fan and convention organizer Bill Wright, 84, died January 17, 2022 in the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, the day before his 85th birthday. Wright, born 1937, was a stalwart of Australian fandom since the late 1950s. He was a founding member of both ANZAPA and the Nova Mob; HonSec of the Eighth Australian Science Fiction Convention (the eighth Australian Natcon) in 1969; secretary of Aussiecon in 1975; awards administrator

Flash Fiction Online 10/21 Nightmare 10/21, 11/21 Fantasy 10/21, 11/21 Flash Fiction Online’s October 2021 issue seeks to “explore that darkness that lurks inside things that initially seem harmless….” Sarah Pauling’s “Litany in the Heart of Exorcism” considers the casting out of a demon – but is something that has kept a young woman from a marriage she does not want demonic? “Better devil-deals than marriage contracts.” A young girl

EUGEN MATOYO BACON was born near Mt Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, and moved to Nairobi, Kenya, with her family as a toddler. Her parents and siblings later returned to Tanzania, but she stayed in Kenya at a boarding school run by German sisters. She studied Information Technology at Strathmore College and was awarded a scholarship to the University of Greenwich in the UK. She had her son at a hospital in

Brazilian illustrator JOSÉ LUIZ BENÍCIO DA FONSECA, who worked as Benício, 84, died De­cember 7, 2021 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Born September 14, 1936 in Rio Pardo, in the Brazilian South, he was a nationwide name in the fields of pulp art, pin-up art, movie posters, and advertisements. After a stint plying piano for a radio show in Porto Alegre when he was only 15, Benício initially dedicated himself

The New Yorker 10/11/21 Tales the Devil Told Me, Jen Fawkes (Press 53) October 2021. Karen Russell offers a brilliant piece of SF (or fantasy, or, really, a beautiful example of how a purely fantastical insertion can illuminate an essentially SFnal premise) in the October 11th issue of The New Yorker. “The Ghost Birds” is set a few decades in the future, a future ravaged by climate change and the

MILESTONES JOHN VARLEY, 74, was hospi­talized last year with COVID, pneu­monia, and congestive heart failure, and received a diagnosis of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He is home now, and expects to soon “be back at work on my next novel, a re-write and near total alteration of the horrible second draft of my first unpublished novel, Gas Giant.” Read his account here. TOMI ADEYEMI’s publishing rights are now represented by

A Girl Called Rumi, Ari Honarvar (Forest Avenue Press 978-1-942436-46-1, $16.00, 362pp, tp) September 2021. Cover by Ari Honarvar. Content warning: self-harm. Ari Honarvar’s debut novel, A Girl Called Rumi, is a sage, beautifully-written fantasy novel. Against the intense backdrop of the Iran-Iraq war and eventual Green Uprising, Kimia uses storytelling to escape, and discovers a storyteller that will lead her through the Seven Valleys of Love – an intense

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 of

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 The Merchant

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

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

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. My first

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 Linda

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

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 William the Conqueror

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,

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 award

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

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

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

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

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 to cli-fi –

Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library remains in the top 20 on four lists, over a year since debuting among bestsellers.

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

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 Ahmed

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

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

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 a

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 “Winnie”). We’re

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

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 than a

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

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

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

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 characters that

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:

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

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 in

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

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

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

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 Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao (Penguin Teen) The City Beautiful, Aden Polydoros (Inkyard) The Gilded Ones, Namina Forna (Delacorte) The Mirror Season, Anna-Marie McLemore (Feiwel & Friends) The Ones We’re Meant to Find, Joan He (Roaring Brook) Vespertine, Margaret Rogerson (Margaret K. McElderry) Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative

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 lacks the zest

A couple titles by Andrzej Sapkowski reappear in paperback rankings this week, presumably due to the premiere of Season 2 of “The Witcher” on Netflix last month.

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 had

From 1811-1816, a secret society styling themselves “the Luddites” smashed textile machinery in the mills of England. Today, we use “Luddite” as a pejorative referring to backwards, anti-technology reactionaries. This proves that history really is written by the winners. In truth, the Luddites’ cause wasn’t the destruction of technology – no more than the Boston Tea Party’s cause was the elimination of tea, or Al Qaeda’s cause was the end

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.

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

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 fictions,

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 to research a

Lit Hub has announced its 48-title list of the best books of 2021. Titles and authors of genre interest follow. Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters (One World) The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, Mariana Enriquez (Hogarth) The Vixen, Francine Prose (Harper) Light Perpetual, Francis Spufford (Scribner) The Scapegoat, Sara Davis (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Dear Senthuran, Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead) The Wrong End of the Telescope, Rabih Alameddine (Grove) Crossroads, Jonathan Franzen