The Feast Makers, H. A. Clarke (Erewhon Books 978-1-64566-081-1, 405pp, $18.95, hc). Cover by Anka Lavriv. March 2024.
The Feast Makers is the third book in the Scapegracers trilogy; there are a lot of spoilers for The Scapegracers and The Scratch Daughters in this review.
As The Feast Makers opens, Sideways Pike faces hardships that fall into two camps. The first is being a butch lesbian high school senior in ...Read More
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Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel (Viking), The Book of Love by Kelly Link (Random House), and Fire Exit by Morgan Talty (Tin House) are all on the longlist for the 2024 First Novel Prize, given by the Center for Fiction “to honor the best debut fiction of the year.”
The longlist and winners are chosen by “a committee of distinguished American writers.” The winner will be announced during the Center’s Annual ...Read More
Read moreSF artist and editor Taral Wayne, 72, died at home on July 31, 2024.
Wayne MacDonald was born October 12, 1951 in Toronto, Canada. He took the pen name Taral from an invented language, Siroihin, introduced in one of his fanzines. He joined the Ontario Science Fiction Club in 1971, contributing works of art and writing to fanzines and semiprozines, and publishing his own journals, including Delta Psi, New Toy, ...Read More
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Cast of Wonders 4/13/24, 5/5/24 Escape Pod 4/25/24 Strange Horizons 4/29/24, 5/16/24 Lightspeed 5/24
Cast of Wonders’ April included Plangdi Neple’s “Bodies of Sand and Blood”, which follows a young trans boy trying to learn the magic of the men of his people, but who again and again is told he cannot because of his body. And yet at his lowest, he hears voices in the darkness ...Read More
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Finalists for the 2024 Caine Prize for African Writing, including several works of genre interest, have been announced, including Breastmilk by Pemi Aguda (One Story 5/27/21).
The winner will be selected by a panel of judges and announced at an awards dinner to be held September 17, 2024. The winner will receive a £10,000 prize.
For more information, see the Caine Prize website.
While you are here, please take a ...Read More
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Dream Foundry, a “non-profit dedicated to bolstering the careers of nascent professionals working with the speculative arts,” has announced the finalists for its 2024 contests.
Writing Contest
Art Contest
The finalists’ entries have been sent
Dead Things Are Closer Than They Appear, Robin Wasley (Simon & Schuster 978-1-665-91460-4, $19.99, hc, 400pp) February 2024. Cover by Micaela Alcaino.
The tourist town of Llewellyn, AKA Wellsie, is famous for the magic that used to be there. Just like Springfield is the town where Lincoln was born, and Roswell is where aliens might have landed, Wellsie is where something happened once. It’s a town on a fault ...Read More
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Spiral Tower Press has announced the third annual Trigon Awards, honoring “the past, present, and future of science fiction, fantasy, and horror” in three categories.
Literary Achievement: Howard Andrew Jones
Scholarly Achievement: Jeffrey Shanks
Special Achievement: Oliver Brackenbury
The awards were presented online on July 27, 2024 during SpiralCon 3. Awardees were selected by the Trigon Committee. For more information, see the Spiral Tower Press website.
While ...Read More
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The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking 978-0-73522-404-9, $35.00, 688pp, hc) June 2024.
In a “Historical Note” to his new novel The Bright Sword (his first adult novel since wrapping up The Magicians trilogy), Lev Grossman remarks that people have been re-working and re-inventing King Arthur’s story for nearly 1,400 years. As he poetically puts it, the legend has “never been told quite the same way twice. Every age and ...Read More
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The 13-title longlist for the 2024 Booker Prize has been announced, with works of genre interest including:
The £50,000 prize is “open to works by writers of any nationality, written in English and published
Beyond the Light Horizon, Ken MacLeod (Orbit 978-0-356-51482-6, £10.99, 336 pp, tp) May 2024. Cover by Duncan Spilling. (Pyr 978-1-64506-066-6, $21.00, 336pp, tp) June 2024.
Beyond the Light Horizon picks up right where Beyond the Reach of Earth (click to see review) ends, with Grant figuring out when he has landed and how he might return to his own time. But his problem is only the beginning of a ...Read More
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The 2024 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards were announced at San Diego Comic-Con on July 26, 2023. Winners of SF/F interest follow.
Best Short Story
Best Single Issue/One-Shot
Best Continuing Series
Best New Series
Phytopia Plus by Zara Zerbe (Verbrecher Verlag) won the €4,000 2024 Phantastikpreis der Stadt Wetzlar, a speculative fiction prize awarded by the city of Wetzlar, Germany.
The other nominees were Endling by Jasmin Schreiber (Eichborn) and Dreizehnfurcht by Wieland Freund (Klett-Cotta).
A public award ceremony is planned for September 2024. For more information, visit the award website.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a ...Read More
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In the Shadow of the Fall, Tobi Ogundiran (Tordotcom 978-1-25090-796-7, $20.99, 160pp, hc) July 2024.
There are probably hundreds of examples of how the Chosen One motif has served SF and fantasy, and there’s a certain boldness in the way in which Tobi Ogundiran hints at it on the very first page of In the Shadow of the Fall, the first in a two-novella sequence called Guardian of ...Read More
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Greatest Hits, Harlan Ellison (Union Square & Co. 978-1-45495-337-1, $19.99, 496pp, tp) March 2024. Cover by Max Loeffler.
What can be said about Harlan Ellison at this point? The man is a legend. Unfortunately, sometimes legends get lost in the folds of time and that makes it harder for newer generations of readers to discover their work. Greatest Hits, a superb collection of some of Ellison’s best short ...Read More
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The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, Sarah Brooks (Flatiron 978-1-25087-861-8, $28.99, 336pp, hc) June 2024.
