You love to know what books are coming out right now? We’ve got you! Check out our weekly update for SF, fantasy, and horror books with Amelia over at our YouTube channel. Don’t forget to hit the thumb’s up and subscribe so you know when a new video goes up!
Tim Burton returns to direct Beetlejuice 2 (2024), also known as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, in this wickedly wild sequel that takes on the 1988 classic, starring Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Jenna Ortega. Since so many remakes and sequels this year have fallen flat, despite media buzz and excitement, it was easy to be skeptical about this film. Could it live up to the original? With Tim Burton, most of the
We Mostly Come Out at Night, Rob Costello, ed. (Running Press 978-0-76248-319-8, $18.99, 384pp, hc) May 2024. We Mostly Come Out at Night, a new dark fantasy YA anthology, looks at the scarier side of queerness. The anthology opens with editor Rob Costello’s powerful introductory essay about queerness and its relationship to monstrousness, how we as a society and as individuals create monsters to reflect our fears and as a
How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive, Craig DiLouie (Redhook 978-0-31656-931-6, $19.99, 400pp, ppb) June 2024. Funny horror is hard to do right, but Craig DiLouie delivers plenty of it in How to Make a Horror Movie and Survive. At once a send up of the movie industry, a brutal horror novel where a lot of people die in horrible ways, and an exploration of art and staying true
The six-title shortlist for this year’s Mo Siewcharran Prize has been announced. The award “aims to nurture talent from under-represented backgrounds writing in English.” This year’s submission call was for YA and adult fantasy novels. Shortlisted entries include: The Devotee, H.D. Ahmed Sandstorm, Aliyah Goga The Master of the Valley, Cassie Leung The Treaties We Break, Tina Shah Modern Day Dragons, Ana Sun Deity of a Drowning Realm, K. Andrea
C Stuart Hardwick is taking over as contest director for the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award. Hardwick replaces William Ledbetter, who served as director for the past 18 years. Hardwick said, “In this competition, Bill [Ledbetter] and Toni Weisskopf have created something of real and lasting value to the industry, and I’m honored and excited to have a part in carrying on its legacy.” The contest will open for
Something Kindred, Ciera Burch (Farrar Straus Giroux 978-0-374-38913-0, $19.99, hc, 284pp) March 2024. Seventeen-year-old Jericka is 100% not having, at all, the summer she was promised. Stuck in her mother’s hometown of Coldwater, Maryland, Jericka is supposed to be visiting all the beaches in New Jersey with her best friend, figuring out if she and her boyfriend are really as serious as they seem to be and taking pictures for
Saga Press, the SF/F imprint of Simon & Schuster (S&S), has announced several promotions and other changes. Tim O’Connell has become vice president and publisher of Saga, moving from his role as vice president and editorial director of fiction at S&S, though he will continue to acquire for the latter. He will report to S&S VP and publisher Sean Manning. Joe Monti has been promoted to vice president, associate publisher,
Allen, Samantha: Roland Rogers Isn’t Dead Yet (Zando 9781638931539, $18, 288pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, audio, 09/10/2024) Ghost romance novel. An actor’s ghost with just enough energy to communicate via kitchen speaker wants Adam Gallagher to help write his autobiography before his body is found crushed by an avalanche. They have to get it done within one month, and ghost and ghostwriter don’t entirely agree on their visions for the
Escape Pod 5/16/24 Strange Horizons 5/20/24, 5/27/24, 6/10/24, 6/17/24 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 5/30/24, 6/13/24 Rocky Cornelius returns to Escape Pod with Andrew Dana Hudson’s May story, “The Concept Shoppe: A Rocky Cornelius Consultancy”. Having left uncool hunting behind her, Rocky is a creative consultant for Primal, a new store that’s selling the postapocalypse experience in a future that feels in many ways postapocalyptic, right down to the paramilitary bandits that
