IN THIS ISSUE

April 2018 • Issue 687 • Vol. 80 • No. 4

51st Year of Publication • 30-Time Hugo Winner

Cover and Interview Designs by Francesca Myman

Interviews

Jeff VanderMeer: Blur the Lines

Tananarive Due: Sense of Mission

Celebrating 50 Years of Locus

Kate Wilhelm (1928 - 2018)

Appreciations by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Leslie What, Ray Vukcevich, Eileen Gunn, Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann, James Patrick Kelly, and James Frenkel

Main Stories

Bergin Wins Tiptree Award • Changes at Tor • 2017 Stoker Awards Winners • Davis Wins 2018 Dell Award

The Data File

2018 Carnegie and Greenaway Medal Shortlists • Kitschies Finalists • Philip K. Dick Award Judges • PEN News • Asimov’s Readers’ Awards Finalists • Analog AnLab Awards Finalists • 2018 Compton Crook Award Finalists • More Harrassment Accusations • Amazon News • Magazine News • Awards News • World Conventions News • Announcements • Financial News • International Rights

People & Publishing

Notes on milestones, awards, books sold, etc., with news this issue about Nick Mamatas, Nalo Hopkinson, Juliet Marillier, Jack Skillingstead, Kevin J. Anderson & Steven L. Sears, and many others

Commentary: Kameron Hurley: Writing is Hard, and That’s OK

Locus Looks at Books

Short Fiction Reviews by Gardner Dozois

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/1/18, 2/15/18; The Father of Lies, K.J. Parker.

Short Fiction Reviews by Rich Horton

Beneath Ceaseless Skies, 2/1/18, 2/15/18, 3/1/18; Lightspeed 2/18, 3/18; Clarkesworld 1/18, 2/18; Galaxy’s Edge 1/18; Kaleidotrope Winter ’18; Apex 2/18.

Reviews by Gary K. Wolfe

Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller; The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 12, Jonathan Strahan, ed.; The Tangled Lands, Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias S. Buckell.

Reviews by Liz Bourke

Gunpowder Moon, David Pedreira; A Study in Honor, Claire O’Dell; The Wonder Engine, T. Kingfisher; The Empress of Timbra, Karen Healey & Robyn Fleming.

Reviews by Adrienne Martini

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, Kelly Robson; Paradox Bound, Peter Clines; The Sky Is Yours, Chandler Klang Smith.

Reviews by Carolyn Cushman

The Wind in His Heart, Charles de Lint; Tess of the Road, Rachel Hartman; Lady Henterman’s Wardrobe, Marshall Ryan Maresca; Torn, Rowenna Miller; Into the Fire, Elizabeth Moon; Cast in Deception, Michelle Sagara; A Problematic Paradox, Eliot Sappingfield.

Reviews by Divers Hands: Russell Letson, Colleen Mondor & Lila Garrott

Phoresis, Greg Egan; The Possible, Tara Altebrando; Beasts Made of Night, Tochi Onyebuchi; Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance, Ruth Emmie Lang.

Audiobook Reviews by Amy Goldschlager

Bancroft; The City of Brass, S.A. Chakraborty; Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr, John Crowley; Spin: The Audiobook Musical, Neil Fishman & Harvey Edelman; Angel Catbird, Margaret Atwood; The Sky Is Yours, Chandler Klang Smith.

Special Features

Photo Story: Galactic Philadelphia • Spotlight on: Michelle Sagara • Spotlight on: Sarah Pinsker • 2017 British Book Summary

Conventions

StokerCon • FOGcon

Listings

Magazines Received: February • Books Received: February • British Books Received: January • Bestsellers

New & Notable

Terry Bisson: This Month in History

Locus Letters

Other Obituaries

Karen Anderson • Appreciation by Astrid Anderson Bear • Peter Nicholls • Appreciation by Gregory Benford • Mary Rosenblum • Appreciation by Gardner Dozois • Stephen Hawking • Bill Crider

Editorial Matters

50th Anniversary • Visitors with Gifts • Locus Poll Deadline • This Issue/Next Issues

Photo List and Ad List

Masthead

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Jeffrey Scott VanderMeer was born July 7, 1968 in Belfont PA, and grew up in the Fiji Islands (where his parents worked for the Peace Corps), Ithaca NY, and Gainesville FL, where he attended the University of Florida for three years. He went to Clarion in 1992.

VanderMeer’s first story of genre interest was ‘‘Night Prayers’’, appearing when he was in high school in 1986; early work also appeared in Asimov’s and Weird Tales. His first book was self-published collection The Book of Frog (1989), and other collections include The Book of Lost Places (1996), Secret Life (2004), Secret Lives (2006), The Surgeon’s Tale and Other Stories (2007, with Cat Rambo), and World Fantasy Award finalist The Third Bear (2010). His novelette The Situation (2009) was a Shirley Jackson Award nominee, and was adapted as a web comic with a script by VanderMeer and art by Eric Orchard. Some of his poetry was collected in Lyric of the Highway Mariner (1991) and The Day Dali Died: Poetry and Clash Fiction (2003).

VanderMeer’s pioneering New Weird series, Ambergris, began with Sturgeon Memorial Award-winning novella Dradin, in Love (1996) and continued with World Fantasy Award winner ‘‘The Transformation of Martin Lake’’ (1998), novellas ‘‘The Strange Case of X’’ (1999) and ‘‘The Hoegbotton Guide to the Early History of Ambergris by Duncan Shriek’’ (1999), all collected in City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris (2001; updated with new stories in 2002). Other works in that world include Shriek: An Afterword (2006) and World Fantasy and Nebula Award nominee Finch (2009). He also published World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Award nominee Veniss Underground (2003), and a tie-in Predator novel in 2008.

His series of surreal ecological novels, the Southern Reach trilogy – Nebula Award and Shirley Jackson Award winner Annihilation (2014), Authority (2014), and Acceptance (2014) – garnered impressive commercial and critical attention, and the trilogy as a whole was nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Director Alex Garland adapted Annihilation as a major feature film starring Oscar Isaac, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, and Natalie Portman, released in February 2018.

VanderMeer’s latest novel is the national bestseller Borne (2017), set in a postapocalyptic city terrorized by a giant flying bear, which LitHub hailed as the best-reviewed SF/F novel of the year; he also published related story The Strange Bird (2017; print edition 2018). Environmental thriller Hummingbird Salamander is forthcoming (and has been optioned by Netflix), as is his debut YA, Jonathan Lambshead and the Golden Sphere.

VanderMeer has been a prolific editor since the 1980s, when he founded The Ministry of Whimsy Press while still in high school, and in 1989 began publishing ‘zine Jabberwocky, which ran for two issues. He co-edited three volumes of the Leviathan anthology series, including the Dick Award nominated and World Fantasy Award-winning third volume (2002, with Forrest Aguirre). He edited anthologies Album Zutique (2003) and Hugo Award finalist The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases (2003, with Mark Roberts).

With wife Ann VanderMeer (née Kennedy, married 2002), he founded a Best American Fantasy anthology series, which published volumes in 2007, 2008, and 2010. They have co-edited numerous anthologies and non-fiction books, including Fast Ships, Black Sails (2008), The New Weird (2008), World Fantasy Award finalist Steampunk (2008), Last Drink Bird Head (2008), Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded (2010), World Fantasy Award nominee The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (2011), World Fantasy Award winner The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (2011), Odd? (2011), The Time Traveler’s Almanac (2014), feminist SF anthology Sisters of the Revolution (2015), The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), and forthcoming volumes The Big Book of Modern Fantasy and The Big Book of Classic Fantasy. They co-wrote humorous volume The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals (2010), and together run e-book publisher Cheeky Frawg Books (which has published work by Karin Tidbeck, Amos Tutuola, and Leena Krohn, among others). They also founded website Weird Fiction Review <weirdfictionreview.com>. They were nominated for a World Fantasy Award in the Special Award, Professional category in 2013.

VanderMeer’s non-fiction includes essay collection Why Should I Cut Your Throat & Other Nonfiction (2002), Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer (2009), Monstrous Creatures (2011), and The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature (2011, with S.J. Chambers), and sequel The Steampunk User’s Manual (2014, with Desirina Boskovich). Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction (2013) won a Locus Award and BSFA Award and was a Hugo Award finalist. He has taught at Clarion and is co-director of the the teen workshop Shared Worlds, now in its eleventh year. He was the 2016-2017 writer in residence for Hobart and William Smith Colleges in upstate New York.

The VanderMeers live in Tallahassee FL.

•

‘‘The experience of having Annihilation released as a film has been very surreal all the way through. It’s the first time I’ve had something adapted, and the director had a very particular vision. It’s surreal having all that stuff happen, and having no control or input. The movie launched last weekend. It took me some time to reconcile myself to the fact that the film is a unique vision, where someone took elements of my work and made something that’s true to the tone and texture, but also deviates a lot from my vision. I saw the film for the third time this last week, and I have to be honest, I thought it was quite beautiful and amazing, but it took a long time for me to get to that point. The director had to decide what would be strange and what would be familiar in ways different from the book. There’s stuff about the characters up front that I would say is more ordinary than the book, but later on the film gets more surreal than the book. That’s the tradeoff. Other things are translations, like the bear in the film. He decided he needed a recurring animal. The moaning creature is in other books, so I can see why he would think about the moaning creature, and create the bear. The first few times I saw the bear, I thought, ‘That’s very different from the book.’ When I saw it again, I thought, ‘That’s a reaction to the book.’ It’s a transformation. At the end of the day, I think it’s better to have an interesting and challenging version that’s true to the texture of the book but different, than to have something that was spot-on, but maybe cheesier. In many ways, it’s like a different expedition into Area X than the one in the book.

‘‘But, having been through that process, I do want to be more involved in future. Going forward on other projects like Hummingbird Salamander, the next novel, which was optioned by Netflix, I’ll be taking a larger role there, as an executive producer and a consultant. Some of the other adaptations that are coming out I can’t really talk about yet, but I will also be involved in their creation. I’m trying to find the right distance, because I don’t necessarily want to be in a writers’ room, even as it’s exciting to think creatively in this area. The creative consultant role is a good one for me, where I can have creative input but not get sucked into the process to such a degree that I stop being a novelist. Mostly, I want to write books.

‘‘The problem I have right now is whatever the opposite of writers block is. I’ve got like 20 notebooks worth of stuff, and if I just work on those, I’ve got 15 years’ worth of novels and stories. Because of making contacts in Hollywood, my subconscious has been routing some of this stuff away from fiction. Some ideas are better suited for TV or movies, and so I just do treatments instead. To some extent, I don’t care if they get made. I mean, I do... but I don’t. The main thing is to relieve the pressure in my brain. Once I write something down in that form, my brain seems to think it’s gotten resolution. Then my film agent sends this stuff out. Some of it looks like it’s going to stick. It’s been nice to have that outlet – to think of these ideas in terms of what media they suit best. I haven’t done dozens or anything, but there are at least three media projects making the rounds. One’s very science fiction – what I think of as the ultimate space opera. Space opera is very weird at its core; the best of it gets away with deeply commercial things disguised by familiar tropes. I wrote what you might call a mini-novel, 100 pages with scene fragments and actual dialogue and stuff, so it’s pretty complete. It just suited that format better. I’m a pretty visual writer, so it’s natural for me to take a lot of technique from film and TV and translate it back into fiction, anyway. Film gets a bad rap for introducing things like jump cuts into fiction, but there is so much amazing and subtle technique in films that can be translated. But I’m still mostly working on actual novels.

‘‘I’ve been a full-time writer since 2007. It took a while to adjust to that psychological aspect of not getting a regular paycheck, although I think I’m used to it by now. My process is such that I’ll spend the afternoon taking a hike or going to the gym, and that’s prime thinking-about-writing time. I have more time to think about things, so I don’t have to spend as much time writing it. I wake up in the morning and write for two hours, then take notes and think about what I’m writing, and repeat the process. That seems to create a lot of words. There’s a certain pressure point where I feel I’ve thought about it enough, and I have to write it, but I’m not one of those people who has to sit down and write a certain number of words each day. So long as I’m reenacting or playing out the story in my mind, it’s almost like I am writing. I just need the connection in my head. There are ways to find separation, so while I was working on this last novel, I had another story I wanted to work on, and every night before bed I would write in my journal next to the bed for 15 minutes. If you do that for five months, you get it done. That’s worked really well, too.

An exclusive look at art from the expanded Wonderbook, forthcoming July 2018

‘‘One of my first story sales was to Asimov’s when I was very young, so I’ve been writing professionally for 30 or 35 years. It’s a weird thing for me, because for seven years before Annihilation came out, I was a full-time writer, and I thought it was a big deal, because it’s hard to do that without being on the bestseller list. Now people are saying, ‘This cult novelist has finally made it big.’ I do understand that Area X is an order of magnitude different, and it’s very satisfying. You don’t often get that opportunity in your mid-forties. When my second novel, Shriek, came out, I had a day job that was very lucrative, and then I had all this royalty money coming in, and I kind of lost my mind. I literally did the thing where you buy 13 pairs of shoes and other stupid shit. It was a stupid year. The point of that is, when the Annihilation movie stuff hit, I had already had that stupid moment – that period of adjustment – including the period where you suddenly go from being in the small press to being published by a large commercial publisher, with a lot more reader interaction. That actually blocked me the first time. I’ve already gone through all of that stuff, though. When Annihilation and the Southern Reach trilogy hit big, it was just fun. Readers have been great because there’s enough ambiguity in the series that they bring their own fan art to it, and their own fan fiction. We have this imaginative play going on between readers and me online, which is really cool. With Borne, it’s even more so, because I gave everyone the go-ahead to do fan art and was encouraging them, so even before the book came out there were all these depictions of Borne and of the giant bear Mord, and that just proliferated when I was on book tour. It’s useful when thinking about the Annihilation film, because there have already been these visual translations of what I was doing that felt like they were mine, but also other people’s.

‘‘The Southern Reach trilogy has been very successful, but it’s divisive in some ways. I know why – it’s got a lot of ambiguity to it. It’s also populated with characters who can’t connect. That’s really what it’s about. With Borne I wanted to write a novel about characters who are trying to connect, and trying to foster relationships and survive (and do more than survive) in a postapocalyptic setting. Borne also has a more traditional three-act structure. You don’t learn everything, but you learn a lot more than you do in the Southern Reach. I think that’s why Borne has continued selling well past the traditional sales cycle, and seems beloved by readers – more so than Southern Reach, where the meaning comes out in a different way. The Area X books are meant to be re-read, because by the time you finish Acceptance, Annihilation is a totally different book, and how you feel about the characters, even by the end of the second book, totally changes. I wanted to create a complexity of character in a different way there. I’ve been really fortunate in that so many readers have been willing to take that journey. Now that I have the Southern Reach and the giant flying bear out of the way, those are the last possible hurdles in terms of reader resistance, I hope! The flying bear in Borne didn’t really bother my publisher, once I contextualized it in terms of things like anime. Animated stuff is a big influence on that novel. I debated for a long time about whether the bear was going to fly, and decided the bear could at least fly for part of the book. I was thinking of Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, where she never explains whether the woman can fly or not, and I was always struck by that, because I thought it was a really interesting way to handle it. People are split between those who love Borne and those who love the bear more. Even though the bear is terrible, the bear is consistent. The bear is very honest, let’s put it that way. It isn’t devious in any way whatsoever. The character of Borne, this mysterious creature, is harder to get a handle on.

‘‘Borne, especially early on, is based on conversations I had with my stepdaughter. When I entered the household, she was six. When Borne says ‘long mouse’ after he sees a picture of a ferret, that’s something my daughter said when she saw a local ferret walking around. I thought that was hilarious. That’s why the book took a while to write. I had to have some distance from that relationship in order to write the book. I also have to give a lot of credit to my wife Ann. I come from an almost sub-nuclear family. The disconnection among the characters in the Southern Reach is real to me, in terms of what my family is like. I mean no disrespect. But Ann has such a large extended family that a second cousin can pass away, and she’ll be distraught. To me a second cousin is like a space alien – I don’t understand that. I had a lot of conversations with Ann about certain scenes, and how characters would feel or react, or what their emotional response would be, and those were helpful.

‘‘In terms of the ecological themes, the fact of the matter is, if I’m working on a novel, I’m working on it for a long time. It can’t be too didactic or preachy because I have to live with that tone the whole time. So I’ll divert that impulse into short stories. I have a short story that’s very satirical and ongoing called ‘Trumpland’. That was fine, because I wasn’t living with that for a long time. Even in the Southern Reach, which are definitely environmental books, you’re meant to come at them from different points of view and different perspectives. There is an issue that Paolo Bacigalupi has also raised, about the rate of the strange versus the rate of the familiar. Early on, I was very formally experimental in dealing with these subjects. That combination means that you’re limiting your audience, which is fine – you shouldn’t change your work for an audience, if it’s personal to you. But at the same time, you want to make a change and make a difference, and find the right ratio of the strange to the familiar to reach the maximum number of people so you can affect change, while keeping your integrity as a writer. For me it’s been a natural progression. I did all of that formal experimental stuff early, and the experiments now are fairly invisible to the reader. My stuff has become more and more accessible, just because my curiosity about types of storytelling has changed. I haven’t really had to think about my themes consciously – the themes are hardwired into me.

‘‘On the other hand, I just finished work on an expanded version of Wonderbook, that creative writing guide I did in full-color. It’s got another 64 pages and is out in July. A lot of that is devoted to talking about environmental storytelling, and acknowledging that I meet many college-aged readers who want more direct, didactic fiction on the subject, but also new ways of looking at the world through fiction.

‘‘Much of the new Wonderbook stuff came from that writer-in- residence gig I did in upstate New York. They have this abandoned naval station by one of the lakes that is home to these weird white deer. So there’s a module that both writers and scientists can create useful fictions around stories about the white deer, most of it fantastical or science-fictional. I find it useful to put scientists and fiction writers in communication and to blur the lines in terms of storytelling. Create these sedimentary layers in the fiction, that’s a bit like the idea of ‘terroir’ explored in the Southern Reach novels.

‘‘I’ve been resistant to the terms ‘cli-fi’ or ‘climate fiction,’ but that resistance has crumbled a bit. My initial reaction was like a lot of science fiction people: ‘Why do we need this subgenre in science fiction?’ But in actual fact, climate fiction allows an umbrella for anyone who’s writing fiction to write about this. There’s no reason why someone who’s writing contemporary fiction with no speculative element can’t grapple with climate change, because the effects are all around us. We can see more of a dialogue between quote-unquote science fiction writers and mainstream literary writers because of this issue. We can have a different sense of community than we might have had in the past. We shouldn’t be territorial about it. I’m not one of those people who wants to defend a certain amount of territory. I want to have communications with different creative people and readers, and sometimes, when it’s necessary, speak their language rather than impose mine on them.

‘‘It’s important to me because there are a certain number of genre readers who bounce off my stuff, as well as a set of literary readers who think it’s too weird. It’s actually worked out well with my publisher FSG that we’ve found that sweet spot of trying to get a set of readers from both camps, and make those barriers disappear a little bit. I’ve been very lucky in that regard, because it’s sometimes literally just the entry point for the reader through things like cover design or backcover description, that makes the difference between whether the reader is enticed or turned off. If there had been a dark haunted lighthouse on the cover of Annihilation, I doubt as many general readers would have picked it up. Aesthetic decisions in publishing are often decisions about accessibility.

‘‘I always told FSG that I was going to write some short fiction around Borne, and then Strange Bird wound up being a novella, and it was very personal to me. It came out in a very passionate, compact manner. The publisher was just planning on doing ebooks of that short fiction, but the editor liked Strange Bird so much he decided to put it out as a trade paperback. As much as the Southern Reach has been really successful, that wasn’t done for a hugely commercial reason. If it was about being commercial he’d be pushing for more Annihilation fiction. FSG has been a joy to work with. They’re really interested in supporting whatever I do, and finding the best way to put it out.

‘‘Hummingbird Salamander is another book I am working on for FSG. Netflix bought the rights, with Michael Sugar, who won an Oscar for Spotlight, as a producer. It’s basically an environmental thriller set in the present day, with a tiny bit of a speculative element. It’s about a software manager who’s going along with her daily life, and one day she gets a key to a storage locker from a woman who died the week before, whom she thinks she has no connection to. She goes there and finds a taxidermed hummingbird and salamander, and when she investigates further she finds they’re among the rarest species on Earth, so the fact that they exist in this form means there’s been some wildlife trapping going on. She follows that lead, because she can’t set it aside, and this kind of upends her life. She falls down this rabbit hole of investigating ecoterrorism and wildlife trafficking, and it allows me to explore these themes more directly. We talk about being didactic, and sometimes it depends on what the form is. In this case she’s actively investigating this ecological mystery because she’s so fascinated by it. It turns out she does have a connection to the dead woman, she just didn’t realize it, and there are all sorts of other plot complications leading to what, I hope, is a pretty amazing conclusion. It’s a much more stripped down style than some of my other books, with a first-person narrator. She’s a former bodybuilder. If you’ve ever seen a bodybuilder who in middle age is still working out, but who has relaxed a bit – she’s still a big hulking woman who doesn’t realize how imposing she is. I thought that would be really interesting to write – taking some of the things I’ve done before and putting it in a different context. I’m going to finish it probably late summer.

‘‘I have a YA novel I’ve finished too for FSG Kids. The Adventures of Jonathan Lambshead is the series. I edited these Dr. Thackery T. Lambshead anthologies, and this series allowed me to write in a fantasy world I already knew about, because I’d written the whole backstory for Dr. Lambshead for the two anthologies. The series is about his grandson inheriting his mansion and finding all kinds of bizarre things there, including a door that leads to another world. It allows me to comment on animal rights a lot, because there are talking animals in the other world he goes to. I was always confused about Narnia, because I didn’t understand why the talking animals would overthrow a fascist dictator and then allow a monarchy to rule over them instead. I just thought they should overthrow everything. I think animals would likely be communists – or ascribe to an ideology we haven’t thought of yet.

‘‘FSG also bought a collection. They want mostly originals, so I have several things I’m working on. Again, it’s the notebook I write in before I go to sleep, so I have several pieces, and those are mostly uncanny fiction. Strictly speaking it will be a collection of weird fiction. After that I have a novel called Drone Love that I’m working on, that I’m really excited about. It’s set in the future, and I can’t say much else about it, except I’ve never seen this particular concept done before in fiction.

‘‘It feels like I’m writing several books a year, but that’s just a little logjam. I love to write, so that’s not the hardship. The hardship is the movie coming along, and suddenly I went from being a hermit to attending a Hollywood premiere and everything. I hadn’t talked to anyone other than my wife and my cat for six months, and suddenly I’m in a photo with Tessa Thompson with this frozen smile on my face, trying to figure out what’s going on.

‘‘As you get older as a writer, you have to take some steps to protect yourself. I don’t really drink anymore. Not even social drinking. I’m never up past midnight. I’m at the gym every other day. Those things go a long way. I feel like every hour I put into the gym, I get five creative hours out of it. Even on days when I don’t feel like going, I go, because it gives a good return. I’m working on a lot of stuff and I like it. I’m just humbled to have these opportunities. It’s all highly unlikely, isn’t it?’’

–Jeff VanderMeer

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Tananarive Priscilla Due was born January 5, 1966 in Tallahassee FL, daughter of civil rights lawyer John D. Due, Jr. and leading civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due. She grew up in Miami, and attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism before getting her MA in English from Leeds University, where she studied Nigerian literature. She worked as a journalist for the Miami Herald after college, wrote full-time for 15 years, and has more recently turned to teaching. She taught an Afrofuturism class at UCLA for many years, and her new class on black horror, ‘‘The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and Black Horror Aesthetic’’, has garnered a great deal of media attention. She has also taught at Antioch University, Spelman College, and the Clarion Workshop. She was inducted into the Medill School of Journalism’s Hall of Achievement in 2010.

Due met author Steven Barnes in 1997, and they were married in 1998. They have collaborated on novels and many screenplays, and together wrote and produced short zombie film Danger Word (2013).

Due’s debut novel was Stoker Award finalist The Between (1995), and other standalones include International Horror Guild Award finalist The Good House (2003) and Joplin’s Ghost (2005). The African Immortals series is Stoker Award finalist My Soul to Keep (1997), International Horror Guild Award nominee and American Book Award winner The Living Blood (2001), Blood Colony (2008), and My Soul to Take (2011).

With husband Steven Barnes she wrote the Zombie series: Devil’s Wake (2012) and Domino Falls (2013). She wrote historical novel The Black Rose (2000) and non-fiction Freedom in the Family (2003, with Patricia Stephens Due). With her husband and actor Blair Underwood she wrote four books in the Tennyson Hardwick series, beginning with Casanegra (2007); second volume In the Night of the Heat (2008) won an NAACP Image Award.

Her story ‘‘Ghost Summer’’ (2008) won a Kindred Award, and ‘‘Herd Immunity’’ (2014) was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Some of her short fiction was collected in Ghost Summer (2015), winner of the British Fantasy Award.

Due lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their son.

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‘‘When I started publishing, it was on the heels of Terry McMillan and the success of Waiting to Exhale. My entrée to publishing wasn’t so much through science fiction and fantasy as it was through this black books renaissance in the ’90s. There were a lot of contracts going out, and a lot of writers getting opportunities. We used to get a tour for the paperback and another tour for the hardcover in those days. My first experiences with readers were almost exclusively at black bookstores, where black booksellers would handsell my books. People weren’t accustomed to reading horror or science fiction by black writers, so they were a little resistant to reading my books, but the booksellers were really passionate, and I built my audience. By the time I attended my first Horror Writers Association event, that was the first time I had been at an event where it was primarily white genre readers. It was like going to a reunion of the other side of the family you hadn’t met yet. I had all these new cousins, and it was great. I met Harlan Ellison that year. It was two different worlds, really. That has also probably contributed to my not being as involved in the community, because for many years my publisher would tour me at black-themed events, and they didn’t know as much about the genre community. In 1997 at Clark Atlanta University I attended a conference called ‘The African-American Fantastic Imagination Explorations in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror,’ where I met Octavia E. Butler, my now-husband Steven Barnes, and Jewelle Gomez. That was the first time those two worlds had crossed – people who love genre and people who are also black. It was a very eye-opening and jarring experience. I have come to discover over the years that genre readers come in all shapes and sizes and colors, and are distributed all over the world.

‘‘At the beginning of my career I was frustrated by the way my appearances were limited to one audience. I didn’t understand why that was, and I asked about it. I came to learn that publishers could set me up for a signing at a Barnes & Noble, but that bookseller doesn’t know who I am, and they’re not going to hand sell and tell everybody they have to come, so I might not have anybody in the audience. Whereas if they send me to a black bookstore, even readers who don’t know anything about horror would come because I was a new exciting black writer, and that was just the way things were. I could wish that everybody knew my name, but the fact of the matter was that people did not know my name. Up until very recently a lot of genre readers still did not know my name. The turning point came when I had more short stories republished in magazines like Lightspeed and Nightmare. John Joseph Adams has made a huge difference in terms of people discovering my work. I learned very early that it was a waste of time to be frustrated by being labeled a black anything. I was lucky to be publishing as a black anything at that point. Someone like Octavia E. Butler, who won a MacArthur and has been so influential, at this point a lot of people refer to her as a science fiction writer and not a black science-fiction writer. It is what it is, and I have no objection to being labeled a black speculative fiction writer, because it’s true, not just in terms of my skin color but in terms of the work I write. I center black characters. I involve a lot of black history, or at least drop some black history in what I write. I’m a black speculative fiction writer and I’m also a speculative fiction writer, and I think those two things can coexist happily.

‘‘I do enjoy the idea of being an inspiration. It’s always fun to encounter a new black reader who has never been interested in science fiction, because they didn’t see themselves reflected, or they thought they wouldn’t be reflected. People of color have been reflected in speculative fiction for some time now, but there’s still a perception that it’s not for them. Then they discover Butler, they discover me, they discover Nnedi Okorafor, they discover N.K. Jemisin, and their eyes light up. It’s like a whole new universe. If I had known about Butler’s work when I started finding my identity as a writer, I would have wasted a lot less time trying to write to fit a canon that was mostly white male writers. By the time I was in grad school, at the University of Leeds in England as a Rotary Foundation scholar, I was writing white male protagonists and epiphany stories without much plot or suspense, because that was what I’d been taught. If a Butler novel like Kindred had slipped in there, I would have said, ‘Wait a minute! I can write as a black woman.’ When I started my first novel The Between, it was an act of courage to write a black character. It was a male character, so I was still writing male, but at least I was moving closer to understanding that I had a story to tell, and that’s the important thing. When you don’t see yourself reflected, you know you have stories, but you don’t know who would be interested in those stories. Even in black literature, a lot of the most acclaimed writers, like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, were writing about a rural Southern experience. I grew up in Miami, and it was suburban, not rural. I’d never read any black suburban fiction in my life. How would I know there was a market for black suburban fiction? So I wrote about a middle class family in a suburban neighborhood, living their middle-class lives, when a supernatural element creeps in, aggravated by a white supremacist. That was the plot of my first novel. Once I realized I could just do that, that I could draw from my family’s civil rights history, and that it was okay to write about the suburbs, that made a big difference.

‘‘I grew up with a very close-knit family. I have two younger sisters. We’re each about two years apart. I’m the eldest. My father is a civil rights lawyer who worked in community relations in Miami. My late mother, Patricia Stephens Due, was a civil rights activists in her youth throughout the ’60s, and was arrested many times. She was tear-gassed, and wore dark glasses her entire adult life because she had sensitivity to light after a tear gassing. We were a family with a sense of mission. One of my earliest memories is my parents setting up a campaign headquarters in their house for McGovern, marching and protesting. There are pictures of my sister being pushed in a baby stroller by Ralph Abernathy, Dr. King’s right-hand man, during a protest in the early ’70s. My sisters and I are still best friends. The loss of my mother has been super hard on me. I got so much encouragement from her. That’s part of the reason family as a theme shows up in so much of my work – because they gave me so much. Every year for my birthday my mother had a big fat Writer’s Market hardcover book waiting for me – this was back before the internet, so the way you found a publisher was to flip through the book. She believed in my dream. If I wrote a short story she would Xerox it and distribute it at our church. In some ways, I would’ve had to try to fail. I was so set up for success, because they believed in me so strongly, and there was that sense of mission.

‘‘I did have a period where I got lost in terms of mission. Who was I writing for, and what should I be writing about? That’s the flip side of coming from respected parents. In a college history course, I might have a book where I could flip to the index and find my mother’s name. I hesitated to write horror because I was aware of that legacy – even though my mother loved horror. That’s the ironic part. She’s the one who really sparked my interest in horror. From a young age, she had us watching these creature-feature movies, the Universal Wolfman, Dracula, all those classic movies I learned to love at a young age. She gave me my first Stephen King novel, The Shining, when I was 16.

‘‘Once I read Stephen King, I was off to the races, but even so, I worried, at first unconsciously, but later it became conscious. In a creative writing workshop at Northwestern University, we were all going around talking about who our favorite writers were. I said Toni Morrison, who wrote Beloved, and Stephen King. When I said Stephen King’s name I saw my classmates stiffen with surprise that I would mention King in these Ivy halls. That’s how the subliminal messaging starts. Even now in creative writing programs students are subtly and not so subtly steered away from the genre. Between that and a white male canon, it’s no wonder I fumbled around trying to find my voice and trying to find my stories.

‘‘Here was the turning point: I was a full-time reporter for the Miami Herald after college. My major was journalism because back then journalism was a solid career. (It’s funny to think about that now.) I was a journalist, and the whole time my plan was to liberate myself as a fiction writer. I was toiling away with these short stories, trying to figure out what I was writing about. I was assigned to interview Anne Rice on the telephone. I’d never read Anne Rice, but read the book to prepare for the interview, and also read some research about her and interviews as well. There was story that was basically excoriating her for ‘wasting her talents’ by writing about vampires when she could be writing works of literary merit. I brought that up because it spoke to me – that whole question of whether you can be respected and write genre was really needling at me. I never told her I was a writer. I just slipped it in with my questions, like they teach you in journalism 101. ‘How do you respond to criticism that you’re wasting your talents writing about vampires?’ I cringed and waited for her to answer. She just laughed. I think she literally laughed. She said, ‘That used to bother me. But my books are taught in colleges.’ She went on about how freeing it is to write genre, and the way that big themes can play out in genre in ways that are harder to get away with in contemporary realism and smaller stories. She lit a fire under me. Within nine months of that interview I had written my first novel. I also read Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day, so between the interview, which was literally a pep talk, even though Rice didn’t know it, and reading Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day, with a respected black writer writing about the metaphysical, I just let go of my fears, parachuted straight in, and never looked back.

‘‘I have always wanted to write. I’ve always seen myself as a writer. When I was four I took typing paper and folded it in half and wrote a book called Baby Bobby, full of misspellings. It was stick figures of the baby in his crib, drinking milk from a bottle, and on the back flap it said, ‘Baby Bobby is a book about a baby. The author is Tananarive Due.’ I spelled author ‘auhter,’ but even so, I knew what an author was, and I was self-identifying as an author. Every decision I made in school was about what would help me be a writer. When band seemed like it was going to take too much time, I dropped band. Instead I was doing things like taking community college writing classes. Whatever it was that would help me be a writer was what I wanted to do.

‘‘Now I want to be a full-time teacher and quit writing for money. It’s ironic. Many years ago, when I was researching my novel Joplin’s Ghost, about a character who interacts with the ghost of Scott Joplin, my publisher was also publishing a very well-known psychic. He was touring and knocking everybody out with his psychic predictions. The publisher thought it would be great if I had a phone consultation with him. ‘He usually charges thousands of dollars,’ she said, ‘and he is willing to do it for you for free.’ I said okay. I’d had one previous experience with a psychic that I considered positive. She didn’t charge me either, but she said some stuff that came true. She told me, ‘You become who you’re supposed to be, and that’s when you meet your man.’ Those were her exact words. I met my husband at a science fiction and horror writers’ conference. On the one hand that could be general advice, but it was so specifically true. For that reason, I was open minded going into the psychic reading. The psychic said some things about the book – he said Scott Joplin was coming through with a suggestion, which in typical fashion I ignored. Even if it was Scott Joplin, I could have been sitting across from him, and I still would have said ‘no.’ He also said he was getting a message from my grandmother that I was going to be a teacher. At the time, when I was busting my you-know-what-to hit a book-a-year schedule to get on the New York Times bestseller list, teaching was not in my mind at all. The idea was a little bit horrifying, because I thought becoming a teacher meant I would not succeed as a writer. That was me coming in with some stereotypical ideas – that I would have to give up writing or stop writing or no longer be able to publish. No offense to the teachers out there, I love teaching, but at the time I didn’t get it, and I wasn’t happy to hear that. Sure enough, that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been teaching at Antioch University Los Angeles, and now in Santa Barbara, since 2007. I was at Spelman College for three years, and had an amazing experience there as a distinguished visiting scholar. Now I’m at UCLA, teaching a black horror course that’s getting a lot of attention and is a lot of fun. I love teaching, and I love the freedom teaching affords me to take time writing a book. I don’t have to try to skew it this way or that way to meet the demands of the marketplace.

‘‘After 15 years of full-time writing I’ve learned there’s no formula for creating a bestseller. Either it is or it isn’t. Some things you think will be a surefire bestseller, like this mystery series my husband and I collaborated on with actor Blair Underwood, don’t take off like you think for a variety of reasons. Maybe TV viewers don’t read. You can’t really do all the calculations. The best life for me as a writer is to write what I love and not have to do it for money. It took me 15 years to figure that out, but I really enjoy the freedom the teaching gives me, and I love the interactions with the students. I feel inspired by their excitement. After 25 years of publishing, you don’t always feel that same excitement when you start writing. But to see writers really embracing it, and their eyes lighting up as they make the connections, is inspirational for me. I love teaching. My primary goal now is to write for legacy. I’m working on a novel called The Reformatory. I just published an excerpt in the Boston Review, which helps inspire me to keep working on it. It’s taking a long time because I am teaching and screenwriting, and co-raising our 13-and-a-half-year-old with my husband, but it’s still coming along. Short stories are fun and a good way to get out in front of an audience. Publishing a collection, Ghost Summer, was a long-held dream. I’ve been publishing novels for years, but it can be hard to publish a short story collection. My big publisher didn’t want a short story collection, so I ended up with a small publisher. The book has done fantastic things, and it got optioned by Fox for a year. Hollywood feels like that last mountain I want to climb. I’ve seen enough frustrated screenwriters and heard enough horror stories not to take it seriously. I’m not willing to make huge changes in my life to accommodate Hollywood. It’s like a Rubik’s Cube to me. You go pitch, and it’s not like what happens in publishing. There’s almost no verbal component to my publishing life, whereas in Hollywood, there’s a huge verbal component to the pitch I had to learn, plus the technical aspects of learning how to write screenplays. Writing with visual symbols and not having the interiority was a puzzle for me to solve. I’ve sold screenplays, all in collaboration with Steve, to Fox Searchlight, to Mar Vista, to Lifetime to Fox TV. All of a sudden I’m a professional screenwriter, just because I’ve been too stubborn to stop doing it, and with the help of some great producers.

‘‘Nothing’s been produced yet with the exception of what Steve and I produced ourselves during our time in Atlanta. Since we were out of LA for three years, we couldn’t do the meetings anymore, and in some ways it was a blessing in disguise, because we had to look at what we could do on our own, without assistance from a studio. My friend Luchina Fisher who had just finished her own short film was on board, and we hired actor Frankie Faison, and this wonderful actress who was 13 at the time, named Saoirse Scott, and we made a little zombie movie, Danger Word. It was one of the most harrowing but also exhilarating experiences of my life. The shoot itself was a weekend of terror and thrills – it rained, it ran late, the crew was a little bit surly, because it was late and they were tired and not used to lugging around equipment. But we made a movie. It’s 18 minutes long, and it’s got an IMDB page. I wish we’d had more money and more time. Like with my fiction, I look at it and think, ‘If only we’d done this or done that.’ Still, it’s there. The next mountain is either a TV series or a feature. I would love to see that happen.

‘‘My new story ‘Field Trip’ is an urban horror story. What that means to me is it’s frenetic and noisy and loud. I wanted to play with the line between reality and fiction, from a bit of a social justice angle. That’s a lot of what my Twitter work is dedicated to – social justice. I wanted to enter the mind of this nervous person, and the style has to relay her nervousness. She’s a very nervous substitute teacher responsible for several children on a crowded subway. I couldn’t think of anything more nightmarish myself, and to juxtapose that with the police killing of one of the student’s siblings (like Tamir Rice), and she’s still recovering from that. The questions are, ‘Is anything I do enough? Can I make a difference?’ She’s trying but she thinks she’s failing. The landscape is more and more foreign and terrifying as the story goes on, with this question, ‘What’s going to happen to these kids in the future?’ She’s with them a few days a week, but they have the rest of their future to live through. I’m trying to express that dilemma, that I think a lot of people in the middle class feel, where you want to make a difference but there’s so much to do, so how can you make a difference? Even here at the World Fantasy convention, you have the great science fiction masters Joe Haldeman and Greg Bear on a panel asking, ‘Is it enough that we write? Is there more should we be doing?’ I think the bottom line is, yeah, maybe there’s more some of us should be doing. Maybe there’s more in terms of donations of time and money. But ultimately, art can heal as well, and art can sometimes heal more quickly than protest.

‘‘In terms of style, I try to inhabit my characters completely, that’s what I try to teach my writing students, even if they eventually want to use a style that’s more emotionally distant. I try to get them to live behind the eyes of those characters and to use every weapon in their creative arsenal. The details they know should only be the details the character notices – it doesn’t matter what some omniscient narrator would notice. Don’t forget their emotions. Their emotions are driving their decisions. That gets into style. I write a lot of child narrators. My novel has two child narrators. The sister is older and more thoughtful, more like a poet, so I can linger on the kind of details she would notice, but the brother is twelve, with more cut-and-dried emotional responses and less analysis. Style is a big part of my process.

‘‘It can be a challenge to write from the perspective of children. You have to decide how faithful you want to be to a juvenile voice and vocabulary. I’ve had stories that were literally supposed to be the diary of a 10-year-old, so I’m constrained by what a 10-year-old might say, but even so it’s a bit of a stretch sometimes. It can be difficult to make the decision about how childlike you want the voice to be. In my current novel, I hope I’ve found the meeting between the kind of beautiful language I like to use in the older child’s voice, while also being true to the younger child, who is living an experience. His superpower is his optimism and his intelligence. The world tries to beat him down, but his family is like the family I grew up in. They say, ‘Okay, how are we going to tackle this and fix this?’ That’s the mood of the children. I think children in general are a lot like that. They can deal better with the supernatural. A grownup would be in therapy for life over a supernatural encounter, while a child would have a little bit of heart-pounding and then go back to sleep. They bounce back, or they seem to. They may end up in therapy later, but in the moment, they are so good at accepting. If you give them an iPhone and they’re two, they can figure it out, whereas you still don’t know how to use it after all these years. They’re intuitive, and intuitive children are really fun narrators.

‘‘My work-in-progress is one of those stories that came to me rather than me looking for it. Shortly after my mother passed away, I got a call from the Florida State Attorney General’s office informing me that a a great uncle of mine, Robert Stephens, had died at a facility called the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna FL in 1937. At first I thought this was another juvenile case from family history, but I realize now that my mother probably never knew she had this uncle. The facility opened in about 1900 and shut down in the late ’60s or early ’70s, but over the course of its existence, it was a horrifying experience for these children. Sometimes they were sent there for truancy, or for being orphans. There’s report after report, starting in the early 1900s, of children being shackled. There was a horrific fire where more than a dozen children died at once. There was all kinds of shady business going on where, even recently, families who sued to get remains back would get a coffin filled with wood chips with no body inside. There’s falsification of records. This terrific researcher, Erin Kimmerle at the University of South Florida, a forensic anthropologist, took a group of students about three years ago to the gravesite. My husband, son, father and I went to the cemetery – they called it Boot Hill – a site behind the school with a group of unmarked graves where they dug up the remains. I have photos of my son taking part in the excavation. It was a really meaningful family moment for my current family, but also an opportunity to air some history that had been deliberately buried. Since that time, Robert Stephens’s remains have been discovered and reburied. I missed that ceremony. I didn’t know about him. He was 15 when he died, allegedly as the result of a stabbing. When his remains were found he had such a terrible ear infection that it had impacted his skull, so who knows how he died.

‘‘The whole reason I wanted to write this novel, The Reformatory, was for him to run away. That’s it. I set it in the 1950s instead of the ’30s because I don’t know that era well enough. I know a lot more about the ’50s and ’60s, so I’m shifting the timeline. I changed his name to Walter after my uncle in the short story version. I’m not sure in the novel if I will change it back to Robert. There is an existing Robert Stephens, so I want to be respectful. That’s the inspiration, and there are many times I’ve wanted to stop writing this novel. It’s hard. It’s no fun. A few survivors have written books about their experiences there, and they’re horrible to read. There’s a place called the White House where they would beat the skin off their backs, and all kinds of reports of sexual abuse.

‘‘As a mother, my son is about that age. It’s so hard to put a character his age in this situation where he’s subjected to beatings and confinement over something ridiculous. But then I’ll see headlines about Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy in Cleveland who was executed for playing with a toy gun, and the officer lied about giving him three warnings. Or Jordan Edwards in Texas, who was shot leaving a party with his brothers. I see these stories, and think about how our current juvenile justice system is really broken. It’s an amoral system because children are rushed away from their families over schoolyard shouting matches, or over truancy, which is not a crime for an adult. Every time I thought, ‘I can’t do this, this is too hard,’ the headlines would steer me back into the book. Like a lot of speculative fiction, or historical fiction, I’m hoping the readers who fall in love with this protagonist will look upon today’s headlines with different eyes. I want them to realize these are not statistics – every single one of these kids is an individual who had as much potential and love and optimism in their heart as this kid in this story. That’s how we have to look at the world right now. A lot of people are under attack under the current administration, and there are a lot of fires to put out, but we have to remember these are all people.

‘‘My novel is set in Gracetown. I’m going back to that setting, and that same powerful family is at the center of the conflict that ends up sending that kid to jail. These families get away with either building wealth on the backs of others, or the torture, killing, and enslavement of others. That phrase, ‘very fine people,’ comes to mind, because everybody has something laudable about them. ‘I’m a slaveholder, but I’m a good family man. I’m a slave holder, but I go to church regularly.’ That’s what confuses us about people: we can see the value, on the surface, of what a person brings. If there’s a celebrity we love, a genius, but then we hear the sordid stories about their personal life, it’s hard to reconcile who we thought someone was with who they actually were. No one believes they’re evil. There’s always a reason for whatever evil acts people do. That makes it complicated, too. I do try to write about that, and about how, as victims of violence and discrimination, there’s a challenge to hold onto your humanity, and to not respond in kind and not become bitter. Bitterness only weighs you down, and that’s something I like to work through as well in my fiction. That was a theme in my novel The Good House. If a town acts unkindly to you and your response is accidentally way out of proportion, and you called up demons? How do you weigh your responsibility? And there are secrets. That’s the thing about very fine people – very fine people have secrets in their families. My mother may have known that she had an uncle who died at the reformatory, but she never told me. Maybe there was some shame there. Or maybe she never knew, because of the family’s shame. Out of shame, or out of a sense of wanting to protect our children, there are things we don’t tell them, and very often those things we don’t tell them will come out and have an impact on their lives, and they’ll have no context to understand why it’s happening. That’s our American story. We’re all players on this stage acting out reactions to things that happened long ago, that we don’t have a full understanding of.

‘‘All fiction is political – that’s the first thing. Even if you’re not trying to be political, there is a set of assumptions that go into every story, that we all understand this is the way things are. There are people who don’t agree that this is the way things are or the way they should be, but the story has a point of view, whether you think it does or not. ‘Responsibility’ is a strong word, but writers have a responsibility to understand that everything that they do is political, whether they intend it or not. The story is populated and the attitudes of the characters reflect the author’s attitudes, even on a subtle level, so understand that, and then have fun. I learned the hard way that you will never write your best work by trying to write the way you think you’re supposed to write, as opposed to doing what comes naturally. Write what comes to you naturally. Even if it’s escapism. Escapism has value as well.

