Locus Online

Fireheart Tiger, Aliette de Bodard (Tordotcom 978-1-250793263, $14.99, 104pp, tp) February 2021.

Aliette de Bodard seems fascinated by relationships with huge power differentials – angels and mortals, giant mindships and modest students, dragons and young teachers, etc. Thanh, the protagonist of Fireheart Tiger, is a princess of Bình Hải, a small Vietnam-like country seeking to gain protection from the more powerful neighbor Ephteria, and Thanh is assigned by ...Read More

The Mirror Season, Anna-Marie McLemore (Feiwel & Friends 978-1-250-62412-3 $18.99, 320pp, hc) March 2021.

Content warning: This title deals graphically with the emotional and psychological fallout from sexual assault.

As Anna-Marie McLemore’s The Mirror Season opens, Graciela Cristales (“Ciela”) is dropping off a boy she does not know at the emergency room in her hometown of Astoria OR. It quickly becomes clear that the two of them were at ...Read More

The Ghost Variations: One Hundred Stories, Kevin Brockmeier (Pantheon Books 978-1-524-74883-8, $27.00, 288pp) March 2021.

I became aware of Kevin Brockmeier’s work back in 2008 when Robert Shearman, in an in­terview with Eric Forbes, included Brockmeier in a list of writers “who play with the short story, squeeze as much out of it as they can.” Sadly, I’ve only now gotten around to reading Brock­meier’s short fiction, picking up ...Read More

All the Murmuring Bones, A.G. Slatter (Titan 978-1-78909-434-3, $15.95, 368pp, tp) March 2021.

All the Murmuring Bones is A.G. Slatter’s (a semi-pseudonym of Australian author Angela Slatter) first novel-length work set in the Irish-flavored world of her acclaimed Sourdough and Other Stories and The Bitter­wood Bible. For fans of Slatter, that’s probably all that needs to be said to compel immediate acquisition. The rest of you, even ...Read More

F&SF 3-4/21 Analog 1-2/21

The March-April issue of F&SF is a sig­nificant one, the first put together by new editor Sheree Renée Thomas. Based on the evidence in front of me, she’s got off to an outstanding start, though we need to wait a few issues before we begin to understand Thomas’s editorial vision.

The issue features a strong Madeleine Robins story, “Mannikin“, about a boy who is ...Read More

Out Past the Stars, K.B. Wagers (Orbit Books 978-0356512402, $16.99, 400pp, tp) February 2021.

It is often difficult to begin a review of the third volume in a trilogy, particularly when, as with K.B. Wagers’s Out Past the Stars, it is the third volume of the second trilogy to star its protagonist and her world. Behind The Throne, After the Crown, and Beyond the Empire are ...Read More

Finalists for the Hugo Awards, the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book have been announced by DisCon III, the 79th World Science Fiction Convention. There were 1,249 valid nominating ballots received (1,246 electronic and 3 paper).

Speculative poetry and flash fiction magazine Arsenika announced that it will permanently close following the release of its upcoming Spring 2021 issue. The magazine ran for five years, starting with Issue 0 in Winter 2017. Issue 8 will be the last, and will include a longer statement from editor S. Qiouyi Lu.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. ...Read More

Winners of the Tolkien Society Awards 2021 were announced on April 11, 2021. The awards “recognize excellence in the fields of Tolkien scholarship and fandom, highlight­ing our long-standing charitable objective to ‘seek to educate the public in, and promote research into, the life and works of'” J.R.R. Tolkien. The society’s trustees choose the shortlist, with winners chosen by the membership.

Finalists for the 2021 Colorado Book Awards have been announced, including titles of genre interest:

Additionally, Molly Tanzer’s Creatures of Charm and Hunger (John Joseph Adams Books) is a finalist in ...Read More

Burn by Patrick Ness (Walker) and Bearmouth by Liz Hyder (Pushkin) are among the titles shortlisted for the UK Literacy Association (UKLA) awards in the 11-14+ category.

The UKLA awards are “the only national book awards which are judged by teachers.” Winners will be announced during the virtual UKLA International Conference on July 2, 2021.

For more information, including the complete shortlists, see the UKLA website.

While you are here, ...Read More

Madeleine L’Engle’s library is being auctioned by New England Book Auctions to benefit three charity organizations. A small portion of the collection was auctioned in December 2020, raising nearly $10,000 for PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program, Smith College’s Madeleine L’Engle Travel Research Fellowships, and the L’Engle Initiative at Image Journal.

The rest of the books can be bid on through the New England Book Auctions website, with lots ...Read More

Westercon 73, the West Coast Science Fantasy Conference scheduled for July 1-4, 2021 in Seattle WA, has announced that the convention will not be held. It is disbanding its committee due, in part, to the coronavirus pandemic.