The preliminary ballot for the 2024 Ditmar Awards for Australian SF has been announced. Best Novel Polyphemus, Zachary Ashford (DarkLit) The Tangled Lands, Glenda Larke (Wizard’s Tower) The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin) Dream Weaver, Steven Paulsen (IFWG) When Dark Roots Hunt, Zena Shapter (MidnightSun) Traitor’s Run, Keith Stevenson (coeur de lion) Best Novella or Novelette “The Measure of Sorrow”, J. Ashley-Smith (The Measure of Sorrow:
Sarah Rees Brennan’s Long Live Evil (Orbit), first in the Time of Iron series, debuts at #15 on the USA Today list in its US trade paperback edition. The Orbit UK edition, in hardcover, was published earlier in August.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE was born May 5, 1979 in Seattle WA, and grew up moving between her parents in Seattle and Sacramento CA. She attended high school in Davis CA, graduating at age 15 and attending UC San Diego, where she took a degree in Classical Studies. She attended grad school at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, but quit to move overseas. She lived near Yokohama, Japan for just over two
Analog 5-6/24 The May/June 2024 issue of Analog opens with “Uncle Roy’s Computer Repairs and Used Robot Parts” by Martin L. Shoemaker, a charming novella about a man who retires with his wife to her hometown and starts his own computer repair business only to find himself accidentally in a bitter rivalry with the town’s resident “whiz kid.” It’s a fun story that does a good job of capturing the
Archangels of Funk, Andrea Hairston (Tordotcom 978-1-25080-728-1, $29.99, 384pp, hc) July 2024. Andrea Hairston’s Archangels of Funk forced me to rewire my brain chemistry. The book contains a stew of dense but rewarding elements as people, dogs, spirits, and bots dot a literary canvas unlike anything I’ve read. It’s a cozy dystopia that demands attention, demands that you think on its wavelength. The book largely contains good but flawed characters
Choice of Games published Benjamin Rosenbaum’s The Ghost and the Golem, a “450,000-word Jewish historical fantasy interactive fiction,” in August 2024. Rosenbaum calls it “kind of a magnum opus,” and explains, “Unlike a game which is graphics and fight mechanics with some story crammed in here and there, these games are purely a bunch of fictional narrative words: you do make choices, but the output, after having made those choices,
The Price of Redemption, Shawn Carpenter (Saga 978-1-6680-3373-9, $18.99, 358pp, tp) July 2024. The Price of Redemption is Shawn Carpenter’s debut novel. Inspired by the exploits of the British Royal Navy during during the French revolutionary wars, it sets its story in a different world to ours and adds magic to the mixture. As a fan of both fantasy and of the naval adventure story (though frequently through gritted teeth
Key Lime Sky, Al Hess (Angry Robot 978-1915998125, trade paperback, 304pp, $18.99) August 2024, It has been said that Irish fantasist Flann O’Brien had a penchant for involving the humble bicycle in his surreal fiction, until the vehicle became a kind of numinous totem or idiosyncratic symbol. A few other writers of fantasy have deployed such a technique—recurring enigmatic touchstone with multiple meanings—and now Al Hess joins their ranks, with
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower-court ruling against the Internet Archive (IA). The suit was first brought in 2020 by HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, and Wiley, alleging “willful mass copyright infringement” by IA’s “National Emergency Library,” which offered unlimited borrows of over a million ebooks. Judge John Koeltl of New York Federal Court issued a summary judgment against IA on March 24, 2023.
The following resolution passed at the 2024 Business Meeting of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS), held during Glasgow 2024: A Worldcon for Our Futures, in Glasgow, Scotland, August 8-12, 2024: BE IT RESOLVED, that the World Science Fiction Society apologizes unreservedly to the nominators and voters of the 2023 Hugo Awards for any failures in the administration of the 2023 Hugo Awards; and The World Science Fiction Society apologizes
Small Wonders 5/24 Flash Fiction Online 5/24 Cast of Wonders 5/29/24 I’ll start off with May’s Small Wonders, a publication dedicated to flash fiction and poetry, which includes Angel Leal’s powerful poem ‘‘Music of the Seraphim’’. A child meets an angel and is filled with a desire for something new – new experiences, a new body, a new place to be – and find their prayers and yearning goes unanswered.