‘‘For my mother, I think horror was both escapism and a way to drain the pus out of the wounds she carried from life. Being scared because of something on a screen is thrilling, but it’s healing, in a weird way, because you can turn off the TV, and things aren’t as bad as they seem. I like to say horror gives order to evil in a way that life doesn’t give order to evil. That world is more fun to hang out in. If you’re encountering evil all the time, and you can’t put a name to it, and there’s no demon responsible for it, then watching something where there are reasons for evil can be very healing. That’s very relaxing, before you go back into the real world. Writers have a responsibility to write their best selves and to write from their hearts, and I can think of example after example of writers who did that. Octavia Butler was writing science fiction about aliens during the Black Power movement, and people who criticized her for not writing about the struggle don’t realize she was writing about the struggle – she was writing about the struggle in allegory and metaphor, and she was writing about the struggle with sharper and clearer eyes than many political writers ever will, because she could see so much. She put all her warnings about where we were headed in her work. Then she wrote Kindred, which was in response to slavery more directly, but she still wrote her best self. Then there was the writer E. Lynn Harris, who was a great mentor of mine. He wrote contemporary realism about bisexual black men. If he had been writing what was supposed to be popular and was expected of him, he would not have been writing about bisexual black men and become a huge bestselling writer. Writer after writer bucked conventional wisdom and said, ‘okay, I’ll publish it myself,’ which is what happened when E. Lynn Harris started out. Terry McMillan started out self-publishing because she didn’t fit the mold of what was expected of writers. My feeling of freedom to write whatever I wanted when I started writing horror is what helped me come back to writing a rural Southern story, the very thing I didn’t think I could write. Once I had the freedom to discover who I was and get those other stories out of me, I could come back and find a way to embrace this story, too. Toni Morrison was a great influence. A lot of black experiences are rooted in the Southern experience. Even if your family left the South, that’s where they started, so it’s hard to escape it on one level. The current political landscape makes it more important for those writers who are inclined to look at history, and to look at cause and effect, to try to contextualize why we seem to be stepping back to the ’50s now.

‘‘I love writers. Writers are my tribe. They make the world a better place. I have a hard time with lists because I’m always afraid of leaving people out and all my friends are writers, but I would say that right now I’m still going to hold on to Toni Morrison and Stephen King, especially for my formative years. Their impact on me is incalculable. I discovered Octavia E. Butler later, after I’d already started publishing, but her impact has also been huge in terms of her fearlessness of vision and trying to hold to that. Samuel R. Delany and my husband Steven Barnes are important. Nnedi Okorafor is one of my favorite writers, and it’s hard to keep up with everything she publishes, she’s so productive. I’ve discovered a new writer, Rivers Solomon, with a novel, An Unkindness of Ghosts. It is so fine and so wonderful, especially as a debut. It reminds me of so many other writers I love, but with a unique voice. There’s Colson Whitehead – I loved Underground Railroad. I love that blending of reality and fantasy that he has in that. The list could go on and on.

‘‘I want to talk about black horror a little bit. I’ve been a black horror writer for a long time, but in some ways, there are a lot of people who never understood there was such a thing as black horror. That’s probably the biggest problem with that label. I’m teaching a black horror course at UCLA. It’s called The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival, and the Black Horror Aesthetic. I was Tweeting about it and I got some media attention, and Jordan Peele’s company Monkey Paw reached out, and based on that I was able to get in touch with his assistant, and Jordan Peele actually came to my class. That was huge and exciting, but what’s even more huge and exciting, actually, is that finally there’s a greater understanding that black horror exists. Peele’s movie Get Out gave me an underpinning I could use to create a whole course around it, using other works that were already in existence but were not as well known or successful. I think Peele is going to have that impact in a wider way, and writers will realize, ‘Oh, this is a thing I can belong to.’ There was a time when we were starting to crawl toward that, but the loss of Octavia E. Butler, and the loss of L.A. Banks, who wrote these vampire huntress novels, set us back. Once you lose a huge link in the chain, the chain is no a longer a chain – you’re just a bunch of writers out doing your thing. I think we’re starting to coalesce again. There’s more attention now for Afrofuturism, which I’ve also taught – works of black speculative fiction art, science fiction, fantasy, and horror.

‘‘The horror subset alone has a powerful chance of helping new generations process their trauma the way my mother’s generation did. There is specific trauma related to being a minority in a country where a certain segment of the population would push a button and send you away, if they could. I don’t know how big that segment is, but it’s significant. They do not see people of color as Americans, and never will see people of color as Americans. That’s hard. That’s a difficult road. That’s a hard conversation with your kids – the same conversation your parents gave you. We wish we weren’t still doing it, but we are. It’s a tough reality. Horror helps make sense of that. Horror helps us see ourselves as heroic. If we create stories ourselves, we can be more than the sidekick or the first to die or the sacrifice. As more and more writers embrace black horror, those stereotypes will start to fade, and it will just be stories about people who happen to be black. Or stories about people who don’t just happen to be black, but they’re black and they bring a strong ethnic flavor to the story, and it’s a retelling of this legend, a fresh way of looking at it. It’s not just black American horror, it’s also black diasporic horror, because there’s also the Caribbean, like with Nalo Hopkinson – it’s all over. It could be worldwide.

‘‘It’s so important for creators to imagine themselves in the future. We’ve so often been erased in the past. I talked about this in a recent Twitter rant. There are so many people who don’t understand there were PoC walking around in New York City in the 1940s, because they didn’t see it in the movies. I’m not even kidding. And Westerns. So many people would be shocked if they could see documentary footage of what happened in an Old West town, as opposed to what they see in the movies. Representation matters in a huge way. I started out writing about little black girls, but by the time I got to grad school I was writing white men. I hate to be in the position of telling a PoC writer, ‘You need to write PoC characters,’ but I’m thinking it. It doesn’t come as naturally to some people. Some people are at the stage where I was, where they don’t see themselves in fiction, so they literally don’t understand how they would look in fiction. So they write to the canon and the audience, because that seems the most prudent thing, and the most natural thing. If it feels like the most natural thing as a writer is not to write PoC characters, then that’s what you should do. I’m not going to tell you otherwise... but sometimes what feels like the most natural thing is not as natural as it seems. With a little more reflection, those same writers might find it liberating to write characters of color. It opens up story ideas. It opens up history. More importantly, it’s different. I think the reason why The Ring was so popular was because it had a different sensibility than American horror. It was a way of being scared we weren’t used to. The monster came from weird angles. I think the same is going to be true of PoC writers who embrace their own mythologies and their own culture. It’s not that the characters have to be rooted in some deep ethnic storyline, necessarily, but I think it’s important for them and for readers to understand what the world actually looks like, as opposed to the mythology we create for our movies.’’

–Tananarive Due

Return to In This Issue listing.

Twenty-Five Years Behind the Mast

The usual response to landmark issues of Locus – the 40th anniversary a decade ago, the 500th issue, etc. – has been to haul out amusing or appalling anecdotes about the magazine’s brilliant, colorful, and blustery founder, Charles N. Brown. I have plenty of such anecdotes, but in thinking about this most impressive anniversary of all, it strikes me that nearly a fifth of this half-century history has been without Charles, who died nearly nine years ago.

So my suggestion for anyone wanting to recognize and understand Locus’s real achievement is simply this: read the masthead. I’m there, to be sure, dead last among contributing editors because of having been born at the wrong end of the alphabet, but there are also some names who are legends in the field, a host of distinguished novelists, anthologists, and critics, and a few junior staff members I haven’t even met simply because I haven’t gotten to Oakland lately.

I sometimes meet a young fan or writer eager to visit what they imagine to be the gleaming Locus corporate HQ, probably with a revolving steakhouse on top. I never disillusion them. It sounds so much cooler than a bunch of people in rooms, some in Oakland, some scattered across the globe, furiously knitting together a monthly magazine simply because it’s worth believing in (no one gets rich doing Locus). The best part of Locus today is all those voices – far more than in the Charles Brown era, but keeping alive the conversation that he always insisted was the heart of the SFF world.

The best way to improve the magazine, of course, would be to reverse the alphabetical order of that list of contributing editors. I’ve been on that masthead for more than 25 years, for heaven’s sake! Can’t a critic catch a break once in a while?

–Gary K. Wolfe

When I first began writing, Locus was what opened up the world of SF for me. Until I discovered the magazine, I didn’t know that conventions, review columns, or fandom even existed. And there they all were in the magazine, along with interviews of writers I had worshiped from afar! In the almost 40 years since, Locus has continued to be the richest source of information about who, what, where, and why in the SF field. Forget the vagaries of Facebook – Locus reports more comprehensively, accurately, and interestingly.

–Nancy Kress

Fifty years ago we all lived in New York – a huge community of SF writers, editors, readers, and fans. One by one, two by two, we began to drift off to California. As my New York friends began to disappear, I started to think the unthinkable myself – leaving New York, my native city, for the winter-free temptations of the San Francisco Bay Area. Late in 1971 I began to shop for houses out there, and by the spring of 1972 I found myself transformed into a Californian. One who had stayed behind, up till then, was my old friend and neighbor Charles N. Brown, who had founded Locus as a one-sheet mimeographed fanzine in 1968 but whose main line of occupation was that of an engineer for the mighty Bechtel Corporation.

A few months after I had completed my transition to California life, Charlie and his wife Dena unexpectedly turned up on our shore. Bechtel had transferred him to the San Francisco office, and, since there was already a substantial colony of ex-New Yorkers in the hilly Montclair district of Oakland, the Browns bought a house uphill from Casa Silverberg, a five-minute drive away. So, to his surprise and mine, we were neighbors again, 3,000 miles from the old turf. And then, very quickly, a matter of a few months after his arrival, Bechtel laid him off, leaving him high and dry and unemployed in exotic unfamiliar California. Charlie, caught by surprise, was quite bewildered. But I had a suggestion for him. Locus was no longer a one-sheet fanzine; it had begun to expand considerably in size and circulation, and had abandoned the mimeograph for lithography, and its main area of concentration now was the doings of the professional science-fiction publishers, with fan activity running a distant second.

‘‘Why not,’’ I said to him, ‘‘expand the magazine even more, scout your friends in the publishing industry for ads, and turn Locus into a semiprofessional magazine that will provide you with a livelihood?’’

‘‘Well, why not?’’ he said, after perhaps thirty seconds of careful contemplation. And so he did, and thereby hangs a tale, a very long tale, 50 years long now. Charlie is no longer with us, and neither are a lot of the other ex-New Yorkers that migrated west 50 years ago, but Locus is still here, and so am I in my hilltop home in California, and isn’t it strange, the little games that life plays with us?

–Robert Silverberg

Sitting down with Locus Magazine is like catching up with an old friend who always knows the good gossip and has the best book recommendations. It’s a great way to keep up with exciting things happening in SFF, and to get inspired by other authors and artists through in-depth interviews. We’re lucky to have it.

–Gwenda Bond

Locus was my passport to the world of professional international science fiction. Hanging around with Charles Brown as he careened around the world pushing Locus and gathering news and gossip about SF and fantasy, Gay and I met hundreds of writers, editors, artists, and fans in dozens of countries. We were globetrotters by nature, but without Charles we would have just been tourists. Charles pushed open doors that I wouldn't have dared even to knock on.

Locus opens the world of science fiction for fans everywhere. We're happy to have been subscribers from the very beginning. Long live Locus!

–Joe Haldeman

If you’re not reading Locus you’re way out of touch with science fiction and fantasy worldwide. Whether you’re an old hand or looking to break in, Locus is where you’ll find out what’s happening with your friends, colleagues, idols and organizations in the field. News, reviews, and great interviews – Locus has it all.

–Margo Lanagan

As a longtime and dedicated subscriber to Locus, I find it hard to separate where your publication ends and my career begins. It seems to me that in order to be a professional science fiction writer, one has to track Locus. It is no less than this genre’s newspaper of record. But although I value the reporting and the interviews and the photography (I remember vividly the first time I got my picture in Locus – and why did it take so long?) it is the commentary on the craft of writing that I most value – and in particular, your short fiction reviews. There are plenty of venues for people to talk about novels, but conversation about short stories has from time to time been hard to find, as publications and websites rise and fall. Only Locus has persisted across the decades. Let me give a special shout out to Mark Kelly and Gardner Dozois for their indefatigable and perceptive reviews. Even on the rare occasions when they missed the mark (hey, what about my story?) their comments were required reading. The short form tends to get slighted in an era of fabulously popular multi-volume series, but know that we who write for the magazines and anthologies always flip to Gardner’s, Rich’s, and Paula’s reviews before we look at anything else. The curation these reviews and the Recommended Reading list provide is often the determining factor when I chose my next read. So thanks, Locus. I can’t imagine life without you, and I have a pretty good imagination.

–James Patrick Kelly

Through my entire professional life, Locus has been the prime source of information on the culture, craft, and business of science fiction and fantasy publishing... and to this day, it reports and records the heartbeat of this vital field!

–Greg Bear

Happy 50th birthday, Locusians!

When I first started reading Locus, some 40 years ago, it looked like your classic American samizdat: black-and-white, hand-typed and stenciled, with few photographs. It looked mimeographed, like a homework assignment or a church newsletter. I’m sure someone with expertise in the history of fanzines can correct me on the exact printing process used – and will....

I subscribed then to find out about markets and deadlines, to read interviews with writers who were older and much more famous than me, and to scan the pages frantically to see if the photo that Charlie took of me at Worldcon made it into the magazine.

Over the decades, the nature of publishing and journalism has changed and diversified, as has science fiction. As the world has grown smaller, Locus has grown larger: it covers more genres and more of the world, and its market news is timely and available to subscribers and casual readers alike.

So much has changed. I now subscribe to find out about markets and deadlines, to read interviews with writers who are younger and much more famous than me, and to scan the pages frantically to see if the photo that Fran or Arley took of me at Worldcon made it into the magazine.

–Eileen Gunn

When I went to Clarion in 1988 I didn't know anything about cons, awards, agents, reviewers, fandom – nothing about the community of SF. Then one of our teachers handed out copies of Locus, and it was like being shown the wardrobe to Narnia. This place is real? Can I live there? Thanks, Locus for welcoming countless newcomers to the field.

–Daryl Gregory

When I returned from Clarion West in 1994, one of my first purchases was a one-year subscription to Locus. Today, 24 years into my subscription, I still read each issue cover to cover, and the homepage on my Web browser (something I did not have in 1994) is locusmag.com. The Locus interviews, in particular, are remarkably informative, inspirational, and fun to read; as a 50-year chronicle of the writer’s life, only the Paris Review interviews can match them. Happy birthday, Locus! I look forward to writing another of these when you’re 100.

–Andy Duncan

The very first thing I do, on the first of the month, is download the new issue of Locus. It’s essential reading.

–Ann Leckie

I started reading Locus in the late 1980s, picking up three-month old sea mailed copies at Galaxy Bookshop in Sydney. Everything I read about in Locus seemed a long way away in those pre-Internet days, almost another world. But it was a world that Locus provided a connection to, the magazine invaluable to me both as a reader and as a beginning professional writer.

In 1996, my novel Sabriel was published in the USA and HarperCollins arranged a kind of pre-tour tour. Because no one knew me or the book at that stage, their cunning plan was to take me to various American cities, invite a bunch of key booksellers and influencers to dinner in a great restaurant in each city, and do stock signings.

In San Francisco, Charles N. Brown and Marianne Jablon came to the dinner. I can’t remember where it was, but the restaurant met with Charles’s approval. In fact, years later he told me it was the main reason he’d decided to attend. Despite having been lured in the first instance by the food, he did read Sabriel and decided I should be interviewed for Locus. It was a very pleasant surprise, as I didn’t think I was interesting enough to be up there with the authors that had Locus interviews.

After the dinner, there was an unscheduled stock signing at midnight. I think it was a Clean, Well-Lighted Place, which was ironic as the manager only turned one light on so the stock-signing could be done but readers would not be attracted to a nocturnal opening. Everybody came with us, and there was browsing in semi-darkness while I signed books.

The next morning my HarperCollins publicist and I set out to visit Locus. We had a driver who was sure she knew how to get to the Oakland office, but this confidence rapidly proved false. We ended up stopping beside an Oakland police cruiser and our driver asked for directions. The officer said, ‘‘You know what? Just follow me.’’

So I had a police escort on my first visit to Locus. At the office, I marveled at the collection of books, drank some more wine (even though it was only about 12 hours since we’d been drinking together anyway) and sat down with Charles for what was really my first ever in-depth interview about my writing, reading and publishing.

Then came the obligatory photo session. Charles wasn’t happy with the initial photographs. Jokingly I suggested since I was from the Antipodes I should really be upside down, and that ever since I was a child I possessed the unusual ability of being able to hang from my heels from tree branches. Charles thought that was a good idea. Due to the publicist’s horror I didn’t hang from my heels, but I did hang upside down from a branch – and that was my first Locus portrait.

I have been fortunate enough to be interviewed several more times over the years, and I continue to read Locus for that invaluable connection with the world of SF/F, though these days I do so the moment the electronic copy becomes available, and I am not permanently three months behind the times.

–Garth Nix

I always look forward to my Locus digital subscription arriving in my inbox on the first of the month. I spend the evening buried in the pages, catching up on all the publishing news, and checking out what’s hot right now.

–Alisa Krasnostein

I was first given a Locus magazine by my college advisor Fredric Jameson, at UC San Diego in 1972. I think it was still mimeographed then, in any case I recall it being a slim pamphlet all in black or purple. I’ve been reading it ever since, and it’s been one of the main ways I connect with the science fiction community. As such it’s like my home town newspaper, and is therefore precious to me. Happy 50th to the whole collective. I wish Charles was here to see it!

–Kim Stanley Robinson

When I was in high school, I used to go downtown to the Toronto research library just to read Locus. I was already submitting short fiction, and I think maybe I thought it was the way to be in the know? Whatever my reason, I remember the librarian delivering stacks of this red-covered magazine to my table, and paging through pictures and news about my literary heroes. I still feel the same thrill when my new issue arrives, even though now I’m lucky to call many of those same people friends. Thank you, Locus, for being the conduit for that connection, for me and others. Happy anniversary!

–Sarah Pinsker

For nearly 50 years Locus has been the benchmark of excellence, the place our entire field looks to for information on what’s happening, what’s important, and who’s doing it. It’s been the best source of news and the best place for the people who buy books to find out about them. It’s where we find out about the good, the bad, the happy and the sad. It’s our talking post. If anyone wants to talk to readers, to book buyers, to book sellers, to writers, to editors, to publishers, to artists, this is the place. It’s essential.

I once did a four book deal at a Locus party on the publisher’s back deck. I found my agent through Locus. It connects me to the publishing world.

Locus grew me from a bean. I learnt about science fiction in its pages and I still use it every day. Its forthcoming books listings shape what I search for and read. Its reviews guide me towards new talent. Its awards databases and its interviews are essential references. I work with it all the time.

–Jonathan Strahan

The only print publication I subscribe to is Locus Magazine. It’s indispensable for keeping up with SF. Plus mind-expanding criticism/interviews!

–Charlie Jane Anders

Locus continues to be the central point for all serious authors, artists, and fans of both fantasy and science fiction. It is our water-cooler, the start and end of the conversations that inform this field.

–Todd McCaffrey

Locus supports and forwards our genre and community in so many uncountable, invaluable ways.

It is impossible to overstate how important Locus is to our community and the greater speculative fiction genre. One of my absolute favorites.

Please support this magazine so they will print more pictures of my cats. You need to see my cats. Don’t deprive yourself of their fluffy glory.

–Seanan McGuire

When I sold my first story, I spent the next nine months or so anxiously awaiting the appearance of two magazines. Asimov’s because there I was, at long last, in print. And Locus because my appearance wasn’t fully realized until they said so. Locus is the voice and conscience of our genre

–Jack Skillingstead

Locus is the spit and baling wire that holds the entire, bizarre and wondrous enterprise of genre publishing together. It’s kind of hard to figure out how it works, and it’s a miracle that it’s still working, and we’re all seriously fucked if it ever stops working.

–Cory Doctorow

Charlie used to tell me that he had only kept Locus going to prove me wrong.

When Locus first started up, as a mimeographed newsletter out of New York City, I was writing a fanzine-review column for Ted White’s Amazing. My review was somewhat skeptical, and maybe less than encouraging. But then, much of the content of the early issues seemed to involve tales of the editorial team’s hapless car trips from NYC to Boston and back, usually featuring at least one breakdown on the road. Locus really wasn’t that promising in its early days.

And as Charlie would tell me, gleefully, in later years: ‘‘You predicted that it would never last. ‘Locus will fold within a year,’ you said.’’ So he kept publishing just to spite me.

“It’s all your fault!” he’d remind me, each time I saw him. Then he would pour me a nice glass of Armagnac.

And as I replied more than once, I was just glad that my youthful skepticism had provided him with an incentive.

–John D. Berry

Can You Smell the Spaghetti?

There I was, a teenaged college kid living in southern Florida, and as far as I knew, the only science fiction fan in several hundred miles. I bought every issue of every science fiction magazine I could find at the local newsstand, and I sent off my sticky dimes and quarters to buy those wonderful publications called fanzines. Quandry, Slant, Cosmag, Oopsla!, and the one that I most eagerly awaited when the postman delivered his daily selection, the newsmagazine of the science-fiction field.

Was it Locus?

Nope. It was Fantasy Times, edited by one Jimmy Taurasi and published by his pal Frank Prieto. After a while Fantasy Times morphed into Science Fiction Times. It was mimeographed, as I recall on yellow paper. It was really about the science fiction field. There was no fannish gossip in SFT.

Jimmy and Frank would pack up their typewriter and mimeograph every year, stow them in a battered station wagon, and publish daily ‘‘convention specials’’ at the Worldcon. Headlines like ‘‘Convention a Huge Success – Hundreds Attend’’ or ‘‘Audience Cheers Heinlein Address’’.

To me those conventions were a taste of heaven on earth, and I dreamed of someday being the Jimmy Taurasi of my generation.

Well, the years rolled by and I never did get to be the Jimmy Taurasi of my generation. But my wife, Pat, and I eventually published a fanzine of our own, called Xero. Each time an issue came rolling off our mimeograph we would lay out the pages in neat stacks around the edges of our dining room table. We would get as many volunteers as we could to march around the table and begin assembling copies. A copy of the back cover, a copy of page 99, a copy of page 97, and so on, ending with a copy of the front cover. At the end of the row I would stand, slamming down a piece of glittering wire from a gadget called a Number 13 Stapler.

In the meanwhile, Pat would be preparing a grand spaghetti feast for everyone to enjoy once the evening’s task was completed. Who was there? Hmm, hard to remember after all these years, but the crew included Don and Elsie Wollheim (yes!), bhob Stewart, Larry Ivie, Chris Steinbrunner, Steve Stiles, and Charles Brown.

Not long after Xero had ended its run, a very different sort of fanzine made its debut. It was a sort of cross between Science Fiction Times and Xero, and its publisher was Charles Brown. Years later, Charles told me that Xero had been the inspiration of Locus. Not the content or even the format, just the idea that a couple of fans could create a publication of this sort.

A few years later Pat and I found ourselves dragooned into Charles Brown’s home, and drafted into a collating line, circling a table, assembling copies of Locus. While we worked, the mouth-watering odor of boiling spaghetti sauce wafted from the kitchen.

I suppose that even now, somewhere out there a couple of enthusiastic young fans are creating their own version of Fantasy Times or Xero or Locus. I doubt that they’re cutting stencils or revving up their mimeograph. Technology has passed that by. But next time those fans open the slick, colorful pages of Locus and think, ‘‘Hey, maybe we can do something like this,’’ I like to think that the enchanting odor of spaghetti sauce, mixed with the acrid tang of mimeograph ink, is wafting through the air.

–Dick Lupoff

If you love science fiction and fantasy, Locus is a must. I’ve been reading it for nearly 50 years; rarely missing an issue. With it’s extensive and entertaining coverage of our community and it’s works, it is truly ‘‘THE MAGAZINE OF THE SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY FIELD.’’

–Tom Doherty

Editorial Staff Through the Ages

Charles N. Brown (1968-2009)

Ed Meskys (1968)

Dave Vanderwerf (1968)

Marsha Brown (1968-1969)

Sheila Elkin (1968-1969)

Cory Seidman (1968-1969)

Elliot Shorter (1968-1972)

Dena Brown (1970-1977)

Patrizia Di Lucchio (1978-1979)

Miriam Rodstein (1978-1980)

Rachel Holman (1978-1984)

Jeff Frane (1979-1980)

Michaela Roessner-Herman (1980-1981)

Faren Miller (1981-2000)

Diana Paxson (1982-1983)

Donna Burriston (1984-1986)

Dawn Atkins (1984-1985)

Carolyn Cushman (1985-1987, 1991-date)

Pamela Troy (1986-1990)

Trevin Matlock (1987-1988)

Shelly Rae Clift (1987-1991)

Scott Winnett (1989-1994)

Marianne S. Jablon (1991-1999)

Mary E. Hall (1992)

Dorothy A. Taylor (1992-1993)

Kirsten Gong-Wong (1993-date)

Amy Sisson (1995)

Mark R. Kelly (1997-date)

Jonathan Strahan (1997-1998, 2002-date)

Jeffrey Prucher (1997-1998)

Cynthia Rusczyk (1999-2001)

Jennifer A. Hall (2000-2004)

Tim Pratt (2001-date)

Melinda R. Himel (2001-2005)

Liza Groen Trombi (2003-date)

Karlyn Pratt (2004-2007)

Amelia Beamer (2005-2011)

Francesca Myman (2007-date)

Rachel Bloom (2010-2011)

Chloe Smith (2011)

Heather Shaw (2011-2014)

Patrick Wells (2013-2014)

Arley Sorg (2014-date)

Bob Blough (2015-date)

Laurel Amberdine (2015-date)

Karina McLoughlin (2015)

Esther L. Patterson (2016-2017)

Josh Pearce (2016-date)

Return to In This Issue listing.

Author KATE WILHELM, 89, died March 8, 2018 in Eugene OR. Wilhelm was an influential SF writer and writing teacher with a career that spanned six decades. She wrote more than 40 books of SF and mystery, helped run the Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Conference, and was instrumental in the creation of the Clarion Workshop.

Her first genre story was ‘‘The Pint-Sized Genie’’ (1956). Over a dozen of her stories were nominated for Nebula Awards, and three won: ‘‘The Planners’’ (1968), ‘‘The Girl Who Fell into the Sky’’ (1986), and ‘‘Forever Yours, Anna’’ (1987); the latter was also a Hugo Award nominee, one of four nominations for her short fiction. ‘‘The Gorgon Field’’ (1985) was a World Fantasy Award nominee. Her first book was collection The Mile-Long Spaceship (1963), and other collections include The Downstairs Room and Other Speculative Fiction (1968), The Infinity Box: A Collection of Speculative Fiction (1975), Somerset Dreams and Other Fictions (1978), Listen, Listen (1981), Children of the Wind: Five Novellas (1989), And the Angels Sing (1992), The Bird Cage (2012), and Music Makers (2012). Some of the stories she contributed to her husband Damon Knight’s long-running Orbit anthology series were gathered Kate Wilhelm in Orbit, Volume One (2015).

Her first novel was mystery More Bitter than Death (1963), and her first SF novel was collaboration The Clone (1965) with Theodore L. Thomas; it was a Nebula Award finalist. The two also collaborated on The Year of the Cloud (1970). Her solo novels include The Nevermore Affair (1966), The Killer Thing (1967), Let the Fire Fall (1969), Nebula Award finalist Margaret and I (1971), City of Cain (1974), Hugo Award winner and Nebula Award finalist Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (1976), The Clewiston Test (1976), Fault Lines (1977), Nebula Award nominee Juniper Time (1979), A Sense of Shadow (1981), Oh, Susannah! (1982), Welcome, Chaos (1983), Huysman’s Pets (1986), Crazy Time (1988), Cambio Bay (1990), Justice for Some (1993), The Good Children (1998), The Deepest Water (2000), Skeletons (2002), The Price of Silence (2005), and Death of an Artist (2012).

In the 1990s her focus shifted to crime and mystery fiction, though often with strong speculative elements, and she wrote two long-running series. The Leidl and Meiklejohn series is The Hamlet Trap (1987), The Dark Door (1988), Smart House (1989), Sweet, Sweet Poison (1990), Seven Kinds of Death (1992), and collection A Flush of Shadows: Five Short Novels Featuring Constance Leidl and Charlie Meiklejohn (1995); she also wrote various novellas about the characters. Her Barbara Holloway mystery series began with Death Qualified (1991) and continued with The Best Defense (1994), Malice Prepense (1996; as For the Defense, 1997), Defense for the Devil (1999), No Defense (2000), Desperate Measures (2001), Clear and Convincing Proof (2003), The Unbidden Truth (2004), Sleight of Hand (2006), A Wrongful Death (2007), Cold Case (2008), Heaven Is High (2011), and By Stone, by Blade, by Fire (2012). She edited Nebula Award Stories Nine (1974) and Clarion SF (1977), and also wrote poetry and essays.

Katie Gertrude Meredith was born June 8, 1928 in Toledo OH. She went to high school in Louisville KY, and married Joseph Wilhelm in 1947; they had two sons. They divorced in 1962, and she married influential writer and editor Damon Knight in 1963. The two lived together in Oregon until his death in 2002.

Knight founded the Milford Writer’s Workshop in 1956, and Wilhelm helped him run it for many years. When Robin Scott Wilson founded the Clarion Workshop in 1968, he explicitly modeled it on Milford. Wilhelm and Knight were instrumental in Clarion’s creation, and were early and frequent instructors. Wilhelm’s writing guide/memoir Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop (2005) won a Hugo Award.

Wilhelm was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2003; in 2009 she won a Solstice Award for her impact on speculative fiction. In 2016, the Solstice Award was renamed the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award in her honor.

HIDDEN TREASURES: KATE WILHELM by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

When Kate was a child, she had a speech impediment called clutter. She understood everything she heard, but she spoke so quickly no one could understand her.

She got treatment and eventually learned to slow down and communicate with the rest of us. She’s been doing it ever since, in her books and stories, and in person.

I first met Kate sitting on a bed in the hospitality suite at MosCon, in Moscow, Idaho, in 1981. Kate was our guest of honor that year.

At that point, Dean Wesley Smith, Steve Fahnestalk, Lori Ann White, and I had an embryonic writers’ workshop nicknamed Writers’ Bloc, or the Moscow Moffia. In that pre-internet time, none of us knew what we were doing, and we figured we needed outside help.

I asked Kate if I should go to Clarion, and she said yes, though she’d never seen my writing.

Dean and I went to Clarion the following summer.

Our minds pretty much exploded. We learned so much to take home to our workshop and apply to our own writing it took us months to recover.

Kate and Damon taught the last two weeks of our six-week class, and they invited us to join their monthly workshop afterward.

Kate Wilhelm (1980s)

Dean and I drove the 470 miles from Moscow to Eugene often after that, arriving Friday, workshopping Saturday in Damon and Kate’s smoke-filled living room (they both smoked, though Damon later stopped. Kate smoked until the end of her life, though she stopped smoking in the living room; everything in her office turned golden) and driving home Sunday. I usually spent Friday and Saturday nights on a guest bed in Damon and Kate’s library.

Damon’s critiques were funny, harsh, and quirky. Kate’s critiques were deep, pinpointing places where the story failed its characters, where the emotional arc rang false, where we hadn’t thought enough about who we were writing about and what their experiences meant to them.

I made many friends at that workshop, some of whom are my best friends now.

In 1987, I moved to Eugene to join its vibrant writing community, partly for easier access to Damon and Kate’s workshop.

Kate kept the workshop going years after Damon died in 2002. Recently, her health issues stopped her from hosting.

When Kate gave up driving, I had the privilege of taking her to our favorite produce stand in the summers and falls so she could buy fresh, organic fruits and vegetables. She loved tomatoes and berries and melons, and she was a fabulous cook. When she and Damon moved into the house in Eugene, it was because of the back yard, rich river soil where for years Kate planted and harvested her own vegetables and fruit.

Later, when she didn’t leave the house much, I visited Kate and got to listen to stories about Milford, Clarion, Florida, the travels Kate and Damon did as cultural ambassadors to Indonesia, China, Brazil – with a side trip to Macchu Picchu. She talked about her childhood – how one day when she was about four years old, she decided to walk home from the library, only she left by the wrong door and was all turned around. She ended up in the police station – and they couldn’t understand her because of the clutter; but somehow, her parents came. She was happy because the police gave her lollipops.

Kate was generous with advice when I hit bumps in my own writing, and she listened to the problems I encountered teaching a short stories class through the local community college. We compared notes.

Ray Vukcevich and I visited Kate the day before she died. She told us her kids were surprised to learn she knew curse words, that she read books with curse words in them. ‘‘I hid those books,’’ she said. ‘‘I hid the books I wanted them to read. And they read them.’’

Kate was sneaky that way. Sometimes you had to hunt for what she wanted you to know. When you found it, it was extra sweet.

–Nina Kiriki Hoffman

KATE WILHELM by Leslie What

I met Kate Wilhelm at Clarion in 1976. Four months later, I moved to Eugene OR to join Kate and Damon’s monthly writing workshop. They had recently purchased a ranch house built on a half-acre, river valley lot. The previous owner had constructed a pool in the front yard, enclosed the addition and given it all a warehouse look so out-of-character from the farmhouse-style houses on their street that an elderly neighbor never forgave Kate and Damon when they refused to honor her request to tear the thing down.

Kate and Damon looked like the people they were. Damon hid behind thick glasses and an unruly beard when he delivered his harsh (though usually accurate) sometimes devastating criticisms of my stories. Kate was always deliberate and thoughtful in her assessments. She had amazingly piercing blue, blue eyes. She took detailed, orderly notes about my work and in her critiques, built a logical case for why and how to improve a piece of writing. She was an intuitive reader who saw what was missing from a workshop story and what the writer meant to do, instead of focusing on what was wrong with the words on the page. She noticed everything. I remember her asking a waiter to replace a salad after she detected the faint aroma of a cucumber slice someone had removed from the lettuce despite Kate’s request for a salad with no cucumbers. She liked almost all vegetables, just not cucumbers.

In the late 1970s, I rode my bicycle to the municipal courthouse to hear a friend argue his first case since graduating from law school and was surprised to see Kate in the jury box, as Damon looked on from the gallery. I sat beside Damon for the next few days to observe the trial. My friend won a judgment for his clients and Kate later told me the experience helped inspire her mystery writing.

Kate’s garden bloomed with flowers and vegetables that nourished her family. Now and then, she gifted workshoppers with a perfect, ripe tomato. The concrete pool aged poorly and Kate decided to fill it in with dirt to grow banana plants and Meyer lemons and ornamental plants.

She kept the workshop going after Damon’s death in 2002. By then, the participants were all friends and professional writers. Kate said she saw us as peers, not as students. We arrived in the late afternoon, took notes about each other’s work, talked about literature, writing, politics, and life. Every month, we argued over where to go to dinner, and then ended up at a Chinese restaurant nearby. We returned to the house for the workshop. If you brought a story, you sat in silence until everyone had critiqued what you’d written. To recover, we talked, ate dessert, drank wine, sobered up with coffee. In those days, I was usually one of the first to excuse myself near midnight and lead the exodus out to the dark carport and rutted stretch of grass where we parked our cars. It felt important to leave at a respectable time and let our mentor rest.

A couple of years ago, Kate confessed that the favor we had granted her by leaving early had an utterly different effect than the way I’d understood things. After our long day together ended with a kiss and good-bye hug to our beloved mentor, the workshoppers left and Kate locked her front door behind us. She did not fall immediately into bed. Though we may have been exhausted by the intensity of the workshop, Kate spent the next few hours in her office working, just as she had done in her early years as a writer (she published her first story in 1956). She’d developed a practice of writing at night, after first reading bedtime stories to her children, tucking them in, and kissing them good night.

Before the workshop ended a couple of years ago, we 40-, 50-, and 60-year-old workshoppers kissed Kate good night, said our good-byes, and watched her wave to us from the window. I assumed she was tired and ready to see us leave. I realize now, that in her way, she was tucking is in for the night. Because once we were gone, Kate changed into her comfy robe and retreated to her office to work on a novel-in-progress or the occasional short story. In her last few years of life, Kate let us know she had valued our workshop as much as we did. But when our role in that day’s story had ended, Kate still needed to tackle the real work of her life, so in the early morning hours, when most of us were asleep, she sat down at her desk to think and write.

–Leslie What

Kate Wilhelm & Damon Knight teach at Clarion (1988)

KATE by Ray Vukcevich

In another time and place, I am sitting at Kate’s kitchen table, and we are talking about Einstein’s understanding of the nature of reality and how he thought that might be of some comfort in the difficult circumstances of the death of a loved one. We are drinking coffee. There is always coffee in Kate’s kitchen. I imagine Einstein explaining that the past, the present, and the future are all equally real. There are no fundamental differences here. They simply are what they are, and they are eternal. I don’t know if we have any of the details right. Can we take comfort in the fact that all the good times are really still there in time and space? It isn’t easy.

That last time I saw Kate in the hospital, she was funny and sharp, totally herself. I am so grateful that our timelines run alongside one another for a distance, and while I do find some comfort in physics, I am in a fog of sadness. I do so miss her. I need to do some reading.

My library is alphabetized by author, so I must get down on the floor to pull her books off the lower shelves and hold them lovingly and turn them in my hands with amazement and admiration and anticipation. I want to be transported to the times and places where I am reading them for the first time, and I want to think about the times I will be reading them all again. Everyone will have a different list of her works that touch them the most. My own list varies every time I think about it, and really includes all of her work, but these four are the ones I will return to next. Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang, Margaret and I, A Sense of Shadow, and Oh, Susannah! And the short stories. I think I will start with all of the stories in Orbit. There is a book called Kate Wilhelm in Orbit. It might be in several volumes. There is an audio book. And there is the collection with the wonderful title The Infinity Box. Each novel, each story, each essay is a definite slice of time and space. Kate’s work is all about what it means to be human, all about what we do to and for one another, and it reminds me that all we really have is one another in this baffling but beautiful universe.

I know it will happen again because it has happened many times before. I will find things in Kate’s books that are the sources of some of my most basic beliefs about what it means to be a person on this planet at this time, things so well said and perfect that I won’t be able to help blob slurping them up and feeling them change my shape as they become part of my being. I will be forever grateful for these stories and for my time with Kate.

–Ray Vukcevich

MEMORIES OF KATE WILHELM by Eileen Gunn

Kate Wilhelm was one of a generation of women born in the 1920s who came of age, in the 1950s and early 1960s, as writers of science fiction that was both literary and feminist. Along with Judith Merril, Carol Emshwiller, Katherine MacLean, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Anne McCaffrey, she was a participant in the influential Milford Writer’s Workshop, founded by Merril, James Blish, and Damon Knight in 1956. These were the women whose work I read in the 1960s and ’70s, when I was forming my idea of what science fiction was and what it could be.

Although I’d been reading her stories since I was in high school, I first met Kate when I attended the Clarion workshop in 1976. She and Damon Knight, her husband, taught the last two weeks of the six-week workshop, which they had co-founded with the writer and academic Robin Scott Wilson.

Kate and Damon were a good-cop/bad-cop tag-team. Damon would slosh through a workshop story in gumboots, correcting sloppy writing and exposing the shaky structure beneath your narrative. He’d draw helpfully in the margins to discourage cliches – a cartoon of your protagonist’s eyes dropping to the ground served as a warning and encouraged you to pay more careful attention to your metaphors. Kate, on the other hand, would read carefully and offer practical suggestions about what you, the writer, could do to make a scene more effective. She’d ask questions about elements that were missing or incomplete. She’d ask what the point of the story was. Damon, in other words, addressed editing issues, and Kate addressed the difficult and uncertain process of creating a story.

My favorite moment during my Clarion experience occurred when I complained to Kate, in great detail, about a story I was blocking on. She listened patiently to my story of despair, and then asked, simply, ‘‘How does it end?’’ I realized in a flash of light that I knew, and I’d always known, how the story had to end, and that all I had to do was write the middle, and I went back to my typewriter and finished the story. Revelations like this are common enough for new writers, and Kate provided them for over six hundred Clarion students, and many more writers at shorter workshops around the world.

A year after Clarion, I moved to Eugene OR, where Kate and Damon lived, as did several of my Clarion classmates, and we all attended Kate and Damon’s informal continuation of Milford; it was an important part of my life for the two years I lived there. After I moved away from Eugene, I continued to drive down from Seattle for the monthly workshop, of which Kate and Damon, of course, were the beating, bloody heart. Several years ago, Leslie What and Nina Hoffman and Pat Murphy and I, all of us ancient Clarion grads, stopped by to visit Kate. We sat in her living room on claw-footed Victorian furniture, and Kate beamed at us. ‘‘I think of you all as my children,’’ she said. The youngest of us was just under 60. We all beamed back, and allowed that, yes, we felt like her children.

In 1978, at ConFusion Pi, a science-fiction convention in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Kate gave a speech in which she described what she termed her biases: first, that science fiction is no different from other fiction; second, that serious fiction writers are artists, like painters, dancers, and composers; and third, that no one can judge the seriousness of the intent of another person.

All we can judge is the art—the novel, the painting, the symphony—and the art produced may be bad art. Art does not have to be good to qualify as art, although there is a popular misconception about this. […] You can’t know the intent of the artist, who may be just as serious and dedicated, and just as emotionally involved, as any artist you can name, and still produce bad art.

Perhaps it was these ‘‘biases’’ that made it possible for her to work, year after year, with so many beginning writers, taking them seriously and helping them take themselves seriously. Many who attended Clarion in the 27 years that Kate and Damon taught there are now important and original authors in science fiction and fantasy, including Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, Vonda N. McIntyre, Nicola Griffith, Nalo Hopkinson, James Patrick Kelly, and many more.

Today, many of the women writing science fiction, and not a few of the men, are children of Wilhelm, whether they studied with her or not, as the workshop techniques developed for Clarion and taught by Clarion alumni have been adopted and adapted at Clarion-type workshops held all over the world.

In person, she didn’t just teach writing. She enabled it.

–Eileen Gunn

Kate Wilhelm & Damon Knight (1990s)

KATE WILHELM by Gardner Dozois

Kate Wilhelm, dead at 89, was the last to go of the top four female writers of the ’70s: James Tiptree, Jr., Joanna Russ, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Kate Wilhelm, all now deceased. Kate also helped her husband, Damon Knight, run the Milford Writer’s Workshop for many years, and was instrumental in founding and helping to run the Clarion Writer’s Workshop. I hadn’t seen Kate face-to-face for decades, but she and Damon were practically surrogate parents to me when I was a penniless young writer, and couldn’t have been kinder to me in providing material support, letting me stay at their rambling old mansion in Milford, Pennsylvania for weeks at a time, and introducing me to the science fiction community at large. And I was far from the only young writer of the day for whom this true. Considering that Kate kept on running writer’s workshops and closely mentoring young writers for decades after Damon’s death, practically right up to the time of her own demise, her impact as mentor and teacher on generations of new young writers can hardly be overestimated.

–Gardner Dozois

KATE WILHELM: INHABITING THE BORDERLINE by Jack Dann

There are very few writers within or without the speculative fiction genre that have what I think of as resonance: that quality that stays with me through the long years, that I retain as my own personal, experiential memory long after I’ve even forgotten the intricacies and plot arcs of the paradigmatic stories that I’ve absorbed into my very being. There are indeed many writers whose work I love and enjoy and admire, writers of both literary and popular fiction... writers who educate, who entertain, who reinforce or upend my so called commonsense notions and values. But their work does not live with me, within me; does not inform and deepen my personal experiential present.

Kate Wilhelm was – by my lights – the quintessentially resonant writer. Her work that I read just short of 50 years ago still plays in my mind, still informs my own work, still represents what I believe penetrating fiction should be... and should do. Over the years I’ve questioned why her work has such resonance for me, as well as for other readers and writers. I have always speculated that it had something to do with coming upon her Jungian-oriented stories and novels such as ‘‘The Infinity Box’’ and Margaret and I, which Kate was writing to great acclaim during speculative fiction’s experimental New Wave period of the late ’60s and ’70ss. Her work delineated and described with an almost scientific accuracy speculative situations (speculative yet astonishingly familiar ‘‘realties’’), which the reader discovers are not familiar at all... except within the terrifying confines of nightmare. And Kate’s work, so satisfyingly localized, intimate, and often domestic, is as confronting as a dream of falling or being buried. And, in fact, stories such as ‘‘The Village’’ – one of the most terrifying and iconic literary works to come out of the Vietnam era – weave familiarity, local color, and sheer bloody terror in such as way as to shift the reader’s sense of what we may laughingly consider consensual reality.

I agree with R. Glenn Wright who wrote that her particular strength as a writer was derived from...

...her ability to lift the edge off the surface of everyday reality – not to show us the seething incoherence of libido energy as so many contemporary authors do – rather she lifts that edge to show us sometimes beautiful and always mysterious patterns underneath that we almost, but not quite, understand. We, all of us, desperately want and need to understand those patterns – they are fundamental somehow to our whole state of being, individually and as members of embattled Western culture. Wilhelm has sensed this need, she feels it, and at her best she helps us with those ever-so-strange patterns. Her stories make us stop stock-still, and, I guess the word is, listen.

That was written in 1977, but it also holds true for her subsequent work, which had grown in style, content, diversity, and – if possible – depth. But Wright also wrote that Kate’s work is virtually impossible to classify. He considered that to be also one of her greatest strengths, as I do, which certainly does not make it easy to characterize such a long and distinguished lifetime of diverse and prolific output. Nor does it even begin to touch upon her vast influence as a guide and teacher to other writers.

Kate Wilhelm (1985)

Kate was a writer who decided to leave genre safety and inhabit the borderline. As she wrote in her introduction to her collection The Infinity Box (1975), ‘‘The problem with labels is that they all too quickly become eroded; they cannot cope with borderline cases at all. The books each label includes and excludes finally distort the label and render it meaningless.’’ She did, however, give her own definition of the ever-shifting and open genre of speculative fiction as ‘‘the exploration of worlds that probably never will exist, that I don’t believe in as real, that I don’t expect the reader to accept as real, but that are realistically handled in order to investigate them, because for one reason or another they are the worlds we most dread or yearn for.’’ And she went on to say – after asking what reader wouldn’t want to live in the dream world... or the nightmare: ‘‘If you don’t believe, you haven’t been reading the papers for the past ten years.’’ In her fiction, dream worlds and nightmares are part and parcel of everyday news.