They are working with LASFS, owner of the Westercon service mark, to implement Section 1.9 of the Westercon Bylaws regarding a Westercon committee failure. Loscon 47, scheduled for November 26-28, 2021 at the ...Read More

Author, editor, and publisher John C. Pelan, 63, died April 12, 2021 in Albuquerque NM of an apparent heart attack. He lived in Gallup NM. Pelan was a significant figure in the dark fantasy and horror field, best known for founding numerous small presses and editing anthologies.

Pelan was born July 19, 1957 in Seattle WA. In 1986 he founded Axolotl Press, publishing work by James P. Blaylock, Charles de ...Read More

Author David Bowles and Estudio Tlalli have announced The Path Grant, which will award annual $2,500 prizes “to new and emerging BIPOC women writers of speculative fiction.” To fund the grant, Bowles will donate royalties from The Path series of novels (The Blue-Spangled Blue, The Deepest Green, The Rising Red, and The Swirling Black) and is seeking additional funding “to provide support to the maximum ...Read More

Polskie Towarzystwo Studiów and Przyszłością (PTSP), the Polish Society for Futures Studies, will host the Stanisław Lem Centennial Debate, free online on April 18, 2021 at 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time. The event, billed as “the expansion of future consciousness through the practice of science fiction and futures studies,” features Thomas Lombardo, Kacper Nosarzewski, and Karlheinz Steinmüller, and is supported in part by the World Futures Studies Federation, Association of Professional ...Read More

The Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS) has released the finalists for the Prometheus Award in the Best Novel category, honoring pro-freedom works published in 2020.

All ...Read More

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson (Del Rey) is the winner of the 2021 Compton Crook Award. Other finalists were:

The award is given by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) to honor the best first ...Read More

The winners for the 2021 PEN America Literary Awards have been announced, including Sharks in the Time of Saviors by Kawai Strong Washburn (MCD) in the $10,000 PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel.

Other finalists of genre interest in the category were

PEN ...Read More

The New York Public Library announced its five Young Lions Fiction Award finalists for 2021, which includes Pew by Catherine Lacey (Farrar, Straus, Giroux) and Temporary by Hilary Leichter (Coffee House).

The winner will be announced June 17, 2021. The $10,000 prize is awarded “each spring to a writer age 35 or younger for a novel or a collection of short stories” by a panel of judges. 2019’s winner was ...Read More

Purgatory Mount, Adam Roberts (Gollancz 978-1473230941, £16.99, 336pp, hc) February 2021.

It’s not too uncommon for an SF story to split itself between different time frames separated by centuries, with the causal links between frames only gradually made apparent – M. John Harrison’s Light is a well-known example – but the odd structure of Adam Rob­erts’s Purgatory Mount still seems pretty bold, as does the novel’s shifting tone from ...Read More

Experimenter Publishing Company has announced that, due to ongoing legal issues with a licensing agreement, it is placing Amazing Stories magazine on indefinite hiatus. Amazing Stories publisher Steve Davidson said,

Experimenter Publishing hopes to get our current issue, featuring Canadian Writers and Artists, published once we raise funds to cover expenses.

The Amazing Stories website will continue to publish on a daily basis and is not expected to be affected. ...Read More

Constelación 1/21 Metaphorosis 1/21, 2/21 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/1/21, 1/14/21

Welcome to 2021! Sure, it might be March or later as you’re reading this, but really my reading “year” runs from the March issue to the February “Year in Review” issue of the following year. I think we’re all look­ing for a better year to come, and the fiction I’ve been reading so far gives me hope.

A genuine newcomer ...Read More

DisCon III, the 79th World Science Fiction Convention, announced that it will be held as an in-person convention December 15-19, 2021, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, DC. The move comes “after nearly two-thirds of respondents to a public survey put out by DisCon III said they would prefer an in-person December convention over a virtual convention in August.” Virtual memberships to the December convention will still be available. ...Read More

The Unfinished Land, Greg Bear (John Joseph Adams Books 978-1-328-58990-3, $26.00, hc, 365 pp) February 2021.

Greg Bear’s The Unfinished Land is not your standard-issue fantasy adventure, even if it does feature a young naïf who travels across a magical, quasi-living landscape, guided by and encountering a range of strangely powered beings, all on the way to a series of rev­elations about the true natures of said landscape, beings, ...Read More

Legendborn, Tracy Deonn (Simon Pulse 978-1-534-44160-6, $18.99, 512pp, hc) September 2020.

In Legendborn, an epic blend of Arthurian legend and Southern Black magical tradition, author Tracy Deonn incorporates the endless allure of collegiate secret societies with a lighter version of Hunger Games-esque battles (not to the death), and a cast of demons to give readers a big adventure that doesn’t stop until the final pages. (And even then ...Read More