The genre is experiencing a blooming period. Big names like George R.R. Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, Brandon Sanderson, Andrzej Sapkowski, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Robert Jordan sell hundreds of copies every week, thanks to television adaptations, but also, in recent years, fantastic fiction has been gaining ground over the other genres and is becoming, little by little, the main trend. For example, the most recent worldwide publishing phenomenon – although in Spain
As Alien: Romulus opens on a stunning starscape and clever title sequence, the Weyland-Yutani corporation is up to its usual tricks, recovering something foreboding from deep space and whisking it away for further study/experimentation. Sometime later, a mix of six friends and family conspire to escape the dismal conditions of a company-controlled mining colony. Unable to break their employment contracts with Weyland-Yutani, and facing deadly work environments, they hatch a
The New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA) SF/F short story contest is now open to entries. “The purpose of this contest is to encourage amateur and semi-professional writers to reach the next level of proficiency…. If you have received more than $1000 for your fiction writing from any source on the date you submit your story and/or have published, in any paying publication, a novel or multiple shorter works adding
“Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200” by R.S.A. Garcia (Uncanny, 7/23) is the winner of the 2024 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction story, presented by the J. Wayne and Elsie M. Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction. The second-place runner up was “Patsy Cline Sings Sweet Dreams to the Universe” by Beston Barnett (Strange Horizons 11/20/23). The third-place runner up was “The Year
The Black Girl Survives in This One, Desiree S. Evans & Saraciea J. Fennell, eds. (Flatiron 978-1-25032-199-2, $19.99, 368pp, hc) April 2024. Horror is in a golden age in young adult fiction. Just a few years ago, you could count the number of YA horror novels released each year on one hand. Last year I tracked more than 30 YA books marketed as horror. This year just in January through
The Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) is accepting applications for its $1,000 Working Class Writers Grant, “awarded annually to speculative fiction writers who are working class, blue-collar, financially disadvantaged, or homeless, who have been historically underrepresented in speculative fiction due to financial barriers which make it hard to access the writing world.” Applications are open until September 30, 2024. The winner will be announced November 15, 2024. For more information, see
Finalists for the 2024 Washington State Book Awards, presented by the Washington Center for the Book, have been announced, including titles and authors of genre interest. Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree (Tor) and Jewel Box: Stories by E. Lily Yu (Erewhon) are among the six titles shortlisted in the Fiction category. The Golden Needle by T.J. Carroll (Cumberstone) and Painted Devils by Margaret Owen (Henry Holt) are among three titles
House of Gamut has rebranded and relaunched Gamut Publishing as Ruadán Books, including “All anthologies and novel contracts” previously signed with Gamut. Scheduled titles include anthology 120 Murders edited by Nick Mamatas. Ruadán is open to submissions of short stories, novellas, and novels, as well as non-fiction for their column “From the Writers Desk”. Gamut also announced the closure of Gamut Academy and Gamut Magazine, with their final scheduled issue as
Tomorrowing, Terry Bisson (Duke University Press 978-1-4780-3068-3, $15.95, 168pp, tp) May 2024. Terry Bisson, who died in January, began writing his ‘‘This Month in History’’ column of hilarious microfictions for Locus on April Fool’s Day 2004, and for the next two decades it became as much a fixture of this magazine as The New Yorker’s cartoons or Alfred Hitchcock’s cameos. (He’d actually begun a similar series for Eileen Gunn’s Infinite
“When I was Your Age” by Sam Brown is the winner of the Mike Resnick Memorial Award, presented at Dragon Con, held August 29 – September 2, 2024 in Atlanta GA. “What the Cat Dragged In” by Bailey Maybray was first runner-up. Other finalists were: “The Year of Pepsi Nova”, Pete Lead “Life in the Old Bones”, Scott M. Sands “The Green Ones”, Magda Smith The annual award is sponsored