Fantastical train journeys are pretty much a subgenre unto themselves, and no wonder. There’s a huge amount of imaginative space between, say, Snowpiercer and The Polar Express, or between Miéville’s Railsea and anything else at all – though Sarah Brooks’s debut novel, The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, carries a few ...Read More
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The US Census Bureau report for April 2024 shows bookstore sales of $596 million, up 2.4% from April 2023. For the first four months of 2024, bookstore sales were down 4.0% at $2.553 billion. All retail was up 3.6% for the month, and up 2.9% year-to-date.
The Association of American Publishers’ StatShort report for April shows sales up 18.3% compared to April 2023, with most major categories showing sales increases. ...Read More
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Kertomukset, Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Anu Partanen (Teos) is the winner of the 2024 Tähtifantasia Award, presented by the Helsinki Science Fiction Society for the best Finnish fantasy book published in the previous year. Other nominees were
The Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) announced the 2024 inductees to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame: Nicola Griffith and Nnedi Okorafor were honored as Creators. Inductees are added to the SF&F Hall of Fame display in the museum.
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame was founded in 1996 and then relocated from the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction and Fantasy at the University of ...Read More
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The shortlist for the seventh annual Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award has been announced. Authors and titles of genre interest include:
Clytemnestra, Costanza Casati (Michael Joseph)
The Square of Sevens, Laura Shepherd-Robinson (Mantle)
The winning title will be announced on September 26, 2024, and the author will receive a handmade glass bell and a cash prize of £2,000. For more information, including the full shortlist, see the Goldsboro ...Read More
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If you have a few minutes, we’ve got the top genre books hitting shelves, IRL and digital, this week! Help us keep doing this weekly round up by liking and subscribing!
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The Sky on Fire, Jenn Lyons (Tor 978-1-250-34200-3, $29.99, 448pp, hc) July 2024. Cover by Michael Rogers.
Jenn Lyons made her debut with The Ruin of Kings, first of a five-book series (“the Chorus of Dragons”) that took epic fantasy, shook it, subverted it, and played entertaining games with the pieces that fell out. The Sky on Fire is not at all related to that series, except that ...Read More
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TikTok has announced its winners for its second annual Book Awards for the UK and Ireland, including two winners of genre interest. In total, 82,000 TikTok users voted on their favorites within the app.
BookTok Book of the Year (International)
BookTok Creator of the Year
Nominees were chosen by an industry panel, including TikTok ...Read More
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Finalists for the 2024 Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA) Small Press Award for Short Fiction have been announced:
Frankie Barnet, Mood Swings (Astra House 5/24) This biting debut is set on a “preapocalyptic” Earth where all non-human animal life has become extinct… but a billionaire in California claims to have a time machine and a plan to save the world. “For a novel that doesn’t feature a single paradox, time loop, or change to history, Mood Swings offers up an incisive critique of time-travel narratives… [A] darkly satirical ...Read More
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Shanghailanders, Juli Min (Spiegel & Grau 978-1-95411-860-7, 270pp, $28.00, hc). May 2024. Cover by Charlotte Strick.
In the first chapter of Juli Min’s Shanghailanders, another novel-in-stories, Leo Yang, a successful real estate developer, boards the maglev train from Pudong International Airport to downtown Shanghai. It is January 2040, and he is returning home after seeing off his wife, Eko, his eldest daughter, Yumi, and his middle daughter, Yoko, ...Read More
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The winner for the annual Arthur C. Clarke Award, celebrating the best science fiction novel published in the UK, has been announced:
Ghostroots, ’Pemi Aguda (W.W. Norton & Company 978-1-324-06585-2, $26.99, 224pp, hc) May 2024.
Ghostroots, ’Pemi Aguda’s spectacular debut collection, is an instant classic. These 12 stories feature hauntings, reincarnations, invisible markets, dancing masquerades, shapeshifting houses, miracles, and magical transformations. Even the stories that aren’t overtly speculative possess a speculative, surreal sensibility. But regardless of the degree of imaginative calisthenics employed, the roots of every narrative in this collection ...Read More
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Kathryn Gossow has won the 2024 Australian Fairy Tale Society (AFTS) Award, honoring “her many contributions to the field of fairy tales in Australia, particularly in building and nurturing the community of fairytalers.”
The other finalists were were glass artist Spike Deane and performer Em Chandler.
For more information, see the announcement.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We ...Read More
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Seattle Worldcon 2025 has announced Brandon O’Brien as their poet laureate, a special guest position that aims to “elevate our proceedings and help us spotlight and emphasize the craft and literary tradition of speculative poetry at this Worldcon.”
Seattle Worldcon 2025 will be held in August 13-17, 2025. The theme is “Building Yesterday’s Future – For Everyone”
For more information, see the announcement.
While you are here, please take a ...Read More
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Winners have been announced for the Frank R. Paul awards, honoring “outstanding work in book and magazine cover art.” Paul was a prominent cover illustrator for Golden Age science fiction magazines.
Best Book Cover
Best Magazine Cover
The awards were presented on July 20, 2024 at the 16th North American Science Fiction ...Read More
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In Universes, Emet North (HarperCollins 978-0-06331-487-0, 240pp, $26.99, hc) April 2024.
Much like time travel, the multiverse, as a scientifically originated but unproven theory, can be used as a narrative conceit with varying degrees of rigour. For every Timescape a Doctor Who; for every Anathem an Everything Everywhere All at Once. I don’t think a work’s placement on this spectrum is a predictor of its quality, but ...Read More
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