Although Kate had claimed that speculative fiction comprised about half of her oeuvre, I would speculate that this genre also informed her non-SF work such as the Barbara Holloway mystery series. Her fiction draws together seemingly contradictory connections and appearances to convey just how deceptive our perceptions of ‘reality’ can be; and it may shed some light on her oeuvre to see how the author formed her ideas and stories: to listen to her speak once more. In an interview with R. K. Troughton, she discussed how the first Barbara Holloway novel came to be:

In the mid seventies I was called for jury duty. Here in Oregon at that time one served for a month, not necessarily being impaneled every day, but available, on call. It happened that I served on six juries during my month. I got a really good look at what happens at trials, how the judges behave, the attorneys, and of course the jurors. It’s really true that some jurors go into the back room with the firmly held notion that the defendant is guilty or would not be on trial. Some believe no police officers would testify to anything but the exact truth of the situation, that personal bias would not enter into such testimony. And so on. It was eye opening. After that month I put the whole experience aside, interesting, glad I had the opportunity to observe it all, and happy to be relieved of that particular duty.

Then, one day Barbara Holloway came to visit in my head. Characters do that for me. I didn’t have name for her, not a clue about who she was or what she did for a living, anything. But she was interesting to me. A strong woman, yet vulnerable in certain ways, intuitive but strongly rational as well. I visualized her in several scenes that invited other scenes and I knew she was going to be a lead character in something without any idea yet of what that something was. At the time I was fascinated by the Mandelbrot images, the Julia sets, how mesmerizing they were as we generated them on our own computers. And I had just read Glick’s book on Chaos Theory, and mused about how the connectedness of everything was evoked. The Butterfly Effect – a butterfly in China, tornado in Kansas sort of thing. Barbara could illustrate that, I realized. She would come to see connections that few others perceived. And lo and behold one morning I woke up knowing she was a defense attorney, that the older man in her life was her father, and their relationship was special. After that it was a matter of a good bit of research about the law, gathering the scenes in my head in some kind of order, filling in the blanks, telling a story about a woman who intuitively knew that the law she served and justice didn’t always fit hand and glove.

Or this, from her introduction to Infinity Box:

This is how I work. I don’t go out looking for story ideas, but now and then an article, sometimes no more than a phrase, will catch on something in my mind, a rough spot maybe, and it will stay there undergoing metamorphosis; accretions collect, and when the idea surfaces again, there may or may not be enough for a story, but at that time I always know a story is happening. If it is still more space than content, I try to forget it again, send it back where it can grow undisturbed, gather other bits that have also been examined, however briefly, and put away until later. Sooner or later the idea serves up images, scenes, a character. When that happens I know I am ready to work with the material, mold it, add whatever I can to give it depth, other dimensions, actual people. The finished stories are often not realistic in the sense of the materialists – you won’t find my worlds in your road atlases – but they are always very real psychically. And the psychic landscape has a more enduring reality than suburbia U.S.A. can ever achieve.

And her work – informed by the rigor of a research scientist and crafted with the generosity of one who had experienced and understood the vicissitudes of a rich and varied life, one who had a deep sense of moral responsibility and social conscience – will endure. Her stories and novels will continue to speak for her, will continue to shock and illuminate and change the way we see... everything.

R.I. P. Kate Wilhelm.

–Jack Dann

This eulogy is in large part excerpted from my introduction to the two-volume Kate Wilhelm Masters of Science Fiction collection forthcoming from Centipede Press <www.centipedepress.com>.

KATE WILHELM by James Patrick Kelly

I can’t believe Kate Wilhelm is gone. I’ve had a sideline in the mentor biz for almost 30 years now, teaching at the Clarions and the Stonecoast MFA, and I’ve never hesitated to point out that I too needed mentors when I was starting out. Mine were Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm. I think I absorbed my critical sensibility from Damon and he did me an immense kindness by vetting my first book contract, since I couldn’t get an agent. But I owe my career to Kate.

I’ve told this story in print several times, but the last story I workshopped at Clarion was a competent but not particularly memorable take on the Mad Scientist trope. In workshop Kate proposed a denouement to this story that changed its meaning in less than 200 words and transformed it from an emotionally safe story to a transgressive horror story. Her suggestion stunned me; it picked up on details that I’d already written that I hadn’t realized were pointing toward her reading. In that moment, I became an apprentice story doctor, and if I’ve helped anyone over the years with rewrite ideas, know that you owe Kate Wilhelm a debt of gratitude for showing me the way. Not only did my story get published with Kate’s rewrite, but Terry Carr selected it for his Year’s Best SF. That validation was what kept me going through many years of discouraging rejections. There were certainly times when I contemplated giving up, but I’d written That Story That Kate Fixed.

Flash forward a couple of decades. I’d taught Clarion maybe four or five times when Michigan State University withdrew all funding and it seemed that the workshop would have to fold. As one of the Clarion founders, Kate headed the team which came together to find Clarion a new home and secure its future. I served for several years on the hastily convened Board of Directors with other Clarion alums and teachers, but it was Kate who kept us together and made it happen. If you’ve attended (or hope to attend) Clarion at UCSD, you owe Kate a debt of gratitude, not only for founding the workshop, but saving it.

For all that she did for me and other aspiring writers, we should honor Kate mostly for the stories and novels. What attracted the young Jim Kelly to her work was not only its gravity, but also its focus on characters who were not starship captains or genius inventors. Her close observation of recognizable people meant that she did not have to gin up widescreen plots or techno-dazzle special effects in order to tell riveting and important stories. I still have the hardcover of Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang that I bought in 1976, right before Clarion. The issues of cloning and identity that it examines are ones that I’ve returned to again and again in my own writing. John Kessel and I reprinted her prescient story, ‘‘Ladies and Gentlemen, This is Your Crisis’’ in our anthology, The Secret History of Science Fiction, in which we argued that the best of our genre writers are in all ways the equal of the many mainstream writers who have written genre stories. And yes, I followed Kate when she switched genres and am a huge fan of the Barbara Holloway mysteries.

As a teacher, a writer, and a person I owe more to Kate than I can say here. I will always remember her, and so should you, if you love science fiction.

–James Patrick Kelly

KATE by James Frenkel

Having just heard news of Kate Wilhelm's death, this is now a sad day for me, as it will be for all who knew her or her body of work. Her death is truly a great loss to American literature. She was such a wonderful writer, of effortless style, impeccable skill, and gracefully nuanced storytelling that never seemed to falter. Not to mention that she was also a friend to so many, kind and considerate of even casual acquaintances.

I was fortunate enough to edit two of her novels. Her craft was so elegantly perfect that when her manuscripts came in and I read them, there was nothing to be done but have the text designed and typeset. If that doesn't sound odd, believe me when I say it is not odd, but rather it is extraordinarily rare. Among all the hundreds of novels I've edited, hers are the only ones that have not required even the most minor editing. No typos, no infelicities of style, no problems with pacing or plot, and no underdeveloped characters. She was remarkable, and a joy to work with. Every new novel was a great pleasure to discover, and her shorter fiction was equally fine.

She was also, whenever I had a chance to spend time talking with her, a delight. Sharp as a tack, and kind as well. I didn't see her in her last years of life, but she remained a bright presence that always brought me joy, both in her work, and in her person.

To say she is missed is a huge understatement. I'm sure many of the people whose lives she touched – students, friends, even editors and publishers, are saddened by her loss. Yes, we still have her marvelous work, and the memories of her benevolent spirit. If there's a heaven, she is surely there, making it a better place.

–Jim Frenkel

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MAIN STORIES

Bergin Wins Tiptree Award • Changes at Tor • 2017 Stoker Awards Winners • Davis Wins 2018 Dell Award

BERGIN WINS TIPTREE AWARD

Virginia Bergin (2014)

Virginia Bergin’s novel Who Runs the World? (Macmillan) won the 2017 James Tiptree, Jr. Award, given annually to works of science fiction or fantasy that explore and expand gender roles. Bergin will receive $1,000, original artwork created to honor the novel, and chocolate. She will be honored at a ceremony during WisCon 42, to be held at the Concourse Hotel and Governor’s Club, May 25-28, 2018 in Madison WI.

The Tiptree jury released an ‘‘honor list’’ recognizing other noteworthy works: ‘‘Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue’’, Charlie Jane Anders (Global Dystopias); Dreadnought and Sovereign, April Daniels (Diversion); The Devourers, Indra Das (Del Rey); An Excess Male, Maggie Shen King (Harper Voyager); Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado (Gray Wolf); An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon (Akashic); Black Tides of Heaven and Red Threads of Fortune, JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing).

The jurors also released a ‘‘long list of twenty-six other works they found worthy of attention’’: The Power, Naomi Alderman (Viking); ‘‘Palingenesis,’’ Megan Arkenberg (Shimmer 1/16); Conspiracy of Ravens, Lila Bowen (Orbit); O Human Star, vol. 1 and 2, Blue Dellaquanti (self-published); The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Theodora Goss (Saga); The Book of Etta, Meg Elison (47 North); ‘‘Notes from Liminal Spaces,’’ Hiromi Goto (Uncanny 5-6/17); ‘‘The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist’’, S.L. Huang (Book Smugglers); ‘‘Your Body, By Default’’, Alexis A. Hunter (Fireside 8/16); The Stars Are Legion, Kameron Hurley (Saga); The Moon and the Other, John Kessel (Saga); Passing Strange, Ellen Klages (Tor.com Publishing); Monstress, Volumes 1 and 2, Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda (Image); ‘‘Coral Bones’’, Foz Meadows (Monstrous Little Voices); Provenance, Ann Leckie (Orbit); ‘‘Her Sacred Spirit Soars,’’ S. Qiouyi Lu (Strange Horizons 7/18/16); The Art of Starving, Sam J. Miller (Harper); Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, Torrey Peters (self-published); Autonomous, Annalee Newitz (Tor); Magnus Chase and the Hammer of Thor, Rick Riordan (Hyperion); The Tiger’s Daughter, K. Arsenault Rivera (Tor); Viscera, Gabriel Squalia (Talos); ‘‘Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time’’, K.M. Szpara (Uncanny 5-6/17); Known Associates, thingswithwings (self-published); Story sequence by Debbie Urbanski: ‘‘The Portal’’ (The Sun 3/16); ‘‘The Thread’’ (Cicada 11/16); ‘‘A List of My Utopias,’’ (The Sun 4/17); ‘‘How to Find a Portal’’ (Lightspeed 7/17); ‘‘A Few Personal Observations About Portals,’’ (The Sun 11/17); ‘‘A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers’’, Alyssa Wong (Tor.com 3/2/16).

The 2017 judges were Eugene Fischer, Kazue Harada, Alexis Lothian (chair), Cheryl Morgan, and Julia Starkey. For more: <tiptree.org>.

CHANGES AT TOR

Fritz Foy (2010s); Devi Pillai (2014); Patrick Nielsen Hayden (2013); Irene Gallo (2017)

Leading SF publisher Tor Books has announced significant changes to the publishing team. Fritz Foy, senior vice president of strategic technology at Macmillan and publisher of Tor.com, has been named president and publisher at Tom Doherty Associates. Tom Doherty says:

Fritz has had an impressive career in publishing, first at Simon & Schuster, and for the last 21 years at Macmillan. He has had roles in sales, marketing, operations, technology, workflow, production, and analytics. He brings with him a passion for books and publishing. For the last decade he has been actively engaged with me at Tor Books.

Fritz will be reporting to me as I move into the role of Chairman and as he begins to lead Tom Doherty Associates into the future. Fritz will continue to divide his time between Santa Monica and New York City.

Additionally, Devi Pillai, formerly associate publisher, has been named vice president and publisher of Tor Books, effective immediately. Associate publisher Patrick Nielsen Hayden is now also vice president and editor-in-chief of Tor Books. Kathleen Doherty has been named vice president of Tor Teen/Starscape. Irene Gallo, creative director of Tom Doherty Associates, will also be publisher of Tor.com.

For more: <www.tor.com/2018/03/01/fritz-foy-named-president-and-publisher-of-tor-and-forge-books>.

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2017 STOKER AWARDS WINNERS

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) announced the winners for the 2017 Bram Stoker Awards at a gala held March 3, 2018 at the Providence Biltmore Hotel in Providence, RI during StokerCon 2018.

Superior Achievement in a Novel: Ararat, Christopher Golden (St. Martin’s).

Superior Achievement in a First Novel: Cold Cuts, Robert Payne Cabeen (Omnium Gatherum).

Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel: The Last Harvest, Kim Liggett (Tor Teen).

Superior Achievement in Long Fiction: Mapping the Interior, Stephen Graham Jones (Tor.com Publishing).

Superior Achievement in Short Fiction: ‘‘Apocalypse Then’’, Lisa Mannetti (Never Fear: The Apocalypse).

Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection: Strange Weather, Joe Hill (William Morrow).

Superior Achievement in an Anthology: Behold!: Oddities, Curiosities and Undefinable Wonders, Doug Murano, ed. (Crystal Lake).

Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction: Paperbacks from Hell, Grady Hendrix (Quirk).

Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection: A Collection of Nightmares, Christina Sng (Raw Dog Screaming).

Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel: Kindred, Damian Duffy, Octavia E. Butler & John Jennings (Abrams).

Superior Achievement in a Screenplay: Get Out.

Active and lifetime HWA members were eligible to vote for winners. For more: <horror.org>.

(See page 33 for our StokerCon report and the photo of the Stoker Awards winners.)

DAVIS WINS 2018 DELL AWARD

Dell Awards (l to r): Sheila Wiliams (editor of Asimov’s), C.E. McGill, Rebecca Kuang, Arthur Davis, Rick Wilber (awards administrator), Alexandra Barr, Brittney Hubley

‘‘Happy? Sad?’’ by Arthur Davis is the winner of the 2018 Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. The award is given to ‘‘the best unpublished and unsold science fiction or fantasy short story submitted by a full-time undergraduate college student,’’ and includes a $500 cash prize, publication in Asimov’s, and an invitation to ICFA (International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts), held March 14-18, 2018 at the Orlando Airport Marriott Lakeside in Orlando FL. Davis received the award during the conference awards banquet. First runner-up was ‘‘Four Days to Opening Night’’, Claire Spaulding. Second Runner-up was ‘‘The Corpse Return’’, Rebecca Kuang. Third Runner-up was ‘‘Shitbucket’’, Brittney Hubley.

There were honorable mentions for ‘‘Flood Daughter’’, Alexandra Barr; ‘‘Venus Return’’, Garrison Kammer; and ‘‘Sapphire, Dagger, Hall’’, C.E. McGill.

The Dell Magazines Award, formerly the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing, was established in 1993 by Asimov’s and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts. The awards are co-sponsored by Asimov’s magazine and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, and supported by the School of Mass Communications, University of South Florida, Tampa FL. For more: <www.dellaward.com>.

Return to In This Issue listing.

THE DATA FILE

2018 Carnegie and Greenaway Medal Shortlists • Kitschies Finalists • Philip K. Dick Award Judges • PEN News • Asimov’s Readers’ Awards Finalists • Analog AnLab Awards Finalists • 2018 Compton Crook Award Finalists • More Harrassment Accusations • Amazon News • Magazine News • Awards News • World Conventions News • Announcements • Financial News • International Rights

2018 CARNEGIE AND GREENAWAY MEDAL SHORTLISTS

The shortlists for the Carnegie Medal for best children’s book and the Kate Greenaway Medal for best illustrations in a children’s book have been announced, with some titles of genre interest.

Carnegie Medal: Wed Wabbit, Lissa Evans (David Fickling); Release, Patrick Ness (Walker).

Greenaway Medal: Night Shift, Debi Gliori (Hot Key); The Song from Somewhere Else, A.F. Harrold, illustrated by Levi Pinfold (Bloomsbury).

The awards are presented by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP). The winners will be announced June 18, 2018 in a ceremony at The British Library in London UK. Winners receive £500 worth of books to donate to local libraries, a golden medal, and a £5,000 Colin Mears Award cash prize. For more: <www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk>.

KITSCHIES FINALISTS

Finalists for the 2017 Kitschies, awarded to ‘‘the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining science fiction,’’ have been announced.

The Red Tentacle (Novel): The Rift, Nina Allan (Titan); Fever, Deon Meyer, translated by L. Seegers (Hodder); City of Circles, Jess Richards (Hodder); We See Everything, William Sutcliffe (Bloomsbury); Black Wave, Michelle Tea (& Other Stories).

The Golden Tentacle (Debut): Age of Assassins, RJ Barker (Orbit); How Saints Die, Carmen Marcus (Harville Secker); Hunger Makes the Wolf, Alex Wells (Angry Robot); The Black Tides of Heaven, JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing); Mandlebrot the Magnificent, Liz Ziemska (Tor.com Publishing).

The Inky Tentacle (Cover Art): Adam Roberts’s The Real-Town Murders, design and illustration by Black Sheep (Gollancz); Kate Saunder’s The Land of Neverendings, illustration by David Dean (Faber and Faber); Gavin Chait’s Our Memory of Dust, design by Richard Shailer (Transworld); Maja Lunde’s The History of Bees, design by Jack Smyth and the S&S Art Department (Scribner); Michelle Tea’s Black Wave, illustration by Rose Stafford, design by Hannah Naughton (& Other Stories).

Finalists were chosen from 142 submissions, from over 48 publishers and imprints. Novel and debut winners will be selected by judges Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Leila Abu El Hawa, Joshua Idehen, Ewa Scibor-Rylska, and Alasdair Stuart. Judges for art are Dapo Adeola, Sharan Dhaliwal, Jet Purdie, and Stuart Taylor. Winners will receive tentacle trophies and a total cash prize of £2,000. Awards will be presented in a ceremony April 9, 2018 at The Star of Kings, London. For more: <www.thekitschies.com/the-kitschies-2017-shortlists-revealed>.

PHILIP K. DICK AWARD JUDGES

The five judges for the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award have been announced. Works of science fiction published as paperback originals in the US during the year 2018 are eligible for the award.

Madeline Ashby, PO Box 72047, Coxwell/Danforth PO, Toronto ON M4C 0A1, Canada

Brian Attebery, 551 S 6th Ave, Pocatello ID 83201-5849

Christopher Brown, PO Box 6159, Austin TX 78762-6159

Rosemary Edghill, 1517 Hess Creek Court, Newberg OR 97132-9579

Jason Hough, 621 SR 9 PMB B20, Lake Stevens WA 98258-8525

Publishers are encouraged to mail copies of eligible books to each judge. Nominees will be announced in January 2019. For more: <www.philipkdickaward.org>.

PEN NEWS

PEN America announced the winners of its Literary Awards, including the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay, which went to the late Ursula K. Le Guin for No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Her son Theo Downes-Le Guin accepted on her behalf. The award includes a $10,000 prize. Winners were honored at the 2018 PEN America Literary Awards Ceremony on February 20, 2018 at the NYU Skirball Center in New York City. PEN America ‘‘stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide.’’ The awards ‘‘confer nearly $315,000 to writers and translators whose exceptional literary works were published in 2017.’’ For more: <pen.org/2018-winners>.

PEN America announced Jennifer Egan as their new president March 1, 2018. Egan takes over the role from Andrew Solomon and will work in partnership with Suzanne Nossel, who was named chief executive officer after serving as PEN America’s executive director since 2013. Nossel says: ‘‘A writer both renowned and beloved, Jennifer Egan’s consummate skill, insight and humanity make her a perfect leader for PEN America at a time when our mission faces grave challenge.’’ For more: <pen.org/press-release/pen-america-names-novelist-jennifer-egan-new-president-announces-coast-coast-unification>.

Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner) and The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt (FSG Originals) are among the five finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, announced March 7, 2018. The prize ‘‘honors the best published works of fiction by American citizens in a calendar year.’’ This year’s judges are Andrea Barrett, Stacey D’Erasmo, and Alex Espinoza. The winner will receive $15,000 and finalists will each receive $5,000. The winner will be announced on April 4, 2018 and honored at an award ceremony on May 5, 2018 at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. For more: <www.penfaulkner.org/award-for-fiction>.

ASIMOV'S READERS' AWARDS FINALISTS

The finalists for the 32nd annual Asimov’s Readers’ Awards have been announced.

Best Novel/Novella: ‘‘How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry’’, Alexander Jablokov (7-8/17); ‘‘The Speed of Belief’’, Robert Reed (1-2/17); ‘‘The Girl Who Stole Herself’’, R. Garcia y Robertson (7-8/17); ‘‘The Runabout’’, Kristine Kathryn Rusch (5-6/17); ‘‘I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land’’, Connie Willis (11-12/17).

Best Novelette: ‘‘The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine’’, Greg Egan (11-12/17); ‘‘Soulmates.com’’, Will McIntosh (3-4/17); ‘‘Books of the Risen Sea’’, Suzanne Palmer (9-10/17); ‘‘Wind Will Rove’’, Sarah Pinkser (9-10/17); ‘‘Tagging Bruno’’, Allen M. Steele (1-2/17).

Best Short Story: ‘‘On the Ship’’, Leah Cypess (5-6/17); ‘‘Crimson Birds of Small Miracles’’, Sean Monaghan (1-2/17); ‘‘Number Thirty-Nine Skink’’, Suzanne Palmer (3-4/17); ‘‘Destination’’, Jack Skillingstead (1-2/17); ‘‘Confessions of a Con Girl’’, Nick Wolven (11-12/17).

Best Poem: ‘‘Titan’s Magic Islands’’, Geoffrey A. Landis (7-8/17); ‘‘Invasion’’, Bruce McAllister (7-8/17); ‘‘How to Die on a Faraway Planet’’, H. Mellas (11-12/17); ‘‘Hubble’s Constant’’, Marian Moore (1-2/17); ‘‘Challenger: A Sedoka’’, Jane Yolen (7-8/17).

Cover: January/February 2017, Maurizio Manzieri; March/April 2017, Tomislav Tikulin; July/August 2017, Bob Eggleton; September/October 2017, Cynthia Sheppard; November/December 2017, Eldar Zakirov.

Winners will be announced during a breakfast ceremony at the 2018 SFWA Nebula conference, to be held at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center in Pittsburgh PA, May 17-20, 2018. For more and to read many of the nominees for free: <www.asimovs.com/about-asimovs/readers-awards-finalists>.

ANALOG ANLAB AWARDS FINALISTS

The finalists for the 2017 Analog Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) Awards have been announced.

Novella: ‘‘Nexus’’, Michael F. Flynn (3-4/17); ‘‘The Girls With Kaleidoscope Eyes’’, Howard V. Hendrix (5-6/17); ‘‘The Proving Ground’’, Alec Nevala-Lee (1-2/17); ‘‘Not Far Enough’’, Martin L. Shoemaker (7-8/17); ‘‘Native Seeds’’, Catherine Wells (11-12/17).

Novelette: ‘‘Europa’s Survivors’’, Marianne J. Dyson (3-4/17); ‘‘For All Mankind’’, C. Stuart Hardwick (7-8/17); ‘‘The Old Man’’, Rich Larson (9-10/17); ‘‘My Fifth and Most Exotic Voyage’’, Edward M. Lerner (9-10/17); ‘‘Galleon’’, Brian Trent (7-8/17).

Short Stories: ‘‘Long Haul’’, Marie DesJardin (1-2/17); ‘‘The Chatter of Monkeys’’, Bond Elam (5-6/17); ‘‘Time Travel Is Only for the Poor’’, S.L. Huang (11-12/17); ‘‘Paradise Regained’’, Edward M. Lerner (1-2/17); ‘‘Focus’’, Gord Sellar (May/June 2017); ‘‘Two Hours at Frontier’’, Sean McMullen (11-12/17).

Fact Articles: ‘‘Alien Archaeology’’, Michael Carroll (5-6/17); ‘‘Fatal Starlight’’, Paul Fisher (11-12/17); ‘‘The Quest for the 2:00 Marathon’’, Richard A. Lovett (9-10/17); ‘‘Rendezvous With a Comet: How ESA’s Rosetta Mission is Decoding Ancient Planetary Mysteries’’, Richard A. Lovett (1-2/17); ‘‘Sustainability Lab 101: Cuba as a Simulation of Possible Futures’’, Stanley Schmidt (3-4/17).

Poetry: ‘‘Space Junk’’, Bruce Boston (7-8/17); ‘‘Barriers’’, J. Northcutt, Jr. (3-4/17); ‘‘A Theory of Gravity’’, Josh Pearce (7-8/17); ‘‘Hypothesis/Assertion’’, Daniel D. Villani (3-4/17); ‘‘Quantum Entanglement’’, Fred D. White (11-12/17).

Cover: November/December 2017, Marianne Plumridge Eggleton; January/February 2017, Kurt Huggins; July/August 2017, Rado Javor; March/April 2017, Tomislav Tikulin; September/October 2017, Eldar Zakirov.

Winners will be announced during a breakfast ceremony at the 2018 SFWA Nebula conference, to be held at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center in Pittsburgh PA, May 17-20, 2018. For more, and to read many of the nominees for free: <www.analogsf.com/about-analog/anlab-readers-award-finalists>.

2018 COMPTON CROOK AWARD FINALISTS

The Baltimore Science Fiction Society (BSFS) has announced the finalists for the 2018 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award:

The Guns Above, Robyn Bennis (Tor)

The Prey of Gods, Nicky Drayden (Harper Voyager)

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Theodora Goss (Saga)

Gilded Cage, Vic James (Del Rey)

All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai (Dutton)

Lotus Blue, Cat Sparks (Talos)

Amatka, Karin Tidbeck (Vintage)

The award honors the best first SF/fantasy/horror novel of the year, and ‘‘includes a framed award document and, for the novel’s author, a check for $1,000 and an invitation to be the Compton Crook Guest at Balticon for two years.’’ The award will be presented at Balticon 52, to be held May 25-28, 2018 at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore MD. Selection is by vote of the BSFS membership. For more: <www.bsfs.org/CCA/bsfsccnu2014.htm>.

MORE HARRASSMENT ACCUSATIONS

Two more prominent authors with genre connections have been accused of inappropriate behavior: Sherman Alexie of sexual misconduct, and Daniel Handler of crude and offensive remarks.

After rumors began to circulate online in February 2018, Alexie issued a statement apologizing to ‘‘the people I have hurt’’ and acknowledging he’d made ‘‘poor decisions.’’ He however rejected ‘‘the accusations, insinuations and outright falsehoods made by Litsa Dremousis, who has led the charges against me,’’ explaining that the two of them ‘‘had previously been consenting sexual partners,’’ which ended in 2015. He claims Dremousis contacted his wife in late 2017 and ‘‘since then, has continually tweeted and spoken in public about my behavior, making accusations based on rumors and hearsay.’’ While he said there were women ‘‘telling the truth’’ about his behavior, he said ‘‘I have no recollection of physically or verbally threatening anybody or their careers. That would be completely out of character.’’ He pledged ‘‘to become a healthier man who makes healthier decisions.’’ Dremousis objected to Alexie’s characterization, posting a statement saying, ‘‘I knew he’d use a consensual affair which ended w/us staying good friends as a way to discredit dozens of women who consented to nothing,’’ going on to say that ‘‘I put a huge chunk of my private life out there of my own volition b/c I wanted him to stop harming women.’’

Dremousis referred several women allegedly harassed by Alexie to a National Public Radio reporter, for a piece that gathered accusations from ten other women against Alexie, including three from women who spoke on the record and agreed to be named. The women described ‘‘behavior ranging from inappropriate comments both in private and in public, to flirting that veered suddenly into sexual territory, unwanted sexual advances, and consensual sexual relations that ended abruptly.’’ They accused Alexie of ‘‘trading on his literary celebrity to lure them into uncomfortable sexual situations.’’ The article can be read online here: <www.npr.org/2018/03/05/589909379/it-just-felt-very-wrong-sherman-alexies-accusers-go-on-the-record>.

In the wake of these accusations, Alexie declined a Carnegie Medal for You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir, and asked that paperback publication be delayed.

After author Daniel Handler (AKA Lemony Snicket) posted in support of Gwenda Bond’s petition asking conferences and publishers to enact stricter anti-harassment policies, numerous people came forward to accuse Handler of making unwelcome crude and sexual comments to his female colleagues. He responded in the comments by saying, ‘‘It’s come to my attention, far too late due to my own flaky logistics and lack of an internet life, that a number of women are coming forward to address remarks of mine, at various points in time, that have caused them hurt.’’ He said it was never his intention to insult anyone: ‘‘I sincerely, if tardily, apologize.’’ He blames his sense of humor, which ‘‘has not been for everyone,’’ and says, ‘‘As a survivor of sexual violence, I also know very well how words or behaviors that are harmless or even liberating to some people can be upsetting to others.’’ He concludes that, ‘‘I do not find comments sections the ideal place to discuss incidents in which my memories, and the memories of others who were with me, sometimes differ. And I believe the people who are talking. I am listening and willing to listen; I am learning and willing to learn.’’ Handler’s response, in full, is here: <www.gwendabond.com/bondgirl/2018/02/metoo-ustoo-change-starts-now-stand-harassment-kidlit-community.html#comment-23168>. (The accusations against Handler are in the same comment thread.)

AMAZON NEWS

Amazon has announced a new imprint, Topple Books, to ‘‘spotlight the voices of women of color, gender non-conforming, lesbian, bisexual, and queer writers.’’ Jill Soloway will serve as editor-at-large, with Carmen Johnson helping to oversee the line. Soloway says, ‘‘We live in a complicated, messy world where every day we have to proactively re-center our own experiences by challenging privilege. With Topple Books, we’re looking for those undeniably compelling essential voices so often not heard.’’

Amazon plans to open another brick-and-mortar bookshop in Pacific Palisades CA, in September 2018 – their second shop in the LA area. They also plan a new store in Lone Tree CO, their first in the state – and their 17th announced location.

MAGAZINE NEWS

Dell Magazines reported that some copies of the March-April issue of Analog and Asimov›s magazines were bound with an incorrect signature due to an error at the printer. According to editor Sheila Williams, subscribers’ issues have already been replaced but any customers or retailers who have a misbound copy can contact customer service at 800-220-7443 for a replacement issue.

AWARDS NEWS

‘‘Homunculus’’ by Stephen Lawson won the 2018 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award. ‘‘Dangerous Company’’ by C. Stuart Hardwick is first runner-up, and ‘‘Falling to the Moon’’ by Wendy Nikel is second runner-up. Other finalists were Stewart C Baker, Gustavo Bondoni, Jonathan Edelstein, Angus McIntyre, Julie Novakova, Patrice Sarath, and Martin L. Shoemaker. The winning story will be featured on the Baen website. The author will be given a trophy, paid a professional rate, and receive free admission into the 2018 International Space Development Conference and a year’s membership in the National Space Society, as well as an assortment of Baen Books and National Space Society merchandise. The grand prize will be presented at the 2018 International Space Development Conference, to be held May 24-27, 2018 at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel in Los Angeles CA. For more: <www.baen.com/baenmemorialaward>.

‘‘A Series of Steaks’’ by Vina Jie-Min Prasad was named Best Story in the annual Clarkesworld readers’ poll. ‘‘Sea Change’’ by Matt Dixon, from the June 2017 issue, won Best Cover Art. For more, including finalists: <clarkesworldmagazine.com/clarke_03_18>.

The Science Fiction Research Association has announced the winners of the 2017 SFRA Awards. Mary Kay Bray Award for best essay, interview, or extended review to appear in the SFRA Review: Hugh C. O’Connell for his review of Jack Fennell’s Irish Science Fiction. Thomas D. Clareson award for distinguished service: Veronica Hollinger. Pilgrim Award for lifetime contribution to SF and Fantasy scholarship: Carl Freedman. Pioneer Award for best critical essay-length work of the year: Thomas Strychacz for ‘‘The Political Economy of Potato Farming in Andy Weir’s The Martian’’ (Science Fiction Studies 44.1). Student Paper Award for outstanding scholarly essay read at the annual SFRA conference: Josh Pearson, for ‘‘New Weird Frankenworlds: Speaking and Laboring Worlds in Cisco’s Internet of Everything’’. Honorable mention for the Student Paper Award: Kylie Korsnack for ‘‘Towards a Time Travel Aesthetic: Writing-between-worlds in Okorafor, Butler, and Baledosingh’’. For more: <www.sfra.org/awards>.

Winners of the 29th annual Preditors and Editors Readers’ Poll have been announced, with 41 categories voted on by 3,500 readers. Some categories of particular interest follow. Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novel: Flame in the Dark, Faith Hunter (Ace). Best Positive Future Novel: All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai (Dutton). Best Magical Realism Novel: Sister Witch: The Life of Moll Dyer, David Thompson (Solstice). Best Horror Novel: Tip of the Iceberg, Ash Hartwell (Stitched Smile). Best Steampunk Novel: Beauty and Beastly: Steampunk Beauty and the Beast, Melanie Karsak (Clockpunk). Best Thriller Novel: Waking Up Wolf, Erzabet Bishop (Naughty Nights). Best Children’s Book: Philip and the Dragon, John Paulits (Gypsy Shadow). Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Short Story: ‘‘Locked Room’’, Marc Sorond (All the Pretty Myths). Best Positive Future Short Story: ‘‘Space Cold’’, Guy T. Martland (steemit.com). Best Magical Realism Short Story: ‘‘Double D’’, Donald J. Bingle (Speakeasies and Spiritualists). Best Steampunk Short Story: ‘‘Doppelgangers (and Other Artistic Piffle)’’, James Bojaciuk (All the Pretty Myths). Best Horror Short Story: ‘‘Ghost Train Out’’, Alex Azar (Strangely Funny IV). Best Anthology: Forged in Blood, Michael Z. Williamson, ed. (Baen). Best Magazine/e-zine Editor: Jeani Rector. Best Fiction Magazine/e-zine: The Horror Zine. Best Nonfiction Magazine/e-zine: The Time Travel Nexus. Best Artist: Denny E. Marshall. Best Artwork (tie): ‘‘Rumble’’, Johannes Chazot; ‘‘Sea Station Warp Arrival’’, Denny E. Marshall. Best Magazine/e-zine Cover Artwork: Denny E. Marshall for Bards And Sages Quarterly, 4/17. For more: <critters.org/predpoll/final_tally.ht>.

The Lambda Literary Foundation has announced finalists for the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Awards (the “Lammys”), celebrating “achievement in LGBTQ writing for books published in 2017.” Nominees of genre interest follow. LGBTQ SF/F/Horror: Amberlough, Lara Elena Donnelly (Tor); The Lost Daughter Collective, Lindsey Drager (DZANC); The Prey of Gods, Nicky Drayden (Harper Voyager); Night Visitors, Owen Keehnen (OutTales); Autonomous, Annalee Newitz (Tor); I Stole You, Kristen Ringman (Handtype); An Excess Male, Maggie Shen King (Harper Voyager); An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon (Akashic). LGBTQ Graphic Novels: My Favorite Thing is Monsters, Emil Ferris (Fantagraphics); Condo Heartbreak Disco, Eric Kostiuk Williams (Koyama). Lesbian Fiction: Difficult Women, Roxane Gay (Grove); We Were Witches, Ariel Gore (Feminist); Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado (Graywolf); Things to Do When You’re Goth in the Country, Chavisa Woods (Seven Stories). Gay Fiction: The Clothesline Swing, Ahmad Danny Ramadan (Nightwood). Bisexual Fiction: Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, Andrea Lawlor (Rescue). Transgender Fiction: Nerve Endings, Tobi Hill-Meyer, ed. (Instar); Transcendent 2, Bogi Takács, ed. (Lethe); The Black Emerald, Jeanne Thornton (Instar). Lesbian Romance: Venus and Lysander, Yoshiyuki Ly (Solstice). LGBTQ Anthology: Meanwhile, Elsewhere, Cat Fitzpatrick & Casey Plett, eds. (Topside); Power & Magic, Joamette Gil, ed. (P&M). LGBTQ Children’s/Young Adult: Dreadnought, April Daniels (Diversion). LGBTQ Erotica: Witches, Princesses, and Women at Arms, Sacchi Green (Cleis). The awards will be presented at the 30th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony, held June 4, 2018 at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. For more: <www.lambdaliterary.org/features/news/03/06/lambda-literary-award-finalists>.

Finalists for the inaugural Aspen Words Literary Prize have been announced, including these titles of genre interest: What It Means When A Man Falls From the Sky, Lesley Nneka Arimah (Riverhead); Exit West, Mohsin Hamid (Riverhead); Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward (Scribner). The winner will be announced during a ceremony to be held April 10, 2018 at the Morgan Library in New York NY. The $35,000 prize is awarded to ‘‘an influential work of fiction focused on vital contemporary issues.’’ Finalists and winner are chosen by jury which this year consists of Stephen L. Carter, Jessica Fullerton, Phil Klay, Alondra Nelson, and Akhil Sharma. Aspen Words is a program of the Aspen Institute. For more: <www.aspenwords.org>.

There are several titles of genre interest on the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist: H(A)PPY, Nicola Barker (Heinemann); Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan (Scribner); The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, Imogen Hermes Gowar (Harper); Elmet, Fiona Mozley (Algonquin); Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward (Scribner). The Women’s Prize for Fiction celebrates ‘‘excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women throughout the world.’’ The shortlist will be announced on April 23, 2018 and the winner on June 6, 2018. The winner will receive £30,000 and a bronze ‘‘Bessie’’ trophy. The 2018 judges include Anita Anand, Katy Brand, Catherine Mayer, Sarah Sands, and Imogen Stubbs. For more: <www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/reading-room/news/announcing-2017-longlist>.

The Stella Prize has announced their 2018 shortlist of ‘‘powerful books by Australian women.’’ All four titles of genre interest from the longlist have made it onto the six-title shortlist: The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree, Shokoofeh Azar (Wild Dingo); Terra Nullius, Claire G. Coleman (Hachette Australia); An Uncertain Grace, Krissy Kneen (Text); The Fish Girl, Mirandi Riwoe (Seizure). Named for Stella Maria Sarah ‘‘Miles’’ Franklin, the first Stella Prize was awarded in 2013. Among other goals, the Prize seeks to ‘‘recognise and celebrate Australian women writers’ contribution to literature.’’ The winning author will receive AUD$50,000. The winner will be announced April 12, 2018. For more: <thestellaprize.com.au/prize/2018-prize>.

The longlist for the 2018 Man Booker International prize includes several titles of genre interest: The 7th Function of Language, Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor (Harvill Secker); The World Goes On, László Krasznahorkai, translated by John Batki, Ottilie Mulzet & George Szirtes (Tuskar Rock); Frankenstein in Baghdad, Ahmed Saadawi, translated by Jonathan Wright (Oneworld). The award is given ‘‘annually for a single work of fiction, translated into English and published in the UK.’’ The £50,000 prize is divided equally among the author and translator(s). Judges for 2018 include Lisa Appignanesi (chair), Michael Hofmann, Hari Kunzru, Tim Martin, and Helen Oyeyemi. The shortlist will be announced on April 12 and the winner on May 22, 2018. For more: <themanbookerprize.com/international>.

The YA Book Prize 2018 shortlist includes several titles of genre interest: S.T.A.G.S., M.A. Bennett (Delacorte); Release, Patrick Ness (HarperTeen); The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman (Knopf). The YA Book Prize is awarded to a YA title written by an author living in the UK or Ireland. Finalists and winners are selected by a panel of judges which includes Akala, Melanie Ramdarshan Bold, Caroline Carpenter, Angie Crawford, Julia Eccleshare, Louise O’Neill, Lucy Powrie, and Alex Reads. The winner receives a £2,000 prize. The prize is organized by book trade magazine The Bookseller and run in partnership with Hay Festival. Winners will be announced at Hay Festival 2018, to be held May 24 - June 3, 2018 in Hay-on-Wye, Wales. For more: <www.thebookseller.com/ya-book-prize/shortlist>.

The Bookseller has announced the nominees for the 2018 British Book Awards, including several titles of genre interest. Children’s Book of the Year: Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls, Elena Favilli & Francesca Cavallo (Particular); La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust, Philip Pullman (David Fickling); The Lost Words, Robert Macfarlane & Jackie Morris (Hamish Hamilton). Fiction Book of the Year: How to Stop Time, Matt Haig (Canongate). Audiobook of the Year: La Belle Sauvage: The Book of Dust, Philip Pullman, narrated by Michael Sheen. Also called the ‘‘Nibbies,’’ The British Book Awards ‘‘honours and celebrates the commercial successes of publishers, authors and bookshops’’ with nominees in a variety of categories, including Debut Book of the Year, Editor of the Year, and Independent Bookshop of the Year. Winners will be honored at a ceremony at Grosvenor House in London on May 14, 2018. For more: <www.thebookseller.com/british-book-awards/shortlists/2018>.

WORLD CONVENTIONS NEWS

Worldcon 76, the 76th Worldcon, to be held August 16-20, 2018 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose CA, released Progress Report 2.0, with Hugo and Retro Hugo awards ballots, a letter from the chair, 2017 highlights of work by artist guest of honor John Picacio, a restaurant guide, membership information, a hotel guide, a call for papers for the academic programming track, the WSFS constitution, essays on ‘‘My First Worldcon’’, details about the exhibit hall, a call for volunteers, and a list of new members. For more: <www.worldcon76.org/entry/progress-report-2-is-here>.

Dublin 2019: An Irish Worldcon, the 77th World Science Fiction Convention, to be held August 15-19, 2019 in Dublin, Ireland, published Media Release #3 on February 26, 2019, ‘‘Dublin 2019 to increase attending membership rates’’, announcing that rates will rise on April 3, 2018. Adult attending membership rates will go up from €160 to €180; first Worldcon memberships from €100 to €110; young adult (13 to 25-year-olds) from €100 to €110; and child (6 to 12 years) from €60 to €65. The infant (under 6 years) remains unchanged at €5, and supporting memberships remain €40. They plan to announce family plans and installment plans soon, and offer a €5 discount for pre-supporters of the Dublin 2019 bid. The latter expires April 2, 2018. For more: <dublin2019.com/join-us>. Media release #4, released March 13, 2018, ‘‘Dublin 2019 introduces new payment plan option to spread the cost of attendance’’, explains the terms of their installment plan, which allows payments to be spread out ‘‘over a number of bi-monthly payments.’’ Details are available here: <www.dublin2019.com/instalment-plan>.

Voting is open for the DUFF, TAFF, and GUFF races. The Down Under Fan Fund (DUFF) to send fans from Australasia to Worldcon 76, or to other major conventions in North America in 2018, has one candidate: Marlee Jane Ward. Voting is open until March 31, 2018. DUFF is open to ‘‘anyone who has been active in science fiction fandom’’ before the start of the previous year. Candidates for a northbound trip must be residents of Australia or New Zealand. ‘‘Anyone active in fandom’’ before January 1, 2018 may vote for the candidate and contribute to the fund. The Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF) to bring fans from Europe to Worldcon 76 has three candidates: Johan Anglemark, Fia Karlsson, and Helena McCallum (Adela Terrell). Voting is open until April 3, 2018. The 2018 TAFF is open to any European ‘‘fan active in fandom’’ before April 2016. ‘‘Anyone active in fandom’’ before April 2016 who donates at least £3.00 or $3.00 may vote. The Get Up-and-over Fan Fund (GUFF) to send fans from Europe to Continuum XIV has two candidates: Marcin Klak and, jointly, Steve & Alice Lawson. Voting is open until April 3, 2018. GUFF is open to ‘‘anyone who has been active in science fiction fandom’’ before the start of the previous year. Candidates for a northbound trip must be residents of Australia or New Zealand. ‘‘Anyone active in fandom’’ before the start of the previous year may nominate and vote for a candidate.

ANNOUNCEMENTS

New SF exhibit Dreaming the Universe: The Intersection of Science, Fiction, & Southern California opened March 3, 2018 at the Pasadena Museum of History in Pasadena CA. The exhibit focuses on the history of Southern Californian science fiction from the 1930s to the 1980s. It is curated by Nick Smith, a former president of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) and ‘‘brings together an unusual range of artifacts, fine and graphic arts, books, ephemera, and photographs’’ covering work by writers including Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Octavia E. Butler. The exhibit runs through September 2, 2018. For more: <pasadenahistory.org/sciencefiction>.

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) announced Kenesha Williams as the recipient of its 2018 Scholarship From Hell. The scholarship places writers in the intensive Horror University workshop, which took place during StokerCon 2018. Williams received airfare to and from the StokerCon venue, a four-night stay at the convention, and registration for StokerCon 2018 and the Horror University workshop classes. StokerCon 2018 was held March 1-4, 2018 at the Biltmore Hotel in Providence RI.

Houghton Library at Harvard University is displaying the “Landmarks: Maps as Literary Illustration’’ exhibition of more than 60 literary maps, including those based on works from Richard Adams, Frank Herbert, N.K. Jemisin, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, and more. The exhibit runs through April 14, 2018 and is free and open to the public. For more: <college.harvard.edu/landmarks-maps-literary-illustration-0>.

FINANCIAL NEWS

The US Census Bureau’s preliminary report for retail in January 2018 shows bookstore sales down 8.4% compared to the same period in 2017. All retail was up 5.8% for the period.

The AAP StatShot figures for October 2017 show adult trade book sales up 25.8% compared to the same period in 2016. Mass market paperbacks saw the biggest increase, up 55%, an increase credited in part to strong titles from Christine Feehan and Clive Cussler. Hardcovers went up 43.4%, and digital audio continued to climb, up 41.9%. Adult e-books fell 6.3%. Children’s/YA sales were up 3.5% overall, but e-books dropped 19.9%. Year-to-date figures show adult books up 3.6% and children’s/YA down 2.5%. The 1,204 publishers reporting saw sales up 27.6% for the month, though up only 1.7% YTD.

Barnes & Noble reported sales down for their fiscal third quarter, which included the disappointing holiday season. Revenue of $1.23 billion was down 5.3% compared to the previous year, with a net loss of $63.5 million – which includes a goodwill impairment charge of $133.6 million and a severance charge of $10.7 million. Comparable store sales fell 5.8%. Book sales dropped 4.1% and online sales fell 5.2%. The company started making cutbacks in February with a round of layoffs expected to save $40 million a year.

Hachette Book Group saw their sales increase 2.7% in 2017, according to parent company Lagardère. Some of the increase was due to this being the first full year including Perseus (acquired March 2016). Earnings (EBIT) came in at €210 million ($258 million), up 1.0%. The US and Canada brought in €618 million ($760 million), or 27% of the total revenue for Lagardère’s publishing group in 2017, the same percentage as in 2016. E-books continued to decline, but at a slower pace, with some of the decline offset by a 20% increase in digital audio.