“The Sound of Children Screaming” by Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare 10/23) is the winner of the 2024 Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction for “stories that are irreplaceable, that inspire, enlighten, and entertain.” Other finalists were: “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200”, R.S.A. Garcia (Uncanny 7/23) “The Year Without Sunshine”, Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny 10/23) “Even if Such Ways Are Bad“, Rich Larson (Reactor 2/8/23) Falling Bodies, Rebecca Roanhorse (Amazon Original
The winners of the 2024 Dragon Awards were presented at Dragon Con, held August 29 – September 2, 2024 in Atlanta GA. Best Science Fiction Novel WINNER: Starter Villain, John Scalzi (Tor; Tor UK) The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport, Samit Basu (Tordotcom) The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom) Theft of Fire, Devon Eriksen (self-published) These Burning Stars, Bethany Jacobs (Orbit US; Orbit UK) Beyond the Ranges, John Ringo
Aiello, K.J.: The Monster and the Mirror: Mental Illness, Magic, and the Stories We Tell (ECW Press 9781770417083, $18.95, 272pp, formats: trade paperback, ebook, 09/03/2024) Non-fiction, a memoir mixed with research and cultural criticism showing ways popular fantasy can serve as a framework for understanding mental illness and notions of what is good or evil, sane or mad. Buffini, Moira: Songlight (HarperCollins 9780063358218, $19.99, 384pp, formats: hardcover, ebook, audio,
Two debuts this week. Frances White’s Voyage of the Damned (Mira) is #22 on Publishers Weekly‘s fiction hardcover list. And Brandon Sanderson’s Wind and Truth (Tor), fifth book in his Stormlight Archive series, appears on two Amazon lists with pre-publication orders; the book is due December 6th.
khōréō 3.4 Due to an error in my logging stories for review, I accidentally left three stories out of my initial review of khōréō 3.4. The stories are reviewed here with apologies to the authors, editors, and publisher of the magazine. “The Maiden Voyage of the Piranha Belle” by L.M. Guay is a diamond of a story, with beautiful glittering surfaces and a sharp, cutting point. The Piranha Belle of
There are many ways to cleave the views of the political right from the political left, but none is so science fictional as the right’s confidence in the role of individual self-discipline on one’s life chances. Dip into any political fight about crime and poverty and you’re sure to turn up someone confidently asserting that these social ills are rooted in impatience. Poverty, we’re told, is rooted in an unwillingness
Gogmagog, Jeff Noon & Steve Beard (Angry Robot 978-1-91520-282-6, $18.99, 353pp, tp) February 2024. Gogmagog is the first novel I’ve read by Jeff Noon since the publication of Nyphomation in 1997. The books he wrote immediately after his Vurt phase – Needle in the Groove and Falling Out of Cars – didn’t appeal to twenty-something Ian (though Falling Out of Cars looks right up the alley of fifty-something Ian). By
A Tempest of Tea, Hafsah Faizal (Farrar Straus Giroux 978-0-374-38940-6, hc, 336 pp) February 2024. Cover by Valentina Remenar. Hafsah Faizal has written a banger of a caper novel with A Tempest of Tea. Her tale of thieves, forgery, and political malfeasance set in the town of White Roaring takes readers on a ride with twists and turns they can never expect. Reminiscent of 19th-century London, White Roaring has a
Time’s Agent, Brenda Peynado (Tordotcom 978-1250854315, trade paperback, 208pp, $16.99) August 2024 Would it be possible to write a piece of fiction that exhibited or contained no emotions? That seems highly unlikely. Humans are made of emotions—and intellect. Those two realms are—to truncate the famous phrase coined by Stephen Jay Gould when he was trying to categorize the barrier between science and religion—“overlapping magisteria.” Two vast territories with a fluid,
To Turn the Tide, S. M. Stirling (Baen 978-1982193539, hardcover, 464pp, $28.00) August 2024 Time travel novels—recently, a trendy favorite of non-genre slipstream authors—have reached a state of incredible complexity. Multiverses, paradoxes, change wars, closed loops, and doppelgangers proliferate. This is all very entertaining, but sometimes it’s nice to read a simple, straightforward “person visits past, gets stuck, makes do” kind of book. A chrono-Robinsonade. That’s exactly what S. M.
The Jaguar Mask, Michael J. DeLuca (Stelliform 978-1-77809-260-2, 348pp, $19.00, tp) August 2024. Cover by Julia Louise Pereira. I was quite charmed by Michael J. DeLuca’s novella Night Roll, a solarpunk-adjacent fantasy set in Detroit. In his debut novel, The Jaguar Mask, DeLuca takes up a different kind of magic, but a similar kind of realism: a story of individuals and communities resisting oppression, on wounded but still generative land.
This list covers new SF/F/H print, online, and electronic periodicals (including regularly updated websites) seen by Locus magazine, focusing on those that publish fiction or reviews and criticism. To submit titles for listing on these pages, please send to Locus Publications, 655 13th St. #100, Oakland CA 94612 or email locus@locusmag.com. Bourbon Penn Erik Secker, ed. Issue No. 33, August 2024, $14.95 print/$2.99 digital/free online, three times a year, 162pp,
Blackheart Man, Nalo Hopkinson (Saga 978-1-6680-0510-1, $28.99, 384pp, hc) August 2024. Those who have been following Nalo Hopkinson’s fascinating (and Grand Master-winning) career have long been aware that a major novel titled Blackheart Man has been in the works for some time. In a Locus interview a couple of months ago, Hopkinson said she’d been working on it for more than fifteen years, and she even mentioned the book in
The Last Hour Between Worlds, Melissa Caruso (Orbit 978-0-31630-347-7, $19.99, 432pp, tp) November 2024. If I tell you that I love The Last Hour Between Worlds to pieces, that I read it when I was miserably sick and it took me entirely out of myself from the first page to the last, that’s probably not quite enough information to constitute a proper review. Melissa Caruso’s latest novel, her first departure
The Locus Selected Books by Author list has been updated on our Forthcoming Books page, with information from the September 2024 issue covering upcoming titles from genre houses slated through June 2025. Find out about your favorite authors’ upcoming books! For the complete list of books by publisher, subscribe to our print magazine or purchase the September issue in print or digital editions, available September 1, 2024. While you are
Kirkus has announced finalists for their 2024 prizes. Authors and titles of genre interest follow. Fiction The Mighty Red, Louise Erdrich (Harper) James, Percival Everett (Doubleday) Prophet Song, Paul Lynch (Atlantic) Playground, Richard Powers (Norton) Young Adult Bright Red Fruit, Safia Elhillo (Make Me A World) Other categories include Nonfiction, Picture Book, and Middle-Grade. “Each award comes with a $50,000 cash prize. Books become eligible for the prizes by receiving
Toward Eternity, Anton Hur (HarperVia 978-0-06334-448-8, 256pp, $26.99, hc) July 2024. Cover by Stephen Brayda. Initially set in a near-future Cape Town, South Africa, and eventually taking us to ever more distant times and locales, Anton Hur’s debut novel Toward Eternity begins with scientist Mali Beeko confronting the mysterious disappearance and reapparance of “Patient One.” Mali specializes in a nanotechnology treatment that cures cancer by replacing the host’s cells with
Niv: Let’s lay some groundwork, some worldbuilding, if we can borrow the term—we’ve been friends for over twenty years. I have a distinct memory of you at a party with a glittery spell book trying to convince me to help you cast a spell, much to my mother’s horror. We grew up together in overlap: neighborhood, high school, Indian parties. And yet we haven’t lived in the same state since
Kevin Hearne announced the launch of Horned Lark Press, for “novellas, short story collections, and anthologies” which are “anti-monarchist, post-capitalist, decolonized stories.” They plan to open to submissions in Spring of 2025. The first four books on the list are Hearne’s own The Squirrel on the Train and The Purloined Poodle and novella anthologies Canines and Cocktails and Death and Honey, both featuring work by Delilah S. Dawson, Chuck Wendig, and
