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Lightspeed 10/21 Nature: Futures 9/17/21 Abyss & Apex Summer ’21 Lackington’s Spring ’21 Speculative City Spring ’21

The fantasy side of the October issue of Light­speed brings us a novelette by PH Lee & Rachel Swirsky, continuing their Dusty Boots series of fairytale-style stories. ‘‘The Ash-Girl and the Salmon Prince’’ blends Cinderella tropes with The Fisherman and His Wife and a hint of Blue­beard. The ash-girl is ...Read More

People from My Neighbourhood, Hiromi Kawakami (Granta Books 978-1-84627-699-6, £7.99, 121pp, tp) August 2020; as People from My Neighborhood (Soft Skull 978-1-59376-711-2, $15.95, 176pp, tp) November 2021.

Hiro Kawakami’s new collection, People from My Neighborhood, isn’t my first exposure to her work. Several years back, I read Kawakami’s Akutagawa Prize-winning collection Record of a Night Too Brief. The three novelettes that comprise that book introduced me to ...Read More

Blood Like Magic, Liselle Sambury (McElder­ry Books 978-1-53446-528-2, $19.99, 496pp, hc) June 2021. Cover by Thea Harvey.

In an intoxicating blend of science fiction and fantasy, author Liselle Sambury has written in Blood Like Magic a novel that embraces technological advances while wholly immersing the text with magic. Set in Toronto in the year 2049, teenager Voya Thomas has at last experienced her Calling – the moment when one ...Read More

Asimov’s 9-10/21 Uncanny 9-10/21 On Spec 6/21, 9/21

Greg Egan’s “Sleep and the Soul” (Asimov’s 9-10/21) is an intriguing piece presented as an alternate history where the Jonbar point is a biological change, not a historical one. Humans in this world do not need to sleep and, at least in the 19th-century US in which the story is set, sleep is regarded with horror because the loss ...Read More

C. Dale Brittain, The Sapphire Ring (Daimbert Publishing 979-8-7211-2328-3, $14.95, 293pp, tp) April 2021.

The third volume in the Starlight Raven series in the Yurt universe finds Antonia no longer the only girl at the wizards’ school run by her father. Still, she’s concerned about the remaining divide between women’s magic and men’s. Then she gets kidnapped by a strange group of women, members of the magic-using Sisterhood, but with ...Read More

The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess, Andy Marino (Redhook Books 978-0316-62948-5, $16.99, 352pp, tp) September 2021.

Andy Marino’s The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess is a creepy, tense narra­tive that exists somewhere between vio­lent psychological thriller and supernatural horror novel. However, while most of the elements of those two subgenres are present here, the novel also delves deep into serious topics like guilt, substance abuse, and mental health. The ...Read More

The BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) longlist nominations are open for works published in 2021. The process includes an “informal crowdsourced suggestion sheet” which is open to anyone, and a nomination form which is open exclusively to BSFA members.

For more information, see the BSFA website.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep ...Read More

C.L. Clark has resigned as editor for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) blog, as of November 30, 2021. Clark held the role for just over a year.

Thank you so much for your trust and support in me as the SFWA Blog Editor for the past year. It’s been my absolute pleasure to usher in new essays, guides, and analyses of the industry and I hope ...Read More

Japanese science fiction website VirtualGorillaPlus (VG+) has announced the winners of its 2021 Kaguya Sci-Fi Contest, judged by Terrie Hashimoto, Kanata Inoue, Katsuya Okumura, and Kaoru Sakasak:

Winners were chosen from 381 entries on the theme of “Colors of the Future.” The grand prize story was translated into ...Read More

The editors of The New York Times Book Review selected their ten best books of the year, including The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (HarperCollins) and How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue (Random House).

They also listed 100 Notable Books of 2020, including the following titles of genre interest:

AudioFile has announced its list of the best science fiction & fantasy audiobooks for 2021:

Shortlists for the 2021 Costa Book Awards, for books “by writers resident in the UK and Ireland,” have been announced. The Stranding by Kate Sawyer (Coronet) is on the four-title Costa First Novel Award shortlist. The High House by Jessie Greengrass (Swift) made the Novel Award shortlist. Anna Goodall’s Maggie Blue and the Dark World (Guppy) and Ross Montgomery’s The Midnight Guardians (Walker) are both finalists in the Children’s Book ...Read More

Dream Foundry, a “non-profit dedicated to bolstering the careers of nascent professionals working with the speculative arts,” has announced the finalists for its 2021 contests.