Hachette UK saw sales drop 3.9% in 2017 compared to a record-breaking 2016, which had big sales from J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. E-book sales were boosted by the acquisition of e-book publisher Bookouture. Audiobook sales rose 30%. Worldwide, Lagardère Publishing reported revenue of €2.289 billion ($2.815 billion), up 1.9% on a like-for-like basis, with recurring EBIT of €210 million ($258 million), up around 1%.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trade division reported 2017 sales up 11.4% over 2016, coming in at $184.5 million. They ended the year with a net income of $2.0 million, a definite improvement over the previous year’s net loss of $7.0 million. E-book sales were actually up, bucking the general trend thanks to strong sales for Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and George Orwell’s 1984. Overall, including the much larger education group, the company has been working to restructure, with extensive layoffs (only around 20 in the trade division); revenue rose 2.5% to $1.41 billion, with a net loss of $103.2 million, an improvement over a loss of $284.5 million in 2016.

Simon & Schuster’s sales and earnings both rose in 2017, compared to 2016. A strong fourth quarter, with revenue up 12%, helped boost sales for the year, up 8% at $830 million, with earnings up 11% to $132 million. Audiobooks had the biggest gain, but the international, adult, and children’s groups all saw gains. Digital sales were up 3.6%, with increased sales for downloadable audiobooks making up for a decline in e-book sales. Print book sales also rose.

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INTERNATIONAL RIGHTS

Brazilian Portuguese rights to the complete works of J.R.R. Tolkien sold to Omar de Souza at Harper Brazil.

Polish renewal rights to ten books in the Chronicles of Amber series by Roger Zelazny sold to Andrzej Zysk at Zysk via Piotr Wawrzenczyk of Book/lab Literary Agency on behalf of John Berlyne of Zeno Agency.

Ukrainian rights to Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert sold to Family Leisure Club via Tatjana Zoldnere of Andrew Nurnberg Associates Baltic in association with Martin Rouse of Trident Media Group on behalf of John Silbersack.

Croatian rights to Neuromancer by William Gibson sold to Katarina Zrinski via Susanna Vojacsek of Andrew Nurnberg Associates Budapest on behalf of Szilvia Molnar of Sterling Lord Literistic.

Czech rights to The Stone in the Skull by Elizabeth Bear sold to Albatros Media via Milena Kaplaveric of Prava I Prevodi in association with Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

Spanish rights to Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor sold to Crononauta via Maru de Montserrat of Internatinoal Editors’, Korean rights to Who Fears Death sold to Minumin via Jackie Yang of Eric Yang Agency, and Russian rights to Binti sold to Career Press via Alexander Korzhenevski Agency, all in association with Katie Shea Boutillier of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

French rights to Mike Resnick’s Paradise, Purgatory, and Inferno sold to ActuSF.

Polish rights to Jim Butcher’s Turn Coat and Polish renewal rights to Dead Beat, Proven Guilty, White Night, and Small Favor sold to Mag Jacek Rodek, and Hungarian rights to Storm Front, Fool Moon, and Grave Peril went to Delta Vision, all via Milena Kaplaveric of Prava I Prevodi in association with Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. Persian rights to Storm Front and 14 other books in the Dresden Files series went to Houpaa Book, and via Jackson.

Turkish rights to Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee went to Salon Yayinlari via Merve Öngen of ONK Agency, Czech rights sold to Host Vydavatelstvi via Milena Kaplaveric of Prava I Prevodi, and Korean rights sold to East-Asia via Jackie Yang of Eric Yang Agency, all in association with Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

Polish rights to the Skyward trilogy by Brandon Sanderson sold to Andrzej Zysk at Zysk, Polish audio rights went to Michal Szolc at Storytel Poland, and Polish rights to Lies of the Beholder sold Andrzej Miszkurka at Mag, all via Piotr Wawrzenczyk of Book/lab Literary Agency on behalf of Krystyna Lopez of JABberwocky Literary Agency.

Complex Chinese rights to Summer of Night by Dan Simmons sold to BWP via Gray Tan of the Grayhawk Agency on behalf of Danny Baror of Baror International in association with Richard Curtis Associates.

Spanish-language rights to The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison sold to Esfera De Los Libros via Jack Byrne of the Sternig & Byrne Literary Agency.

Simplified Chinese rights to Arkwright by Allen Steele sold to Cheers via Gray Tan of the Grayhawk Agency, and German rights to Avengers of the Moon sold to Golkonda via Christian Dittus of Paul & Peter Fritz Agency, all on behalf of Szilvia Molnar of Sterling Lord Literistic.

Simplified Chinese rights to Memory of Water by Emmi Itäranta sold to Sichuan People›s Publishing via Lotta Dufva of Elina Ahlback Literary Agency.

Croatian rights to Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward sold to 24sata via Jennifer Lyons and Lucinda Karter of the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency in association with George Laidlaw of Stilus Kniga, and Slovak rights went to Inaque via Lyons & Karter in association with Kristin Olson of the Kristin Olson Literary Agency. Italian rights to Salvage the Bones and Men We Reaped sold to NN Editore via Lyons in association with Beatrice Beraldo of the Italian Agency. Norwegian rights to Salvage the Bones sold to Aschehoug via Lyons and Karter in association with Trine Licht of Licht & Burr.

Spanish rights to Junot Díaz’s picture book Islandborn, illustrated by Leo Espinosa, sold to Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial via Clara Ferrer of the Sandra Bruna Literary Agency on behalf of Draga Malesevic of the Penguin Young Readers Group.

German rights to Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan sold to Amigo Grafik via Paul & Peter Fritz Agency on behalf of Krystyna Lopez of JABberwocky Literary Agency. Russian rights to The Tropic of Serpents went to AST via Alex Korzhenevski of the Alexander Korzhenevski Agency on behalf of Eddie Schneider of JABberwocky.

Hungarian rights to Kushiel’s Chosen by Jacqueline Carey went to Konyvmolykepzo via Susanna Vojacsec of Andrew Nurnberg Associates on behalf of Lauren Abramo of Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

German rights to Simon R. Green’s From a Drood to a Kill went to Feder & Schwert via Paul & Peter Fritz Agency on behalf of Krystyna Lopez of JABberwocky Literary Agency, and Dead Man Walking and Very Important Corpses went to the same company via Christian Dittus of Paul & Peter Fritz Agency on behalf of Joshua Bilmes at JABberwocky.

Turkish rights to the Enola Holmes series by Nancy Springer sold to Eksik Parca via Akcali Copyright Agency on behalf of Jennifer Weltz of the Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency.

Thai rights to Fate’s Edge and Steel’s Edge by Ilona Andrews went to Kaewkarn via Itzel Hsu of the Grayhawk Agency on behalf of Amy Rosenbaum of Nancy Yost Literary Agency.

German rights to the Justin Cronin’s Ouranios and three more books went to Georg Reuchlein at Random House Germany via Claire Roberts at Trident Media Group, and complex Chinese rights to The Passage and The Twelve went to Fantasy Foundation via Clare Chi at The Grayhawk Agency in association with Nicola DeRobertis-Theye of Trident Media Group, all on behalf of Ellen Levine.

Swedish audio rights to The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater sold to Wahlstroms via Mo Literary Services on behalf of Taryn Fagerness Agency and Laura Rennert of Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

Serbian rights to The Core by Peter V. Brett sold to Laguna via Katai & Bolza on behalf of Lisa Rogers of JABberwocky Literary Agency.

Polish rights to The Armored Saint, The Queen of Crows, and The Killing Light by Myke Cole went to Andrzej Miszkurka at Mag via Piotr Wawrzenczyk of Book/lab Literary Agency on behalf of Krystyna Lopez of the JABberwocky Literary Agency. Polish audio rights went to Michal Szolc of Storytel Poland.

Serbian rights to The Dragon with the Chocolate Heart by Stephanie Burgis sold to Vulkan via Simona Kaleva of Andrew Nurnberg Associates Sofia, and Hebrew rights to that title and The Girl with the Dragon Heart sold to Utz via Beverley Levit of the Book Publishers Association of Israel, all on behalf of Molly Ker Hawn of the Bent Agency.

German rights to C.L. Polk’s Witchmark and Stormsong sold to Klett-Cotta at auction via Sarah Knofius of Thomas Schlueck Agency in association with Katie Shea Boutillier of the Donald Maass Literary Agency on behalf of Caitlin McDonald.

Russian rights to Leigh Bardugo’s The Language of Thorns sold to AST via Anna Vasilyeva of Andrew Nurnberg Associates Moscow, Polish rights to the Grisha trilogy went to Mag Jacek Rodek via Filip Wojciechowski of Graal, and Georgian rights to Six of Crows sold to Palitra via Tatjana Zoldnere at Andrew Nurnberg Associates Baltic, all in association with Mia Roman at New Leaf Literary & Media on behalf of Joanna Volpe at New Leaf Literary & Media. Danish rights to The Language of Thorns sold to Carlsen via Lester Hekking of Sebes & Bisseling in association with Veronica Grijalva of New Leaf Literary & Media, in association with Volpe.

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PEOPLE & PUBLISHING

MILESTONES

Nick Mamatas (2016)

NICK MAMATAS is now represented by Michael Curry of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

L.J. HACHMEISTER is now represented by Paul Stevens of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

JOHN GUY COLLICK is now represented by the John Jarrold Literary Agency.

AWARDS

NALO HOPKINSON received the 2018 Octavia E. Butler Memorial Award for ‘‘recognition of impactful contributions to the world of science fiction, fantasy and speculative fiction, with the spirit and conviction demonstrated by multi-award winning author and Cal State LA alumna’’ Butler. The award was presented by Cal State Los Angeles at a ceremony held during Eagle-Con, March 8, 2018 at the University-Student Union of the Cal State campus in LA.

JOHN C. ‘‘BUD’’ SPARHAWK received the 2018 Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award, to be presented during SFWA’s 52nd Nebula Conference, held May 17-20, 2018 at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center in Pittsburgh PA. Sparhawk has served variously as Eastern Regional Director and treasurer, and is the first CFO of SFWA.

DANIEL M. KIMMEL won the Edward E. Smith ‘‘Skylark’’ Award for contributions to science fiction, and ALESSANDRA MARIA PISANO received the Gaughan Award, given annually to an emerging artist, both presented by the New England Science Fiction Association at Boskone 55, held February 15-17, 2018 in Boston MA.

Nalo Hopkinson (2016)

EDWARD WILLETT’s The Cityborn (DAW) is a finalist for the City of Regina Book Award in the Saskatchewan Book Awards. Winners will be announced April 28, 2018.

BOOKS SOLD

JULIET MARILLIER sold fantasy Beautiful as an audiobook original to Steve Feldberg at Audible Originals via Russell Galen and Ann Behar of Scovil, Galen, Ghosh Literary Agency.

LAURA LAM & ELIZABETH MAY sold Seven Devils and a second book to Betsy Wollheim at DAW and Rachel Winterbottom at Gollancz, via Russell Galen of Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency for May and Juliet Mushens at Caskie Mushens for Lam.

JACK SKILLINGSTEAD’s The Chaos Function sold to John Joseph Adams at John Joseph Adams Books.

SHARON LEE & STEVE MILLER sold Constellation 4, a new volume collecting Liaden Universe stories, to Toni Weisskopf at Baen Books via Jennifer Jackson at the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

NICKY DRAYDEN’s Escaping Exodus sold to David Pomerico at voyager via Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

GENEVIEVE COGMAN sold books six, seven, and eight in the Invisible Library series to Bella Pagan at Pan Macmillan via Lucienne Diver of The Knight Agency.

CHLOE NEILL sold the fourth Devil’s Isle novel to Jessica Wade at Berkley via Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency.

K. ARSENAULT RIVERA’s Sixteen Swords sold to Miriam Weinberg at Tor via Sara Megibow of kt literary.

E. CATHERINE TOBLER sold collection The Grand Tour, with stories set in Jackson’s Unreal Circus universe, to Jason Sizemore at Apex.

JAINE FENN sold two books to Angry Robot.

BETHANY MORROW’s supernatural novel The Sound and the Stone and a second book sold to Diana Pho at Tor in a pre-empt via Victoria Marini of Irene Goodman Agency.

VICTOR GISCHLER sold the Kingdom of Ghosts trilogy to Brendan Deneen at Tor via David Hale Smith of Inkwell Management.

DUNCAN HAMILTON’s Dragonslayer, first in a new trilogy, sold to Devi Pillai at Tor with Melissa Ann Singer to edit via DongWon Song of the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency.

TASHA SURI sold three books in the Empire of Sand epic fantasy series inspired by Mughal-Indian history to Sara Guan at Orbit at auction via Laura Crockett of TriadaUS Literary Agency.

TROY BUCHER’s epic fantasy trilogy The Fallen Gods’ War went to Sheila Gilbert at DAW via Jennie Goloboy of Donald Maass Literary Agency.

SEAN GRIGSBY sold Ash Kickers (sequel to Smoke Eaters) and Daughter of Forgotten Light to Angry Robot Books.

MEGAN O’KEEFE sold SF Velocity Weapon and two more titles to Brit Hvide at Orbit via Sam Morgan of Foundry Literary + Media.

MARIA ADELMANN sold Aftermath, ‘‘reimagining classic fairy tale characters as modern women in a support group for PTSD,’’ and story collection Girls of a Certain Age to Carina Guiterman at Little, Brown in a pre-empt via Jenni Ferrari-Adler of Union Literary.

STEVEN KOTLER’s near-future thriller Last Tango in Cyberspace and another title sold to Peter Wolverton at St. Martin’s via Paul Bresnick of Bresnick Weil Literary Agency.

CYN BLACKBURN sold holiday fantasy Wrapped Up In You and two more books to Alethea Spiridon at Entangled Lovestruck.

COLLEEN HALVERSON’s third Aisling Chronicles paranormal romance, Echoes from the Veil, along with Equinox, a novella set in the same world, sold to Brenda Chin at Engangled via Rachel Brooks of BookEnds.

Juliet Marillier (2015)

BETH WILLIAMSON’s space opera Six Shooter sold to Tera Cuskaden at Entangled Amara.

RYAN T. McFADDEN sold The Thief, the Kaiser, and the Venusians and a second book to Bundoran Press.

REBECCA ANGUS sold timeslip romance Where We First Began to Lynn McNamee at Red Adept via Jessica Schmeidler of Golden Wheat Literary.

RAYNA VAUSE sold vampire novel Twice Bitten to Lynn West at Dreamspinner Press via Jill Marsal of the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency.

MICHAEL ROYEA sold Jason and the Quest for the Ram with the Gold-Colored Fleece to Sheri Williams at TouchPoint Press.

CHRISTIAN KLAVER’s Shadows Over London went to Corie Weaver at Dreaming Robot via Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency.

FRED PHILLIPS’s time-travel novel Coaching My Dad went to Tom Corson-Knowles at TCK Publishing.com.

A.A. ALSOP’s The Dead Orphanage went to Tom Corson-Knowles at TCK Publishing.com.

KRISTIN CAST sold The Key to Blackstone for six figures via Meredith Bernstein of Meredith Bernstein Literary Agency.

JESS ROTHENBERG sold YA The Kingdom, ‘‘Westworld meets the Serial podcast,’’ to Tiffany Liao at Holt Children’s and Venetia Gosling at Macmillan UK Children’s at auction via Stephen Barbara at Inkwell Management on behalf of Glasstown Entertainment.

ERIKA SWYLER’s Little Twitch sold to Lea Beresford at Bloomsbury in a pre-empt via Michelle Brower of Aevitas Creative Management.

BRIDGET TYLER sold YA SF The Pioneer and a second book to Kate Jackson at HarperTeen with Alice Jerman editing via Simon Lipskar of Writers House. Film rights were optioned by Temple Hill Entertainment.

JESSICA RUBINKOWSKI sold YA The Bright and the Pale, inspired by Russian folklore, to Karen Chaplin at HarperTeen via Sarah Landis of Sterling Lord Literistic.

EMILY WHITMAN’s selkie novel The Turning went to Martha Mihalick at Greenwillow via Marietta Zacker of Gallt and Zacker Literary Agency.

ASHLEY POSTON’s YA Soul of Stars, sequel to Heart of Iron, went to Kelsey Murphy at Balzer & Bray via Holly Root of Root Literary.

NAHOKO UEHASHI’s The Beast Player, a fantasy set in medieval Japan, translated by CATHY HIRANO, sold to Laura Godwin at Holt Children’s in a six-figure pre-empt via Allison Hellegers of Rights People on behalf of Adam Freudenheim of Pushkin Children’s.

MEREDITH TATE’s YA fantasy The Red Labyrinth sold to Ashley Wyrick at Flux.

CHRISTOPHER EDGE’s YA SF The Infinite Lives of Maisie Day sold to Beverly Horowitz at Delacorte via Kate Wilson at Nosy Crow.

J.H. REYNOLDS sold The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, first in the middle grade Monsterstreet series, and three more titles to Ben Rosenthal at Katherine Tegen Books via Rosemary Stimola of Stimola Literary Studio.

Jack Skillingstead (2017)

EMILY McKAY’s YA fantasy Untethered sold to Brenda Chin at Entangled Teen.

CHRISTA CONKLIN’s Tranquility sold to Deb Haggerty at Elk Lake via Jessica Schmeidler of Golden Wheat Literary.

MELISSA WOODS sold zombie YA Alive? To Rebecca Gober at Clean Teen.

SARAH PINSKER sold first novel A Song for a New Day, expanding Nebula Award winner ‘‘Our Lady of the Open Road’’, and a second book to Rebecca Brewer at Ace via Kim-Mei Kirtland of the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency.

TAMSYN MUIR sold debut epic science fantasy Gideon the Ninth and two sequels to Carl Engle-Laird at Tor.com Publishing via Jennifer Jackson at the Donald Maass Literary Agency.

New writer BRIAN NASLUND’s fantasy Dragons of Terra and two sequels sold to Christopher Morgan at Tor Books at auction via Caitlin Blasdell of Liza Dawson Associates.

LAUREN TEFFEAU’s first novel Implanted sold to Phil Jourdan at Angry Robot via Lana Popovic of Chalberg & Sussman.

KATE WILLIAMS sold debut YA fantasy The Babysitters Coven and a second book to Krista Marino at Delacorte at auction via Kerry Sparks of Levine Greenberg Rostan.

First novelist KATE PENTECOST’s Elysium Girls, a YA set in an alternate-history Dust Bowl, and a second title went to Hannah Allaman at Disney-Hyperion in a pre-empt via Sara Crowe of Pippin Properties.

SHANNON PRICE’s first novel The Red Bridge Wars, a YA reimagining of The Iliad set in San Francisco, and a second book went to Diana Gill at Tor Teen via Elana Roth Parker of Laura Dail Literary Agency.

New writer KAT CHO’s YA fantasy Gumiho, inspired by Korean mythology, sold to Stacey Barney at Putnam Children’s via Beth Phelan of the Bent Agency (she has since moved to the Gallt & Zacker Literary Agency).

BOOKS RESOLD

RIO YOUERS resold Halcyon and The Forgotten Girl to Cat Camacho at Titan Books UK via Cris Scheina of US publisher St. Martin’s.

CHRISTINA HENRY resold Red Riding Hood reimagining Red and The Ghost Tree to Cat Camacho at Titan Books UK via Tawanna Sullivan of US publisher Penguin Random House.

E.C. TUBB resold the Chronicles of Malkar series (Death God’s Doom, The Sleeping City, three stories, and a comic strip) to David Edwards at Nightscape Books via Phil Harbottle on behalf of the Tubb estate.

IMOGEN HERMES GOWAR’s first novel The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock resold to Jonathan Burnham and Erin Wicks at Harper via Anna Stein at ICM on behalf of Karolina Sutton at Curtis Brown. Penguin published in the UK.

BOOKS DELIVERED1

SONIA ORIN LYRIS turned in The Stranger, book two in the Seer Saga, to Tony Daniel at Baen.

PUBLISHING

JONATHAN KARP has been promoted to president and publisher of Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing, a new position reporting to CEO Carolyn Reidy. Karp will oversee Atria, Gallery, Scribner, Simon & Schuster, and their imprints, while remaining publisher of the Simon & Schuster trade imprint.

ALEX LENCICKI was promoted to vice-president, marketing and publicity director at Orbit. ELLEN WRIGHT was promoted to associate publicity director, and LAUREN PANEPINTO was promoted to vice-president, creative director.

KUO-YU LANG is leaving his position of as vice president of international sales and business development at Diamond Book Distributors to become global director of business development at ReedPop, the pop culture convention division of Reed Exhibitions, where he will work on their events in Asia.

MEDIA

KEVIN J. ANDERSON & STEVEN L. SEARS have partnered with Shoreline Entertainment to develop their graphic novel Stalag-X for film and TV.

Film rights to LAWRENCE WATT-EVANS’s 1987 Hugo Award winner ‘‘Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers’’ were optioned by Warner Bros., with a script by Steve Desmond & Michael Sherman, to be produced by Andrew Lazar’s Mad Chance with Benjamin Simpson co-producing, via APA and Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency.

Film rights to APRIL DANIELS’s Nemesis: Dreadnought series was optioned by Wayne Brady’s Makin’ It Up Productions via Saritza Hernandez and Marisa Corvisiero of the Corvisiero Literary Agency.

DANIEL KRAUS’s collaboration with the late GEORGE ROMERO, The Living Dead, set in Romero’s cinematic zombie universe, sold to Brendan Deneen at Tor via Richard Abate of 3 Arts Entertainment and Chris Roe of Chris Roe Management.

Film rights to TAMARA DIETRICH’s The Hummingbird’s Cage were optioned by Bankside Films, London via Susan Schulman of Susan Schulman Literary Agency on behalf of Barbara Braun Associates.

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KAMERON HURLEY: WRITING IS HARD, AND THAT'S OK

Kameron Hurley

On winning the Oscar Award for best original screenplay, Jordan Peele admitted that he started his winning script for the film Get Out at least 20 times. Why 20? Because he just didn’t feel he could get the script to work, no matter how many times he tackled it.

Author N.K. Jemisin relates a similar struggle in the writing of her masterful novel, The Fifth Season. In her acceptance speech for the Hugo Award for that novel, she says she believed that The Fifth Season was beyond her skill to write. ‘‘I thought no one would want to read it,’’ she said, and she thanked the numerous people who convinced her not to quit writing the book.

It’s stories like these, and my own struggles with my work, that make me wonder how many exceptional stories we’ve been denied because the difficulty involved felt overwhelming to their authors. Perhaps the creators didn’t have the support networks to encourage them to keep going. The truth is that when you are working on a piece that doesn’t seem to be working, it can feel demoralizing, like a personal failure. What we often fail to realize is that writing – though we are the only ones who can actually put the words to paper – is a collaborative act, requiring a lot of invisible voices along the way to help us keep going.

I have never wanted to quit writing more than I have in the last two years. The process feels as if it’s gotten harder. In truth, it feels harder because I’m working on more technically difficult pieces. The knowledge doesn’t make me feel any better when I’m banging my head against the wall on a project.

I’m currently working on a time-traveling military science fiction novel called The Light Brigade, and it’s been... a struggle. I kept getting to the point at which the events in the novel need to start happening out of order, and then... getting stuck. I’d write some stuff, throw it away, endlessly revise what I had, write up a lot of circle diagrams, plug stuff into Scrivener, bang my head against the desk, rewrite stuff again... and finally I just sent what I had, with a rough outline for the rest, to my editor and agent.

I felt like a totally failure.

My agent, Hannah Bowman, got on the phone with me and said, ‘‘Listen, this first part you’ve got is damn good.’’ (I sighed with relief, I admit.) The rest, she said, is confusing. Sure. But we’re going to map it out. Explain it to me.

So I did.

And she was like, ‘‘Oh, wow, yeah. This is a beast. This is tough.’’

Cue my second sigh of relief.

I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t a failure. I have just been working on something hard.

We discussed what we wanted to happen in the rest of the book, and how to solder together the partial scenes. We both made some notes. She said she’d send me an updated outline. She must have worked on it all day, because she kept sending me email updates in real time. They said stuff like: ‘‘Wait, now there’s three timelines!’’ ‘‘Now this character is caught in a time loop!’’

And I said, ‘‘Yeah, you know: welcome to my world.’’

It turns out her husband has a PhD. In math, and so helped her build... well, it’s a complicated if/then statement graph thing. Apparently it’s called ‘‘a directed Hamiltonian path through a bipartite graph.’’ What it did was help her run through models of how this time travel would work.

After doing that, she sent me three versions of what we could do. I revised the third one, the one we agreed on, and then used her breakdown of the Missions and Base Scenes to set up modular chunks in Excel saying who the protagonist’s team is, and what’s happening around them, at each of these points in time. Then, on the second tab, I scrambled those scenes up according to how we wanted the reader to experience them.

After I did that, I decided I wanted to time shift someone else and my agent was like, ‘‘Well, I ran her through the graph and we can have her do X or Y but not both.’’ And I was like, well, I’ll do whatever math says, then!

See, folks: I’m a real science fiction writer!

After we had solved the worst of the issues, I realized just how hard on myself I had been. I had thought I was stupid because I couldn’t figure this out, when in truth it took three of us to make it work. And I haven’t even heard from my editor yet, who may chime in with stuff we haven’t seen.

What I’m getting at here is that suffering a couple of setbacks can really hurt your self-esteem. It sure has hurt mine. But your biggest bully as you go forward with your career may end up being yourself, and how much you internalize all the crap the world throws at you. Having thick skin is great, but the reality is that over time, your skin gets rubbed raw in this business, and if it keeps getting hit without having the time to recover, well... you aren’t going to recover.

We have a really weird job. It’s this profession where you must spend time thinking very deeply about a thing, often alone, and bleed yourself into it, and then you have to present it to the world, and the world does with it whatever the hell it wants. It’s like watching dogs gnawing up pieces of you that you’ve cut up and thrown to them.

Sometimes you really are building a complex piece of work that requires your full brain power. And, maybe, the brain power of a village. It’s not because you’re lazy, or stupid, or behind, or other people are somehow geniuses. It’s because you really are doing something hard that you haven’t done before. And that’s a good thing! That’s being ambitious. That’s not settling for writing the same book over and over. Doing the hard thing is what leads to writing exceptional work.

The more self-doubt I experience, the more I wonder if the true test of working on something great is self-doubt. I’ve met several mid-career writers who admit that they are far more full of doubt now, three or six or ten books into their careers, than they were when they first began. While much of this is simply leveling up as a writer – you’re better able to see your work’s weaknesses – the truth is that the grind itself can wear us down. You feel your career should be in a certain place, or that you should sell a certain number of books. You feel like a failure for not writing quickly enough, not being nominated for awards, not being reviewed. There are a million ways to measure yourself.

One of those ways certainly shouldn’t be how difficult or easy it is to write your own work. If writing novels, and finishing them, and selling them, and continuing to do that year after year, was super easy, well…everyone would do it. And they don’t. Plenty of writers quit after a first book, a first series, or the end of their contracted books. I understand why they quit. They quit because for many of us, it doesn’t get easier. It gets harder.

But that’s where all the great work comes from... that place between the last book and the next, the long dark moments where it’s you and your self-doubt, and the hope and uncertainty of what comes next.

–Kameron Hurley

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GARDNERSPACE: A SHORT FICTION COLUMN BY GARDNER DOZOIS

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/1/18

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/15/18

The Father of Lies, K.J. Parker (Subterranean) January 2018.

‘‘Science-fantasy’’ is a slippery term, one that’s changed over time, as demonstrated in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, issues #244 and #245, the annual science-fantasy double issue. Using the strictest definition, any story that features ‘‘impossible’’ technology, technology far in advance of what can be achieved by today’s technical capabilities, is ‘‘science-fantasy.’’ I give a break to stories about the exploration and colonization of the solar system, although that’s out of reach of today’s technological capabilities, but not all that far out of its reach, and to eliminate such stories, which are traditionally thought of as ‘‘science fiction’’ would be to eliminate most of the genre, going back to the ’60s when space flight did become actually possible in the real world. Seen through the lens of that strictest definition, though, space opera stories, far future stories, stories about galactic empires, stories featuring faster-than-light travel, time travel, AIs, sentient robots, living spaceships, travel to alternate dimensions, or crosstime travel to different Earths are all ‘‘science-fantasy’’ rather than ‘‘science fiction.’’

Times change, though (it’s worth remembering that stories about the development of atomic power and the first manned landing on the Moon were once ‘‘legitimate’’ science fiction), and very few people today, with the exception of the strictest pedants, would have any trouble accepting the stories in the above list as science fiction – in fact, it wouldn’t even occur to all but a vanishing percentage that they weren’t.

I myself tend to accept all of the stories on the above list as science fiction, and reserve the term ‘‘science-fantasy’’ for stories that mix science fiction with tropes from genre fantasy.

For my money, then, a perfect example of a science-fantasy story, and also the best story in the February 1st issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, is ‘‘The Starship and the Temple Cat’’ by Yoon Ha Lee, which features the ghost of a cat haunting the ruins of a space station that has been destroyed by war. The cat ghost later rallies the human ghosts in the station to defend it against a returning enemy spaceship, and then strikes up a conversation with the spaceship itself, which is in rebellion against its former masters, and awakens the ghosts that power the ship to form an alliance. The ghost of the cat is perfectly believable, both as ghost and as cat, and has believably cat-like motivations and a cat-like perspective on everything that it does.

On the other hand, ‘‘Where the Anchor Lies’’ by Benjamin C. Kenney could easily be seen as science fiction, given the idea that psychic communication is possible between a fallen, ‘‘dead’’ sentient spaceship and the human woman who was once bonded to it as it’s ‘‘lover.’’ It makes an interesting companion piece to the Yoon Ha Lee story – although this time the ghost is that of a spaceship.

Once again, ‘‘El is a Starship Melody’’ by Maurice Broaddus, although weaker than the other two stories in the issue, could be considered science fiction, as long as you’re willing to accept the concept that the semi-living crystals that power a starship can be controlled by playing the right music to them.

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The strongest story in the February 14th issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, ‘‘Penitents’’ by Rich Larson, is, as far as I can tell, not a science-fantasy story at all, but rather a straight after-the-holocaust story, and a pretty good one, where aliens with godlike powers return to the Earth, which they had seeded with life millions of years ago, to observe, and mourn, the results of their efforts – almost all life wiped out by the humans they had helped to create, except for a few isolated and desperate survivors. This would certainly fall within the range of almost all – if not all – other science fiction markets.

Also good in the February 14th issue, another after-the-holocaust story with, as far as I can tell, no fantasy element at all, is ‘‘Red Dreams’’ by R.Z. Held, in which a young woman struggles not to give in to the dreams which are urging her to kill her partner and mutilate herself – and everything and everyone else she can get her hands on. (The author could have inserted a fantasy element here as a reason for her affliction, ghosts or an ancient curse, but instead there’s a clever scientific explanation for what’s causing her ‘‘red dreams,’’ and how to fight them without giving in to them and going berserk.

‘‘Such Were the Faces of the Living Creatures’’ by Josh Pearce, is another after- the-holocaust story, although this one leans more toward the gonzo/Weird Western than the other two, with a lot of semi-surreal elements that are never really explained – but no straight, conventional genre fantasy elements.

The only actual science-fantasy story in the February 14th issue, using my definition, is ‘‘The Last Human Child’’ by Milo James Fowler, in which a human child programmed to be a killer and a combination of ogre and troll created by wizards form an unlikely partnership to battle against all three races: ogres, trolls, and humans.

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The first major short-story collection of 2018 has appeared: The Father of Lies by K.J. Parker. Parker’s work is unlike anything else being done in the fantasy genre – razor-sharp, sardonic, bitingly intelligent, slyly funny. In fact, especially at short lengths, he may be the best writer working in fantasy today, and you’re unlikely to see another fantasy collection as strong and quirky as this one in 2018.

My favorites here are ‘‘The Dragonslayer of Merebarton’’, ‘‘The Things We Do For Love’’, ‘‘No Peace for the Wicked’’, and ‘‘Told by an Idiot’’, but there are eight other stories here almost equally satisfying. This will almost certainly turn out to be one of the best collections of the year.

–Gardner Dozois

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LOCUS LOOKS AT SHORT FICTION: RICH HORTON

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/1/18

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/15/18

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/1/18

Lightspeed 2/18

Lightspeed 3/18

Clarkesworld 1/18

Clarkesworld 2/18

Galaxy’s Edge 1/18

Kaleidotrope Winter ’18

Apex 2/18

February is Science-Fantasy Month at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, one of my favorite times! And as a bonus, this year it extends to the first day in March, so there are three issues of stories that mix SF and fantasy (often by describing SFnal situations in the language of fantasy.) My favorite from the first issue was ‘‘The Starship and the Temple Cat’’, by Yoon Ha Lee, which really does mix out-and-out fantasy with SF (unlike Lee’s novels, which I read as being pure SF in a milieu describable to us only in a way that seems like fantasy). The cat is a ghost, in its spectral sense the only survivor of a space station destroyed by a galactic warlord’s forces. The starship is one of the fleet that destroyed the space station, and it has returned out of something like guilt after the death of its captain. And somehow the two meet, and through poetry and music, find a way to resist the warlord’s forces.

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The 2/15 issue had a couple of intriguing pieces. Rich Larson’s ‘‘Penitents’’ portrays a wholly ruined future Earth in which the more privileged live underground. Mara is one of those, and she’s come to the surface with the help of the wily Scout, to try to rescue her friend Io from the spooky alien creatures who have captured her: it seems these aliens attach to humans they find on the surface, take over their minds, and send them on forced marches. But Scout knows how alluring the attraction of these aliens is – and Mara eventually learns just why, which gives the story (and its title) its moral point. Josh Pearce’s ‘‘Such Were the Faces of the Living Creatures’’ is the most effectively strange of all these stories. It’s set in a wholly chemically corrupted future in which children are conceived with the help of a ‘‘mater baster’’, and are usually genetically malformed. The protagonist sets out with one of their diseased children to find a cure for her, a journey which serves as sort of a travelogue and, in the end, suggests a hope for a kind of transcendence, though within a cynical milieu.

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From March 1, there is ‘‘The Emotionless, in Love’’, a sequel of sorts to Jason Sanford’s excellent 2016 story ‘‘Blood Grains Speak Through Memories’’, set in a future in which AI-controlled ‘‘grains’’ enforce strict environmental rules on the humans they still tolerate, using human ‘‘anchors’’ as their enforcers for specific domains. Colton has had his grains burned out, and as a result can’t feel emotion. He has joined a traveling caravan, helping them with his limited ability to understand the grains. They have reached a domain which is ruled by an apparently mad anchor named Sri Sa, who offers Colton a way to regain his emotions in exchange for his group’s help.... The story turns in part on the true history of the establishment of the grains’ control, and on Sri Sa’s real and somewhat sinister plans. It’s interesting work, though not, I thought, quite as successful as its predecessor. Sarah Pinsker’s ‘‘Do As I Do, Sing As I Sing’’ is pretty solid work as well, set on a world where ‘‘cropsingers’’ are required to sing to the crops to encourage them to grow properly. The narrator is to become the newest cropsinger for her community – a difficult and lonely job. Her brother rebels, and leaves, only to return with what he hopes are mechanical approaches to the problem. The story is at once a fine look at its main characters, and a worthwhile and not insistent meditation on both the difficulty of crude efforts to replace traditionally effective methods (such as this story’s cropsinging), and on the somewhat paradoxical resistance to changes that really might improve peoples’ lives, if disruptively.

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Lightspeed’s February issue includes a fine and pointed fantasy by Rahul Kanakia, ‘‘A Coward’s Death’’, about an all-powerful Emperor conscripting the first sons of his subjects to work on a massive statue. The moral is simple – his rule is unjust, but resistance, as they say, is futile. Nonetheless, one young man in the narrator’s village resists. The tale is lightly told, but mordant and effective.

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In March Bryan Camp’s ‘‘The Independence Path’’ is a solid and effecting, grounded piece of extrapolation, about an android boy and his desire for independence from his parents, whom he loves. He just wants to be his own person. Just like humans, of course! This story nicely marries believable technological and social extrapolation – and has a real character at its center.

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Clarkesworld opens the year with an issue with three stories (of five, and that’s not counting Grenada-native Tobias S. Buckell!) from outside the traditional SF Anglosphere. I liked two of them a lot: Bo Balder’s ‘‘A Cigarette Burn in Your Memory’’ is very strange, about a woman who takes inquiries about missing persons. Nothing odd there, but we soon learn that all sorts of things are missing, at least in peoples’ memories, including, perhaps, hers. It’s truly, effectively mysterious and moving. Bao Shu’s ‘‘The Lighthouse Girl’’ is a clever story about a young girl whose mother is dead, but there is a mystery: why is her father evasive about her past? And why is her mother’s tombstone among graves from 40 years in the past? And what of her English teacher who thinks she resembles a childhood friend? Sinister possibilities arise – but the real answer is more SFnally interesting. Tobias S. Buckell’s ‘‘A World to Die For’’ is a parallel worlds tale, opening in an environmentally collapsed future, a milieu reminding me of Mad Max. The gang Che runs with is stopped by another gang that wants a trade – Che for some solar panels. That seems strange and pretty scary, but things get stranger when she meets a man who says she’s been rescued from an attempt on her life, and stranger still when she meets herself, and realizes she’s rattling through a variety of parallel worlds, in wildly varying states of environmental health. The story drives – perhaps a bit too didactically – towards a morally convicted resolution.

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From the February Clarkesworld I enjoyed ‘‘Obliteration’’, another of Robert Reed’s almost parable-like examinations of the effects of a technology, in this case a memory backup that allows anyone to replay any event of their life in detail. Kleave is exploring a simulated Mars and tries to replay something for his girlfriend and he can’t – his memory backup, and its backups, have been corrupted. This sends him on a path involving not just attempts to restore his lost memory, but to live without it (among, for example, a group that rejects the tech entirely). All this serves nicely as an illustration of this particular bit of speculation, and as a (slightly pat) moral look at its unexamined consequences. Nice if not overwhelming.

More interesting, I thought, was Carolyn Ives Gilman’s ‘‘Umbernight’’, set within a struggling colony on a world subject to periodic bursts of radiation from its primary’s UV-emitting companion. Michiko is perhaps the only colony member interested in exploring their world, so she is forced into leading a dangerous expedition to recover the latest cargo drop from Earth, which will arrive just before the next predicted ‘‘umbernight’’, when their planet will be awash in dangerous radiation. The expedition is predictably a disaster, especially when umbernight comes a bit early, and the members learn, the hardest way, that their planet changes in quite amazing ways in true umbernight. It’s pretty neat stuff, really, set against its protagonist’s justly cynical attitude.

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I haven’t mentioned Galaxy’s Edge in a while. The magazine remains worth checking out, even if it hasn’t published any truly exceptional stories quite yet. It’s nicely produced, though, and features plenty of nice work, and lots of new writers.

My favorite story for January is by veteran writer Nick DiChario, whose ‘‘Of Love and Olives’’ tells of an olive-farming couple in Italy, and a young man they find in a block of ice washed ashore. The man seems a miraculously survived soldier from WWI, and before long the wife is quite inappropriately attracted to him. The resolution is a bit bittersweet, but pragmatic and grounded.

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Kaleidotrope for Winter has another quite amusing tale of a certain magical street, and a shop not far from ‘‘The Ouroboros Bakery’’, Octavia Cade’s previous story for them. The shop in ‘‘The Temporary Suicides of Goldfish’’ is run by the Lady of Scales, who will turn you into a goldfish for a pretty fair price, if you need to escape the world for a time. And the narrator, having picked the pocket of the wrong man, does need to get away. The story lets us learn as we go along how this magic works, and how and when one becomes human again, and also, incidentally, reveals a little twist about the relationship of the narrator, her girlfriend, and the girlfriend’s grandmother.

I also liked ‘‘A Slip in the Slice’’, by Heather Morris, which sets up an intriguing notion: timeslices, where people share the same space but in different times (sort of), maybe a bit like Philip José Farmer’s Dayworld or Hao Jingfang’s ‘‘Folding Beijing’’, but not exactly. Gwen wakes up one morning and realizes Paul – her ‘‘slicemate’’ or whatever – is stuck between slices or something. The tech doesn’t matter – the story works its way effectively to an unforced point about Gwen’s isolation.

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In the February issue of Apex, I found Alix E. Harrow’s ‘‘A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies’’ pretty special. It’s told by a librarian (‘‘There have only ever been two kinds of librarians in the history of the world: the prudish, bitter ones with lipstick running into the cracks around their lips who believe the books are their personal property and patrons are dangerous delinquents come to steal them; and witches’’ – no prizes for guessing which category our narrator fits), as she encounters a teenaged boy who becomes obsessed with a particular, pretty bad fantasy novel.

The boy is obviously in a difficult family situation and perhaps escape is what he needs. Witches know ways to escape, but that’s against the rules, and librarians are rule followers. The story is at the same time a bit cute, almost arch, and yet grounded and quite moving. It’s one of those stories that by the end really sold me, so that I liked it much more than I at first expected.

Recommended Stories

‘‘A Cigarette Burn in Your Memory’’, Bo Balder (Clarkesworld 1/18)

‘‘The Temporary Suicides of Goldfish’’, Octavia Cade (Kaleidotrope Winter ’18)

‘‘The Independence Path’’, Bryan Camp (Lightspeed 3/18)

‘‘Umbernight’’, Carolyn Ives Gilman (Clarkesworld 2/18)

‘‘A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies’’, Alix E. Harrow (Apex 2/18)

‘‘The Coward’s Path’’, Rahul Kanakia (Lightspeed 2/18)

‘‘The Starship and the Temple Cat’’, Yoon Ha Lee (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/1/18)

‘‘A Slip in the Slice’’, Heather Morris (Kaleidotrope Winter ’18)

‘‘Such Were the Faces of the Living Creatures’’, Josh Pearce (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 2/15/18)

‘‘Do As I Do, Sing As I Sing’’, Sarah Pinsker (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 3/1/18)

‘‘Obliteration’’, Robert Reed (Clarkesworld 2/18)

–Rich Horton

Semiprofessional magazines, fiction fanzines, original collections, and original anthologies, plus new stories in outside sources should be sent to Rich Horton, 653 Yeddo Ave., Webster Groves MO 63119, <Richard.Horton@sff.net>, for review.

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LOCUS LOOKS AT BOOKS: GARY K. WOLFE

Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller (Ecco 978-0-06-268482-0, $22.99, 336pp, hc) April 2018.

The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 12, Jonathan Strahan, ed. (Solaris 978-1781085738, $19.99, 620pp, tp) April 2018. Cover by Adam Tredowski.

The Tangled Lands, Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias S. Buckell (Saga 978-1481497299, $26.99, 304pp, hc) February 2018.

If Sam J. Miller’s debut novel The Art of Starving was an intimate portrait of a troubled but appealing teen grappling with personal demons like bullies and eating disorders, his SF debut Blackfish City is expansive, ambitious, violent, rich in invention, and populated by a range of colorful figures whose characteristics sometimes seem drawn from sources as diverse as The Godfather, classic urban noir, a few familiar SF tropes, Samurai movies, and even superhero comics (at least there’s some Spiderman-style building-scrambling). Not least among these characters is the setting itself – the remarkable eight-armed artificial ocean city of Qaanaaq (which we first glimpsed in Miller’s celebrated 2015 story ‘‘Calved’’), ‘‘east of Greenland, north of Iceland’’ and home to a population of almost a million, many of whom are refugees from the drowned or abandoned cities of the ‘‘Sunken World.’’ (By now we’re so inured to inundations and dislocations caused by climate change that a simple phrase is about all we need by way of backstory, though Miller does offer a few more details, mentioning that the most recent effort at an American government has collapsed.) It’s about as different in scope and tone from The Art of Starving as it can get, but it’s also the first SF debut novel I’ve seen this year that promises to have as striking an impact as Annalee Newitz had last year with Autonomous (which, interestingly enough, also partly took place in a growing Arctic city, Iqaluit). But instead of robots, Miller offers us killer whales and polar bears, and instead of bonding with your robot, something called ‘‘nanobonding,’’ by which humans can share awareness with particular animals because of nanomites in the bloodstream.

Qaanaaq is interesting for a number of reasons. It’s fueled by undersea thermal vents and governed mostly by artificial intelligences, and although there is a managerial class, capitalism seems virtually unregulated, while a criminal syndicate has amassed its own power. The wealthy live in plush accommodations with moving gardens and twenty-story buildings, while the refugees and itinerant workers of the ‘‘upper arms’’ barely subsist in what amount to stacks of shipping crates. The main viewpoints are those of Ankit, chief of staff to an ambitious politician; Fill, a wealthy heir to one of the city’s shareholders, suffering from an unusual condition called the breaks (which, unleashed by ‘‘big pharma,’’ has odd effects on memory, later explained in an ingenious but credible way); Kaev, a skilled but damaged professional fighter who makes his living deliberately throwing fights to accommodate the corrupt sport (‘‘beam fighting,’’ a kind of logrolling fought on beams above the ocean); and Soq, a nonbinary street urchin working mostly as a messenger for the mob, which is led by a ruthless godmother named Go.

It takes a while for Miller to reveal how these characters and their worlds are intertwined, since at first each seems to have a different agenda. Ankit, for example, wants to free her mother from a psychiatric facility-cum-prison called the Cabinet, while Kaev – who turns out to be her brother – is simply looking for an honorable way to retire and survive. Fill is interested in discovering the author of an anonymous broadcast called City Without a Map, a kind of insider’s guide to Qaanaaq which Miller also uses, sometimes a bit blatantly, as an ongoing infodump, a bit like Dos Passos’s ‘‘camera’’ segments of his U.S.A. trilogy. What does eventually knit the characters together is a figure who makes a spectacular appearance in the novel’s opening scene: a mysterious woman riding a skiff towed by a killer whale, and accompanied by a huge polar bear. She seems a bit intimidated by the bear, but it becomes apparent that she and the orca are nanobonded – which many view as a kind of unholy abomination. After she goes all Kill Bill on a mob trying to attack her, we learn what her real motive is, and how she is connected to the other characters. Miller’s conclusion may seem a bit rushed and CGI-ready, after a novel so dense with ideas and fully-realized characters, but at the same time it makes clear that, beyond the technology and pyrotechnics, Blackfish City is, rather surprisingly, also a novel about family, responsibility, and the possibility of community.

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After many years – sometimes it feels like too many – of reading year’s best anthologies, I’ve come to the conclusion that they serve three different purposes for three different but overlapping audiences. The first, and most obvious, is to provide a rich and entertaining variety of stories for the general literary reader; we might quibble over why a particular story was considered ‘‘best,’’ or why a favored story didn’t make it, but, given the considerable variety of talent at work these days, it would take a Trumpian level of incompetence to produce an annual that wasn’t, on the whole, pretty readable – and Strahan (a colleague on this magazine and our podcast) has the advantage of eclectic tastes, both stylistically and thematically. The second purpose is that they provide a useful service for those of us who at least nominally try to keep up with the field, helping to identify trends, letting us know what old favorites are up to, and, perhaps more importantly, introducing us to newer writers who might emerge as major figures over the next few years. The third purpose might be to serve as an introduction to the field for readers thinking it may be time to catch up on this sci-fi stuff, or as a reintroduction for those who may have drifted away years earlier. I have no idea what proportion of the market this latter group might represent (not a lot, I suspect), but an interested novice faced with a daunting bookstore section or Amazon algorithm full of widely varied and unfamiliar titles might reasonably expect that something called the Year’s Best is a good place to dive back in.

Jonathan Strahan’s introduction to his twelfth annual volume – which puts him on a par with Judith Merril, whose pioneering series ended with its twelfth volume in 1968, but still far short of Gardner Dozois’s unequalled run – mostly addresses that middle group of self-identified SF readers, likely the core market. But I wonder what each of these audiences might take away from the stories here, which range from the solidly hard SF of Tobias S. Buckell, Yoon Ha Lee, and Linda Nagata, to historical fantasies from Mary Robinette Kowal and Theodora Goss, to unnervingly timely stories from Karl Schroeder, Nick Wolven, Greg Egan, Kai Ashante Wilson, Dave Hutchison, and Charlie Jane Anders. More than in most Strahan annuals, these latter tales sometimes tilt toward horror, not a formal remit of Strahan’s selection process, but perhaps an indication of where writers’ imaginations are leading them these days.

But back to those hypothetical readers. The lead story, Tobias S. Buckell’s ‘‘Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance’’, should delight veteran SF readers with its spectacular setting near a black hole, its waggish names for spaceships (a trend apparently started by Iain M. Banks but now picked up by everyone), and its sardonic narrator, a maintenance robot compelled by its Asimovian directives to serve a rather weaselly human CEO. The general reader less interested in hardware and black holes might see it as a clever tale in the old tradition of the slave outwitting its master, while the former SF reader now all grown up might be pleased to see that versions of Asimov’s laws are still among the tools of the trade. Some of the same themes are echoed later with Suzanne Palmer’s ‘‘The Secret Life of Bots’’. (Another odd, but probably minor trend seems to be borrowing bits of titles – Buckell from Robert Pirsig’s old memoir, Palmer from the Sue Monk novel, Max Gladstone’s ‘‘Crispin’s Model’’ from Lovecraft, Egan’s ‘‘The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine’’ from Bunuel, Kai Ashante Wilson’s ‘‘The Lamentation of Their Women’’ from Conan the Barbarian, of all places.)

The general point is that, depending on what you’re reading for, the stories fall into some very different kinds of groupings. The SF reader will find a natural link between the Buckell story and other space-opera-like tales such as Yoon Ha Lee’s delightful ‘‘The Chameleon’s Gloves’’, in which an art thief is assigned to track down a rogue general with a doomsday weapon, or Alastair Reynold’s haunting far-future tale of thousand-year galactic reunions, ‘‘Belladonna Nights’’, with its very effective narrative twist. On the fantasy side of the ledger, another clever thief deals with squabbling royal heirs in Daniel Abraham’s ‘‘The Mocking Tower’’. But the outwitting-those-in-power theme of Buckell can also link it to Vina Jie-Min Prasad’s much more mundane but still satisfying ‘‘A Series of Steaks’’, in which a forger of steaks (using a bioprinter) outwits a powerful merchant who threatens her. ‘‘Belladonna Nights’’, on the other hand, with its future-as-past narrative angle (a technique perfected decades ago by Cordwainer Smith), might link it to similarly elegiac narratives of the nearer future, such as Linda Nagata’s tale of an artist on a dying Earth striving to finish her final work – an obelisk on Mars, remotely constructed by robots – or Indrapramit Das’s ‘‘The Moon is Not a Battlefield’’, in which a combat veteran recalls a lunar war involving an Indian colony there.

Another possible grouping of stories offers SFnal treatments of very current issues – bioprinting food in the Prasad story, cryptocurrencies in Karl Schroeder’s ‘‘Eminence’’, which combines economic satire with the role of social capital or ‘‘eminence’’ – which also becomes a central topic in Nick Wolven’s ‘‘Confessions of a Con Girl’’, perhaps the most inventive narration here, in the form of a student’s pre-college senior thesis essay. Schroeder’s account of the financial impact of a homegrown ‘‘potlatch’’ cryptocurrency is not only entertaining, but explains the whole concept more succinctly than most economists have been able to. Greg Egan’s ‘‘The Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine’’ – like much of his short fiction, more accessible and less arcane than his recent novels – begins by making a disturbingly convincing case that an AI might replace you at work by simply observing and then cloning your skills, but eventually turns into a kind of consumerist satire reminiscent of early Frederik Pohl. Issues of racism and power are confronted in Kai Ashante Wilson’s ‘‘The Lamentation of Their Women’’, one of the liveliest but most violent fantasies here, edging into horror, and in Dave Hutchison’s more restrained but more bluntly didactic ‘‘Babylon’’, about a Somali spy’s radical tactic for infiltration and assimilation.

Perhaps the most chilling single story here, though, and one of the highlights of the volume, is Charlie Janes Anders’s ‘‘Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue’’, another horror tale about an Orwellian program called Love and Dignity for Everyone, which sets out to ‘‘cure’’ transgender people like Rachel by forcibly downloading their identities into cadavers with socially approved gender assignments. The dystopian elements are underscored by Rachel’s memories of her earlier life with her childhood friend Jeff – who is witnessing her transformation – and by a creepy narrative voice that reminds us that before we feel too sorry for her, we should remember that she ‘‘holds a great many controversial views’’ – as though that alone is an indictment worthy of disembodiment. Almost equally chilling, if only because of its pointed connections to contemporary life, is Samuel R. Delany’s first science fiction story in years, ‘‘The Hermit of Houston’’, which traces the relationship of the narrator and his lover Cellibrex in a 22nd century in which national borders have dissolved, Facebook is remembered as ‘‘the greatest of the old religions,’’ and ‘‘the election of 2020 was the Trump of Doom for the Pence.’’ Although gender-switching has become common, it becomes apparent that gay people and women have borne the brunt of population control in this decomposing society.

The gloomy prospects set forth by the Anders and Delany stories might lead some readers to seek respite in the fantasy selections, and indeed Scott Lynch’s headlong tale of a search for dragon gold, ‘‘The Smoke of Gold is Glory’’, offers many familiar rewards of a comic fantasy quest, even if it doesn’t do much new conceptually. But even in some of the best fantasy selections there is a sense of lost worlds and lost opportunities. In Kelly Barnhill’s touching ‘‘Probably Still the Chosen One’’, a girl waits her entire life for the return of a ‘‘High Priest’’ of fairyland who visited her once as a child, while Caroline M. Yoachim’s ‘‘Carnival Nine’’ seems to take us into a playful kidlit world of living windup toys, until it evolves into a kind of family tragedy. The two stories set largely in Victorian England hardly present that world as a nostalgic respite, either: Mary Robinette Kowal’s ‘‘The Worshipful Society of Glovers’’ is a Dickensian class melodrama of an apprentice glovemaker trying to save his ill sister with the aid of brownies, while Theodora Goss’s ‘‘Come See the Living Dryad’’ is less a fantasy than a century-old murder mystery involving a disfiguring form of dysplasia, exploitative freakshows, and a modern woman trying to trace her identity. Both are beautifully written, but offer little consolation.

As usual, Strahan has scoured an impressive variety of sources for these 29 stories. The reader returning to SF after some time away will recognize familiar old venues such as F&SF, Asimov’s, and even the resurrected Omni (the source of Maureen McHugh’s affecting, Twilight Zone-ish ‘‘Sidewalks’’), while the current SF reader won’t be surprised to see stories from Tor.com, Clarkesworld, or Lightspeed. Only a true devotee would have been able to find the stories from Boston Review (a special issue on ‘‘global dystopias,’’ in which the Charlie Jane Anders tale was by far the best), or from anthologies like The Djinn Falls in Love (Said Z. Hossain’s ‘‘Bring Your Own Spoon’’, perhaps the only postapocalyptic djinn restaurant story you’ll ever read), or even the author’s own subscriber mailing list (Caitlín R. Kiernan’s magical realist ‘‘Fairy Tale of Wood Street’’). Of the making of short fiction there is no end, and apparently no end of places to publish it, either, so as always it’s good to have a trusted and indefatigable gleaner on our side.

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Nearly eight years ago, Tobias S. Buckell & Paolo Bacigalupi joined forces to create a high-fantasy world with a lot of familiar late-medieval/early Renaissance trappings and one particularly neat device: every act of magic or spellcasting, no matter how small, fuels the rapid growth of dense, poisonous brambles already threatening to encroach the land. Each wrote a novella set in this world, Bacigalupi’s The Alchemist and Buckell’s The Executioness, published as an audiobook by Audible and later in separate volumes from Subterranean Press (reviewed here in December 2010). Now they’ve returned to this world with two additional novellas, Bacigalupi’s ‘‘The Children of Khaim’’ and Buckell’s ‘‘The Blacksmith’s Daughter’’, all four packaged as The Tangled Lands. It’s a bit of a chimera, a suite of standalone stories with different themes, a common setting, and a few recurring characters, mostly the bad guys. As a sampler of what this world might yield, it’s fascinating, but anyone expecting a shape resembling a novel, or even a clear narrative arc, might come away disappointed.

The arrangement of the four stories does at least suggest a chronology. The lead story, Bacigalupi’s ‘‘The Alchemist’’, has much of the feel of a SF tale, focusing on Jeoz, an alchemist whose approach to the bramble problem mostly involves non-magical scientific strategies – observation (the bramble doesn’t grow around copper mines), invention (a musket-like ‘‘balanthast’’ with a combustion chamber), and experimentation (seeking the right mix of ingredients in the combustion chamber to affect the bramble). But Jeoz doesn’t abjure magic entirely, using it to keep his seriously ill daughter alive (the most heartbreaking scene is Bacigalupi’s opening, when Jeoz is forced to sell his last piece of furniture, his young daughter’s bed, in order to put food on the table – but we come to understand that paying for his research is partly what has brought him to such dire straits). The balanthast, which turns out to be the most effective instrument yet in fighting the bramble, becomes a kind of MacGuffin for the entire series, but it’s also what eventually gets the alchemist in trouble when he presents his bramble-busting device to the powerful Mayor of the city of Khaim, whose own personal magus, Scaczi – the only one whose magic is legal – sees the new invention as a threat to his own power. The tale ends as a fable of scientific research co-opted for political and military purposes, as Scaczi discovers that balanthast technology can also be used to detect magic – the smoke generated causes anyone or anything recently affected by magic to glow a brilliant blue. Instead of solving the bramble problem, the new invention is used to further suppress the use of magic, cementing the mayor’s and Scaczi’s power. But the novella’s other, broader theme – that everyday technologies we’ve become accustomed to can create lasting harm to the environment – is fully in keeping with Bacigalupi’s other work.

Neither this story nor Buckell’s ‘‘The Executioness’’ seem to have been revised much for this edition, although some details of Buckell’s story have been altered to account for the telltale blue glow and the growing power of Scaczi. Buckell’s story, though, in keeping with his other fiction, focuses on how the dispossessed might organize to gain power. Tana is the mother of two sons and the daughter of the town executioner. In order to keep the family afloat, she unwillingly takes on her father’s job as he lies ill. Returning from her first almost-botched execution, she finds that raiders have destroyed her home as well as the neighboring farms and villages. Her sons are missing, and her father burnt so badly that he persuades her to put him out of his misery. Searching for her sons, she tracks down the raiders and their prisoners, quixotically attacking them with her executioner’s blade and quickly getting herself nearly killed. By the time she is rescued by a passing caravan, though, word has already begun to spread about her courageous attack, and this gradually turns into a legend, which she begins to feel she must fulfill in order to find her missing sons. She thus becomes the figurehead of a growing resistance movement.

The third story, Bacigalupi’s ‘‘The Children of Khaim’’, the only one not in first-person narration, introduces a new villain, the cruel and sadistic Duke Malabaz. The central figures are Mop and his young sister Rain, who are working for Malabaz to help clear bramble all the way to a nearby village, using the old-fashioned method of burning it back. It’s brutal, exhausting, and low-paying work (the balanthast is presumably still a secret technology hoarded by the Jolly Mayor and Scaczi), and a dramatic contrast to the life they once led in the beautiful city of Alacan, now lost to the brambles. One of the main hazards of such work is getting infected by the bramble itself, which produces seed pods and tendrils that can work their way into the bloodstream, resulting in a coma-like paralysis that can last for years. When the inexperienced Rain is so infected, Mop is persuaded to leave her behind, refusing to give her the ‘‘mercy cut’’ that will end her suffering, and prevent her possible fate as a living ‘‘doll’’ – a sex toy for ‘‘soft-eyed men.’’ Mop’s efforts to track down his sister lead him to Khaim, now known as the Blue City, and eventually to a confrontation with the evil Duke himself.

Duke Malabaz figures even more prominently in the final story, Buckell’s ‘‘The Blacksmith’s Daughter’’, the most violent and action-packed story in the collection. It’s narrated by the title character Sofija, whose parents have been commissioned by the Duke to build a suit of ornamental armor for his son – but with an impossible deadline and insufficient funds to buy needed materials (at one point the Duke suggests to Sofija’s father that he sell her to get the money). They try to escape, but are captured and taken before the Majister Scaczi – whose power intimidates even the Duke, it seems. This leaves Sofija with the prospect of mounting a desperate scheme to save her parents. All four stories deal with the challenges of poverty and subsistence in a feudalistic society, and all offer glimpses of a much broader canvas – the lost empire of Jhandpara, with its floating palaces, the bramble-destroyed city of Alacan, the coastal city of Paika and its dreaded raiders, the six-armed god Borzai, etc. – but none offer much in the way of resolution. The balanthast, presented as a potentially revolutionary technology in the first story, never shows up again at all, and while a few characters seem to escape or gain reprieves, the oppressive power structure of Khaim, with its evil sorcerer Scaczi, remains intact. While each story works on its own individual terms, the collective effect is that of a series of intriguing trailers for a tantalizing epic film which we may or may not ever see in its entirety. I hope we will.

–Gary K. Wolfe

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LOCUS LOOKS AT BOOKS: LIZ BOURKE

Gunpowder Moon, David Pedreira (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-2676085, $14.9, 304pp, tp). February 2018.

A Study in Honor, Claire O’Dell (Harper Voyager 978-0-06-269930-5, $15.99, 304pp, tp). July 2018.

The Wonder Engine, T. Kingfisher (Red Wombat Tea Company 978-1-386-528876, $3.99, ebook). February 2018. Cover art by Ursula Vernon.

The Empress of Timbra, Karen Healey & Robyn Fleming (self-published 978-0-473-42716-0, $4.99, ebook). February 2018. Cover art by Damonza.

I began reading David Pedreira’s Gunpowder Moon, the debut novel of a former Florida journalist, with a fair degree of optimism. Its big idea – helium-3 mining on the moon – is fairly well discredited junk science (see Charles Stross, ‘‘Science-fictional shibboleths,’’ 4th December 2015, <www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/12/science-fictional-shibboleths.html>) but this is science fiction. Junk science is practically traditional, and writers such as Ian McDonald have written fascinating thrillers (and subtly ironic interrogations of moondust libertarianism) around He3 mining and the wild lunar frontier. Reading Gunpowder Moon proved a disheartening experience.

Caden Dechert, a former military man, is the chief of a US mining operation on the moon. It’s 2072, and the environmental crisis that has destroyed Earth’s economy and upended global energy policy has been established fact for ten years. Despite this environmental crisis destabilising global power relations, the USA, China, Russia, and India are still global (and now lunar) powers. (The EU, with all of its member states, has apparently been wiped off the map.) The US and China have been ramping up their sabre-rattling, and the conflict may spill over onto the moon – though the moon has always been a demilitarised zone. When a bomb kills one of Dechert’s miners, it looks like the march towards war will become a sprint.

Dechert is a typical noble-but-cynical-haunted-veteran type. He believes in one thing: war shouldn’t come to space. So he sets out, against the wishes of his superiors, to find the truth. He wants to put out the fuse that’s burning towards a lunar explosion, but no one really gives a shit. Everyone either has their orders, wants to protect their status, is powerless to prevent the war, or wants it to happen. He finds a conspiracy – not very surprising – but can he tell anyone who cares in time to make a difference?

That’s Gunpowder Moon, a pedestrian and predictable quasi-military thriller occasionally enlivened by some luminous moon-descriptive prose. But if that were all it is, it would be scarcely disheartening. No, the disheartening things about it are the assumptions deeply embedded within its narrative. About who’s important. Who’s worth telling a story about.

In a novel with a cast of... well, in the double-digits of named characters, anyway, there are two named women. One is a military lieutenant who shows up late and has perhaps two lines of dialogue. The other may as well be the only civilian woman on the moon: Lane Briggs, introduced early on as The Girl (the only woman in Dechert’s team of seven or eight miners). The text can’t resist reminding us that she’s a girl and girls are different than men and men lust after them and men act differently around them, and directing a constant stream of low-grade sexual harassment in her direction. The text seems to believe this is humour, not harassment, but it made me think uncomfortable things about the reporting chains for sexual assault and the likelihood of coercive sexual encounters in an environment where your safety depends on the goodwill of the men around you. Briggs is omnicompetent, cool and collected – and Dechert, by virtue of his position as her boss, has access to information about her past sexual relationships – because apparently they all work for a company that spies on that sort of thing and puts it in the employee file, and this is normal and not a problem at all (and Dechert never considers that his boss knows all about his relationships, nor brings this information up with regard to the men he works with).

This is a novel in which, fifty years from now, after an environmental disaster that’s destroyed their economy – and most of the world’s – Americans are still shooting people in the Middle East, referring to ‘‘Hajiville,’’ and generally continuing their eternal Middle Eastern war, now in Lebanon. It’s a novel in which Dechert has a Chinese friend called Lin Tzu, who can trace his descent (apparently) from the famous Sun Tzu. Perhaps some marginally competent copyeditor will point out before the final published version (I read an advance copy) that the tzu in Sun Tzu is an honorific, and that Chinese names generally start with one’s surname, with the personal name coming second.

I have higher standards than this. Science fiction can be better than this. It doesn’t have to thoughtlessly reproduce today’s social dynamics, now with vacuum outside the windows. Gunpowder Moon is a story that has no ambition for the future: its science, its characterisation, and even its dystopian dabbling lack real imagination. There is a place, I suppose, for the mediocre. I’ve just been spoiled for it by the good.

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Speaking of good, let’s talk about Claire O’Dell’s A Study in Honor. O’Dell is an open pseudonym for Beth Bernobich (The Queen’s Hunt, The Time Roads) and this marks the author’s first novel-length foray into science fiction. And damn, what a novel it is. A Study in Honor is a near-future take on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, set in an America in the grip of a second civil war.

Dr. Janet Watson lost her arm and her career to a sniper’s bullet while treating soldiers on the changing battlefields of the new civil war. The prosthetic that replaced her original arm – a stopgap replacement – is only a semifunctional piece of machinery, nothing near the top-of-the-line model she’d need to return to her career as a surgeon. The Veteran’s Administration (understaffed and underfunded) is unwilling to admit she could be entitled to a better arm, and Watson – homeless in Washington D.C, jobless, running out of savings, and on the edge of despair – finds herself disinclined to look a gift horse in the mouth when it comes bearing the offer of really nice shared accommodation.

Said gift horse is Sara Holmes, arrogant, mysterious, playful, and compassionate by turns. At first Holmes’s life and job are opaque to Watson, and she comes to realise this is intentional on Holmes’s part – and to suspect Holmes’s motives. But when Watson, now working in a job far beneath her skills as a medical technician at the V.A., tries to find out why a patient died when there was no apparent reason for that death, it’s Holmes who rescues Watson from a seemingly-random attempt on her life after work, and Holmes who offers Watson both protection and a challenge.

Holmes is a government agent – a brilliant and independent one, with a full measure of confidence in her own judgment where it conflicts with that of her handlers or supervisors. And Holmes believes that there’s a conspiracy afoot in Washington and the V.A.: a conspiracy that may have implications for the current, and strongly contested, presidential election, and one that may reach all the way to the battlefields of the civil war and perhaps across it.

Holmes’s superiors are unconvinced, but Holmes is hard to deter, and Watson is, herself, invested in justice, truth, and ethical medicine. Together, it turns out, they make a very good team.

There’ve been many takes on (and updates of) Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation. Some of them remain faithful to the time and place of the originals; some of them don’t. Some of them bend the genders of the characters (I’m thinking of Aliette de Bodard’s definitely Holmes-ian The Tea Master and the Detective) and some of them take some strong liberties with the social and political contexts of the original Holmes and Watson, and/or with the relationship between the two of them. Until O’Dell’s A Study in Honor, though, I’d never read a version of Holmes and Watson where both parties were women of colour, and queer. It gives Holmes’s confidence – the confidence that borders on arrogance – an entirely different inflection: it gives her characterisation that much more of an edge, in a not-that-far-future America. And it makes Watson that much more interesting a Watson, in this social context, where because of racism, she has more factors to consider in weighing risks and benefits of her decisions, and in negotiating the world.

It’s also enormously rare that one encounters a good book where both main characters are women who love women, but where romance or attraction between them is never hinted at. (Holmes, while well-meaning, is sufficiently bad at respecting boundaries when she thinks she knows best, that one feels an intimate relationship with her would be... challenging.) Holmes and Watson are roommates who respect each other, a respect that builds into a burgeoning friendship. Their characters are well-drawn, solid, recognisably based on Doyle’s originals while being their own things, too, and Watson’s first-person voice provides effortlessly gripping narration.

The pace is a little uneven, especially near the beginning, but once it ramps up, it becomes a tight and deeply compelling thriller, with twists and turns and a mystery at its base. O’Dell’s prose is sharp and clean, rising at times to the poetic, and her near-future Washington DC feels like a real city. The USA of A Study in Honor is a place with deep political divisions, and some of that comes into play in this story. It feels appropriately complicated as a future, and not a simplistic future vision of now.

As you might be able to tell, I really enjoyed A Study in Honor. It fits neatly on my shelf alongside The Tea Master and the Detective – though I don’t know of many other future Holmes and Watson stories that are as satisfyingly good. I hope to see sequels from O’Dell, because this is a mystery-thriller partnership than seems designed to make me happy. Lots and lots of sequels.

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To move from the hope of sequels to an actual sequel: have you read The Wonder Engine yet? It’s the second book in T. Kingfisher’s (the penname for Ursula Vernon) Clocktaur War duology, following on from last year’s Clockwork Boys. While Vernon has the weird, wild, and occasionally dark Digger to her name, as well as her short fiction and illustrated books, as T. Kingfisher, her work has generally avoided the kind of territory where entertaining characters die horribly. The Wonder Engine, while still full of Vernon’s trademark practicality, compassion, pragmatism, and humour, reaffirms Clockwork Boys’ somewhat darker direction. There’s still plenty of practicality, compassion, pragmatism, and humour – but this time a lot more of that humour is the gallows kind.

We met the condemned band of Slate (forger extraordinaire, competent thief, team leader), Brenner (assassin, Slate’s ex-lover), and Caliban (disgraced former paladin with a dead demon decaying in his soul, currently in love with Slate) in Clockwork Boys. They’ve been sent to stop the bands of so-called Clockwork Boys sent out from Anuket City to conquer their city of origin, and if they fail, the curse implanted in their skin will kill them. Learned Edmund, a 19-year-old scholar and celibate brother from a very sheltered (and very intellectual) order, rounds out their number, and during the course of Clockwork Boys, Slate saved the life of a gnole (small and badger-like sentient) called Grimehug, who forms part of their company as The Wonder Engine opens.

They’ve survived the journey to Anuket City. But Slate has history in Anuket City – the kind of history that cuts you open and tortures you to death because you pissed off the wrong people. Neither she nor her companions know where to start looking for the creators of the Clockwork Boys, which are called clocktaurs in Anuket City. And even should they find them, they have no idea how to destroy the clocktaurs, or persuade their creators that the war should end. Such are the perils of being a forlorn hope. On top of this, Slate’s still not quite sure how to deal with her frustrated attraction to Caliban – a very pretty man, but one with a terrible habit of putting his foot in his mouth.

But there are a lot of gnoles in Anuket City, and they go everywhere. Grimehug, who may or may not have an agenda of his own, is willing to help Slate find out about the clocktaurs. And Learned Edmund (when not being fascinated by gnole culture and customs) makes contacts of his own among the artificers. Slate, Brenner, and Caliban return to Slate’s old haunts, where Slate is desperately hoping not to be recognised, and look for information.

They find useful information, but Slate’s past finds her. This leads to a harrowing interlude for both Slate, faced with the prospect of torture and execution, and Caliban, who is really not okay with letting this happen. (It does accelerate their courtship to the just jump his bones already stage, though.)

It turns out the solution isn’t as easy as finding the people who want a war and, ah, convincing them to stop. Or destroying the factory that makes clocktaurs. No: the clocktaurs are produced by a wonder engine, an artefact of strange power from a previous age, and fuelled by bound demons and dead flesh. The war continues because it is better to give the clocktaurs a target than to risk them turning on their tentative masters... and Slate, Caliban, and Brenner have to destroy the wonder engine.

No one’s ever managed to destroy a wonder engine before.

This is an excellent book. Tense, fast-paced, with some brilliantly bizarre world building, it demands your attention. Its characters – flawed, complicated, human – are enormously compelling, and their self-discoveries and betrayals, dark nights of the soul and bitter gifts of god-given grace, are underlaid with a great deal of narrative kindness. The Wonder Engine is a book – and the Clocktaur War is a duology – that understands human flaws, finds them gently forgivable, and understands the grace of gods to be as much a terrible, incomprehensible burden as a gift. Read it. But start with Clockwork Boys, or you’ll miss out on a lot.

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The Empress of Timbra, co-authored by Robyn Fleming & Karen Healey (Guardian of the Dead, While We Run), turns out to be an unexpected delight. Its publication was funded through Fleming and Healey’s Kickstarter campaign, but it’s now widely available as an ebook. While Healey’s solo form is in YA, this first offering from the Healey-Fleming team, while certainly YA-friendly, feels a lot more like epic fantasy: the epic fantasy of yesteryear, where young people go out into the world and make a place for themselves in it.

When 14-year-old Taver’s fisherman father dies, his mother takes him to the palace of Vatadania, the Empress of Timbra. There, he learns that his blood father is Baron Arkelga Tuvari, a wealthy and important nobleman. His mother, pressed by poverty, asks for the Baron’s help – and Taver is forced to deal with having his world, and his self-image, upended. Fourteen is an emotional age, and being suddenly confronted with these changes does nothing for Taver’s emotional equilibrium. Though the Baron accepts Taver as the son of his blood, he doesn’t – at least at first – acknowledge him openly, instead finding Taver an apprenticeship with a master smith in the palace and finding Taver’s mother a place in the kitchens.

In Tuvari’s household, Taver meets his younger sister, 12-year-old Lady Elain. Elain is Tuvari’s acknowledged daughter by the Empress’s advisor and seer, Hialye Cazol – but still not a legitimate child. Elain’s mother is expecting another child by the Baron, and Elain’s routine is a little disrupted – and she’s always wanted a friend that she could trust. Taver and Elain forge a friendship complicated by Taver’s ambivalent status within Tuvari’s household, but one that grows stronger with time.

As a smith’s apprentice, Taver has to deal with the bullying and resentment of the other apprentices, who see him as an outsider who needs to be kept in his place. Meanwhile, his own ambivalence regarding his blood father makes him awkward and uncertain.

Elain’s secure in her position in her mother’s household, and her father’s. She doesn’t have Taver’s ambivalence, and she’s learning politics, and magic, and the constraints that govern women’s use of what is called the Art. There are ideological constraints on women’s use of magic, and deep rifts in society that surround the last empress and her transgressive use of the Art.

What Taver doesn’t realise – and what Elain’s surprised she has to tell him – is that Baron Arkelga Tuvari is the Empress’s cousin. Tuvari is one of only a handful of scions of the royal family to survive the civil war and political unrest that attended Vatadania’s ascension to the throne. Tuvari’s the son of the previous empress – the empress known as Dania the Usurper – and the only one of Vatadania’s close relatives who may still produce heirs of his own. With Vatadania engaged in negotiations for her marriage, and political machinations in train by people who dislike the her policies, reforms, and potential choice of husband, when Tuvari acknowledges Taver, a whole heap of complications fall on Taver’s head. Both Taver and Elain are pieces on a board that’s bigger – and more complicated – than they know.

The Empress of Timbra is told in alternating chapters from Taver’s and Elain’s points of view. They’re deeply engaging characters, and unreliable narrators – they miss things because of their youth and lack of context, and then the reader sees the pieces come together in compelling ways. Their adventures involve horned horses, childish adventures, dangerous politics, pirates, negotiating awkwardness in a powerful family, and the problems of ethics, power, and human relationships. It’s a very full book – and a fast one, for all its varied pieces, with interesting world building and cool cultural asides. And it closes with some truly entertaining ‘‘scholarly’’ appendices, reflecting on the meat of the novel from centuries in the future.

It’s a good book. I recommend it, and I’m looking forward to reading more from Healey & Fleming in this world.

–Liz Bourke

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LOCUS LOOKS AT BOOKS: ADRIENNE MARTINI

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, Kelly Robson (Tor.com Publishing 978-1250163851, $14.99, 176pp, tp) March 2018. Cover by Jon Foster.

Paradox Bound, Peter Clines (Crown 978-0-553-41833-0, $26.00, 374pp, hc) September 2017.

The Sky Is Yours, Chandler Klang Smith (Hogarth 978-0-451-49626-3, $27.00, 462pg, hc) January 2018.

As a reader, finding your way into Kelly Robson’s Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach is hard. Robson throws so many disconnected – both to our actual reality and to each other in the book’s reality – ideas at you that it’s hard to stay engaged long enough to figure out what she is doing. Hang in there, though, because the pay-off is so very much worth the work.

The book opens on Minh, a far-future environmental engineer with six prosthetic legs. She’s tending her peach orchard near Calgary while simultaneously attending a meeting. Kiki, Minh’s firm’s administrative assistant, flags a potential project for the group: a trip back to ancient Mesopotamia to model the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Minh is in.

While this could have been a perfectly fine time travel novella, Robson spins it into a deep and compelling story about Minh’s fear of losing control and how far she’ll go to keep some semblance of it clenched tight in her fist. It’s also about the friction between generations and genders. And, of course, it’s about trying to fix the present by traveling to the past.

Once you get the lay of Robson’s land, the story is a marvel – and exactly as long as it needs to be. It’s hard to not flip right back to the beginning once you’ve reached the story’s perfect ending, if only to discover what fine details you missed the first time through.

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In Peter Clines’s Paradox Bound, Eli Teague was an average kid growing up in Sanders ME. It’s about as small a town as you can get and is one of those places where time just seems to move more slowly. One day, when he’s still a younger kid, a woman driving a Ford Model A shows up on his road home – and his life is forever changed.

See [SPOILER ALERT] she’s on the hunt for the American Dream. It’s a real thing, she explains after they reconnect when Eli is an adult. Ben Franklin made it after he returned from France, using some Freemason knowledge. The Dream disappeared in the 1960s, it is thought, and there is a tribe of searchers looking through time for it.

Of course, there are those who’d rather it not be found. These faceless men have zero qualms about making sure it isn’t – or, if it is, it is found by them.

What unspools is a perfectly fine adventure, as Eli gets up to speed and meets some characters along the way. The faceless men are all scenery-chewing menace and Harry, the woman driving the Model A, has some details drawn in that buck convention. Clines knows how to structure a chapter, too, so that the whole story has a propulsive energy that drives you from one episode to the next.

What it isn’t, however, is subtle. The sub-text about America and our current political situation isn’t actually sub. That may not have been Clines’s intention, because he’s a skilled enough writer to control his message. But the on-the-nose-ness of the plot makes Eli’s quest and the author’s message feel too simplistic and moves the story from a great one to just a fine one.

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In Chandler Klang Smith’s The Sky Is Yours, Empire Island is falling apart, mostly (but not entirely) because two dragons circle above it. They never land. They can’t be killed. And, just for fun, they randomly set part of the island on fire. Those who could leave have left. Still on the island are the very rich, who don’t want to give up their considerable assets, and criminals, who have all been locked up in Torchtown. Torchtown isn’t a prison, so much as it is a neighborhood that is surrounded by wire and guards and guns so that the prisoners stay put.

To say that Smith’s debut is delightful is selling it short. I mean, it is delightful: you can feel an ebullient energy bouncing throughout the words and the story. It’s weird and it’s creative and it is full of heart as it tells the story of three people shoved together in this future where media saturates every moment of every day and, well, folks have to adapt to death continuously flying above them.

Duncan Ripple, a dim, privileged reality star, is the heir to a fortune. He’s betrothed to Swan Lenore Dahlberg, a naive (and possibly dying) heiress from Wonland, a bucolic suburb of Empire Island. But he is wound up with the near-feral Abby, who saves his life and rebuilds her world around him. Sort of. It’s complicated.

Smith tells their story, which dips and flows and combines in continuously surprising ways. There are bits told through literal poetry, flow charts, and movie scripts – and those transitions are organic rather than gimmicky. She spins and subverts fairy tales, and drops callbacks to current pop culture conversations without signposting them. Like, this Bechdel Test moment when Ripple is alone with the two women:

‘‘Ripple holds the girls in his spotlight. It’s so weird to see them having a conversation, one that is not about him.’’

In so many ways, The Sky Is Yours should be a glorious mess, given all that this writer is doing. But while it is glorious, it isn’t a mess. It is warm and violent and strange and comforting in equal measure, without ever falling apart.

–Adrienne Martini

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LOCUS LOOKS AT BOOKS: CAROLYN CUSHMAN

The Wind in His Heart, Charles de Lint

Tess of the Road, Rachel Hartman

Lady Henterman’s Wardrobe, Marshall Ryan Maresca

Torn, Rowenna Miller

Into the Fire, Elizabeth Moon

Cast in Deception, Michelle Sagara

A Problematic Paradox, Eliot Sappingfield

Charles de Lint, The Wind in His Heart (Triskell Press 978-0920623787, $21.99, 544pp, tp) September 2017.

The American Southwest provides a spectacular backdrop for de Lint’s latest contemporary fantasy novel, related to the Newford series, but with a focus on Native American magic. In Arizona on the Painted Lands Kikimi reservation, three people are forced to face their problems – and the existence of the otherworld. Teen Thomas Corn eyes dreams of getting away and fears the local shaman won’t let him if his ability to see auras is revealed, so he’s stuck working at the trading post to support his mother and siblings. Steve Cole is a white man who’s been living in the desert for some 40 years, escaping his past as a rock star. Sadie’s an abused teen dumped in the desert by her father. Cole witnesses Sadie being dumped in the middle of nowhere and decides to help her, but the girl repays him by digging into his story online and trying to expose his past for profit – bringing blogger/fan Leah Hardin from Newford to the Painted Lands to investigate. It turns out that many of the Kikimi have close ties to the cousins, or ma’inawo, animal beings able to turn into humans, or combination forms. The death of a cousin threatens relations between the otherworldly and the humans – already split between the tribe’s traditionalists and those supporting the casino – and it falls to Cole, Thomas, and even Leah to find a resolution. The plot is full of surprising twists and intriguing characters like the painter Aggie White Horse, known for her paintings of animal-headed people; the shaman Morago; a foxalope woman; and even the Morrigan, in a bit of a Celtic crossover. The magic is pervasive, but at its heart – and this novel has plenty of heart – this is a story about people learning to see the world in a new way, get out of their ruts, and finally move forward.

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Rachel Hartman, Tess of the Road (Random House 978-1-101-93128-8, $18.99, 521pp, hc) February 2018.

Hartman follows up her young-adult fantasy duology begun in Serafina with this first in a new duology featuring Serafina’s younger half-sister, Tess. An irrepressible, curious, and imaginative child, Tess became the focus of her bitter and religiously repressive mother’s determination to punish wrongdoing and turn her into a proper young lady, like her twin sister Jeanne. Instead, Tess has gotten herself into enough trouble that the family plans to put her in a convent. Having thoroughly burned her bridges behind her at Jeanne’s wedding, 17-year-old Tess runs away, unexpectedly falls in with an old friend – a childhood partner in crime – and finds herself on a quest to prove the existence of a legendary creature. She finds the road freeing, and full of adventures, if not quite the sort her younger self dreamed of, but she also has a chance to remember the past and re-evalute various aspects of her life. Serious, traumatic moments mix with irreverent humor, amusing characters, wry observations on life, and fascinating details of this world, particularly some surprisingly intimate details of the lives of the reptilian quigutl. Tess’s personal journey makes a delightful adventure, as she grows from angry, traumatized teen to a young woman determined to do some good in the world, find the good in herself she’d denied so long – and enjoy a good adventure or two.

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Marshall Ryan Maresca, Lady Henterman’s Wardrobe (DAW 978-0756412647, $7.99, 368pp, pb) March 2018. Cover by Paul Young.

The Holver Alley crew returns for a new caper in this second book in the Streets of Maradaine series, following the Rynax brothers and their odd assortment of friends as they search for the real culprit behind the burning of their homes and shops in Holver Alley. Ex-spy Asti Rynax is obsessed with the hunt, and even when his brother Verci gets injured, Asti’s passion keeps the group moving forward. Clues lead to a name: Lord Henterman, an earl known for his parties, with one scheduled to take place in just few days, giving the team a new target, if they can turn themselves into upper-class guests and servants in time. As usual, nothing goes as planned, and schemes keep changing – and Lady Henterman herself turns out to be a huge surprise. Add gangs skirmishing for neighborhood control, an unexpectedly dedicated constable looking into the situation, a dangerous mage, political shenanigans, and betrayal, and things get very complicated. And too serious; lighter moments pop up, but nowhere near enough to overcome the sense of grim forboding, and with this large cast of characters, distinguished largely by their useful skills, it’s hard to get truly engaged. They manage to get out of their latest scrape and even come out ahead, unexpectedly, but it’s not the upbeat conclusion to a caper you’d expect. Maresca spins some fun adventures in his various series set in Maradaine, but there’s a definite dark side to the city that seems to be growing.

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Rowenna Miller, Torn (Orbit US 978-0-316-47862-5, $15.99, 436pp, tp) March 2018. Cover by Peter Bollinger.

Fashion and rebellion mix in this charming fantasy, a first novel and the first book in a series based roughly on the French Revolution. Sophie, an ambitious young seamstress, has the unique ability to sew charms into clothing, and uses that talent to build a business catering to the elite. She’s thrilled to get a new commission from one of the most noted ladies of the court. Unfortunately, anti-monarchist unrest is spreading in the city – and Sophie’s brother Kristos, a day laborer, spends most of his free time talking about social injustice in the taverns. Sophie’s frustrated with Kristos; she brings in most of the money, and her hard work is making her a success, but he wants her to help him and his friends spread their revolutionary ideas. Instead, she attends the elite salons of Lady Viola Snowmont and listens to aristocratic young people talking about the arts, politics, and even economic theory, gaining a new understanding of the way the ruling class thinks. As the revolutionary mood spreads, Sophie finds herself torn – and then forced into a deadly plot. Sophie’s an earnest young woman, and it’s not hard to relate to her joy in fabric and design, her wonder at the aristocratic world she’s seeing, and the pain of her predicament, but she’s unfortunately passive, spending a lot of time worrying ineffectually. It’s a bit disappointing in these days of female action heroes, though maybe a bit more realistic.

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Elizabeth Moon, Into the Fire (Del Rey 978-1-101-88734-9, $28.00, 459pp, hc) February 2018. Cover by Mike Bryan.

Things take a sudden turn for the worse in this second book in the Vatta’s Peace series. In the first book, Kylara Vatta managed to save a bunch of survivors from a shuttle wreck that landed them on a deserted, ice-bound continent, and ended up a hero. But when she tries to take a little rest and relaxation before buying a ship with her multi-talented boyfriend Rafe and leaving Slotter Key, she finds out all her money, including her back pay, has been frozen, pending accusations of causing various deaths. All the evidence she’d carefully gathered from the shuttle crash and subsequent events has disappeared – along with the survivors, who have been hidden, drugged, and quarantined for a non-existent disease. Then her family gets attacked. Finally, Ky gets mad, and goes into her best military mode, planning to rescue the missing survivors – and find out who’s behind all the attacks. At points, this has elements of a prison break/caper story, but the conspiracy she’s up against is huge and vicious, and Ky has to rely on help from a variety of outside sources, even helpful strangers and, ultimately, the stupidity of some of the bad guys, It’s quite an adventure, with an impressive big final battle, but not the brilliant strategic operation I was expecting.

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Michelle Sagara, Cast in Deception (Mira 978-0-7783-3110-0, $15.99, 506pp, tp) January 2018. Cover by Shane Rebeschied.

As always, a new crisis develops in this 13th volume in the Chronicles of Elantra fantasy series, a novel with a serious case of middle-volume plot stall. Fortunately Kaylin’s irreverent attitude keeps things entertaining, even when the story bogs down. This time, Kaylin’s already-controversial household becomes the center of attention when one of her houseguests, one of the cohort – a group of Barrani youngsters once sacrificed to the green, developing strange new abilities in the process – decides he wants to go to the High Halls to take the Test of Name, which will either kill him or make him a Lord of the Barrani High Court. Then the rest of the cohort still in the West March decide to join him. Since just two of the cohort accidentally called Shadows and almost destroyed the High Halls once already, many fear what might happen – but before that issue can be resolved, Kaylin and the dragon Bellusdeo get magically transported far from the city, and discover new problems are facing the cohort members heading to Elantra. Figuring out how to fix things and get back to the city takes up the bulk of the novel, which ends up pretty much where it started, but with more players in place, and a lot of exposition providing more new questions than revelations.

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Eliot Sappingfield, A Problematic Paradox (Putnam 978-1-5247-3845-7, $16.99, 343pp, hc) January 2018. Cover by John Hendrix.

A teen genius escapes middle school and faces aliens in this amusing older-middle-grade SF novel. Nikola Kross is a total misfit in school, too advanced for her teachers and preferring her science experiments to trying to get along with others. She’s totally unprepared when aliens kidnap her father and she gets sent off to a boarding school for geniuses where most of the students aren’t human, and she might not be the smartest person there. Still, she’s sure enough of herself not to be fazed when dumped mid-term in classes on topics she didn’t even know were possible – and to display talents that surprise everyone. She even makes friends, since the other kids, however rude and weird, are a major improvement on the denizens of the middle-grade hell she escaped. Though expressed in SF terms of aliens, other dimensions, and quantum phenomena, this has certain Lovecraftian touches when it comes to the bad guys, the alien Old Ones – not to mention a lot of science so advanced it might as well be magic. The whole thing reads like a mass of twisted (and not-so-twisted) tropes, a gonzo fun-fest of bizarre science and a school full of multi-talented kids who team up to save the world in the face of adult denial, a very impressive first novel that should leave readers young and old eager for more.

–Carolyn Cushman

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LOCUS LOOKS AT BOOKS: DIVERS HANDS

Phoresis, Greg Egan

The Possible, Tara Altebrando

Beasts Made of Night, Tochi Onyebuchi

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance, Ruth Emmie Lang

RUSSELL LETSON

Phoresis, Greg Egan (Subterranean 978-1-59606-866-7, $40.00, 163pp, hc) April, 2018.

Greg Egan’s Phoresis is, at around 40,000 words, a long novella and close to the same length as many of the mass-market, full-length paperback novels I grew up on. Into that relatively small space Egan has packed the story of several multiple-generation, low-tech engineering projects that range from geoengineering to interplanetary exploration and colonization, while also creating an exotic planetary system and non-human characters who, despite their physiological strangeness, clearly model psychological and intellectual traits to which we might well aspire.

But I get ahead of myself. I suspect that the story is meant to be puzzled over – it is, in any case, generally thrifty with its expository passages. Nevertheless, we get some essential orienting details early on. The tide-locked twin worlds Tvíbura and Tvíburi orbit each other closely enough that the inhabitants of Tvíbura can make detailed telescopic examination of Tvíburi’s surface. On both bodies, a crust of rock and ice covers liquid oceans warmed by tidal stresses, and on Tvíbura the roots of ocean-based ‘‘Yggasdril trees’’ break through the ice, allowing geysers to bring to the surface materials for the soil and air that support a sparse and irregular ecology and a hardscrabble farming culture, constantly struggling to avoid starvation. The planets are small enough that Tvíburans can make the Great Walk around their world in thirty days, and so close to each other that one of the book’s great engineering works – a tower that reaches beyond the atmosphere and partway to the opposite world – is possible.

The Tvíburans would seem to be humanoid, though they differ seriously from us in metabolism and especially in reproductive physiology. Nevertheless, they come across as psychologically ‘‘human’’ in important ways: they are gregarious, curious, imaginative, methodical, ingenious, and persistent. Unlike us, they apparently lack large-scale conflict, perhaps because they are all women (the squabbling, competitive male components of their strange reproductive system are not quite sentient), and while there can be debates and disagreements, there are no wars, despite resource shortages that would have humans at each other’s throats over the first missed meal.

In Part One, Freya (most of the Tvíburans are given recognizable human names) speculates on schemes that might generate more life-giving geysers, but finally imagines an even more ambitious project: to build a tower high enough to allow people to travel to Tvíburi, where resources might be more easily accessible. In Part Two, four generations later, the first six explorers catapult from the completed tower, crossing vacuum to descend via glider to Tvíburi, where they face the challenges of a world whose ecology differs from that of home, and where one of them devises another way of crossing the space between the worlds. Part Three completes the there-and-back-again pattern, as a descendant of the pioneering settlers crosses from a tower built on Tvíburi to the home world, where she finds that the stay-at-homes continued to address their problems with the same patience and determination that built the original tower.

The story is intensely procedural, driven by two sets of processes: conceiving, planning, and organizing the various projects and then actually building and using them. The speculative-engineering side of the novel almost evades the feeling of fiction – it deals with orbital mechanics, strength of materials, the load-bearing qualities of ice, and such practical details. The drama arises from the social setting. Building the tower and exploring Tvíburi are cooperative, entirely voluntary projects that will not see completion or payoff in the original planners’ and workers’ lifetimes, and execution demands both vision and sacrifice on the part of those who will not see the work’s end. Long before the tower she envisioned is completed, Freya says,

This thing isn’t ours any more. . . . If it ever was. All we can leave behind is what we’ve learned: about the strength of ice, about the way the roots grow, about gravity, torques and forces. The rest is in other people’s hands, and the ones who’ll matter most haven’t even been born yet.

In this, Phoresis is strongly reminiscent of Incandescence (2008), in which an alien culture struggles to understand and survive in an extreme and exotic environment with limited tools and resources; and also of the intensely-planned, much-debated cooperative projects of The Four Thousand, the Eight Hundred (2016). This is the Tower of Babel, but without the hubris and confusion: a parable not of division and failure but of the triumph of ingenuity and selflessness – of hope.

–Russell Letson

COLLEEN MONDOR

The Possible, Tara Altebrando (Bloomsbury 978-1-61963-805-1, $17.99, 292 pages) June 2017.

For the first six pages of The Possible, Tara Altebrando wrote a YA novel about a smart-ass 17-year old named Kaylee who has two best friends, a crush on a classmate, and a killer talent on the softball mound. All of this is familiar territory and Altebrando delivers it with a degree of sass and wit that conjures up the best teen dramas, without going too deep on the drama. Then she drops the hammer when the host of a popular podcast shows up at Kaylee’s door. Liana wants to interview Kaylee for her show, The Possible. She wants to talk to Kaylee about her birth mother, Crystal. She wants to know if she remembers what Crystal did to get sent away to prison for life. She wants to know if Kaylee has telekinesis, too. So much for typical teen drama!

Liana’s podcast is hot and fans are excited to hear the new series; it is sure to garner a lot of attention. (Think of Serial.) She has long wanted to take a look at Crystal’s case and see if there is any truth to her defense claim that telekinesis caused the murder she was convicted of, not her. Crystal enjoyed mild fame as a teen telekinetic and it is exactly the sort of subject that Liana’s listeners are certain to enjoy. She wants to interview Crystal’s daughter and see if she has ever experienced anything that would suggest she is telekinetic. If Kaylee is, then maybe Crystal really was and that means Crystal was telling the truth all along. Liana can see the ratings rise from a mile away, which means she should be a perfect villain for all that goes down here. But Altebrando is a much better writer than that, and the subtle manner in which she weaves paranormal possibilities and outright mystery into the narrative is evidence of just how good she is.

The spotlight presented by the podcast is not a place that Kaylee is really equipped to inhabit, but she cannot resist the lure of knowing more about her birth mother. There is also the telekinesis and all those odd little things over the years that could have been coincidences but maybe, upon reflection, were not. Is there something to it, are all the things that Kaylee is really good at, all the times she seemed extra lucky, actually evidence of something else? If she is ‘‘special,’’ what does that mean for her own memories about Crystal’s crime? And, perhaps most importantly for Kaylee, how is all this going to change how everyone she knows treats her? Salem might have been a long time ago, but no one ever really likes those extra special women, do they?

Tara Altebrando does a first rate job here of crafting sharp commentary about the public’s obsession with notorious crimes (and criminals). She also walks a perfect line on the question of telekinesis, making it seem just the right degree of possible before turning around and making it easily dismissible… or not. Most importantly, this is an author who knows how to capture the whole ‘‘coming of age’’ question better than most. She should be a lot better known than she is, and with The Possible she will certainly enthrall fans eager for her piercing way of getting to the truth, no matter how unexpected it might be.

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Beasts Made of Night, Tochi Onyebuchi (Razorbill 978-0-448-49390-9, $17.99, 296pp) October 2017.

Debut author Tochi Onyebuchi draws deep on his mother’s Nigerian roots in the world-building extravaganza Beasts of the Night. Based on the bustling metropolis of Lagos, the walled city Kos is ruled by the elite Kaya family, dominated by the priest-like Mages and suspicious of the sin-eating young aki. The royal Kayas are entitled and oblivious, the Mages corrupt and dangerous, and the aki are the heart of the story. Seventeen-year old Taj is the strongest of the aki and determined to hold the line for his friends and get the job done as long as he possibly can. But there is big trouble brewing in Kos, big sins bursting to be set free, and soon Taj is running for his life in the beautiful, turbulent, complicated neighborhoods he loves. Saving Kos will take everything he has and maybe cost him more than he can bear. Welcome to Toch Onyebuchi’s world, a place like no other and a true YA tour de force.

As readers immerse themselves in Kos and its purity system, which relies upon the ‘‘magic’’ of sin discovery by the Mages and then sin eating by the aki, they will find a lot about the city that is familiar. Onyebuchi describes a place that is steeped in bazaars and outdoor living, with people filling the streets and the scents of savory foods wafting down alleyways. Food is a huge part of Taj’s life (he looooooves food), and Onyebuchi delightfully shares one mouth-watering meal after another. He also engages in plenty of descriptions about what everyone is wearing, which helps to balance out the brutality of the life-threatening battles the aki engage in. The tattoos the aki are marked with, evidence of the sins belonging to others that they have eaten, are another major factor in Kos life. Taj’s tattoos do not fade, which is unusual. They mark him as something different, which isn’t easy because being an aki in this town is already tough enough.

When Taj’s tattoos are revealed to be only one part of what makes him special, he gets sucked into dangerous palace life. There is a lot of palace intrigue (of course there is a lot of palace intrigue) and Taj finds himself uncertain of who to trust among a princess, a Mage-in-training, and a bodyguard (each of whom is a dynamic and complex female character!). As the power games are slowly revealed, the fragile society that Kos was built upon begins to crumble. The rifts between rich and poor, guilty and pure, powerful and hungry widen beyond repair. And then Taj discovers what he will have to give up to save his city and who he will lose in the battle he never saw coming.

Onyebuchi has written an action-packed narrative that is great fun to read, but more importantly he gives readers a lot to think about in terms of politics, diversity, and elitism. He shows how hard it is to survive when every single day is about survival and how casually people can become disassociated from the pain they cause in others. There is beauty in Kos, and there is horror; there are villains aplenty and small but mighty heroes. Altogether, Beasts Made of Night is a thoughtful, thoroughly unique novel, and it heralds the arrival of a dazzling talent.

–Colleen Mondor

LILA GARROTT

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance, Ruth Emmie Lang (St. Martin’s Press 978-1-250-11204-0, $26.99, 346 pp, hc) November 2017.

Weylyn Grey is a magical enigma. He can, apparently, control the weather, speak with animals, accelerate plant growth, and do other supernatural things on occasion, but he’s also a perennial outsider, walking in and out of other people’s lives only to leave them touched with enchantment and confusion.

Ruth Emmie Lang’s debut is a mosaic of viewpoints looking at Weylyn and his impact on his surroundings over the course of nearly fifty years. We hear from his first friend, from his foster sister, from a child who runs across him squatting in a cabin in the woods; we hear from people who love him and people who dislike him and at least one person who barely knows him at all. Lang’s intent is clearly to weave some kind of magical-realist tapestry using Weylyn’s otherworldliness as a catalyst to look at the lives and relationships of ordinary people, a gently numinous Americana.

Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance is an ambitious and interesting project, but the idea of using a magical outsider to reveal things about the heart of America is inherently an extraordinarily thorny and tangled one, given the ways America has traditionally dealt with otherness. It calls for a great deal of skill in differentiating times and places, handling the specificities of region and class, race and gender in a way that would illuminate them from a new and strange perspective.

Unfortunately, Lang’s ambitions are thwarted by the fact that, over half a century and more than a thousand miles of roving, all of her narrators – male, female, married, single, friendly, otherwise – share the same voice and are afflicted with the same emotional constipation. Whimsy descend on this book, and in its wake the characterization is left in tatters. At one point, in Michigan, 1979, Nelson Penlore, an aging widower with a daughter he doesn’t know how to talk to and a small-town butcher shop, thinks the following: ‘‘I’m pretty sure the lyrics to every song I’ve ever heard now occupy the part of my brain that once controlled speech ... I opened my mouth to wish her Happy birthday, but ended up mumbling The Crests’ ’16 Candles’ too quietly for her to even hear.’’ It should be noted that his daughter is turning 11.

This is not how real people behave, and it is also not convincing as belonging to its putative milieu. This is how people behave in a certain kind of magical-realist novel, with an overly self-conscious quirkiness. It doesn’t help that the novel’s overall plot is not strong: Weylyn grows up, falls in love, runs away from his girlfriend because he’s afraid his powers will hurt her, and looks her up again later. In the interim, there’s an interlude in which he works with his teenage nephew to get his powers under control, but we don’t actually see enough of that work for it to be convincing, so his about-turn to be willing to search for his ex feels like it comes out of nowhere. Weylyn himself is not an unappealing character (after all, he talks to animals and runs off with wolf packs), but we don’t get to hear from him directly until very late in the book, and then what we do get is restricted to a fairly restrained, factual narration, which is nevertheless more effective than any other part of the novel.

Probably the worst effect of the whimsy is the way it blurs times and places together. Weylyn learns to read on a borrowed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, but, despite the fact that he is growing up in the South, race and racial issues never enter the text. Neither do any other social issues that would have been relevant to a young man growing up in the eighties, or the changes in behavior that take place as technologies progress. Nor do most regional differences, aside from the weather, which, granted, is given more focus than some of the human behavior. Lang’s moments of extreme weather are quite well-handled and are highlights of the book: the tornado, hurricane, and blizzard in question all feel very real and are described evocatively both in themselves and in their effects on human beings.

Lang’s prose isn’t terrible, either, but it suffers from the same issues her characterization does, in that she seems to have no idea where to put the emphasis. Events that don’t need to be prettied-up get extremely poetic language, and sentences that start out subtle and strong fall quickly into mixed metaphor and that omnipresent whimsy.

It’s a shame that Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance falls into the trap of letting this haze of quirkiness soften its thorns and defang its frequently referenced wolves.

–Lila Garrott

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LOCUS LISTENS TO AUDIOBOOKS: AMY GOLDSCHLAGER

The Power, Naomi Alderman

Senlin Ascends: The Books of Babel #1, Josiah Bancroft

The City of Brass, S.A. Chakraborty

Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr, John Crowley

Spin: The Audiobook Musical, Neil Fishman & Harvey Edelman

Angel Catbird, Margaret Atwood

The Sky Is Yours, Chandler Klang Smith

The Power, Naomi Alderman; Adjoa Andoh, narrator (Hachette Audio 978-1-47899990-4, $24.98, digital download, 12 hr., unabridged) October 2017.

Young women suddenly gain the power to deliver powerful electric shocks, brutally upending the power differential between men and women, eventually leading to a matriarchal society 5,000 years later in which women can’t even imagine a time where men were physically, politically, or artistically dominant. The present-day story is told from the perspectives of the illegitimate daughter of a London crimelord, a teenage victim of sexual abuse turned prophet, a male Nigerian freelance journalist documenting the political and social upheaval, an ambitious American politician, and her daughter, whose power doesn’t quite work correctly.

British actress Adjoa Andoh, best known to geeks as Francine Jones, the woman who didn’t approve of her daughter Martha traveling with the Doctor on Series 3 on the revived Doctor Who, narrates the book. Her voice is refined, throaty, and appropriately intense and urgent. The story requires a fairly wide palette of accents, including Nigerian, working-class English, and Eastern European, among others. Andoh handles most of them excellently, except for some of the American accents. Professional English actors can usually manage a Southern American accent (which worked quite well for Mother Eve, the prophet from Alabama), but any other region is typically expressed in a flat, generic accent that would be hard put to place (Margo sounded part Southern, part I don’t-know-what, which didn’t entirely work for a politician who is supposedly based in the Northeastern United States.).

When this book was first released this fall, it got a tremendous amount of buzz, and, of course, was dubbed a modern Handmaid’s Tale. The framing device, in which a series of violent and terrible events are perceived almost as trivial and amusing from the perspective of a distant future, is the same, as is the understanding that women in positions of power won’t necessarily behave any better than men currently do. This book might be a less subtle expression of the argument, but it feels both convincing and devastating. Personally, I still can’t stop thinking about it.

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Senlin Ascends: The Books of Babel #1, Josiah Bancroft; John Banks, narrator (Hachette Audio 978-154916787-4, $24.98, digital download, 14.25 hr., unabridged) January 2018.

There’s been a quiet buzz about this steampunkish series ever since the author self-published the first book in 2012; the Hachette Book Group has picked the books up for wider distribution, and I’m happy to have this chance to review this first audio production, narrated with calm authority by John Banks.

Thomas Senlin, a school headmaster from a small fishing village, has always dreamed of visiting the fabulous Tower of Babel, and persuades his young, vivacious wife Maria to spend their honeymoon there. But their plan for an idyll on the third level known as the Baths is spoiled almost as soon as they step off the train. First, Maria’s luggage disappears in the tumultuous market surrounding the Tower’s base, and then Maria herself vanishes. Senlin is left alone to pursue his missing wife up the various ringdoms of the Tower. Every ringdom is entirely different than what he was led to expect from his curiously inadequate guidebook, equally full of wonders and squalor, and governed by strange rules enforced by a brutal justice when they are violated. Senlin must use his wits and triumph over his sheltered naiveté if he is to find Maria. But is it a mistake to so stubbornly rely on the new friends he makes, despite a multitude of warnings to trust no one?

Although Senlin is clearly a riff on a provincial Englishman in foreign parts, we are not actually in our world, which leaves Banks to develop creative choices with accents for all the characters, which I thought worked quite well. I particularly enjoyed the musical Irish-sounding voice he adopted for Finn Goll (well, I guess Finn is an Irish name), the ruthless shipping magnate/crimelord who manipulates Senlin into working for him.

This story is a classic everyman’s journey, in which our hero gains new insights as he travels to strange places. It has its charm, but the pacing can occasionally be a bit slow, particularly when we wait for Senlin to realize certain obvious truths: The listener will know the traitor in Senlin’s ranks far, far before he will. He does get there eventually, though, and Bancroft’s worldbuilding (towerbuilding?) is richly detailed and intriguing. I will likely continue to accompany Senlin on the later stages of his search.

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The City of Brass, S.A. Chakraborty; Soneela Nankani, narrator (Harper Audio and Blackstone Audio (978-153845611-8, $55.99, MP3-CD, 19.5 hr., unabridged [also available as a digital download]) November 2017.

In Napoleonic-era Cairo, Nahri makes a living as a con artist and thief posing as a fortune teller and healer, while concealing the magical talents she actually does possess but does not understand. One night, her grift goes terribly wrong: during a supposedly fake magical ritual, Nahri stumbles upon a real spell and summons up a djinn, or daeva, called Dara. He instantly recognizes her as part daeva herself; in fact, she is apparently the last surviving member of the former royal family of Daevabad, the titular City of Brass. Dodging murderous ifreets and other dangers all the way, Dara conducts Nahri to the city, where she is treated as a pawn by both the current rulers and the supporters of Nahri’s family.

I am not as familiar with Arabic as I’d like, but actress Soneela Nankani’s pronunciation of Arabic places and personal names sounded reasonably plausible to me, and she provided a fine amount of dramatic tension in this gripping story. This was one of those novels where the story took over, and the audio narration almost vanished into the background for me; I just wanted to know what was going to happen next. I was very impressed by the incredibly nuanced characters and politics, which grappled directly with issues of racism and prejudice. There were very few pure villains: nearly everyone was painted in shades of gray, and each faction had both noble causes and vile actions in their history. I especially appreciated the complexity of Nahri’s own heritage: She is half human, and half a member of a daeva tribe that is so vehemently against daeva/human hybrids that they went to war over it.

I have no idea where this series plans to go, but I’ll definitely be there for it.

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Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr, John Crowley; narrated by the author (Brilliance Audio 978-154361416-9, $14.99, (MP3 CD, 15.5 hr., unabridged [also available as a digital download]) October 2017.

In a not-too-distant future short on resources and rife with disease, a dying man rescues an injured crow. They somehow learn to communicate, or at least the man believes they do, and the man hears the story of Dar Oakley, a crow who has lived many lifetimes and has crossed the border between life and death on multiple occasions, and as a result, has gained a certain wisdom about humanity and crowkind, the separate ways the two species understand the concepts of life and death, and how those differing perceptions have led to an evolving relationship between humans and crows.

With certain exceptions, John Crowley is not known for writing cohesive plots with a driving throughline (the short novel Engine Summer and his novella ‘‘Great Work of Time’’ are rare exceptions). The individual stories and meditations inside Little, Big and Aegypt were what made those books really shine. Ka is not about plot: It is a spiritual and philosophical work, of the sort that recounts a similar tale multiple times with small variations, allowing the layers to build toward enlightenment. Since listening to an audiobook is a slower process than reading and usually requires a fairly intense level of concentration, either this will be a profound or a tedious experience for the listener, or possibly either one in specific places.

Crowley himself narrates his book, which in general, I am in favor of, as who can represent a book as intimately as the author can? He is one impressive reader, lending an additional gloss of gravitas to this cerebral, poetic work. I have heard him read live many times, and I don’t understand how I could have forgotten just how good he is. This is an excellent choice for the patient and ruminative listener; those who prefer hard-driving audio action will have to listen elsewhere.

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Spin: The Audiobook Musical, Neil Fishman & Harvey Edelman; narrated by Jim Dale and a full cast (HarperAudio and Blackstone Audio 978-153851884-7, $19.99, CD, 1.5 hr., unabridged [also available as a digital download]) January 2018.

Angel Catbird, Margaret Atwood; performed by a full cast (Audible Studios, $21.83, digital download, 2.75 hr., unabridged) February 2018.

I admire the efforts of audiobook publishers to provide audio experiences that go beyond a written text, to provide a convincing audio landscape. But while I admire the attempt, that doesn’t mean they all work. Cases in point: Spin and Angel Catbird.

Spin is a musical adaptation of the fairy tale Rumplestilskin, with all the hard edges filed off. The miller who boasts his daughter Jane can spin gold into straw is a shy man intimidated into showing off by his bolder, more competitive friends. The king is poor and easily dominated by his shopaholic sisters (who, it turns out, will happily shop for the whole kingdom, not just themselves). And the trickster Rumplestilskin really just wants friends; he just doesn’t know how to go about it.

When I was eight or nine, I was totally devoted to more faithful and far bloodier versions of fairy tales; I am not entirely a fan of softening stories to this degree, even if that’s the current trend. But the actors are charming, the songs are catchy, and I am always a sucker for Jim Dale’s amused-sounding narration. This is a perfectly pleasant production that would be useful for family roadtrips, and an experiment that succeeds in providing a well-rounded audiobook experience.

On the other hand, Angel Catbird is the third graphic novel adapted for audio that I have tried to listen to, and I have come to the regretful conclusion that such adaptations are simply not for me. Audio publishers tend to throw a ton of money at the things, hiring a full cast of accomplished actors, composing music, and laying out a full array of sound effects. The result is a highly stylized (and to my ears, stilted) audio play, with an over-the-top, stagey narration reminiscent of the hokiest of old radio serials. It’s the aural equivalent of silent movies, with the heavy makeup and exaggerated facial expressions intended to play to the back of the theater.

It didn’t help that the plot – in which a sweetly nerdy scientist who turns into an owl-cat-human hybrid after an accident with a gene-splicing compound, must stymie the plots of his boss, a cackling and sexually predatory rat-human hybrid with an army of cybernetically enhanced rats – was also exaggerated and silly. Frankly, I couldn’t even get through it.

Adapting a comic book panel by panel seems to lead to choppy, disjointed storytelling. At the same time, there’s a certain amount of visual, unspoken nuance that gets lost in an audio-only adaptation. Contemporary film writers seem more able to establish a more organic flow in their comic-book adaptations; the visual medium, which obviates the need to describe the action, is presumably a great help in this regard.

Perhaps recommended for the visually impaired; everyone else can feel free to pass it by.

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The Sky Is Yours, Chandler Klang Smith; Kirsten Potter, narrator (Random House Audio, $29.95, digital download, 15.5 hr., unabridged) January 2018.

Empire Island, a stand-in for New York City, is crumbling and stagnant, a process hurried along by the two dragons who appeared a few decades ago and began burning buildings seemingly at random. However, some people still remain, including the criminal descendants of a prison town located within the city, and the ultrawealthy who refuse to give up their property. Duncan Humphrey Ripple V, the handsome but not-too-bright scion of one of those rich families, cares little for anything other than himself, and his far more intelligent bride-to-be, Baroness Swan Lenore Dahlberg, homeschooled and sheltered by her mother, imagines her future marriage (which is really more of a financial transaction) in terms of romance novels. The couple’s prospects for wedded bliss dim once Swannie actually meets Duncan and his new girlfriend Abby, a feral young woman who grew up on a landfill and who believes she can communicate with certain animals. They’re shattered entirely after scavengers invade the Ripple estate, murdering several of the inhabitants, and sending Swannie, Duncan, and Abby fleeing into the heart of the unwelcoming city.

Potter does mispronounce certain words (e.g., ‘‘ermine’’ (in the exact same way I was teased about when I was three – which is why I’m particularly attuned to it), ‘‘bas-relief,’’ and the author’s boyfriend’s name in the dedication), but she is decidedly skilled at producing distinct voices and believably masculine pitches. The voices she uses for the animals who talk to Abby – Duncan’s eager-to-please ape hound Hooligan, the coolly logical genetically enhanced rats, and the nearly inarticulate dragons, who can only express themselves via peculiar, guttural phonemes – are particularly good.

The resolution of the story felt both inevitable and somewhat too neat, but the journey was undeniably compelling. Recommended.

–Amy Goldschlager

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GALACTIC PHILADELPHIA

Malka Older and David Walton took part in the Galactic Philadelphia reading series with an appearance on February 13, 2018. Sally Wiener Grotta and Lawrence Schoen curate the series. For more: <www.galacticphiladelphia.com>.

Sally Wiener Grotta, Malka Older, David Walton, Lawrence Schoen

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Michelle Sagara was born in, and has spent all her life living in, what is now called Toronto. Her long-suffering husband and two children have learned that there’s nothing terribly mystical or magical about being a writer, although the experience of watching their mother has made imposter syndrome and lack of critical objectivity about one’s work seem completely normal.

Reading is one of her life-long passions, and she is sometimes paid for her opinions about what she’s read by the venerable F&SF. When not reading, she writes – as both Michelle West and Michelle Sagara – which she has done since 1987, although the first book wasn’t published until the end of 1991.

Michelle Sagara (2014)

You recently sold the 14th and 15th volumes of the Chronicles of Elantra, started 13 years ago. Tell us about the series.

The City of Elantra is, like many modern cities, a large and vibrant urban landscape. It has the requisite large trees in older areas, and buildings which are of Historical Interest and therefore subject to zoning by-laws that would make your eyes bleed if you had to read all of them.

A variety of different races call Elantra home, with the resultant racial tension and fears; colour isn’t as much of a problem for Elantra as species, because humanity isn’t the only race in the city. Immortal dragons and Barrani, winged Aerians, fanged and furred Leontines, all live within the city boundaries.

Elantra has lawyers and a large bureaucracy, but the city also has a police force. That the head of government is an Emperor – and also a Dragon – is a minor consideration, unless you’re on the wrong side of his laws, in which case, it’s probably more messy.

Encouraging people to stay on the right side of those Laws are the Hawks, one third of the force tasked with keeping the peace. Private Kaylin Neya is a member of the Hawks; along with her partner, Corporal Severn Handred, she patrols the City in an attempt to keep it safe. She’s at home in the rougher streets of Elantra, because that’s where she started.

Kaylin is the main character of the series, and the books involve her attempt to more-or-less do her job. But in a world where magic and magical beings exist, the job isn’t quite as mundane as she’d like it to be on most days....

Did you have the whole series planned from the start?

I have the ending planned, and had it planned from the start. But my intent with the Cast series was to structure it more as a continuing television series than as an -ology. I know that some people love world building (I know two authors who, for fun when current projects are hugely stressful, begin by making maps. One uses Campaign Cartographer, which is not anyone’s definition of user friendly), but while I will do it, it’s not what I do for fun.

So I had a couple of books that I wanted to write in the series itself. I wanted to write a book about the Aerians (winged people). I wanted to write a book about the Leontines (cat people, but more lion than kitten). I wanted to write a book about the Dragon Court (which I still haven’t found story for).

I promised myself, however, that I would write until I had no stories I wanted to tell, and then I would write the ending. But.

I started out with a handful of stories that I wanted to tell in the most general of terms. An Aerial book. A Leontine book. A Barrani book. A Dragon book. The ending. (Side note: I’m not a great outliner. For the most part, for me, outlining kills the book. I’ve done a submission outline exactly once in my life, and this taught me that it is better by far for me to just finish an entire novel and submit that. I have a huge amount of envy for people who can outline, but have learned that I’m just not one of them. Even having a very general outline for a series of books (The Queen of the Dead) meant, in the end, writing book two from page one four times; I only finished that book when I finally realized that the event that had been my intended closer was... never, ever going to happen. And then, I just wrote the book.)

Having said that, I knew that I had the freedom to write the books I wanted to write, and while writing those handful of very loose ideas, other ideas took root, grew, and became books. And: I could let them.

What particular advantages or pleasures does working in the same universe offer you as a writer?

The best thing about working in the same universe – for me – is the characters. Because there’s no must-finish-by-book-number-X stricture, it means that as characters open up and unfold, I can follow their stories. Little things from earlier books can eventually become books in their own right.

Cast in Peril became Teela’s book. That wasn’t planned; what I’d planned was something different. But there’s a flow to writing and a flow to story, and – again for my process, because no two writers I know have the same processes – that story resides in character; the plot follows characters. So my intentions would be like an outline (but never written down). I think, ‘‘this is what the book will be about.’’ But very often, once I start the book, it veers wildly. I do know the end. I don’t always have a clear path to that end, because the path I had gets trampled into invisibility when I write actual, book words.

When I was drafting Peril, I knew what the next book would be about. It would be about Kaylin having to deal with real life, not work. This didn’t happen. What happened instead was Cast in Sorrow. And because of the ending of that book, I now had an entirely different set of problems for Kaylin and the Hawks. The book I thought I’d be writing, I tried to write, but because of the consequences of Sorrow, everything had changed. The situation in which Kaylin found herself hadn’t; the difficulties she had to handle had.

Cast in Deception also comes directly out of the consequences of the characters that arrived in Cast in Sorrow, which turned my quiet little novel, Cast in Flame – in theory a more mundane book about having to find a new home, which meant landlords, among other things – into something much more explosive.

The book I’m currently writing follows Cast in Deception (which was just published), but I have a book I want to write immediately after it, which might – just might – finally be the Dragon Court book. If not, I still want to write a Dragon Court book.

All of this is possible in a continuing series. If each book has a story arc, the characters aren’t confined by it.

The thing I love best about the continuing series and characters is that I can take the time around events to develop those characters, to grow them.

Should readers start with book one, or are there other possible entry points?

I’m going to quote Liz Bourke here. (She’s speaking about Cast in Shadow, the first book in the series.)

This isn’t a good place to start the series: I’d advise any newcomers to start with the second book. (The first is good, but it has more of a fantasy romance feel than is actually true of the series.)

Since I wrote the books, I cannot ever read them as a reader. I think there’s relevant information in the first book about some of the characters that continue - but I do feel that people coming to the series from the first book might expect more romance. Romance is hard. Or at least it’s hard for me. I don’t objectively always understand how it works, and because I don’t, while I can read romance and love stories, they don’t filter down into the grit that is my writer loam. I can write couples, because that’s also bedrock to me – but how they became couples remains a bit out of reach.

So...for me to write actual romance, I would have to make entirely intellectual decisions, and I would have to force the book and characters to conform to those decisions. And my process makes that a book-killer.

That is a digression. It’s fine to start at the first book, but if the romantic elements are what you like best about it, you probably won’t love the rest of the series that follows.

Why do you think readers enjoy series work so much?

Characters, honestly – or at least that’s why I do. I read series books because I’ve grown fond of the various characters in them, and I’d like to know more about their lives going forward. It’s not just about the story, or the continuing story, but about the people themselves.

That said, I like to see the consequences of various decisions; I like to see the way those decisions play out in later books. I’m not really approaching this as a writer, but as a reader, because reading was the first activity I truly loved as a child, and it’s still incredibly important to me.

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know? Upcoming work or other projects of note?

I have just worked out the title of the next Cast novel. It’s Cast in Oblivion. For those who’ve read the series, it takes up almost exactly where Cast in Deception ends.

–Michelle Sagara

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Sarah Pinsker’s first professional sale was ‘‘20 Ways the Desert Could Kill You’’ in 2012. She followed that with the Sturgeon Award-winning ‘‘In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind’’, also her first Nebula Award-nominated story. She has since won the Nebula Award for novelette ‘‘Our Lady of the Open Road.’’ Her 40+ stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, F&SF, Lightspeed, and Uncanny, among others, and numerous anthologies. Her first collection, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea: Stories will be published by Small Beer in 2019. She is also a singer/songwriter and has toured nationally behind three albums on various independent labels. She lives with her wife and dog in Baltimore, MD.

Sarah Pinsker (2010s)

You’ve had a couple of stories come out to great acclaim recently. Tell us about current Nebula Award finalist ‘‘And Then There Were (N-One)’’ – what’s it about, and why did you write it?

‘‘And Then There Were (N-One)’’ is a science fiction murder mystery set at a convention of Sarah Pinskers. It rose from a confluence of events that took place at a writing retreat. Someone had brought a box of marshmallow peeps and set them on a plate. By Saturday evening there were ten, and that somehow morphed into a Peep-by-Peep recreation of the deaths in Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. (<storify.com/UncannyCabin/twice-upon-a-time-there-was-an-uncanny-cabin> documents the evening, which also involved whiskey and Hamilton). That plus a contest prompt of ‘‘a triptych of memories’’ and I woke up Sunday morning with the idea of a murder at a multiple-selves convention. They weren’t Sarah Pinskers yet; that came several drafts later.

On a visit to my mother’s, I found my childhood copy of the Dr. Seuss fill-in-the-blanks My Book About Me, which I had filled in around the age of eight. Alongside questions about how big your shoes are and how many books you’ve read (I think my answer was ‘‘a million’’), there’s a double page spread of ‘‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’’ I had circled or written in about twenty things, everything from astronaut to ‘‘president’s dog trainer’’ (that one was a write-in!) Looking at that got me thinking about how taking one path can sometimes close others off. At that moment I had the horrifying realization that I needed to do a monumental authorial self-insertion. And really, that was when the story finally fired; it got its heart and moved beyond high-concept gimmickry when I understood I needed to use details from my own life, paths travelled and untraveled, all of which lead to new paths that I never had the opportunity to travel. It’s a fun and bizarre exercise, especially for someone who is decision-averse. Some of it is ‘‘real’’ and some of it isn’t, but what does real mean in a fictional setting?

You have two stories on the Nebula ballot now. Tell us about ‘‘Wind Will Rove’’.

My novelette ‘‘Wind Will Rove’’ was born at an old-time music jam I went to with my aunt, who also plays guitar. The guitar part is easy: everything is in the same key, and your job is to play two or three chords behind the fiddle players and stay out of their way. Since that doesn’t take much attention, my hands did the playing and my mind started paying attention to the details in a sort of ethnographic way: who sat where, who had control of the song, etc.

Someone had given me a story seed that told me I needed to write a space story, and someone else gave me a seed that said ‘‘I thought it was a kiwi,’’ pointing out that a kiwi can be ‘‘a fruit, a bird, or a New Zealand national,’’ and I started thinking about how language and history distort over time, so somebody might be aware of one definition but not all three, and arrive at a textual misread. The combination of those three elements became a story about old-time fiddlers in a middle generation on a generation ship. I’m fascinated by the idea of those middle generations, and the idea that someone idealistically set off on that journey, removing the choice for their descendants. I also love playing with the question of what becomes an abstract concept in that setting. Melodies can be kept static and passed down intact, but do the titles or lyrics mean anything at all to the people playing them? What’s worth keeping, and why?

I took both ‘‘And Then There Were (N-One)’’ and ‘‘Wind Will Rove’’ to the Sycamore Hill workshop, a year apart, but in the opposite order. I love Sycamore Hill and try to go any time I’m invited. It pushes me to bring – and to write! – my most ambitious stories. Then I have to sit down with all my notes from the critiques and sort out whom I agree with. I’m lucky to have a couple of critique situations like that in my life. Not only do I get great advice on my own stories, but critiquing stories by great writers ups my game.

Which one story of yours are you most fond of, that you’d like to point our readers toward?

I don’t think I can pick just one! Probably one of the two above, to be honest, which is nice since you always want to be able to say your most recent work is your best or favorite, right? The descriptions of music in ‘‘Wind Will Rove’’, and the translations of the past, for good or bad, made me happy, as did the easter eggs in ‘‘And Then There Were (N-One)’’.

I like to think my stories are hopeful, even when things look dire. I’m into hope. I think I write a lot of people trying to figure out how to navigate really lousy situations as best they can. I like examining human-level problems and solutions against science fictional or fantastic backgrounds. I also love writing queer characters in situations where their queerness is not part of the crisis at hand.

What’s the particular appeal of science fiction for you? Why write that instead of, say, mysteries or literary fiction?

I can’t remember a time before I read science fiction, so it was natural that I gravitated toward writing it. My father always had subscriptions to the SF magazines, and his library includes hundreds of anthologies and collections, so I read a lot of short fiction growing up. Novels too, but I remember devouring all the year’s bests. I also had a grade school teacher who taught SFF stories. I remember reading ‘‘Of Mist, And Grass, And Sand’’ with her, and later discovering Dreamsnake. Also ‘‘Harrison Bergeron’’, ‘‘The Nine Million Names of God’’, ‘‘The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas’’, ‘‘The Ship Who Sang...’’ She came to the Asimov’s anniversary reading last year. I’m not always good at thank yous, but I like to think the people who influenced me can see their influence pretty directly.

I spoke to a community college last week and was asked a question about why I choose to write SF. First, to me, lit fic is just another genre, with its own conventions. I think a lot of my own work falls into the lit/SF overlap. Good realist fiction is lovely, but I love the expanded palette that ‘‘what if’’ allows.

Your short stories are justly celebrated. Any plans to write a novel?

I’ve written a novel! It’s set in the near future of ‘‘Our Lady of the Open Road’’, where live music has been driven underground. It’s proven to be a great setting for exploring not just future music technology and its effect on musicians, but also isolation and community and what we allow to happen in the name of safety, which are timely discussions.

You’re not just a writer, but also a musician. Tell us about that side of your work.

To me, fiction and music are both sides of the storytelling coin – another expanded palette. I wrote fiction for years, and then put it aside when my music started going well. Three albums and several years of touring later, I started writing fiction again. Songwriting distills a story down to its absolute essence. After three verses and a chorus, even a flash story feels like enough room to write an epic. Lyric-writing punches up the rhythms of fiction too. Like a lot of writers, I read everything out loud, and a story that’s working well has a beat to it.

I get a kick out of trying to translate music into prose, as well. ‘‘Wind Will Rove’’, ‘‘Our Lady of the Open Road’’, ‘‘A Song Transmuted’’ – I think the trick is not to describe what the music sounds like, but what a song stirs in the players and in those listening. If I conjure that feeling right, the reader can overwrite whatever sound they’re hearing.

Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know about you or the work you do?

I’m a research fiend, even if it doesn’t all wind up on the page. My degree is in history, and I am a very happy person if you point me at an archive and let me loose. I love collecting the tidbits that are true and yet too weird to make believable speculative fictions.

Tell us about your upcoming collection.

Small Beer Press will be publishing my collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea: Stories in 2019. It’ll have a mix of reprints from online and print magazines, as well as an original story. The Small Beer folks are awesome humans and I love their stuff. If I walk into a dealers’ room where they have a table, I usually walk out with everything on it. I’m tremendously honored to be included in their catalogue, shoulder to shoulder with some of my favorite authors.

–Sarah Pinsker

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2017 BRITISH BOOK SUMMARY

The number of books published in the UK went up for the first time after three years of decline. It’s nice to see numbers going up for a change. We still suspect we’re missing quite a few books due to the logistics of trying to keep track from a distance, and the decline in brick-and-mortar stores that makes it harder for our UK correspondent, Ian Covell, to spot books in stores. Also, with more and more publishers bringing books out simultaneously in the US and UK, some UK publishers won’t send UK editions to the US for listing; more publishers are bringing out just one edition and shipping copies to the US, and we’re trying to list such editions only once, though it’s a frustrating, time-consuming process trying to double-check everything.

Few changes in the publishing field affected us in 2017. Head of Zeus added children’s/YA imprint Zephyr in 2017, but they only had a couple of YA fantasy titles listed for 2017, neither of which we saw. Canongate bought Severn House in September; both do occasional titles of interest.

We saw 675 titles, up 21% from 559 in 2016. New books (first and First UK editions) went up 17% to 421 titles. Reprints rose 28% to 254 titles; they made up 38% of the total books seen in 2017, up from 35% in 2016. We used to consider 50% ideal, since books were more likely to make a profit if reprinted, but e-books have changed that view, usually coming out simultaneously with the first print edition, yet filling much of the space that used to be occupied by smaller-format paperback reprints. Unfortunately, we still haven’t started to seriously track e-books in the UK. The UK practice of having e-books appear before the print editions continues; in some cases it appears to be an attempt to have a book appear simultaneously with the US and avoid losing sales if the print edition is months off, but often there’s no obvious reason for the e-book to appear first. Since we usually find out about such e-books through Amazon, we can’t always be certain the e-book really exists, since it’s not uncommon for ghost listings to be left when a print edition is pushed back. Double-checking every format just isn’t feasible, if the information is even available. Some publishers don’t even post e-book information online until the book is actually out.

The data used to create these figures is extracted from our monthly ‘‘British Books’’ column. All the books counted here were listed there, but not all the books listed there are counted here, since we drop marginal items such as strictly associational titles or chapbooks. We include books published in 2016 but not seen until 2017. ‘‘New books’’ refers to originals, plus first-UK editions of books originally published in English elsewhere, usually the United States, Australia, or Canada. Where mergers have occurred, we have combined data from past years to reflect the difference. Young-adult imprints are generally grouped with their adult namesakes, even if they are technically part of separate children’s divisions; it’s difficult to separate them out from the adult versions of the imprints, and US editions aren’t necessarily a guide; UK publishers are less likely than their US counterparts to automatically designate book with young protagonists as YA or children’s books.

The list of Total Books Published breaks down the output for all publishers with five or more genre titles in 2017. Orion/Gollancz took back first place with 95 titles, up from 74 in 2016, knocking Little, Brown/Orbit back to second place with 84 titles, up slightly from 82. Black Library moved into third place with 72 titles, up from 16; the increase is somewhat misleading, since previously we weren’t seeing a lot of their UK titles. By 2017, they shifted to doing mostly international editions, and we’re now listing such books seen in the US as UK editions. HarperCollins/Voyager returns in fourth place with 43 titles, up from 39, followed by Pan Macmillan/Tor UK, back in fifth with 39 titles, up from 36. Below that, publishers shifted around as usual. Publishers with fewer than five titles are lumped together in Miscellaneous Publishers. We saw books from 54 publishers, down from 57; 23 had five or more titles, up from 19. Three small presses made it out of miscellaneous: NewCon Press, PS Publishing, and Tartarus Press. (The Tartarus books were all from 2016; we rarely see their titles, which are mostly limited collectors’ editions.)

We counted 31 miscellaneous publishers, down from 38. We no longer relegate all print-on-demand publishers to miscellaneous; we counted 19 POD titles in 2017, up from 12.

Chart #2 shows the top ten publishers with their totals for the last five years. Seven increased their output this year: Black Library, up 350% from 2016; Orion/Gollancz, up 28%; Transworld/Bantam, up 26%; Titan, up 15%; HarperCollins/Voyager, up 10%; Pan Macmillan/Tor UK, up 8%; and Little, Brown/Orbit, up 2%. Decreasing their output were Random House, down 18%; PS Publishing, down 17%; and Hodder & Stoughton, down 16%.

The list of Books Published by SF Imprint gives the numbers for SF imprints (and some small presses) with five or more titles, separate from their corporate groupings. Gollancz remains in the lead with 90 titles. Below that was a lot of shifting around. Black Library jumped into second place with 72 titles, pushing Orbit down to third place with 62 titles. Harper Voyager held onto fourth place with 29 titles, tied with PS Publishing. Jo Fletcher Books moved up one spot to sixth place with 14 titles, followed by NewCon Press with 13, Tor UK with 11, Solaris with ten, Angry Robot with eight, and Del Rey UK with five. No new imprints made the list. The 11 imprints listed were responsible for 343 titles, or 51% of the total books published, up from 46%. They published 212 new titles, or 50% of the new books total, up from 47% last year. (In the US, 17 imprints brought out 30% of total books and 28% of new books.)

We break down publishers’ new books by Originals (first editions) in Chart #3 and First UK Editions in Chart #4. Chart #3 shows publishers with more than three original titles. Little, Brown/Orbit returns in first place in originals with 59 titles, but was fourth in first UK editions with only three; 74% of their titles were new. Orion/Gollancz was second in original books with 41, and tied for second in first UK editions with four; 47% of their titles were new. Titan was third in original books with 31, and first in first US editions with six; 97% of their titles were new. The only publishers with higher percentages of new books were Angry Robot, NewCon Press, and Rebellion/Solaris, all with 100%. Not that long ago, most of the major UK publishers brought out a large number of books originally published in the US, and we wanted to point out publishers with more original titles. Now many of those same publishers make a point of publishing simultaneously in the US and UK, in large part because the increase in simultaneous print and e-book first editions made it easy and inexpensive to acquire new titles as e-books from overseas, so publishers risked losing significant sales if their books came out later. So, the number of first UK editions has declined considerably in the last ten years; in 2007, 23 publishers had at least one first UK edition; Little, Brown/Orbit alone had 38 first UK editions. Titan’s six titles barely compare, though 13 publishers had at least one first UK edition in 2017, up from seven in 2016.

Chart #1 shows the breakdown of subjects of new books in 2017. Nine of the subjects saw increases compared to 2016. Paranormal romances held steady with 15, and three subjects dropped. Fantasy novels once again had the most titles with 135; add 34 young-adult fantasy and there were 169 fantasy novels, 40% of the new books total, the same as last year. SF novels were up at 73 titles; plus 14 young-adult SF novels, there were 87 SF novels, 21% of the new books total, up from 20%. Horror novels came in with 30 titles; add three young-adult titles and there were 33 horror novels, 8% of new books, up from 7%. Paranormal romance novels had 15 titles, with no YA; they made up 4% of new books, the same as last year.

Young-adult books went up with 51 titles, up from 42, a 21% increase. Fantasy led as usual with 34 titles, up from 29; it made up two-thirds (67%) of the new YA total. Young-adult SF returned in second place with 14 titles, up from nine; it was 27% of new YA titles. Horror was third with three new novels, the same as last year, making up 6% of new YA novels. We counted no new YA paranormal romances. We’re not sure if publishers are really cutting back on romance these days, or simply giving more emphasis to the SF and fantasy elements, considering the popularity of dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories these days.

New anthologies dropped significantly, down 39% to 11 titles. Another ten anthologies are counted with media tie-ins, up from only two last year. Collections saw a solid increase with 37 titles, up 37%; three more ended up in media tie-ins. Omnibuses more than doubled with seven titles; another nine are in media tie-ins. We counted two Reference titles, up from none in 2016. History/criticism, a rather volatile category, came in with only six titles, down from 13 last year. Our grab-bag category of Art/Humor had three titles, down from ten: we counted one graphic novel, and two art books featuring works by individual artists on specific topics: futuristic movie art by Syd Mead and Paul Kidby’s works depicting Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

Media-related books came in with 49 new titles, up from 31; they were 12% of the new books total, up from 9%. They included ten omnibuses, ten anthologies, and three collections. Black Library led with 25 gaming tie-in titles, 22 in the far-future world of Warhammer 40,000, three in the fantasy world of Warhammer. Titan followed with nine titles, a mix of media tie-ins and one gaming tie-in (Halo). Random House UK’s Century imprint brought out seven Star Wars tie-ins, and BBC Books had six Doctor Who titles. These days, most tie-ins are published simultaneously in the US and UK. We don’t count tie-ins that are simply the US editions imported in the UK, such as Star Trek titles, just as we don’t count the BBC Doctor Who and Warhammer titles in the US.

Quality remains high, according to our best indicator, our Recommended Reading list published in the February issue. We listed 68 different titles from 22 UK publishers, very close to the 69 titles from 21 publishers listed last year. Little, Brown UK/Orbit led with nine titles, followed by Orion/Gollancz with eight, then Rebellion/Solaris and Macmillan/Tor UK with six each.

CONCLUSION

The increase in the number of titles made up a bit for two years of decline, but otherwise there wasn’t much change. The trend towards simultaneous US/UK publishing continues to eat away at first UK editions, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. If more publishers move to international editions, instead of separate US and UK editions, it would affect our numbers, but not consumers. Sometimes, it seems as if US and UK publishing are losing a lot of their distinctive differences, but there are still authors and works with distinct British flavor, and publishers, particularly small presses, fostering that, and producing a lot of quality work.

–Carolyn Cushman

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StokerCon, sponsored by the Horror Writers Association, was held at the Biltmore in Providence RI, March 1-4, 2018. HWA president Lisa Morton said, ‘‘It’s hard to beat hundreds of horror-lovers huddled together in a supposedly haunted hotel while a Nor’easter rages outside.’’ Guests of honor were Ramsey Campbell, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Victor LaValle, Elizabeth Massie, Sam Weller, and Craig Engler; Jeff Strand was emcee. Morton said, ‘‘This was our third year of putting this event together and I feel like this was the year we nailed it. We learned a great deal from our first two conventions and tried to put most of what we learned into effect this year; we also had a wonderful venue….’’ Linda Addison was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.

There were around 400 attendees. Co-chair James Chambers reported more than 60 author readings, along with around 80 panels and presentations. Chambers said, ‘‘Our Horror University workshop series offered more than a dozen two-hour, intensive workshop classes with veteran writing instructors. We also hosted a full day of programming for Librarians as well as two days of academic presentations as part of the Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference. On the third day of the con we presented the Final Frame Film Competition, which showcased about a dozen short horror films (all under 13 minutes) from around the world.’’ Highlights included Dacre Stoker’s presentations on the history of Bram Stoker and Dracula, a 200th anniversary panel in honor of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, a tribute panel to Jack Ketchum, and the Stoker Awards banquet, attended by about 160 congoers. Panels included ‘‘State of the Genre’’ moderated by Morton and featuring the GoHs; ‘‘Representation in Horror’’ with Marc Abbott, Linda Addison, Larissa Glasser, E.F. Schraeder, and Delona Southerland; and ‘‘Independent Publishing: Outlook for the Future’’ with Kate Jonez, John Edward Lawson, John McIlveen, Olivia Monteleone, and Alex Scully. Additional offerings included pitch sessions paired with a ‘‘Pre-pitch Panel’’ where ‘‘agents, editors, and publishers taking pitches during our Pitch Sessions talk about what they look for in a pitch’’; and a dealers’ room with ‘‘around a dozen’’ vendors, including Borderlands Press, Haverhill House, Hippocampus Press, Necronomicon Press, Raw Dog Screaming Press, and Providence bookseller Books on the Square – the official con bookseller.

Next year’s StokerCon will be held May 9-12, 2019 at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids MI. Guests of honor will include Josh Boone, Kathe Koje, Josh Malerman, Robert R. McCammon, Kaaron Warren, and Stephanie M. Wytovich. Jonathan Maberry will emcee. For more information visit <stokercon2019.org/>.

A selection of photos from the convention follows.

–Arley Sorg

Jenny Campbell & GoH Ramsey Campbell; GoH Caitlín R. Kiernan & Kathryn A. Pollnac; GoH Victor LaValle, Alan Baxter, Paul Tremblay

Ellen Datlow, Linda Addison, Lisa Morton; Thomas Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson; Becky Spratford, Rose O’Keefe; Christopher Golden, Jaimie Levine, James Moore

Joe Borrelli Tim Waggoner; Patrick McGrath, Danel Olson; Adam Bolivar, Derrick Hussey

GoH Craig Engler,Scott Edelman; Marge Simon, Linda Addison, John Palisano; Chris Bennet, Rena Mason

StokerCon Winners (l to r): GoH Elizabeth Massie (for Lisa Mannetti), Doug Murano, Kim Liggett, Grady Hendrix, Angel Leigh McCoy, Linda Addison, Rose O'Keefe, Jeff Strand, Christopher Golden, Stephanie M. Wytovich (For Christina Sng); kneeling: Michael Bailey (for Alessandro Manzetti)

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The 2018 Friends of Genre convention (FOGcon 8) was held March 9-11 at the Walnut Creek Marriot in Walnut Creek CA. 190 memberships were sold, plus an additional 32 day passes. The theme was ‘‘Performance in SF&F’’, with honored guests Andrea Hairston, Ada Palmer, and Thomas M. Disch (posthumously).

Programming included 74 participants and 55 slots, with panels on science, writing, publishing, literature, politics, and more, with titles such as ‘‘Short Stories that Stand Out From the Slush Pile’’, ‘‘Glorious, Bonkers Romance’’, ‘‘Good Grimdark Done Well by Marginalized People’’, ‘‘Speculative Fiction, Science and the Sacred’’, and ‘‘Cuddly Horrors from Outer Space’’.

The dealer’s room was well appointed, with businesses such as Borderlands Books and Cargo Cult, goods like books, jewelry, and accessories, and services including massage.

The bar lounge was comfortable and often lively, suitable for working or mingling. Additional options included the affordable Unaward Lunch Banquet with 105 attendees (a buffet with delicious fare), a writing workshop, readings, a hospitality suite, and programming for children. Writers’ organization Codex held a dinner with over 30 attendees.

FOGcon 9 is scheduled for March 8-10, 2018, and the theme is ‘‘Friendship’’. Honored guests have not yet been announced.

A selection of photos from the convention follows.

–Arley Sorg

Ada Palmer, Andrea Hairston, Crystal Huff

Heather McDougal, Jude Feldman; Madeleine E. Robins, Cliff Winnig,Ellen Klages

Julia Dvorin, Vylar Kaftan, Hal Heydt, Jed Hartman; Cathy Hindersinn, Lynne M. Thomas, Josh Pearce, Juliette Wade

Laura Blackwell, Cassie Alexander, Naru Sundar, Marie Brennan; Megan O’Keefe, Effie Seiberg, Karen Rochnik, E.A. Foley

Kerry Ellis, Eva Folsom; Chris Cornell, Cath Schaff-Stump, Anne Leonard, Caitlin Seal; Rebecca Gomez Farrell, Dominica Phetteplace

Nancy Jane Moore, Brenda W. Clough; Jeannie Warner, Karen Williams, Pat Murphy, Chaz Brenchley, Alene Kercheval

Kathryn Wilham at the Aqueduct table

Return to In This Issue listing.

MAGAZINES RECEIVED: FEBRUARY

Alien Dimensions–Neil A. Hogan, ed. Issue #7, April 2017, $3.99 digital/$7.95 print, 96pp, 15 x 22 1/2cm. Original fiction genre magazine set in outer space, with a focus on stories set in the future involving non-humanoid aliens. This issue includes six short stories and the concluding chapter of a serialized YA novella. Subscriptions not available, but the magazine can be purchased from Amazon.com in either Kindle or print format; website: <www.aliendimensions.com>.

Alien Dimensions–Neil A. Hogan, ed. Issue #8, 2017, $3.99 digital/$7.95 print, 96pp, 15 x 22 1/2cm. Original fiction genre magazine set in outer space, with a focus on stories set in the future involving non-humanoid aliens. This issue includes five short stories for adults, two YA short stories and part one of a serialized YA novella. Subscriptions not available, but the magazine can be purchased from Amazon.com in either Kindle or print format; website: <www.aliendimensions.com>.

Alien Dimensions–Neil A. Hogan, ed. Issue #9, 2017, $3.99 digital/$7.95 print, 76pp, 15 x 22 1/2cm. Original fiction genre magazine set in outer space, with a focus on stories set in the future involving non-humanoid aliens. Issue #9 includes five short stories, the second installment of a serialized YA novella. Subscriptions not available, but the magazine can be purchased from Amazon.com in either Kindle or print format; website: <www.aliendimensions.com>.

Alien Dimensions–Neil A. Hogan, ed. Issue #10, 2017, $3.99 digital/$7.95 print, 76pp, 15 x 23cm. Original fiction genre magazine set in outer space, with a focus on stories set in the future involving non-humanoid aliens. Issue #10 focuses on robots and includes six short stories for adults, a story for younger readers, and part three of a YA serial. Subscriptions not available, but the magazine can be purchased from Amazon.com in either Kindle or print format; website: <www.aliendimensions.com>.

Alien Dimensions–Neil A. Hogan, ed. Issue #11, 2017, $3.99 digital/$7.95 print, 76pp, 15 x 23cm. Original fiction genre magazine set in outer space, with a focus on stories set in the future involving non-humanoid aliens. This issue includes six short stories, a story for younger readers, and part four a of serialized YA novella. Subscriptions not available, but the magazine can be purchased from Amazon.com in either Kindle or print format; website: <www.aliendimensions.com>.

Analog Science Fiction and Fact–Trevor Quachri, ed. Vol. 138 No. 3 & 4, March/April 2018, $7.99, bimonthly, 208pp, 15 x 21½ cm. Part two of a serial by Derek Künsken; novelettes by Alec Nevala-Lee and Nick Wolven; short stories by Suzanne Palmer, Rich Larson, Gwendolyn Clare, Tom Ligon, Brian Trent, Brendan DuBois, Jerry Oltion, Mary A. Turzillo, Bruce McAllister, Susan Forest, Gregory Benford, James Van Pelt, Tom Jolly, and Bill Pronzini; a science fact by C. Stuart Hardwick; poetry; reviews, etc. Cover by Donato Giancola.

Asimov’s Science Fiction–Sheila Williams, ed. Vol. 42 No. 3 & 4, Whole Numbers 506 & 507, March/April 2018, $7.99, bimonthly, 208pp, 15 x 21½ cm. Novellas by Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Bill Johnson; novelettes by Ray Nayler and Rachel Swirsky & Trace Yulie; short stories by Mary Robinette Kowal, James Van Pelt, Rudy Rucker, Robert Reed, Sean Monaghan, James Gunn (two stories), Rich Larson, and Alexandra Renwick; an in memoriam for Kit Reed; poetry; columns by Robert Silverberg and James Patrick Kelly; reviews, etc. Cover by Jeff Brown.

Bourbon Penn–Erik Secker, ed. Issue No. 15, March 2018, $9.95 print/$1.99 digital/free online, twice a year, 162pp, 12½ x 20 cm. Literary speculative fiction magazine with stories by Chris Kammerud, Josh Pearce, A.L. Rowser, J. Ashley Smith, and Brian Evenson. Cover by Miguel Escobar. Subscription: not available. Copies can be purchased from Amazon.com; website: <bourbonpenn.com>.

Dreams & Nightmares–David C. Kopaska-Merkel, ed. No. 108, January 2018, $5.00, irregular, 20pp, 14 x 21 cm. Magazine of fantastic and speculative poetry, with work by Sheikha A., Bruce Boston, Robert Frazier, Mary Soon Lee, and others. Subscription: $25 for six issues, to David C. Kopaska-Merkel, 1300 Kicker Rd., Tuscaloosa AL 35404. Make checks out to David C. Kopaska-Merkel. E-mail: <jopnquog@gmail.com>; website: <dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/>.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction–C.C. Finlay, ed. Vol. 134 No. 3 & 4, Whole No. 736, March/April 2018, $8.99, bimonthly, 260pp, 13 x 19½ cm. This issue includes a novella by Andy Stewart; novelettes by Charlotte Ashley, Chi Hui, Susan Palwick, and Ted Rabinowitz; short stories by Joseph Bruchac, William Ledbetter, Marc Laidlaw, Wole Talabi, G.V. Anderson, and Paul Di Filippo; a science article by Jerry Oltion; poetry, reviews, and etc. Cover by Cory & Catska Ench.

Science Fiction Studies–Arthur B. Evans et al., eds. Vol. 45, Part 1, No. 134, March 2018, $30.00, three times a year, 222pp, 15 x 23 cm. Academic journal. This issue includes Jia Liyuan’s (Nathaniel Isaacson, ed. and trans.) examination of how the ‘‘future of China’’ in the early Chinese SF book Xin jiyuan [The New Era, 1908] replicated the then contemporary west; Raechel Dumas’s consideration of how Japanese SF/horror in the 1990s (as exemplified by the novels Parasite Eve by Hideaki Sena and Queen of K’n-yan by Ken Asamatsu) used the physical process of the female body to explore social and political ideas; Micah K. Donohue’s argument that Alex Rivera’s movie Sleep Dealer as a work of both borderland SF (as defined by Sarah Anne Wells and Lysa Rivera) and the cybergothic; Nicholas M. Kelly’s discussion of how Neal Stephenson explores computer language in Snow Crash and other work; Nolan Boyd’s posthuman analysis of humanity in the anime series Texhnolyze; Ashley Winstead considers how Bruno Latour uses prosopopoeia (endowing an object with a voice) in his novel Aramis, or the Love of Technolgy (1993) to argue for the inclusion of an object as a political subject; Jennifer Woodward’s look at how Arthur Conan Doyle’s novella The Poison Belt uses the disaster arc narrative to critique Victorian anxieties about social degeneration; Brian Willems explores why Jean-Luc Godard included a screen shot of A.E. van Vogt’s book Null-A Three near the end of his film Adieu au langage, 2014; Tom Dillon’s queer reading of Michael Moorcock’s character Jerry Cornelius from Cornelius’s first to last appearances to argue that the character shifting identities (gender, sex, and sexuality) ruptures the narrative form of the stories; essay-length book reviews, and reviews. Subscription: $32.00 per year digital/$40.00 for print for US individual (write for other rates) or free with a membership in the Science Fiction Research Association, to SF-TH Inc., c/o Arthur B. Evans, EC 203, DePauw University, Greencastle IN 46135-0037; all institutional subscriptions are handled through JSTOR; website: <www.depauw.edu/sfs/store>.

Star*Line–Vince Gotera, ed. Issue No. 41.1, Winter 2018, $5.00 + $2.00 s&h print/$2.50 digital, quarterly, 44pp, 14 x 21½ cm. Speculative poetry magazine from the Science Fiction Poetry Association with work by Ken Poyner, Deborah L. Davitt, Christina Sng, and others; and a non-fiction article by Denise Dumars. Cover by Akua Lezil Hope. Subscription: $24.00 for four print issues/ $10.00 digital (includes Dwarf Stars anthology) to SFPA, SFPA Treasurer, PO Box 666, San Mateo CA 94568; paypal to <SFPATreasurer@gmail.com>.

Magazines Received continues after ad.

ONLINE MAGAZINES

Andromeda Spaceways Magazine <www.andromedaspaceways.com> –Eugen M. Bacon, ed., Vol 14 No. 1, #70, March 2018, A$4.95 e-book, quarterly. Australian SF and fantasy magazine. This issue includes original fiction by Hamilton Perez, Lucy Mackey, and others; interviews with new writers Andrei Seleznev, J. Ashley Smith, and Gemma Farley; poetry, and reviews. Cover by Roan Carter. Subscription: A$18.00 for four e-book issues from the website <www.andromedaspaceways.com/subscriptions/>; email: <asimeditor@gmail.com>.

Apex Magazine <www.apex-magazine.com>–Jason Sizemore, ed. Issue #106, March 2018, free online or $2.99 e-book, monthly. Online SF/fantasy/horror magazine publishing both new and reprinted fiction. This issue includes original fiction by Rachel Harrison, Cassandra Khaw, and Bentley A. Reese; reprinted fiction from T.A. Pratt; interviews with Rachel Harrison and Benedick Bana; a non-fiction article by ZZ Claybourne; an Ursula K. Le Guin appreciation by Paul Jessup; columns and short fiction reviews. New issues posted on the first Tuesday of every month, while the online content is posted piecemeal (every Tuesday) throughout the month. Cover by Benedick Bana. Subscription: $21.95/year from Apex or Weightless Books <www.weightlessbooks.com>. Also available from Amazon.com at $1.99/month or £1.99/month via Amazon.co.uk.

Aurealis <www.aurealis.com.au>–Stephen Higgins, ed. No. 108, 2018, $2.99, 10 times a year (every month except January and December). This issue includes stories by Anya Ow, Jen White, and Abhishek Sengupta; articles; and reviews. Subscriptions $19.99/year for 10 issues from their website.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies <www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com>–Scott H. Andrews, ed. Issue #246, March 1, 2018, free online, biweekly. Online fantasy/adventure magazine. This issue includes original fiction by Sarah Pinsker, Jason Sanford, and Phoenix Alexander. Cover by Florent Llamas. Subscription: $15.99/year from Weightless Books <www.weightlessbooks.com>.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies <www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com>–Scott H. Andrews, ed. Issue #247, March 15, 2018, free online, biweekly. Online fantasy/adventure magazine. This issue includes original fiction by Siobhan Carroll and J.W. Alden (with accompanying podcast), and a reprint from Alter S. Reiss. Cover by Stefan Meisl. Subscription: $15.99/year from Weightless Books <www.weightlessbooks.com>.

Clarkesworld <www.clarkesworldmagazine.com>–Neil Clarke, ed. Issue #138, March 2018, free online or $2.99 e-book, monthly. Online SF/fantasy magazine. This issue includes original fiction by Kij Johnson (with accompanying podcast), Juliette Wade, Izzy Wasserstein, and E. Lily Yu; reprinted fiction by Xiu Xinyu (Blake Stone-Banks, trans.), Kage Baker, and Rich Larson; non-fiction essays by Carrie Sessarego and Cat Rambo; and an interview with Jo Walton. Cover by Arthur Haas. Subscription: $2.99/month at Amazon.com, £2.99/month via Amazon.co.uk, or $35.88/year from Clarkesworld or Weightless Books <www.weightlessbooks.com>.

The Dark <www.thedarkmagazine.com>–Sean Wallace & Silvia Moreno-Garcia, eds. Issue #34, March 2018, free online or digital available for $1.99-$2.99, monthly. Dark and strange fiction magazine. This issue includes original fiction by Hadeer Elsbai and Aliya Whiteley, and reprints from Ray Cluley and Mark Morris. Cover art by Laura Sava. Subscription: digital subscriptions available for $23.88 for 12 issues from Weightless Books <www.weightlessbooks.com>. Single issues can be purchased from Amazon.com at $1.99/month or £1.99/month via Amazon.co.uk.

Fireside <www.firesidefiction.com>–Elsa Sjunneson-Henry and Julia Rios, eds., February/March 2018, free online, monthly. Online fiction magazine with substantial genre content; content is posted throughout the month. For February and March the site includes short stories by Phenderson Djèlí Clark and Marissa Lingen, and flash fiction by Holly Lyn Walrath and Arkady Martine. Subscriptions: unavailable.

GigaNotoSaurus <www.giganotosaurus.org>–Rashida J. Smith, ed. March 2018, free, monthly. Online speculative fiction magazine. Each month GigaNotoSaurus publishes one novella or novelette length science fiction or fantasy story. March’s story is by Vanessa Fogg.

Lightspeed Magazine <www.lightspeedmagazine.com>–John Joseph Adams, ed. Issue #94, March 2018, free online or $3.99 e-book, monthly. Online SF/fantasy magazine. This issue includes original science fiction by Bryan Camp and Ken Liu; reprinted SF by A. Merc Rustad and N.K. Jemisin; original fantasy by Beesan Odeh and Cassandra Khaw & A. Maus; reprinted fantasy by Jeremiah Tolbert and Seanan McGuire; an interview with Na’amen Gobert Tilahun; and movie and book reviews. The e-book edition is available on the first of the month with exclusive content not available on the website. This month’s exclusive content includes a novella by Alec Nevala-Lee and an excerpt from a novel by Tessa Gratton. On the website, each month’s contents are serialized throughout the month with new features published on the first four Tuesdays. Cover by Reiko Murakami. Subscription: $2.99/month via Amazon.com or $35.88/year from Lightspeed <www.lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe/> or Weightless Books <www.weightlessbooks.com>.

Magazines Received continues after ad.

Nightmare Magazine <www.nightmare-magazine.com>–John Joseph Adams, ed. Issue #66, March 2018, free online or $2.99 e-book, monthly. Online horror/dark fantasy magazine publishing both original and reprinted fiction. This issue includes original fiction by A. Merc Rustad and Lilliam Rivera; reprinted fiction by M. Rickert and Stephen Bacon; a non-fiction essay on reviewing horror by Charles Payseur; and book reviews. On the website, each month’s contents are serialized throughout the month with new features published on the first four Wednesdays. The e-book edition is available on the first of the month with exclusive content not available on the website. Cover by Vukkostic/Fotolia. Subscription: $2.99/monthly from Amazon or $23.88/year from Nightmare or Weightless Books <www.weightlessbooks.com>.

Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show <www.intergalacticmedicineshow.com>–Scott M. Roberts, ed. Issue #61, February 2018, bimonthly. Online SF/fantasy magazine, access is by subscription only. This issue includes fiction by Michael Ezell, Aimee Ogden, Jacob A. Boyd (with an article on how the story came to be), J.D. Moyer, and Ari B. Goelman (with accompanying podcast); an interview with Cherie Priest; and reviews, writing advice, etc. Cover by M. Wayne Miller. Subscription: $15.00/year, includes access to entire site and all back issues.

Shimmer <www.shimmerzine.com>–E. Catherine Tobler, et al., eds. Issue #42, March 2018, $2.99 per issue, bimonthly. Online literary SF/fantasy magazine. This issue includes fiction, with accompanying interviews, by Sara Saab, Sara Beitia, Lora Gray, and Kathrin Köhler. Stories are posted every other Tuesday throughout the month. Cover by Sandro Castelli. Subscription: $15.00/year (six issues) from Shimmer; also available from Weightless Books <www.weightlessbooks.com> and Amazon.com.

Strange Horizons <www.strangehorizons.com>– Jane Crowley & Kate Dollarhyde et al., eds. February/March 2018, free, weekly. Online speculative fiction magazine publishing fiction, poetry, essays, reviews, and interviews. New issues are posted each Monday. For February and March the site posted fiction with accompanying podcasts by Irette Y. Patterson, Innocent Chizaram Ilo, Kai Stewart, and Darby Harn; a podcast of a story by Gretchen Tessmer; a column by Kat Tanaka Okopnik; an article by Matthew David Goodwin; interviews with Dan Rempel and Youheum Son; poetry and a monthly podcast of the poetry appearing on the website; and reviews, etc. Covers by Tahlia Day and Youheum Son. Subscription: unavailable.

Tor.com <www.tor.com>–Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Irene Gallo, Fritz Foy, Tom Doherty, Liz Gorinsky, et al., eds. February/March 2018, free online. Macmillan publishing house site specializing in genre fiction. Each month Tor.com publishes free fiction and articles including original works, reprints, novel excerpts, and comics; re-reads/re-watches of novels and television shows; an artist gallery; original reviews; articles and commentary; interviews; as well as providing a forum for the genre community. New material is posted throughout the month. February/March 2018 fiction posts include excerpts from works by Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias S. Buckell, Richard K. Morgan, Jeff VanderMeer, Tessa Gratton, Catherynne M. Valente, Kim Wilkins, Jesse Andrews, Martha Wells, John Scalzi, Ilana C. Myer, and Julia Whicker; audio excerpts from work by Tomi Adeyemi; and original fiction by Thomas Olde Heuvelt and Simon Bestwick. Subscription: unavailable.

Uncanny Magazine <www.uncannymagazine.com>–Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, & Michi Trota, eds. Issue #21, March/April 2018, $3.99 digital only, bi-monthly. Science fiction and fantasy magazine with original and reprint fiction, non-fiction essays, interviews, and poetry. This issue includes original fiction by Sarah Pinsker, A.T. Greenblatt, Emma Törzs, Sarah Monette, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, and Brandon O’Brien; reprinted fiction from Nalo Hopkinson; non-fiction essays from R.F. Kuang, Neile Graham, Marissa Lingen, and Karlyn Ruth Meyer; interviews with A.T. Greenblatt and Vina Jie-Min Prasad; and poetry. Cover art by Nilah Magruder. E-book subscribers receive the complete e-book on the first Tuesday of the month. Online readers will receive only the first half of the magazine on the first Tuesday of the month. The second half will be available the first Tuesday of the following month. Also available free on the Uncanny website is the Uncanny Magazine Podcast with some of the stories, interviews, and other content available for listening. Subscriptions: $23.88 for one year at Weightless Books <www.weightlessbooks.com>.

THE OUTER LIMITS

The Weekly Standard (February 12, 2018) includes an appreciation of Ursula K. Le Guin by Michael Dirda.

Return to In This Issue listing.

BOOKS RECEIVED: FEBRUARY

Compiled by Liza Groen Trombi & Carolyn Cushman. Please send all corrections to Carolyn Cushman, c/o Locus. We will run all verified corrections.

*Algernon, S.R. Walls and Wonders (ReAnimus Press, 978-1979599214, $15.99, 296pp, tp, cover by Clay Hagebusch) Collection of 21 stories (eight original), one original poem, and a chart. A print-on-demand edition; e-book also available. ReAnimus Press, 1100 Johnson Road #16-143, Golden CO 80402; <www.ReAnimus.com>.

+Amis, Martin The Rub of Time: Bellow, Nabokov, Hitchens, Travolta, Trump: Essays and Reportage, 1994- 2017 (Penguin Random House/Knopf, 978-1-4000-4453-5, $28.95, xiii + 390pp, hc, cover by Ekko von Schwichow) Non-fiction collection of essays including items on Vladimir Nabokov, J.G. Ballard, Don DeLillo, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, and writing his own Time’s Arrow. Includes index. First US edition (Cape 9/17).

*Anderson, Poul The Complete Psychotechnic League, Volume 2 (Baen, 978-1-4814-8306-3, $16.00, 306pp, tp, cover by Kurt Miller) Omnibus/collection of nine stories, the second of three collections of the Psychotechnic League series. This includes the 1982 ‘‘Forward’’ by Sandra Miesel and interstitial material from the 1982 Cold Victory, which collected six of the stories here; the interstitial pieces have been somewhat revised.

*Andreasen, Michael The Sea Beast Takes a Lover (Penguin Random House/Dutton, 978-1-101-98661-5, $25.00, 221pp, hc) Collection of 11 stories, at least four reprints, most with fantastic, surreal, or SF elements.  A first collection. E-book also available.

*Andrews®, V.C. House of Secrets (Pocket, 978-1-5011-6250-3, $7.99, 389pp, pb) Associational gothic novel, the first book in the eponymous series. Fern lives at Wyndemere, a house full of secrets, where her mother is a servant. The author is probably Andrew Neiderman. Copyrighted by Vanda Productions. A Gallery hardcover (-6252-7, $26.99) was announced but not seen; e-book also available. Simultaneous with the Simon & Schuster UK edition.

*Anonymous, ed. The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 4 (Titan US, 978-1783299072, $9.99, 585pp, pb) Omnibus of two tie-in novels: Aliens: Music of the Spears by Yvonne Navarro (1996) and Aliens: Berserker by S.D. Perry (1998). Copyrighted by Twentieth Century Fox Film.

*Anonymous, ed. The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume 5 (Titan US, 978-1783299096, $9.99, 589pp, pb) Omnibus of two tie-in novels: Aliens: Original Sin by Michael Jan Friedman (2005) and Aliens: DNA War by Diane Carey (2006). This is an international edition with US and UK prices.

*Arrow, William, ed. Planet of the Apes Omnibus: Volume 4 (Titan US, 978-1785653957, $9.99, 536pp, pb) Tie-in omnibus with three novelizations based on teleplays from the TV show: Planet of the Apes: Visions from Nowhere (1976), Planet of the Apes: Escape from Terror Lagoon (1976), and Planet of the Apes: Man, the Hunted Animal (1976). Arrow is a pen name used by William Rotsler for the first and third novels listed here, and by Donald J. Pfeil for the second. This is an international edition with US and UK prices. E-book also available. Copyrighted by Twentieth Century Fox Film.

*Bacigalupi, Paolo & Tobias S. Buckell The Tangled Lands (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press, 978-1-4814- 9729-9, $26.99, 294pp, hc, cover by Krzysztof Domaradzki) Collaborative shared-world collection of four novellas, two (one reprint, one original) by each author, set in their world of Khaim. The reprints were originally published together as an audiobook The Alchemist and The Executioness (2010) and separately as print books by Subterranean in 2011. E-book also available.

*Bailey, Michael & Darren Speegle, eds. Adam’s Ladder (Dark Regions Press/Written Backwards, 978-1- 62641-267-5, $14.95, 102pp, tp) Original anthology of 18 dark SF stories. Authors include Laird Barron, Chaz Brenchley, and Ramsey Campbell. A print-on-demand edition; e-book also available. A deluxe, signed limited hardcover edition of 100 (-266-8, $95.00) was announced but not seen. Written Backwards, <www.nettirw.com>.

*Banks, Lucy The Case of the Deadly Doppelgänger (Amberjack, 978-1-944995-47-8, $14.99, 328pp, tp) Fantasy ghost novel, second in the series about Dr. Ribero’s Agency of the Supernatural. The group has to work with a rival agency to investigate deaths in a seaside town. E-book also available. Amberjack 1472 E. Iron Eagle Drive, Eagle ID 83616; <www.amberjackpublishing.com>.

*Barker, RJ Blood of Assassins (Orbit US, 978-0-316-46654-7, $15.99, 434pp, tp) Epic fantasy novel, the second in the Wounded Kingdom  trilogy. E-book also available. Simultaneous with the UK (Orbit) edition.

*Barnhill, Kelly Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories (Workman/Algonquin Books, 978-1-61620-797-7, $24.95, 283pp, hc, cover by Sarah J. Coleman) Collection of nine stories. A first collection. E-book also available.

*Baxter, Alan Hidden City (Gryphonwood Press, 978-1-940095-78-3, $9.99, 261pp, tp) Dark urban fantasy/noir horror novel. Steven Hines hears the city of Cleveport speak and suffers its illness when a fungal infection turns people violent. A print-on-demand edition; e-book also available.

Beaulieu, Bradley P. With Blood Upon the Sand (DAW, 978-07564-1406-1, $18.00, 660pp, tp, cover by Donato Giancola) Reprint (DAW 2017) fantasy novel, second in the series The Song of the Shattered Sands.

*Belleza, Rhoda Blood of a Thousand Stars (Penguin Random House/Razorbill, 978-1-101-99913-4, $17.99, 356pp, hc) Young-adult science fiction novel, second in a series begun in Empress of a Thousand Skies. E-book also available.

*Bickle, Laura Witch Creek (Harper Voyager US, 978-0-06-256731-4, $7.99, 363pp, pb) Urban fantasy novel, the second book in the Wildlands series, fourth overall in the series begun in Dark Alchemy. The author also writes as Alayna Williams. E-book also available.

Bishop, Anne Etched in Bone (Penguin Random House/Roc, 978-0-451-47450-6, $8.99, 496pp, pb, cover by Blake Morrow) Reprint (Roc 2017) urban fantasy novel of the Others, the fifth and final in the arc following Meg Corbyn and Simon Wolfgard.

*Block, Lawrence, ed. Alive in Shape and Color (Pegasus, 978-1-68177-561-6, $25.95, 307 + xpp, hc) Associational original anthology of 17 stories (two reprints), at least two with possible supernatural elements, inspired by works by noted artists including Salvador Dali, Hieronymous Bosch, and Georgia O’keeffe, written by authors including Joe R. Lansdale, Joyce Carol Oates, and Kristin Kathryn Rusch, each story accompanied by a color reproduction of the art that inspired it. E-book also available.

*Boffard, Rob Outer Earth (Orbit US, 978-0-316-43907-7, $17.99, 975pp, tp) Omnibus of the three SF thrilller novels in the series: Tracer (2015), Zero-G (2016), and Impact (2016). Simultaneous with the Orbit UK edition. E-book also available.

*Bolander, Brooke The Only Harmless Great Thing (Tor.com Publishing, 978-1-250-16948-8, $10.99, 89pp, tp) Alternate-history fantasy novella in which the Radium Girls, factory workers poisoned by radiation in the early 20th- century, are being replaced on the job by elephants. E-book also available.

*Boone, Ezekiel Zero Day (Simon & Schuster/Atria/Bestler, 978-1-5011-2510-2, $26.00, 313pp, hc, cover by David Wu) Horror novel/thriller, third and final in The Hatching trilogy about a deadly, ancient breed of spiders taking over the planet. E-book also available. The author also writes as Alexi Zentner. Simultaneous with the UK (Gollancz) edition.

Boyett, Steven R. & Ken Mitchroney Fata Morgana (Blackstone Publishing, 978-1-5385-0753-7, $16.99, 387pp, tp) Reprint (Blackstone Publishing 2017) alternate-world/time-slip SF novel. Blackstone Publishing, 31 Mistletoe Road, Ashland OR 97520; <www.BlackstonePublishing.com>.

*Brodsky, Jordanna Max Olympus Bound (Orbit US, 978-0-316-38594-7, $26.00, 496pp, hc) Contemporary/urban fantasy novel, the third book in the Olympus Bound series begun in The Immortals. Former goddess Selene DiSilva realizes someone in NYC is sacrificing gods. Simultaneous with the Orbit UK edition. E-book also available.

Brooks, Terry The Black Elfstone (Penguin Random House/Del Rey, 978-0-553-39150-3, $8.99, 374pp, pb, cover by Mike Bryan) Reprint (Del Rey 2017) fantasy novel, the first in the four-part Fall of Shannara series, the conclusion to the overall Shannara series.

*Brown, Simon Screening Stephen King: Adaptation and the Horror Genre in Film and Television (University of Texas Press, 978-1-4773-1492-0, $29.95, viii + 226pp, hc) Non-fiction, a critical look at the various ways King’s works have been adapted, the King ‘‘brand,’’ and changes in horror films and TV over the years. Includes a selected TV and filmography, bibliographic references, and index. A hardcover edition (-1491-3, $90.00) was announced but not seen; e-book also available. University of Texas Press, PO Box 7819, Austin TX 78713-7819; <www.utexaspress.com>.

Brust, Steven Iorich (Tor, 978-0-7653-5057-2, $8.99, 319pp, pb, cover by Stephen Hickman) Reprint (Tor 2010) fantasy novel, 12th in the Vlad Taltos series.

Bujold, Lois McMaster Penric’s Fox (Subterranean Press, 978-1-59606-863-6, $25.00, 198pp, hc, cover by Lauren Saint-Onge) Reprint (Spectrum Literary Agency 2016) fantasy novella in the World of the Five Gods/Chalion series, third in the series featuring Penric and Desdemona. First print edition. A leatherbound, signed, limited edition of 450 ($45.00) is also available. Subterranean Press, PO Box 190106, Burton MI 48519; <subterraneanpress.com>.

*Burch, Adam Roar of the Storm (Amazon/47North, 978-1611097436, $14.95, 404pp, tp) SF novel, second and final in the Fracture Worlds series. Edmon Leontes’s new life as a starship medic is threatened by his brother’s quest for power.  E-book also available.

*Burke, Sue Semiosis (Tor, 978-0-7653-9135-3, $25.99, 333pp, hc) SF first-contact novel. Colonists struggle to communicate with the planet’s sentient plants.  A first novel. E-book also available.

Burroughs, Edgar Rice Land of Terror (Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. & Grosset & Dunlap, no ISBN, $100.00, 319pp, hc, cover by Bob Eggleton & John Coleman Burroughs) Reprint (Edgar Rice Burroughs 1944) SF novel, sixth in the Pellucidar series. Co-published by ERB Inc. and Grosset & Dunlap in two editions (one from each publisher), both limited to 200 numbered and 52 lettered copies, signed by Bob Eggleton and separately slipcased, illustrated by Roy G. Krenkel and John Coleman Burroughs, with somewhat different forewords by Robert B. Zeuschner. The ERB Inc. edition indicates second edition and has remastered dustjacket art by John Coleman Burroughs, while the Grosset & Dunlap has new jacket art by Bob Eggleton; each has the jacket art of the other as a color foldout, along with two more foldouts with art by Frank Frazetta and Joe Jusko. ERB Books, <www.erbbooks.com>.

*Caine, Rachel Killman Creek (Amazon/Thomas & Mercer, 978-1542046411, $15.95, 336pp, tp) Associational serial-killer thriller, the second in the Stillhouse Lake series. E-book also available.

*Caine, Rachel & Ann Aguirre Honor Among Thieves (HarperCollins/Tegen Books, 978-0-06-257099-4, $17.99, 465pp, hc, cover by Jeff Huang) Young-adult SF thriller, the first book in the Honors series. Teen criminal Zara ends up joining the Honors, an elite team of humans selected by sentient alien spaceships to join in exploration. E-book also available.

Card, Orson Scott & Aaron Johnston The Swarm (Tor, 978-0-7653-7563-6, $8.99, 512pp, pb, cover by John Harris) Reprint (Tor 2016) SF novel, the first book in the Second Formic War series.

Books Received continues after ad.

Carey, M.R. The Boy on the Bridge (Orbit US, 978-0-316-30034-6, $16.99, 390pp, tp) Reprint (Orbit US 2017) post-apocalyptic SF novel, set in the same world as The Girl with All the Gifts. The author also writes as Mike Carey.

*Cherryh, C.J. Emergence (DAW, 978-0-7564-1414-6, $26.00, 320pp, hc, cover by Todd Lockwood) SF novel, 19th in the Foreigner series. E-book also available.

Child, Lincoln Full Wolf Moon (Penguin Random House/Anchor, 978-0-307-47376-9, $9.99, 291pp, pb) Reprint (Anchor 2017) thriller novel with possible supernatural elements, featuring Jeremy Logan. This is a premium/tall rack-size edition.

*Clare, Gwendolyn Ink, Iron and Glass (Macmillan/Imprint, 978-1-250-11276-7, $18.99, 328pp, hc, cover by Mike Heath) Young-adult steampunk fantasy novel, the first in a duology, set in an alternate 19th-century Italy, where the science of scriptology allows writers to create new worlds.

*Clayton, Dhonielle The Belles (Disney/Freeform, 978-1-4847-2849-9, $17.99, 434pp, hc) Young-adult fantasy novel set in a world where people are born gray and need the help of a Belle’s special powers to be beautiful – and beauty is power. E-book also available. Simultaneous with the UK (Gollancz) edition.

*Cole, Myke The Armored Saint (Tor.com Publishing, 978-0-7653-9595-5, $17.99, 203pp, hc, cover by Tommy Arnold) Military fantasy novel, the first in the Sacred Throne trilogy. Heloise, a 16-year-old village girl, opposes the tyrannical Order that destroys any suspected of evil magic. E-book also available.

*Corey, James S.A., Hallie Lambert & Georgia Lee The Expanse: Origins (BOOM! Studios, 978-1-68415-114-1, $14.99, unpaginated, tp, cover by Riley Rossmo) Graphic novel, a tie-in to the TV series based on the books by Corey (a pen name for Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck), offering origin stories for the main characters. Written by Corey, Lambert & Lee; illustrated by Huang Danlan. Originally published as four separate comics. E-book also available.

Corlett, Anne The Space Between the Stars (Penguin Random House/Berkley, 978-0-399-58513-5, $15.00, 354pp, tp) Reprint (Berkley 2017) post-apocalyptic SF novel.

Correia, Larry & John Ringo Monster Hunter Memoirs: Sinners (Baen, 978-1-4814-8287-5, $7.99, 374pp, pb, cover by Alan Pollack) Reprint (Baen 2016) fantasy novel, second in the Monster Hunter Memoirs series set in the world of Correia’s Monster Hunter International series.

+Day, David The Heroes of Tolkien (Thunder Bay Press, 978-1-684120956, $15.99, 256pp, tp, cover by Mauro Mazzara) Non-fiction guide to heroes in Tolkien’s works, with color Illustrations by ten artists including Victor Ambrus, Mauro Mazzara, and Ian Miller. An index is provided. A flexibound edition with embossed cover. First US edition (Cassell 10/17).

de la Cruz, Melissa Return to the Isle of the Lost (Disney/Hyperion, 978-1-3680-2136-4, $9.99, 309pp, tp, cover by James Madsen) Reprint (Hyperion 2016) middle-grade fantasy novel, sequel to The Isle of the Lost.

*Del Carlo, Eric Raise the Red Flag (DSP Publications, 978-1-64080-078-6, $14.99, 185pp, tp) Alternate- history, gay steampunk SF novel. The American colonies rebel in 1867, and a captured British airship captain struggles to rejoin the British forces with the help of a young thief. A print-on-demand edition; e-book also available. DSP Publications, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Ste #2 PMB #279, Tallahassee FL 32305-7886; <www.dsppublications.com>.

*Dennard, Susan Sightwitch (Tor Teen, 978-1-250-18352-1, $16.99, 233pp, hc, cover by Scott Grimando) Young-adult fantasy novella in the Witchlands series, set before Truthwitch, told through journal entries, sketches, and materials such as clippings from history books and pieces of songs. Illustrated by Rhys Davies. This has a deckle edge. A simultaneous export-only trade paperback (-19388-9) was announced but not seen. E-book also available.

*Dietz, William C. Battle Hymn (Ace, 978-0-425-27874-1, $27.00, 340pp, hc, cover by Paul Youll) SF novel, third and final in the America Rising trilogy about the Second Civil War. E-book also available. Simultaneous with the Titan UK edition.

Doctorow, Cory & Jen Wang In Real Life (Macmillan/Square Fish, 978-1-250-14428-7, $12.99, 177pp, tp, cover by Jen Wang) Reprint (Roaring Brook/:01 First Second) associational young-adult graphic novel based on a story by Doctorow and adapted/illustrated by Wang.

*Dolnick, Ben The Ghost Notebooks (Penguin Random House/Pantheon, 978-1-101-87109-6, $25.95, 236pp, hc) Psychological and supernatural haunted-house horror novel about a newly engaged young couple who become live-in caretakers of an old house-turned-museum. E-book also available.

Donnelly, Lara Elena Amberlough (Tor, 978-0-7653-8382-2, $15.99, 395pp, tp) Reprint (Tor 2017) fantasy spy novel.

Dyer, Thoraiya Crossroads of Canopy (Tor, 978-0-7653-8594-9, $15.99, 333pp, tp, cover by Marc Simonetti) Reprint (Tor 2017) fantasy novel, the first book in the Titan’s Forest series.

*Dyer, Thoraiya Echoes of Understorey (Tor, 978-0-7653-8595-6, $25.99, 350pp, tp, cover by Marc Simonetti) Fantasy novel, the second book in the Titan’s Forest series set in a rainforest controlled by living gods. E-book also available.

*Effinger, George Alec, ed. Planet of the Apes Omnibus: Volume 3 (Titan US, 978-1785653933, $9.99, 747pp, pb) Tie-in omnibus with four novelizations of the 1974 TV series: Planet of the Apes: Man the Fugitive (1974), Planet of the Apes: Escape to Tomorrow (1975), Planet of the Apes: Journey into Terror (1975), and Planet of the Apes: Lord of the Apes (1976). Copyrighted by Twentieth Century Fox Film. This is an international edition with US and UK prices. E-book also available.

El Akkad, Omar American War (Penguin Random House/Vintage, 978-1-101-97313-4, $16.95, 413pp, tp) Reprint (Knopf 2017) alternate-history dystopian SF novel of a US split by a second Civil War and devastated by plague.

*Ellsworth, Spencer Starfire: Memory’s Blade (Tor.com Publishing, 978-0-7653-9577-1, $16.99, 293pp, tp, cover by Sparth) SF space opera novel, third in the Starfire trilogy.

Eves, Rosalyn Blood Rose Rebellion (Penguin Random House/Ember, 978-1-101-93602-3, $10.99, 407pp, tp) Reprint (Knopf 2017) young-adult historical fantasy novel, the first book in a series.

*Finlay, Adrianne Your One & Only (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 978-0-544-99147-7, $17.99, 304pp, hc, cover by Erlon Abrantes) Young-adult dystopian SF novel with a strong element of romance. Jack, the only genuine human in 2407, meets a female clone who feels different from her sisters. A first novel. E-book also available.

*Firestone, Amanda & Leisa A. Clark, eds. Harry Potter and Convergence Culture: Essays on Fandom and the Expanding Potterverse (McFarland, 978-1-4766-7207-6, $39.95, 213pp, tp) Critical non-fiction, a selection of 16 essays looking at Harry Potter fandom online, the series’ treatment of outsiders, and other ways the series relates to modern culture. Individual essays provide notes and bibliographic references; a general index is included. E-book also available. McFarland & Company, Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640; 800-253-2187; <www.mcfarlandpub.com>.

*Flint, Eric, Paula Goodlett & Gorg Huff 1637: The Volga Rules (Baen, 978-1-4814-8303-2, $25.00, 357pp, hc, cover by Tom Kidd) SF novel in Flint’s Ring of Time series. Serfs in Russia rebel.

Flood, Gregory Edward Seven God Limit (Koios Books, 978-1976223594, $16.95, 343pp, tp) Reprint (Koios Books 2015) fantasy novel. Two men killed in 1982 go back in time to the Roman Empire to stop the rise of Christianity – with the help of seven pagan gods. This may be the first print edition; it is copyrighted 2001, but the only previous edition found is the 2015 Koios Books e-book.

+Fombelle, Timothée de The Book of Pearl (Candlewick Press, 978-0-7636-9126-4, $17.99, 355pp, hc, cover by Mike Bennion) Young-adult fantasy novel. Joshua Pearl, come from a fairy tale world, is stuck in Paris on the eve of WWII. Translated from the French Le livre de Perle (Gallimard Jeunesse 2014) by Sara Ardizzone & Sam Gordon. First US edition (Walker UK 6/16). E-book also available.

*Francis, Diana Pharaoh Shades of Memory (BelleBooks/Bell Bridge Books, 978-1-611-94837-0, $17.95, 262pp, tp) Fantasy novel, fourth in the Diamond City Magic novels. Riley and her family are on the run from both the law and bad guys trying to get their hands on her family’s magic.

*Gear, W. Michael Outpost (DAW, 978-0-7654-1337-8, $26.00, 422pp, hc, cover by Steve Stone) SF novel, first in the Donovan trilogy. Various people vie for power on the struggling colony planet Donovan. E-book also available.

Godfrey, Daniel New Pompeii (Titan US, 978-1785656033, $7.99, 453pp, pb) Reprint (Titan US 2016) near- future SF time-travel novel.

*Gower, Jasmine Moonshine (Angry Robot US, 978-0-85766-734-2, $9.99, 313pp, tp, cover by John Coulthart) Historical fantasy novel set in Soot City, a magical twist on 1920s Chicago, where magic has been prohibited. Daisy Dell is a Modern Girl, but can’t give up the now-illegal magic she inherited. This is an international edition with US, UK, and Canadian prices. E-book also available.

*Gregory, Lena Clairvoyant and Present Danger (Penguin Random House/Berkley Prime Crime, 978-0-425- 28277-9, $7.99, 293pp, pb, cover by Griesbach and Martucci) Fantasy mystery novel, the third in the Bay Island Psychic series. A ghost leads Cass to a body. Copyrighted by Denise Pysarchuk. E-book also available.

+Gwynne, John A Time of Dread (Orbit US, 978-0-316-50224-5, $16.99, 685pp, tp, cover by Paul Young) Epic fantasy novel, the first in the Of Blood and Bone series, set in the same world as the Faithful and the Fallen quartet. First US edition (Macmillan 1/18). E-book also available.

Hamilton, Alwyn Traitor to the Throne (Penguin Random House/Speak, 978-0-14-751909-2, $10.99, 513pp, tp, cover by Daniele Gaspari) Reprint (Viking 2017) Wild West Arabian Nights YA fantasy novel, second in the Rebel of the Sands trilogy.

*Hamilton, Thomas Wm. Weird Thoughts (Strategic Book Publishing, 978-1-946540-77-5, $11.50, 123pp, tp) Original collection of 17 stories and vignettes (four reprints) and seven essays on astronomy, including an autobiographical piece on working in NASA’s Apollo program, and the text of a talk given at a planetarium convention. This is a print-on-demand edition. Strategic Book Publishing, <www.sbpra.net>.

Heilig, Heidi The Ship Beyond Time (HarperCollins/Greenwillow, 978-0-06-238079-1, $9.99, 452pp, tp, cover by Ray Shappell) Reprint (Greenwillow 2017) young-adult fantasy novel about a ship that travels any place there’s a map for it, sequel to The Girl from Everywhere. This includes three alternate endings

Higgins, Wendy The Great Pursuit (HarperTeen, 978-0-06-238137-8, $9.99, 496pp, tp) Reprint (HarperTeen 2017) young-adult paranormal romance novel, second in the Eurona duology begun in to The Great Hunt.