Momma Durtt, Michael Shea (Hippocampus Press 978-1-61498-417-7, 310pp. $20.00, tp) July 2024. Cover by Tom Brown. Michael Shea (1946 – 2014) is usually noted for his World Fantasy Award-winning fantasy novel Nifft the Lean, but he is almost as well-known among horror lovers for his Lovecraftian fiction. Among a multitude of short work in this latter category is a 2012 novelette: ‘‘Momma Durtt’’. It is a good allegorical story, but
Abtahi, Olivia: Twin Flames (Lee & Low/Tu Books 9781643790435, $24.95, 368pp, formats: hardcover, audio, 08/27/2024) Young-adult fantasy novel about teenaged Argentinian Iranian twin girls living in a small town, each one very different the other. On their eighteenth birthday a neighbor’s barn mysteriously burns down, and when one of the twins discovers a djinn arising from the fire she suddenly gains strange powers and can no longer touch iron.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is holding a special election to fill the positions of president and secretary. The election follows the resignation of president Jeffe Kennedy and vice-president Chelsea Mueller, among others. Secretary Anthony W. Eichenlaub is currently interim president. Voting begins October 9, 2024. Those elected will fill out the current term (until June 30, 2025). For more information, see the SFWA site. While you
The European Science Fiction Society (ESFS) announced the Hall of Fame Awards, Achievement Awards, and winners of the Chrysalis Awards for emerging talent. Hall of Fame Awards Best Author WINNER: Adrian Tchaikovsky (UK) Pierre Bordage (France) Guido Eekhaut (Belgium) Marc Elsberg (Austria) Lanfranco Fabriani (Italy) Vesela Flamburari (Bulgaria) Adnadin Jasarevic (Montenegro/Bosnia-Herzegovina) Igor Rendić (Croatia) Marina Tena (Spain) Maxime Weber (Luxembourg) Best Artist WINNER: Iris Compiet (Netherlands) Вадим Антонюк/Vadym Antonyuk (Ukraine)
The shortlist for the 2024 Prix Utopiales (honoring the best SF published in France) has been announced. Aux ordres, Louise Carey (L’Atalante) Code Ardant, Marge Nantel (Mnémos) Sweet Harmony, Claire North (Le Bélial) L’Ost céleste, Olivier Paquet (L’Atalante) La Maison des Soleils, Alastair Reynolds (Le Bélial) The winner will selected by jury, and announced at Les Utopiales International Science Fiction Festival, to be held October 30 – November 3, 2024
Seattle Worldcon 2025 has announced a Special Hugo Award for Best Poem to be part of the Hugo ballot in 2025. The award is open to “your favorite poem within the speculative, science fiction, and fantasy genres, published in 2024, that is at least three lines.” Additionally, Seattle Worldcon 2025 has announced a Community Fund, seeded with $30,000 from DisCon III. The fund will have “four focus areas: Pacific Northwest
The winners for the 2024 Prix Rosny Aîné have been announced. The prize is awarded to SF novels and short stories written in French and published in print in 2023. Best Novel WINNER: Paideia, Claire Garand (Volte) Les Contes suspendus, Guillaume Chamanadjian (Forges Vulcan) L’Armée fantoche, Claire Duvivier (Forges Vulcan) La Cité diaphane, Anouck Faure (Argyll) Tonnerre après les ruines, Floriane Soulas (Argyll) Best Short Story WINNER: “Le Fils du fossoyeur”, Nicolas
Two debuts this week. Jennifer L. Armentrout’s Born of Blood and Ash (Blue Box Press), fourth in her Flesh and Fire series, debuts in the top five on three lists. And Ava Reid’s Lady Macbeth (Del Rey), a retelling of Shakespeare with occult elements, debuts on all four print lists compiled here, ranking from #7 to #30.