Writing Contest

Editor and publisher Jeremy G. Byrne, 57, died November 25, 2021 in Melbourne, Australia after a long illness.

Byrne co-founded Eidolon Publications in 1990 and co-edited all 30 issues of Eidolon: The Journal of Australian Science Fiction and Fantasy until its closure in 2000. He was an integral part of publishing Terry Dowling’s The Mars You Have in Me, Storm Constantine’s The Thorn Boy, Robin Pen’s The Secret ...Read More

The Last Graduate, Naomi Novik (Del Rey 978-0-593-12886-2, $28.00, 400pp, hc) Sep­tember 2021.

Naomi Novik’s A Deadly Education introduced us to the Scholomance, a magical high school for wizards that kills the better part of each incoming class by the time they are seniors. The school is not driven by pure malice (although it does seem to take a certain glee in making its students miser­able) but by hope. ...Read More

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 ...Read More

This Thing Between Us, Gus Moreno (MCD x FSG Originals 978-0-37453-923-8, $17.00, 272pp, tp) October 2021.

I’ve never owned an Amazon Alexa. I do have a Google Nest sitting beside the TV, but other than my daughter asking the device to play songs from The Greatest Showman soundtrack, the family rarely engages with it. I am, however, aware that both the Alexa and the Nest are always listening, ...Read More

White Smoke, Tiffany D. Jackson (Katherine Tegen Books 978-0063029095, $18.99, 384pp, hc) September 2021.

After her public collapse and a stint in rehab, Marigold, a Black high school track star, is finally getting a second chance. When her artist mom gets a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a residency that comes with a free house, Mari, her mother, brother, step-father, and step-sister move from coastal California to a rundown Midwestern town. ...Read More

NPR’s Books We Love (formerly Book Concierge) has an extensive list of Best Books in an assortment of categories, including It’s All Geek to Me and Young Adult, with hundreds of titles recommended by “NPR staff and trusted critics.” The Sci Fi, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction category includes titles by leading authors like Charlie Jane Anders, Becky Chambers, Fonda Lee, Rivers Solomon, Cadwell Turnbull, Jeff VanderMeer, and many others.

For ...Read More

George R.R. Martin announced the opening of Sky Railway, the renamed and renovated historic short-haul railroad he purchased, with other investors, in 2020. “Mostly what I have been doing is throwing out ideas and writing checks,” Martin said.

We had two big old diesel locomotives, so right off we decided we would run two trains: the Wolf and the Dragon. And to paint them, and give each its own character ...Read More

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) has organized a free workshop “geared towards writers of colour” called Need To Know: Knowing Your Power as an Author of Colour. “This workshop is aimed to help you break down the processes of being published so you know where your power lies.” The event is scheduled for January 15, 2022 and will take place virtually. Workshop leaders are Patrice Lawrence ...Read More

Shards of Earth: The Final Architecture Book One, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor 978-1-5290-5188-9, $28.00, 549 pp, hc) August 2021. Cover by Steve Stone.

Once upon a time I used the term “re­combinant SF” to describe stories that whipped multiple ideas and themes and gadgets and speculations and story-patterns into busy, complicated, surprising concoctions: a Chi­nese AI emperor and Tibetan yak-wranglers on a terraformed Mars; a moon-size ancient alien and clone-soldiers ...Read More

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

The New York Public Library has announced its lists of the best books of 2021 in various categories, including 100 Best Books for Adults, 50 Best Books for Teens, and 145 Best Books for Kids.

The Adult category includes numerous genre titles, with Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki (Tor), Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (Ballantine), and Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor (Tordotcom), plus many more. The Teen ...Read More

The Financial Times has announced the five best SF books of 2021, as selected by James Lovegrove:

The 2022 Joyce Carol Oates Prize has announced its 37-title longlist. The award honors “mid-career authors in fiction,” and the winner receives a $50,000 prize, given by the New Literary Project. Authors of genre interest, along with their most recent titles, include: