Philip Pullman is stepping down as Society of Authors (SoA) president. Pullman has been with the SoA for 35 years, and was elected as president in 2013. He will remain a member of the trade union’s council. Pullman says,
When it became clear that statements of mine were being regarded as if they represented the views of the Society as a whole (although they did nothing of the sort, and ...Read More
Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor Teen 978-1250317391, $18.99, 320pp, hc) April 2022.
It’s practically an unwritten rule that middle volumes of trilogies should shade a bit darker, with higher stakes, unexpected complications, dimmer hopes, and a growing sense of desperation. If you’re going to (apparently) kill off Frodo, volume two is the place to do it. The second volume of Charlie Jane Anders’s YA Unstoppable trilogy, ...Read More
Longing and Other Stories, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki (Columbia University Press, 978-0-231-20215-2, $20.00, 160pp, tp) January 2022.
One of Japan’s most celebrated and prolific authors of the last century, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki has remained relatively unknown in the West – a great loss for us, one that will be, hopefully, remedied by this new translation of Longing and Other Stories by Anthony H. Chambers & Paul McCarthy
It’s difficult to know how ...Read More
Sisters of the Forsaken Stars, Lina Rather (Tordotcom 978-1-250-78214-4, $16.99, 192pp, tp) February 2022.
The events in Sisters of the Vast Black, Lina Rather’s first novella in her ‘‘space nuns’’ series, have caught up with said space nuns in Sisters of the Forsaken Stars, at least those who remain in the Order of Saint Rita. The Central Governance, which sprung from Old Earth and intends to rule ...Read More
The This, Adam Roberts (Gollancz 978-1-47323-092-7, £16.99, 304pp, hc) February 2022.
In 2015, Adam Roberts wrote an extraordinary novel that deserved more attention and love than it received. The Thing Itself blended Fermi’s Paradox, Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason and John Carpenter’s The Thing (with a side-dish of wry humour and literary allusions) to deliver a madcap, centuries-spanning meditation on the ineffable nature of reality. Roberts’s latest ...Read More
Bright Ruined Things, Samantha Cohoe (Wednesday Books 978-1-25-076884-1, $18.99, 352pp, hc) February 2022.
Samantha Cohoe’s intriguing mashup of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby makes for a thoroughly immersive read. Set on an island dominated by the wealthy and powerful Prosper family, Bright Ruined Things focuses on a single day when 18-year old Mae, daughter of a deceased but much loved retainer of Lord Prosper, finds herself ...Read More
Can’t Find My Way Home, Gwynne Garfinkle (Aqueduct Press 978-1-61976-212-1, $20.00, 342pp, tp) January 2022.
Two days shape young Joanna Bergman’s life: when she both got the lead role in her high school’s production of ‘‘Saint Joan’’ and began her friendship with the beautiful, popular Cynthia ‘‘Cyn’’ Foster, and when, three years later, Cyn dies in a botched protest bombing of a storefront Vietnam War draft board office. And, ...Read More
The Horror Writers Association (HWA) announced Tracey Cross as the recipient of its 2022 Scholarship From Hell, and Rosemary Thorne as winner of the virtual Scholarship from Hell. The scholarship places writers in the intensive Horror University workshop, which will take place during StokerCon 2022.
Cross will receive airfare to and from the StokerCon venue, a four-night stay at the convention, free registration for StokerCon 2022, and free choice of ...Read More
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has voted on five revisions to the membership eligibility qualifications.
The Board of Directors stated:
As previously announced, the new membership eligibility requirements, across all membership categories (e.g., prose, game writing, comics, etc.), are intended to set Associate membership eligibility at $100 earned professionally and Full membership at $1000 earned professionally over a career, attested by sworn affidavit.
Additionally, with this change, ...Read More
Kij Johnson is joining the Ad Astra Center for Science Fiction & the Speculative Imagination as associate director. Created in November 2021 at the University of Kansas, the Center “brings writers, readers, scholars, educators, and fans of speculative fiction together to study and create work that changes the world.” The Center is headed by director Chris McKitterick.
For more information, see the official Ad Astra Center website.
While you are ...Read More
The Magician by Colm Tóibín (Penguin UK) won the 2022 Rathbones Folio Prize.
The £30,000 award is open to all works of literature written in English and published in the UK during the previous calendar year. Judges for 2022 were William Atkins, Tessa Hadley (chair), and Rachel Long. For more information, see the Prize website.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or ...Read More
The International Board on Books for Young People awarded the 2022 Hans Christian Anderson Awards to author Marie-Aude Murail and illustrator Suzy Lee. Awarded biyearly, the awards “recognize lifelong achievement and are given to an author and an illustrator whose complete works have made an important, lasting contribution to children’s literature.” Murail’s work of genre interest includes Magic Berber (Pocket Jeunesse).
For more information see the IBBY website.
While ...Read More
S.B. Divya is stepping down as co-editor of Escape Pod on April 8, 2022. Mur Lafferty remains co-editor, joined by new co-editor Valerie Valdes.
It’s been my great privilege and pleasure to work on Escape Pod for the last 7 years, but it is time for me to say goodbye. Unfortunately, due to my health problems, I no longer have the energy to juggle 3 jobs plus family responsibilities…. This ...Read More
Liz Gorinsky is stepping down as publisher of Erewhon Books, effective immediately. Gorinsky founded the press in 2018, and their first titles were released in 2020.
Senior editor Sarah Guan will lead the editorial program, and oversee an expansion of the editorial team. Director of publishing and production Cassandra Farrin and marketing and publicity manager Martin Cahill remain in their positions. Viengsamai Fetters has joined as an editorial assistant, and ...Read More
Blackmoore, Stephen: Suicide Kings
(DAW 978-0-7564-1763-5, $17.47, 224pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, March 22, 2022)
Urban fantasy/noir novel, seventh in the series about LA necromancer Eric Carter. Carter helps a friend with a deadly ritual in Los Angeles, while struggling to adjust to being brought back from the grave.
Butner, Richard: The Adventurists
(Small Beer Press 978-1618731944, $17.00, 320pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, March 22, 2022)
Collection of 16 ...Read More
The shortlist for the €100,000 2022 International Dublin Literary Award has been announced, with The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi (Riverhead) among the six finalists.
The winner will be chosen by a judging panel consisting of Emmanuel Dandaura, Sinéad Moriarty, Alvin Pang, Clíona Ní Ríordáin, and Victoria White, and announced by the mayor of Dublin on May 19, 2022 as part of the International Literature Festival Dublin.
For
The European Science Fiction Society (ESFS) Hall of Fame Awards, Achievement Awards, and Chrysalis Award nominees have been announced, along with the names of the nominating countries.
Hall of Fame Awards:
Best Author
Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel (Knopf 978-0-593321447, $25.00, 272pp, hc) April 2022.
One of the central characters in Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility is a novelist known for a bestseller about a worldwide pandemic, published just a few years before an actual pandemic makes it a bestseller all over again, with a blockbuster film adaptation in the works. Not surprisingly, she’s on a worldwide book ...Read More
The 81st World Science Fiction Convention, to be held August 23-29, 2023 in Chengdu, China, has an official name: Chengdu Worldcon, as announced on Twitter.
The convention has also released membership rates: full attending memberships with voting rights are $120, while attending memberships without voting rights are $70. Supporting memberships (which grant voting rights but not attendance) are $50. Virtual memberships with voting rights are $60, while basic virtual memberships ...Read More
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America released a statement in support of the people of Ukraine:
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America stand with the people of Ukraine, all creators, and SFF fans around the world who oppose and abhor the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The organization wholly condemns this invasion and oppression which has tragically taken so much from the tireless and brave ...Read More
Daughter of the Moon Goddess, Sue Lynn Tan (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-303130-2, $27.99, 512pp, tp) January 2022.
Living on the moon for most of her life, Xingyin never imagined more for herself—not growing into her magical powers, fleeing from her home, or risking her life for the kingdom that wants her dead. But after accidentally revealing her existence to the Celestial Emperor, Xingyin embarks on a perilous journey to free ...Read More
Lightspeed 1/22 Fantasy 1/22 Nightmare 1/22 F&SF 1-2/22
January’s Lightspeed leans decidedly grim to kick off the new year, with a majority of the original fiction opting away from happy endings. It’s a trend that will continue in sibling publications Fantasy and Nightmare (though that last certainly makes sense, given the Nightmare’s horror focus). In Lightspeed, though, Aimee Ogden’s flash fiction “Dissent: A Five-Course Meal (With Suggested Pairings) ...Read More
Servant Mage, Kate Elliott (Tordotcom 978-1-250-76905-3, $19.99, 176pp, hc) January 2022. Cover by Tommy Arnold.
Kate Elliott is perhaps best known for her epic fantasy, though her most recent novel, Unconquered Sun, opens a whole new space opera universe. (It tells a story that’s just as epic.) Her work is characterised by a deep and substantial interest in the details of world and culture, in power and the ...Read More
Esquire has announced a 50-title list of the best fantasy books of all time.
For this list, we concentrated on novels that are primarily fantasy, which is why you won’t see genre-straddlers like Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time or Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun.
To keep this lineup manageable, we only included books originally published as a bound book on paper — which ruled out ...Read More
Finalists for the 2021 Australian Shadows Awards have been announced. The award is given by the Australian Horror Writers Association (AHWA) for “the finest in horror and dark fiction published by an Australasian within the calendar year.”
Novel