A new online SF journal, The Sengkang Sci-Fi Quarterly, launched in August. Editor-in-chief Zubin Jain tells us, We are a digital-only science fiction magazine based in Singapore, and focused on promoting speculative fiction from south-east asia. Our magazine also publishes non-fiction reviews of science fiction from south-east asia as well as profiles of regional authors. All story contributors are paid. We’ve just launched our inaugural issue that features a mix
The Melancholy of Untold History, Minsoo Kang (William Morrow 978-0-06333-750-3, $28.00, 240pp, hc) July 2024. Early in Minsoo Kang’s remarkable first novel The Melancholy of Untold History, a character known only as the historian makes an interesting observation about how civilizations tell their own stories. First, he says, come ‘‘tales of gods, monsters, and heroes,’’ followed by historical narratives of ‘‘important personages of the past who achieved great things in
CHRIS MCGRATH was born in the Bronx and has lived in and around NYC his whole life. At an early age he became interested in art, especially science fiction and fantasy. After graduating from The School of Visual Arts in NYC, Chris gave guitar lessons for several years before beginning his career in 2001. Since then he has done covers for #1 New York Times best selling authors such as:
The Redemption of Morgan Bright, Chris Panatier (Angry Robot 978-1-9152-028-95, $18.99, 416pp, pb) April 2024. Cover by Sarah O’Flaherty. Chris Panatier’s The Redemption of Morgan Bright is a great psychological thriller full of mystery that slowly morphs into a full-blown horror novel. At once the story of a sister looking for answers, a narrative about a crumbling psyche, and a tale that gets progressively more mysterious with each new revelation,
Aman J. Bedi, Kavithri (Gollancz 5/24) This enchanting debut South Asian steampunk/fantasy novel, first in the Ghosts of Ethuran series, is inspired by the landscapes and society of colonial and post-colonial India, and follows a young outcast woman who dreams of attending a magical academy and gaining enough power to raise improve the lives and status of her people. Tobias S. Buckell & Dave Klecha,
Long Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan (Orbit 978-0-35652-249-4, £20.00, 440pp, hc) August 2024. Cover by Syd Mills. Sarah Rees Brennan has had a varied and interesting career to date writing YA novels, including tie-ins for The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and Fate: the Winx Saga in addition to her original work. Long Live Evil is her first novel aimed primarily at an adult audience. It is simultaneously a wholehearted embrace
The Universe Delivers the Enemy You Need, Adam Marek (Comma Press 978-1-91269-775-5, £9.99, 244pp, tp) March 2024. A large chunk of the 21 stories in Adam Marek’s new collection, The Universe Delivers the Enemy You Need – a magnificent title that’s sadly not shared by a single piece in the book – plays on similar concerns raised by Joel Dane in The Ragpicker: that technology is putting a significant dent
The Daughters’ War, Christopher Buehlman (Tor 978-1-25088-767-2, $28.99, 416pp, hc) June 2024. Christopher Buehlman’s The Daughters’ War is the rare prequel that makes you want to pick up the first book – The Blacktongue Thief, in this case – again so that you can read it with all that you now know about this world and one of its characters. It helps, too, that both books are damn good (and
Sci-fi, Magick, Queer L.A.: Sexual Science and the Imagi-Nation, a new science fiction exhibit, opens August 22, 2024 at the USC Fisher Museum of Art in Los Angeles, CA. The exhibit focuses on: …Los Angeles from the late 1930s through 1960s and looks both forward and backward to follow the lives of writers, publishers, and early sci-fi enthusiasts, including progressive communities such as the LA Science Fantasy Society, the
Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch (Knopf) has won the Fiction category of the 2024 Indiana Author Awards. Unfadeable by Maurice Broaddus (Katherine Tegen) won in the Middle Grade category. The awards “celebrate the best books by Indiana authors written in eight different categories and published during the previous two years.” Winners are chosen by a panel of judges, including “former winners, writers, educators, scholars, local bookstore owners and librarians. Each winner receives $5,000, “a hand-crafted limestone-and-steel
The West Passage, Jared Pechaček (Tordotcom 978-1-25088-483-1, 384pp, $28.99, hc) July 2024. Cover by Jared Pechaček. I went into Jared Pechaček’s debut novel, The West Passage, with absolutely no idea what I was getting into beyond a cool cover. Pechaček’s been a delightful person to follow on various social media for some time now – sharing illustrations and fashion commentary, and one of the hosts of the lovely Tolkeinalia podcast
Clarkesworld 5/24 The May issue of Clarkesworld opens with a charming story, which also offers up some touching emotional moments. “Fishy” by Alice Towey sees a daughter tasked with going through her father’s office after his death, trying to track down a prototype he was working on that would provide clean water to millions. His shifty business partner is after the prototype as well, but it turns out her father
The Locus Bestsellers for May include top titles: The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo (Flatiron), Dune by Frank Herbert (Ace), A Court of Frost and Starlight by Sarah J. Maas (Bloomsbury US), and Warhammer 40,000: Eisenhorn: The Omnibus by Dan Abnett (Black Library).
Anderson, Kevin J. & Morris, Jeffrey: Persephone (WordFire Press 9781680576207, $16.99, 292pp, formats: trade paperback, hardcover, ebook, 08/20/2024) SF novel. Colonists on the ark-ship Odyssey awaken to discover the ship’s tech has been damaged. Also, their new planet is barely habitable, and has a mysterious giant geoglyph that might be a massive ore deposit — or a message. Burton, Gabi: Drown Me with Dreams (Bloomsbury USA 9781547610419, $19.99, 432pp,
Among several debuts this week, three titles rank prominently. Hannah Nicole Maehrer’s Apprentice to the Villain (Entangled: Red Tower) ranks #1 or #2 on three lists. Harper L. Woods’ The Coven (Bramble) ranks #2 or #3 on two lists, and lower on a third. And James S.A. Corey’s The Mercy of Gods (Orbit), first volume in The Captive’s War, ranks on four lists, as high as #8 or #9 on
MONIQUILL BLACKGOOSE is an enrolled member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe and a lineal descendant of Ousamequin Massasoit. She writes extensively about depictions of Indigenous and Indigenous-coded characters in SF, and is an active member of steampunk and cosplay communities. She studied cognitive psychology, and worked for several years in a children’s home before becoming a phlebotomist. Debut novel Cygenic was published in 2020 under the name Monique Poirier. To
The Ragpicker, Joel Dane (Meerkat 978-1-94615-459-0, $17.95, 290pp, p) July 2024. If you believe the advertising campaigns from Meta and Apple (especially Apple’s slick ads for its Vision Pro), virtual and physical realities will harmoniously exist together. It’s a utopian attitude that conflicts with the often dystopian vision presented by the genre, where VR, with its immersive pods and body suits, is a means of escaping the harsh realities of
These Deathless Shores, P.H. Low (Orbit 978-0-31656-920-0, $19.99, 464pp, tp) July 2024. I’m not quite sure what I make of These Deathless Shores, the debut novel from Malaysian American author P.H. Low. Low, whose short fiction and poetry have garnered them recognition, has written a novel that takes as its central concern the problem of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and the island (‘‘Neverland’’) outside the reach of the ordinary world
In the Belly of the Whale, Michael Flynn (CAEZIK SF & Fantasy 978-1647101015, trade paperback, 400pp, $19.99) July 2024 Why is the field of fantastika like Walt Whitman? Because both are “large and contain multitudes.” (And also, parts of it contradict other parts.) Seriously, though, for at least the past twenty years or thereabouts, the output of fantastika has been so large that no single reader can keep up with
The Academic Conference on Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 was held on June 8-9 in Toronto ON. Keynote speakers were Larissa Lai and Nicholas Ruddick, with remarks from the organization’s chair, Allan Weiss. Held quasi-annually since 1995, ACCSFF features papers and panel discussions on “all aspects of the field,” with a long association with the Toronto Public Library’s Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy. This year, ACCSFF
Diabolical Plots 5/24 Beneath Ceaseless Skies 5/2/24, 5/16/24 GigaNotoSaurus 5/1/24 The latest from Diabolical Plots includes the aptly named “How to Kill the Giant Living Brain You Found In Your Mother’s Basement After She Died: An Interactive Guide” by Alex Sobel, which follows Grace as she tries to process her mother’s death while also dealing with the strange abomination that is the living, possibly telepathic brain her mother somehow brought
The organizers of the Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree Awards) have announced updates and changes, including a streamlined process, and plans to move forward with the award for work published in 2024, after being “on pause” for 2022 and 2023 publications. We will continue in the tradition of the award, honoring and promoting recent works that explore and expand our ideas of gender. But we’re improving how we do that,
We are a READER-SUPPORTED VENUE! That means you!
If you enjoy our book reviews, news, recommendations, and resources… if you value keeping up on new books and staying in touch with the field…
Support our work via Locus Patreon and show the love, so we can keep doing the magazine, the website, and the Locus Awards! Books, short fiction, art, conventions, publishing industry news, international reports, recommended reading lists – don’t let them disappear!