Hillyer, Lexa Spindle Fire (HarperTeen, 978-0-06-244088-4, $9.99, 353pp, tp, cover by LIsa Perrin) Reprint (HarperTeen 2017) young-adult fantasy novel inspired by the fairy tale of Sleeping Beauty.

*Hinton, Michael B. & Sherry R. Melançon Afflicted (Zephinky Publishing, 978-0-9991880-1-9, $14.99, 426pp, tp, cover by Jay Odjick) Post-apocalyptic superhero fantasy novel, the first book in the RTX Chronicles. Apocalypse kills half the population, and a few survivors develop dangerous powers. E-book also available.

*Holliday, Scott J. Punishment (Amazon/Thomas & Mercer, 978-1-503949058, $24.95, 228pp, hc) SF thriller/horror novel, the first in a series featuring homicide detective John Barnes, who uses advanced technology to experience the last memories of a serial killer’s victims. E-book also available,

Isbell, Tom The Release (HarperTeen, 978-0-06-221609-0, $9.99, 357pp, tp, cover by Joel Tippie) Reprint (HarperTeen 2017) young-adult post-apocalyptic SF novel, third and final in the Prey trilogy.

*Jae-Jones, S. Shadowsong (St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books, 978-1-250-12913-0, $18.99, 387pp, hc, cover by Steve Stone) Young-adult historical fantasy novel, sequel to Wintersong, set in the early 19th century.  E-book also available. Simultaneous with the Titan UK edition.

+James, Vic Tarnished City (Penguin Random House/Del Rey, 978-0-425-28412-4, $25.00, 398pp, hc) Fantasy novel, the second book in the Dark Gifts trilogy. First US edition (Pan 9/17).

Books Received continues after ad.

*Jamison, Carol Parrish Chivalry in Westeros: The Knightly Code of a Song of Ice and Fire (McFarland, 978- 1-4766-7005-8, $35.00, 209pp, tp) Critical non-fiction, looking at how Martin uses and challenges chivalry as found in medieval literature. Includes notes, bibliography, and index. McFarland & Company, Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640; 800-253-2187; <www.mcfarlandpub.com>.

*Jemisin, N.K. & Mac Walters Mass Effect: Andromeda: Initiation (Titan US, 978-1785651601, $7.99, 299pp, pb) Tie-in novel, a prequel to the video game, second in the Mass Effect: Andromeda series. Copyrighted by Electronic Arts. This in an international edition with US and UK prices. E-book also available.

*Johnson, Les Mission to Methone (Baen, 978-1-4814-8305-6, $16.00, 298pp, tp, cover by Bob Eggleton) Near-future SF novel. An asteroid surveyor finds an alien spaceship and various powers seek to claim it, unaware that war with aliens might soon follow. E-book also available.

Jones, Darynda The Trouble with Twelfth Grave (St. Martin’s, 978-1-250-14756-1, $8.99, 291pp, pb, cover by Herman Estevez) Reprint (St. Martin’s 2017) urban fantasy/romance novel, the 12th in the Charley Davidson series.

*Kelly, Sofie A Tale of Two Kitties (Penguin Random House/Berkley Prime Crime, 978-0-399-58457-2, $23.00, 326pp, hc) Fantasy mystery novel, the ninth book in the Magical Cats series. This includes bonus short story ‘‘The Cat Burglar’’. E-book also available.

*Kessel, John Pride and Prometheus (Simon & Schuster/Saga Press, 978-1-4814-8147-2, $27.99, 371pp, hc, cover by Robert Hunt) Mashup SF Gothic romance/horror novel. Mary Bennet of Pride and Prejudice falls for Victor Frankenstein and befriends his Creature. E-book also available.

*King, Emily R. The Rogue Queen (Amazon/Skyscape, 978-1542048347, $9.99, 290pp, tp) Young-adult fantasy novel, third in the Hundredth Queen series. E-book also available.

*Kinnison, Jeb Nephilim (Noumenal Publishing, 978-1984915160, $14.95, 295pp, tp, cover by Augusta Scarlett) Young-adult fantasy novel. Mormon teen Jared teams up with Jewish newcomer Sara to battle dark spirits from the Underworld in a small Utah town. A print-on-demand edition.

*Kitaiskaia, Taisia Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers (Hachette/Seal Press, 978-1- 58005-673-1, $20.00, 127pp, hc) Non-fiction, a look at 30 ‘‘witchy’’ wise woman writers whose works enchant and mystify. Each author has some quasi-mystical details about her, a more factual brief description of her works, with a few noted as recommended reading, and a portrait by Katy Horan. Authors covered include Octavia E. Butler, Shirley Jackson, Angela Carter, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Mary Shelley. Foreword by Pam Grossman. E-book also available.

*Koch, Gini Aliens Abroad (DAW, 978-0-7564-1283-8, $7.99, 631pp, pb, cover by Lindsey Look) SF novel, #16 in the Alien series. An accidental early launch sends Earth’s first long-range spaceship off with Kitty and Jeff, but without much of its crew. Koch is a pen name for Jeanne Cook, who also writes as Anita Ensal, G.J. Koch, and J.C. Koch.

*Kolby, Janel Winterfolk (HarperTeen, 978-0-06-248700-1, $17.99, 308pp, hc) Young-adult novel with elements of magical realism. Teenaged Rain lives hidden with her father in a Seattle homeless encampment slated for demolition. A first novel. E-book also available.

*Kopfler, Pamela Better Dead (Kensington, 978-1496713216, $7.99, 357pp, pb) Fantasy mystery novel, the first in the B&B Spirits series. The ghost of Holly’s unlamented ex returns to her family-plantation-turned-B&B, needing help to stop smugglers. E-book also available.

Kress, Nancy Tomorrow’s Kin (Tor, 978-0-7653-9030-1, $15.99, 349pp, tp, cover by Stephan Martiniere) Reprint (Tor 2017) SF novel of first contact, the first book in the Yesterday’s Kin trilogy, based on Kress’ Locus and Nebula Award-winning novella Yesterday’s Kin.

+L’Aube, André A. Claire de Lune: Her Ghost Comes in Moonlight - Not to Avenge, but to Reveal Right (Paris Bookshop, 978-1983678745, $12.00, 145pp, tp) Historical fantasy novel about a hidden secret of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. A man is given the chance to live his life over from a turning point in Paris, 1977. This notes a version was ‘‘briefly published’’ with alternate title Paris Passerelle: Bridge of Regret (12/17), still shown on the spine.

Lawrence, Mark Red Sister (Ace, 978-1-101-98887-9, $7.99, 475pp, pb, cover by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme) Reprint (Ace 2017) fantasy novel, the first in the Books of the Ancestor trilogy.

Levenseller, Tricia Daughter of the Pirate King (Macmillan/Square Fish, 978-1-250-14422-5, $9.99, 308pp, tp, cover by Jen Wang) Reprint (Feiwel and Friends 2017) middle-grade pirate adventure novel with fantasy elements.

*Levenseller, Tricia Daughter of the Siren Queen (Macmillan/Feiwel and Friends, 978-1-250-09601-2, $17.99, 338pp, hc, cover by Jen Wang) Middle-grade pirate adventure novel with fantasy elements, sequel to Daughter of the Pirate King. E-book also available.

*Liggett, Kim Heart of Ash (Penguin Random House/Putnam, 978-0-399-16649-5, $17.99, 276pp, hc, cover by Lyuba Burakova) Young-adult horror novel, sequel to Blood and Salt. Ash must free her love from possession by his powerful ancestor. E-book also available.

Lockhart, Ross E., ed. Eternal Frankenstein (Word Horde, 978-1-939905-37-6, $15.99, 304pp, tp, cover by Patrick Jones) Reprint (Word Horde 2016) anthology of 16 stories inspired by Mary Shelley and her novel. A print-on- demand edition. Word Horde, <www.wordhorde.com>.

*Mafe, Diana Adesola Where No Woman Has Gone Before: Subversive Portrayals in Speculative Film and TV (University of Texas Press, 978-1-4773-1523-1, $27.95, 173pp, tp) Associational non-fiction, a look at black female characters in US and British SF films and television, focusing on four films and two TV series produced from 2002- 2012. Includes notes, bibliography, and index. A hardcover edition (-1522-4, $85.00) was announced but not seen; e-book also available. University of Texas Press, PO Box 7819, Austin TX 78713-7819; <www.utexaspress.com>.

*Malfi, Ronald We Should Have Left Well Enough Alone (JournalStone, 978-1-945373-97-8, $18.95, 299pp, tp) Collection of 20 stories, two original. The author’s first collection. A print-on-demand edition; a hardcover (-99-2, $29.95) was announced but not seen. E-book also available. JournalStone, <www.journalstone.com>.

*Marks, Rachel A. Fire and Bone (Amazon/Skyscape, 978-1503946750, $9.99, 404pp, tp) Young-adult urban fantasy novel of an underworld of Celtic demigods in Los Angeles, the first book in a series. Teen runaway Sage discovers she’s the daughter of a Celtic goddess in a world of magic, Hollywood glamour, and dangerous power plays. E- book also available.

*Marsh, Sarah Glenn Reign of the Fallen (Penguin Random House/Razorbill, 978-0-448-49439-5, $17.99, 370pp, hc) Young-adult fantasy novel, the first in a duology about a female necromancer in a land where nobles are raised from the dead, but must be kept shrouded completely or they turn into zombie-like Shades. E-book also available.

*Martin, Emily B. Creatures of Light (Harper Voyager US, 978-0-06-268883-5, $6.99, 384pp, eb) Fantasy novel, the third and final in the Creatures of Light trilogy.

*Mastai, Elan All Our Wrong Todays (Penguin Random House/Dutton, 978-1-101-98515-1, $16.00, 369pp, tp) Reprint (Dutton 2017) literary SF time-travel novel.

*McGuire, Seanan Beneath the Sugar Sky (Tor.com Publishing, 978-0-7653-9358-6, $17.99, 174pp, hc, cover by Sean Rodwell) Fantasy novella, third in the Wayward Children series begun in Every Heart a Doorway. A signed edition (978-1-250-18890-8) was announced but not seen; e-book also available.

McLemore, Anna-Marie When the Moon Was Ours (St. Martin’s/Wednesday Books, 978-1-250-16010-2, $10.99, 273pp, tp, cover by Jonathan Bush) Reprint (Dunne 2016) young-adult fantasy novel.

*McMullen, Sean Dreams of the Technarion (ReAnimus Press, 978-1979854450, $15.99, 307pp, tp, cover by Richard Wagner) Collection of 10 stories, plus lengthy essay ‘‘Outpost of Wonder: SF in Australia 1832- 2017’’, a history of Australian SF (not fantasy), with a section of further reading. A print-on-demand-book; e-book also available. ReAnimus Press, 1100 Johnson Road #16-143, Golden CO 80402; <www.ReAnimus.com>.

*Miller, Jason Jack All Saints (Raw Dog Screaming, 978-1-935738-99-2, $15.95, 235pp, tp, cover by Jason Jack Miller) Supernatural thriller, fourth in the Murder Ballads and Whiskey series. Ben Collins and the immortal Danicka are pursued by an old enemy through Mexico. A print-on-demand edition. Raw Dog Screaming Press, <www.RawDogScreaming.com>.

*Miller, Mark Alan Hellraiser: The Toll (Subterranean Press, 978-1-59606-849-0, $40.00, 96pp, hc, cover by Brandon Mahlberg) Horror novella featuring Pinhead, set between events in Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart and The Scarlet Gospels, written by Miller from unfinished story ‘‘Heaven’s Reply’’ by Barker, who also illustrated. This is a deluxe, limited edition of 724 signed by Miller; a traycased, leatherbound, lettered edition of 26 signed by Miller and Barker ($250.00) and e-book also available. Subterranean Press, PO Box 190106, Burton MI 48519; <subterraneanpress.com>.

*Miller, Tom The Philosopher’s Flight (Simon & Schuster, 978-1-4767-7815-0, $26.00, hc) Historical fantasy novel set in a WWI-era USA where magic has blended with science, the first book in the Philosopher’s War series. Montana teen Robert Weekes studies empirical philosophy, a female-dominated field that allows users to summon wind, control smoke, and even fly. A first novel. An export-only trade paperback edition (978-1-5011-9181-7) was announced but not seen. E-book also available.

Modesitt, L.E., Jr. Recluce Tales (Tor, 978-0-7653-8620-5, $15.99, 476pp, tp, cover by Matt Stawicki) Reprint (Tor 2017) collection of 20 stories in the Recluce series.

*Moorcock, Michael, Mike Baron & Mike Mignola The Michael Moorcock Library: The Chronicles of Corum, Volume 1: The Knight of the Swords (Titan Comics US, 978-1782763253, $24.99, 110pp, hc, cover by Mike Mignola) Graphic novel based on the novel by Moorcock, adapted by Baron, and illustrated by Mike Mignola, with Kelley Jones and others. Originally published as a series of four comics in 1987. Introduction by Ron Marz. This is an international edition with US, Canadian, and UK prices.

*Morton, Lisa The Samhanach and Other Halloween Treats (JournalStone/Trepidatio, 978-1-947654-06-8, $18.95, 349pp, tp) Collection of 14 stories of Halloween. Introduction by Nancy Holder. A print-on-demand edition; a hardcover (-99-2, $29.95) was announced but not seen; e-book also available. JournalStone, <www.journalstone.com>.

*Myers, Tina LeCount The Song of All (Skyhorse/Night Shade Books, 978-1-59780-942-9, $25.99, 442pp, hc, cover by Jeff Chapman) Fantasy novel, the first in the Legacy of the Heavens series inspired by the Saami cultures of Scandinavia. A former warrior’s life as a farmer is disrupted by priestly plots. A trade paperback edition (-923-8, $14.99) was announced but not seen; e-book also available. A first novel.

*Nielsen, Jennifer A. The Traitor’s Game (Scholastic Press, 978-1-338-04537-6, $17.99, 388pp, hc, cover by Billelis) Young-adult fantasy novel, first in the eponymous trilogy. Kestra Dallisor, daughter of the chief counsel to Antora’s evil and possibly immortal ruler, is kidnapped and forced to help rebels. E-book also available.

*Nowak-McNeice, Katarzyna & Agata Zarzycka, eds. A Dark California: Essay on Dystopian Depictions in Popular Culture (McFarland, 978-1-4766-6783-6, $39.95, 205pp, tp) Non-fiction, a selection of 14 essays looking at ways California is depicted as dystopian, Gothic, or uncanny in popular culture, including literature by Toby Barlow, Angela Carter, and Thomas Pynchon, plus video games, music, TV, and film. Individual essays provide notes and references; a general index is provided. E-book also available. McFarland & Company, Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640; 800-253-2187; <www.mcfarlandpub.com>.

+Ober, Damien Lincoln Doctor Benjamin Franklin’s Dream America (Skyhorse/Night Shade Books, 978-1- 59780-919-1, $14.99, 315pp, tp, cover by Kevin Peterson) SF novel of an alternate 1777 American Revolution with computers, Internet, and Franklin’s revolutionary new open-source social networking portal. A first novel. First US edition (Equus Press 2014, not seen).

*Okorafor, Nnedi Binti: The Night Masquerade (Tor.com Publishing, 978-0-7653-9313-5, $14.99, 203pp, tp, cover by David Palumbo) SF novella, third in the series begun in Binti. E-book also available.

*Pedreira, David Gunpowder Moon (Harper Voyager US, 978-0-06-267608-5, $14.99, 286pp, tp) Near-future SF thriller/mystery novel set on the moon, where US and Chinese mining stations are affected by tensions between their countries. A first novel. E-book also available.

*Perry, Carol J. It Takes a Coven (Kensington, 978-1-4967-0719-2, $7.99, 364pp, pb) Mystery with psychic elements, the sixth in the Witch City series featuring Lee Barrett in Salem MA. Lee investigates the deaths of three witches. Includes recipes. E-book also available.

Pierce, Tamora First Test (Penguin Random House/Ember, 978-0-375-82905-5, $9.99, 216pp, tp, cover by Howard Huang) Reprint (Random House 1999) young-adult fantasy adventure novel about a girl training for knighthood, first in the Protector of the Small quartet in the Tortall series.

Pierce, Tamora Lady Knight (Penguin Random House/Ember, 978-0-375-82908-6, $10.99, 427pp, tp, cover by Howard Huang) Reprint (Random House 2002) young-adult fantasy adventure novel, fourth in the Protector of the Small quartet in the Tortall series.

Pierce, Tamora Page (Penguin Random House/Ember, 978-0-375-82907-9, $9.99, 257pp, tp, cover by Howard Huang) Reprint (Random House 2000) young-adult fantasy adventure novel, second  in the Protector of the Small quartet in the Tortall series.

Pierce, Tamora Squire (Penguin Random House/Ember, 978-0-375-82906-2, $10.99, 397pp, tp, cover by Howard Huang) Reprint (Random House 2001) young-adult fantasy adventure novel, third in the Protector of the Small quartet in the Tortall series.

*Pierce, Tamora Tempests and Slaughter (Penguin Random House/Random House, 978-0-375-84711-0, $18.99, 462pp, hc) Young-adult fantasy novel, the first book in the Numair Chronicles series about the early years of the mage Numair Salmalin. This is a collector’s edition with a poster inside.

*Poston, Ashley Heart of Iron (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, 978-0-06-265285-0, $17.99, 467pp, hc, cover by John Dismukes) Young-adult SF adventure novel, inspired by the story of Anastasia. Teen outlaw Ana goes to desperate lengths to fix the android D09, the only thing with her when she was found as a child.

*Pourteau, Chris & Rhett C. Bruno, eds. Bridge Across the Stars (Sci-Fi Bridge, 978-1984190833, $18.00, 479pp, tp, cover by Steve Beaulieu) Original anthology of 17 SF stories. Authors include Jason Anspach, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, and Will McIntosh. Foreword by Kevin J. Anderson; afterword by Bruno. This is copyrighted 2017 but apparently did not appear until 2018. E-book also available. Sci-Fi Bridge, <www.scifibridge.com>.

*Powell, Gareth L. Embers of War (Titan US, 9781785655180, $14.95, 408pp, tp) SF novel. The sentient starship Trouble Dog, tired of war, turns to rescue work only to finds she may have to fight anyway. This is an international edition with US and UK prices. E-book also available.

*Price, Robert M., ed. Lin Carter’s Simrana Cycle (Celaeno Press, 978-4-902075-89-2, $18.00, vii + 223pp, tp, cover by Stephen Hickman) Anthology of 31 stories, collecting for the first time Carter’s Simrana Tales (13 stories, one not previously published and two new ‘‘posthumous collaborations’’), eight Lord Dunsany stories that inspired them, a reprint story by Henry Kuttner, plus 10 new stories by authors including Darrell Schweitzer, Adrian Cole, and Robert M. Price, who edited the anthology and provides an ‘‘Outroduction’’ that compares Carter’s work to Dunsany’s and discusses the texts. This is a print-on-demand edition; a hardcover (-98-4, $24.00) edition was announced but not seen; e-book also available. Celaeno Press, <www.celaenopress.com>.

*Redwine, C.J. The Traitor Prince (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, 978-0-06-265298-0, $17.99, 400pp, hc) Young-adult fantasy novel inspired by The Prince and the Pauper and fairy tale ‘‘The False Prince’’, third in the Ravenspire series. E-book also available.

Reilly, Matthew The Four Legendary Kingdoms (Pocket, 978-1-5011-6717-1, $9.99, 442pp, pb) Reprint (Macmillan Australia 2016) SF thriller, fourth in the Jack West, Jr. series, combining characters from that and the Scarecrow series. This is a premium/tall rack-size edition.

*Renneberg, Stephen The Riven Stars (self-published, 978-0-9941840-5-4, $14.99, 406pp, tp, cover by Tom Edwards) SF space-opera novel, third in the Mapped Space series. Earth Intelligence Service agent Sirius Kade investigates conspiracies against Earth. A print-on-demand edition. E-book also available.

*Rhodes, Morgan Immortal Reign (Penguin Random House/Razorbill, 978-1-595-14824-7, $18.99, 391pp, hc, cover by Shane Rebenschied) Young-adult fantasy novel, sixth and final in the Falling Kingdoms series. This is a pen name for Michelle Rowen. E-book also available.

*Rice, Christopher Bone Music (Amazon/Thomas & Mercer, 978-1-542048309, $24.95, 450pp, hc) Superhero thriller/horror novel, first in the Burning Girl series. Charlotte Rowe, a survivor of abduction by serial killers, is unwittingly dosed with a drug that gives her superhuman strength. E-book also available.

*Ross, Rebecca The Queen’s Rising (HarperTeen, 978-0-06-247134-5, $17.99, 439pp, hc) Young-adult medieval fantasy novel. Brienna goes to a prestigious boarding school, but cannot master any of the five passions (art, music, drama, wit, and knowledge) or find a respectable patron. A first novel. E-book also available.

Rowling, J.K., Jack Thorne & John Tiffany Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two (Scholastic/Levine, 978-1-3382-1666-0, $12.99, 314pp, tp) Reprint (Levine 2016) young-adult script book for the two-part play, written by Jack Thorne based on a story written by Rowling, Thorne & Tiffany.

Rubin, Lance Denton Little’s Still Not Dead (Penguin Random House/Ember, 978-0-553-49703-8, $9.99, 345pp, tp, cover by Mathieu Persan) Reprint (Knopf 2017) humorous young-adult fantasy novel, sequel to Denton Little’s Deathdate.

*Sachdeva, Anjali All the Names They Used for God (Penguin Random House/Spiegel & Grau, 978-0-399- 59300-0, $26.00, 251pp, hc) Collection of nine stories, three original, many with mystical, fantasy, or SF elements. The author’s first collection. E-book also available.

Sagara, Michelle Grave (DAW, 978-0-7564-1287-6, $7.99, 422pp, pb, cover by Cliff Nielsen) Reprint (DAW 2017) contemporary fantasy novel, the third and final in the Queen of the Dead trilogy.

*Salvatore, R.A. Child of a Mad God (Tor, 978-0-7653-9527-6, $25.99, 496pp, hc, cover by Larry Rostant) Dark fantasy novel, the first book in the Coven series set in the world of Corona from the DemonWars Saga.

Sanderson, Brandon Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection (Tor, 978-0-7653-9118-6, $9.99, 692pp, pb, cover by David Palumbo) Reprint (Tor 2016) fantasy collection of eight stories and a graphic novel excerpt in the Cosmere series.

*Sappingfield, Eliot A Problematic Paradox (Penguin Random House/Putnam, 978-1-5247-3845-7, $16.99, 343pp, hc, cover by John Hendrix) Middle-grade humorous SF novel about a girl genius at a special school for geniuses, some not human. A first novel. E-book also available.

Saunders, George Lincoln in the Bardo (Penguin Random House/Random House, 978-0-8129-8540-5, $17.00, 343pp, tp, cover by John Pye & E. Webb) Reprint (Random House 2017) literary fantasy novel about Abraham Lincoln. Winner of the Man Booker Prize. Includes reading group questions.

*Schaumberg, Deborah The Tombs (HarperTeen, 978-0-06-265644-5, $17.99, 435pp, hc, cover by Si Scott) Young-adult historical fantasy novel. Avery fears being sent to the Tombs asylum like her mother, for seeing things others can’t. A first novel. E-book also available.

Books Received continues after ad.

*Shand, Pat Avengers: The Serpent Society (Joe Books, 978-1-77275-208-3, $12.99, 271pp, tp) Comic-book tie-in novel. Copyrighted by Marvel.

*Shand, Pat Iron Man: Mutually Assured Destruction (Joe Books, 978-1-77275-206-9, $12.99, 262pp, tp) Comic-book tie-in novel. Copyrighted by Marvel.

*Shanker, Tarun & Kelly Zekas These Vengeful Souls (Macmillan/Feiwel and Friends/Swoon Reads, 978-1- 250-18306-4, $10.99, 287pp, tp, cover by Kathleen Breitenfeld) Young-adult Victorian fantasy novel, third and final in the trilogy begun in These Vicious Masks. E-book also available.

*Singh, Vandana Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories (Small Beer Press, 978-1-61873-143-2, $16.00, 320pp, tp) Collection of 14 stories, one original. E-book also available. Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant Street #306, Easthampton MA 01027; <smallbeerpress.com>; <weightlessbooks.com>.

*Speegle, Darren Cries from the Static (Raw Dog Screaming, 978-1-935738-39-8, $15.95, 224pp, tp, cover by Daniele Serra) Collection of 17 stories, eight original. A print-on-demand edition. Raw Dog Screaming,  <www.rawdogscreaming.com>

*Sprunk, Jon Blade and Bone (Prometheus/Pyr, 978-1-63388-269-0, $18.00, 286pp, tp, cover by Jason Chan) Fantasy novel, the third book in the Book of the Black Earth Quartet. E-book also available.

*Stephenson, Robert N., ed. The Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror, Volume III (Altair Australia, 978-1981123056, $12.99, 329pp, tp, cover by Bob Eggleton) Original anthology of 20 stories. Authors include Colleen Anderson, Mike Jansen, and James Van Pelt. A print-on-demand book; e-book also available through Smashwords.

Stiefvater, Maggie The Raven King (Scholastic, 978-0-545-42499-8, $9.99, 438pp, tp, cover by Adam S. Doyle) Reprint (Scholastic Press 2016) young-adult contemporary supernatural romance novel, fourth and final in the Raven Cycle series. This has bonus series story ‘‘Opal’’.

*Streeby, Shelley Imagining the Future of Climate Change: World-Making Through Science Fiction and Activism (University of California Press, 978-0-520-29445-5, $18.95, 157pp, tp) Non-fiction looking at speculations on the effects of climate change made by activists, bloggers, movies, SF and ‘‘cli-fi’’ fiction, and more, with a special focus on the visions of indigenous people and people of color, including a chapter on the works of Octavia E. Butler. The fifth book in the American Studies Now series. Includes notes and select bibliography. E-book also available.  University of California Press, 155 Grand Avenue, Suite 400, Oakland CA 94612-3758; <www.ucpress.edu>.

*Sutherland, Tui T., Barry Deutsch & Mike Holmes Wings of Fire The Graphic Novel Book One: The Dragonet Prophecy (Scholastic/Graphix, 978-0-545-94215-7, $12.99, 214pp, tp, cover by Mike Holmes) Middle- grade graphic novel adapting the first book in Sutherland’s Wings of Fire series. Adapted by Barry Deutsch; illustrated by Mike Holmes. A simultaneous hardcover edition (-94216-4, $24.99) was announced but not seen; e-book also available.

*Sweterlitsch, Tom The Gone World (Penguin Random House/Putnam, 978-0-399-16750-8, $27.00, 388pp, hc) Near-future SF time-travel thriller/mystery novel.  In 1997, NCIS agent Shannon Moss visits possible futures for clues to a murder and discovers the end of humanity is near. Simultaneous with the Headline edition.

*Swift, E.J. Paris Adrift (Rebellion/Solaris US, 978-1781085936, $15.99, 379pp, tp) Fantasy time-travel novel. Hallie’s year off in Paris leads her to a time portal in the bar where she works. This is an international edition with US, UK, and Canadian prices. E-book also available.

*Tantimedh, Adi Her Beautiful Monster (Simon & Schuster/Atria/Leopoldo & Co., 978-1-5011-3060-1, $26.00, 310pp, hc) Mystery novel, second in the Ravi PI series about a private investigator who sees Indian gods. E-book also available.

Taylor, Bruce Magic of Wild Places (ReAnimus Press, 978-1530692231, $12.99, 174pp, tp, cover by Carl Sloan & Lida Sloan) Reissue (original unknown, reprinted 2016 by ReAnimus Press) non-fiction, an autobiographical look at the author’s relationship with his father (who gave up his own aspirations as a writer) and its effect on his career. Introduction by Brian Herbert. A print-on-demand edition. ReAnimus Press, <www.ReAnimus.com>.

*Taylor, Bruce Tales from the Good Ship KafkaBury (ReAnimus Press, 978-1979347501, $11.99, 163pp, tp, cover by Carl Sloan & Lida Sloan) Original collection of 26 stories.  This is a print-on-demand edition; e-book also available. ReAnimus Press, 1100 Johnson Road #16-143, Golden CO 80402; <www.ReAnimus.com>.

*Taylor, Travis S. Bringers of Hell (Baen, 978-1-4814-8304-9, $23.00, 310pp, hc, cover by Kurt Miller) Military SF novel, the sixth book in the Tau Ceti Agenda series. E-book also available.

*Thomas, Keith The Clarity (Simon & Schuster/Atria/Leopoldo & Co., 978-1-5011-5693-9, $27.00, 295pp, hc) Thriller/horror novel. Psychologist Matilda Deacon protects a girl who recalls past lives from a man killing people for their memories.

*Thomas, Leah When Light Left Us (Bloomsbury USA, 978-1-68119-181-2, $17.99, 390pp, hc, cover by Sarah J. Coleman) Young-adult SF novel about the aftermath of a family’s encounter with an alien.  E-book also available.

Tidbeck, Karin Jagannath (Penguin Random House/Vintage, 978-1-101-97397-4, $16.00, 155pp, tp) Reprint (Cheeky Frawg Books 2012) collection of 13 stories. A Crawford Award winner. E-book also available.

*Toliver, Wendy Once Upon a Time: Regina Rising (Disney/Kingswell Teen, 978-1-4847-8776-2, $16.99, 359pp, hc) Young-adult TV tie-in novel. Copyrighted by ABC Studios.

*Ure, Amanda Replicas (Galactic Association of Intelligent Life Earth, 978-1973482178, $9.99, iii + 212pp, tp) Shared-world SF novel, the second book in the Galactic Association of Intelligent Life series based on the universe created by L. Stephen Wolfe & Roy L. Wysack, who provide the foreword. Melissa Shipton decides to join a colony world, partly because of her difficult relationships with her droid siblings, one with the same genetic modifications she had, the other with her original genome. A print-on-demand edition; e-book also available.

*Vale, Maria The Last Wolf (Sourcebooks Casablanca, 978-1-4926-6187-0, $7.99, 283pp, pb, cover by Kris Keller) Werewolf romance novel, the first in the Legend of All Wolves series. E-book also available.

VanderMeer, Jeff Annihilation (Macmillan/MCD X FSG Originals, 978-0-374-53715-9, $14.00, 195pp, tp) Reprint (FSG Originals 2014) weird eco-SF novel, the first in the Southern Reach trilogy. A movie tie-in edition.

VanderMeer, Jeff Borne (Macmillan/Farrar, Straus and Giroux/MCD, 978-0-374-53765-4, $15.00, 349pp, tp) Reprint (MCD 2017) post-apocalyptic SF novel. This adds ‘‘Teems’s Bestiary’’, describing various strange creatures, with illustrations by Eric Nyquist; originally posted on <www.mcdbooks.com> as ‘‘The Borne Bestiary’’.

VanderMeer, Jeff The Strange Bird (Macmillan/MCD X FSG Originals, 978-0-374-53792-0, $10.00, 109pp, tp, cover by Sungpyo Hong) Reprint (MCD X FSG Originals 2017 e-book, not seen) post-apocalyptic SF novella in the Borne series. This is the first print edition.

*Vasilyev, A. Fayroll: More Than a Game (LitWorld, 978-9925-7385-0-2, $9.95, 361pp, tp) Near-future SF novel, the first in the Fayroll series about a hugely popular virtual reality fantasy game. Apparently translated from a Russian litRPG novel first published in 2014; this is copyrighted 2017.  A print-on-demand edition. Litworld, 2 Kariotaki St., FL 102, 28 Theodorou Court, 6042 Larnaca, Cyprus; <litworld.com>.

*Vining, Dan NightSun (Rare Bird Books/Vireo, 978-1-945572647, $24.95, 310pp, hc) Near-future SF detective novel set in an LA beset by drought and traffic congestion so bad all emergency services travel by air. Air cop Nate Cole and PI Ava Monica cross paths on cases involving human trafficking and a runaway bride. E-book also available. Rare Bird, 453 South Sprint St. Suite 302, Los Angeles CA 90013; <www.rarebirdbooks.com>.

*Voiklis, Charlotte Jones & Léna Roy Becoming Madeleine: A Biography of the Author of A Wrinkle in Time by Her Granddaughters (Macmillan/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 978-0-374-30764-6, $19.99, 162pp, hc) Middle-grade biography of Madeleine L’Engle and her life up to the publication of A Wrinkle in Time, with journal entries, photographs, poems, letters, and other items, many never published before. E-book also available.

*Walton, Jo Starlings (Tachyon Publications, 978-1-61696-056-8, $15.95, 271pp, tp) Collection of 20 stories, a play, and 16 poems. E-book also available. Tachyon Publications, 1459 18th Street #139, San Francisco CA 94107; <www.tachyonpublications.com>.

*Ward, Dayton Star Trek: Discovery: Drastic Measures (Simon & Schuster/Gallery, 978-1-5011-7174-1, $16.00, 381pp, pb) Star Trek tie-in novel. Copyrighted by CBS Studios. E-book also available.

*Warren, Christine Baby, I’m Howling for You (St. Martin’s, 978-1-250-12072-4, $7.99, 310pp, pb) Shifter paranormal romance novel, the first book in the Alphaville series, a spin-off from the Others series. Librarian wolf shifter Renny Landry seeks to escape a coyote-shifter stalker in the remote town of Alpha.

*Warren, Scott To Fall Among Vultures (Parvus Press, 978-0997661354, $14.99, 253pp, tp, cover by Tom Edwards) Military SF novel, second in the Union Earth Privateers series started in Vick’s Vultures. E- book also available. Parvus Press, PO Box 711232, Herndon VA 20171; <ParvusPress.com>.

*Warren, Scott Vick’s Vultures (Parvus Press, 978-0997661316, $11.99, 212pp, tp, cover by Tom Edwards) Military SF novel, first in the Union Earth Privateers series about Captain Victoria Marin and her xenotech-salvaging crew of Vultures, who stumble across an alien prince needing rescue. This is dated 2016 but not seen until now. E-book also available. Parvus Press, PO Box 711232, Herndon VA 20171; <ParvusPress.com>.

*Wells, Alex Blood Binds the Pack (Angry Robot US, 978-0-85766-647-5, $8.99, 492pp, pb) Science- fantasy novel, second in the Hob series begun in Hunger Makes the Wolf. Miners, witchy Hob Ravani, and the Ghost Wolves biker gang continue to resist TransRift Corp’s plans for their planet. Wells is a pen name for Alex Acks, who also writes as Rachel Acks. This is an international edition with US and UK prices. E-book also available.

*Wells, Dan Active Memory (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, 978-0-06-234793-0, $17.99, 392pp, hc, cover by Sebastien Hue) Young-adult post-apocalyptic/dystopian SF novel, third in the Mirador series. E-book also available.

Wells, Dan Ones and Zeroes (HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray, 978-0-06-234791-6, $9.99, 408pp, tp, cover by Sebastien Hue) Reprint (Balzer + Bray 2017) young-adult post-apocalyptic/dystopian SF novel, the second book in the Mirador series.

*Westerfeld, Scott, Margo Lanagan & Deborah Biancotti Nexus (Simon Pulse, 978-1- 4814-4342-5, $19.99, 483pp, hc, cover by Shane Rebenschied) Young-adult fantasy novel, third in the Zeroes trilogy about teens with unusual powers. E-book also available. Simultaneous with the Simon & Schuster UK edition.

Westerfeld, Scott, Margo Lanagan & Deborah Biancotti Swarm (Simon Pulse, 978-1- 4814-4340-1, $12.99, 448pp, tp, cover by Shane Rebenschied) Reprint (Simon Pulse 2016) young-adult fantasy novel, second in the Zeroes trilogy.

*Zumas, Leni Red Clocks (Little, Brown/Boudreaux Books, 978-0-316-43481-2, $26.00, 351pp, hc, cover by Lauren Harms) Dystopian near-future SF novel about reproductive rights in a US where abortion and in vitro fertilization are banned. E-book also available. Simultaneous with the UK (The Borough Press e-book) edition.

February 2018

SF Novels 23

Fantasy Novels 24

Horror Novels 6

ParanormalRomance 2

Anthologies 5

Collections 14

Reference 2

History/Criticism 7

Media Related 9

Young Adult 26

SF 6

Fantasy 18

Horror 2

Paranormal Romance 0

Other 0

Omnibus 5

Art/Humor 2

Miscellaneous 7

Total New: 132

Reprints & Reissues: 50

Total: 182

Year to Date

SF Novels 39

Fantasy Novels 41

Horror Novels 8

Paranormal Romance 7

Anthologies 11

Collections 22

Reference 0

History/Criticism 9

Media Related 12

Young Adult 58

SF 16

Fantasy 36

Horror 3

Paranormal Romance 2

Other 1

Omnibus 6

Art/Humor 5

Miscellaneous 11

Total New: 231

Reprints & Reissues: 109

Total: 340

Return to In This Issue listing.

BRITISH BOOKS RECEIVED: JANUARY

Note: This information, unlike the Locus main list, is put together by Ian Covell; send corrections to him at 24 St Pauls Road, Middlesbrough TS1 5NQ, England. First world editions marked with an asterisk. Comments by Ian Covell.

* Anonymous, ed. The Complete Predator Omnibus (Titan 978-1-7856-5342-1, £8.99, 671pp, pb) Omnibus of three tie-in novels based on graphic novels based on the movies: Predator: Concrete Jungle by Nathan Archer (1995), Predator: Cold War by Nathan Archer, and Predator: Big Game by Sandy Schofield. Archer is a pen name for Lawrence Watt-Evans; Schofield is a pen name for Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch. This is an international edition with UK and US prices.

* Arden, Katherine The Girl in the Tower (Random House/Ebury/Del Rey UK 978-1-785-03106-9, £12.99, 364pp, tp, cover by Aitch) Fantasy novel, second in the Winternight trilogy after The Bear and the Nightingale.

Bates, Callie The Waking Land (Hodder 978-1-4736-3875-4, £7.99, 384pp, tp) Reprint (Hodder & Stoughton 2017) fantasy novel, the first in a trilogy.

* Benford, Gregory & Gordon Eklund New Ball Games for the Future (PS Publishing 978-1-786362-10-0, £18.00, 153pp, hc, cover by Richard Powers) Original collection of two SF baseball stories. A signed, limited edition of 100 (-11-7, £35.00) is also available. PS Publishing, Grosvenor House, 1 New Road, Hornsea, East Yorkshire HU18 1PG England; <www.pspublishing.co.uk>.

* Black, Holly The Cruel Prince (Hot Key Books 978-1-4714-0645-4, £12.99, 370pp, hc, cover by Sean Freeman) Young-adult fantasy novel, the first in the Folk of the Air series. Simultaneous with the US (Little, Brown) edition.

Briggs, Patricia Silence Fallen (Little, Brown UK/Orbit 978-0-356-50594-7, £8.99, 371pp, tp) Reprint (Orbit 2017) urban fantasy novel, tenth in the Mercy Thompson series.

Cline, Ernest Ready Player One (Random House UK/Arrow 978-1-784-75479-2, £8.99, 372pp, tp) Reprint (Century 2011) SF novel. This is a movie tie-in edition.

* Duve, Karen The Prepper Room (Dedalus 978-1-910213-72-8, £9.99, 311pp, tp) Satirical near-future SF novel of a woman-dominated future facing rebellion from the MASCULO movement. Translated by Mike Mitchell from the German Macht (Galiani Berlin 2016).

* Feehan, Christine Judgment Road (Little, Brown UK/Piatkus 978-0-349-41672-4, £8.99, 426pp, tp) Paranormal romance novel, first in the Torpedo Ink series. Simultaneous with the US (Berkley) edition.

* Gowar, Imogen Hermes The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock (Harvill Secker 978-1-911-21572-1, £12.99, 484pp, hc) Literary historical fantasy/magic realism novel set in 18th-century London, about a courtesan and a businessman with a fake (or maybe not) mermaid. A first novel.

* Gwynne, John A Time of Dread (Macmillan UK 978-1-5098-1294-3, £20.00, 458pp, hc, cover by Paul Young) Fantasy novel, the first in the Of Blood and Bone series set 100 years later in the same world as the Faithful and the Fallen series.

Haig, Francesca The Forever Ship (Harper Voyager 978-0-00-756316-6, £8.99, 437pp, tp) Reprint (Harper Voyager 2017) fantasy novel, third in the Fire Sermon series.

Irvine, Ian The Fatal Gate (Little, Brown UK/Orbit 978-0-356-50525-1, £10.99, 573pp, tp) Reprint (Orbit 2017) fantasy novel, second in the Gates of Good and Evil duology.

Islington, James An Echo of Things to Come (Little, Brown UK/Orbit 978-0-356-50781-1, £9.99, 716pp, tp, cover by Dominick Saponaro) Reprint (Orbit 2017) fantasy novel, second in the Licanius trilogy.

* Jae-Jones, S. Shadowsong (Titan 978-1-7856-5546-3, £7.99, 508pp, tp) Fantasy novel. Last in a duology after Wintersong.

Kearney, Paul Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine Battles: Calgar’s Siege (Black Library 978-1-78496-476-4, £18.00, 328pp, hc, cover by Mikhail Savier) Reprint (Black Library 2016) gaming tie-in novel. A paper-over-boards edition. This is an international edition with UK, US, Canadian, Euro, and Australian prices.

Koontz, Dean The Whispering Room (HarperCollins UK 978-0-00-752018-3, £20.00, 513pp, hc) Reprint (Bantam 2017) associational thriller/horror novel, second in the Jane Hawk series. [First UK edition]

* Lu, Marie Batman: Nightwalker (Penguin UK 978-0-141-38683-6, £7.99, 250pp, tp, cover by Jacey) Young-adult comics tie-novel about Bruce Wayne before he became Batman, based on the DC Comics universe. A hardcover edition (-38682-9, £12.99) is also available. Simultaneous with the US (Random House) edition.

* Maberry, Jonathan The X-Files Origins: Devil’s Advocate (Little, Brown UK/Atom 978-0-349-00300-9, £7.99, 352pp, tp) Young-adult tie-in novel, the story of 15-year-old Dana Scully. Simultaneous with the US (Imprint) edition.

Newman, Peter The Seven (Harper Voyager 978-0-00-818016-4, £8.99, 454pp, tp, cover by Jaime Jones) Reprint (Harper Voyager 2017) fantasy novel, third in the Vagrant trilogy.

Palmer, Ada Too Like the Lightning (Head of Zeus 978-1-7866-9950-3, £8.99, 528pp, tp) Reprint (Tor 2016) SF novel, first in the Terra Ignota series.

* Powell, Gareth L. Ack-Ack Macaque: The Complete Trilogy (Rebellion/Solaris 978-1-78108-605-6, £10.99, 795pp, tp) Omnibus of the trilogy: Ack-Ack Macaque (2013), Hive Monkey (2014), and Macaque Attack (2015). This adds a new epilogue and the 2007 story ‘‘Ack-Ack Macaque’’.

* Reynolds, Alastair Elysium Fire (Orion/Gollancz 978-0-575-09058-3, £18.99, 408pp, hc, cover by blacksheep) SF mystery novel, second in the Prefect Dreyfus Emergency series begun in The Prefect (retitled Aurora Rising), and part of the Revelation Space universe. Simultaneous with the US (Orbit US) edition.

Reynolds, Josh Warhammer: Age of Sigmar: Plague Garden (Black Library 978-1-78496-621-8, £8.99, 408pp, tp, cover by Matthias de Muylder) Reprint (Black Library e-book 6/17) gaming tie-in novel based on the roleplaying game universe. This is an international edition with US, UK, EU, Australian, and Canadian prices.

Reynolds, Josh Warhammer 40,000: Fabius Bile: Primogenitor (Black Library 978-1-78496-620-1, £8.99, 349pp, tp, cover by Lie Setiawan) Reprint (Black Library 2016) gaming tie-in novel based on the roleplaying game universe. This is an international edition with US, UK, EU, Australian, and Canadian prices.

* Roberts, Nora Year One (Little, Brown UK/Piatkus 978-0-349-41493-5, £16.99, 419pp, hc) Apocalyptic fantasy novel, the first in the Chronicles of the One trilogy. Plague wipes out half of humanity as magic replaces technology. Simultaneous with the US (St. Martin’s) edition.

* Stansfield, Katherine Falling Creatures (Allison & Busby 978-0-7490-2141-2, £14.99, 318pp, hc) Historical crime novel with supernatural elements, set in 1844 Cornwall. E-book also available.

* Stross, Charles Dark State (Macmillan/Tor UK 978-1-5098-2352-9, £14.99, 349pp, tp) SF novel, second in the Empire Games series in the Merchant Princes multiverse. A hardcover edition (£25.00) was announced but not seen. Simultaneous with the US (Tor) edition.

Thorpe, Gav Warhammer 40,000: The Horus Heresy: Corax (Black Library 978-1-78496-220-3, £20.00, 446pp, tp, cover by Neil Roberts) Reprint (Black Library 2016) collection of six gaming tie-in stories. Illustrated by Dominik Oedinger and Neil Roberts. A paper-over-boards international edition with US, UK, EU, Canadian, and Australian prices. Copyrighted by Games Workshop.

VanderMeer, Jeff City of Saints and Madmen (Macmillan/Pan 978-1-5098-4815-7, £8.99, 239+lxxx, tp, cover by Chris Wormell) Reprint (Cosmos 2001) collection of 14 stories set in the city of Ambergris. This has the added material from the Cosmos 2002 edition, including the introduction by Michael Moorcock. E-book also available.

VanderMeer, Jeff Shriek: An Afterword (Macmillan/Pan 978-1-5098-4814-0, £8.99, 450pp, tp, cover by Chris Wormell) Reprint (Macmillan UK 2006) fantasy novel in the Ambergris series. E-book also available.

VanderMeer, Jeff Veniss Underground (Macmillan/Pan 978-1-5098-4816-4, £8.99, 304pp, tp, cover by Chris Wormell) Reprint (Prime Books 2003) SF novel. This follows the Night Shade 2003 edition, which added story/afterword ‘‘Veniss Exposed: Precursors & Epiphanies’’. E-book also available.

* Wexler, Django The Infernal Battalion (Head of Zeus 978-1-7866-9644-1, £20.00, 500pp, hc) Fantasy novel, fifth in the Shadow Campaigns series. Simultaneous with the US (Ace) edition.

* Wilkins, Kim Odin’s Girl (PS Australia 978-1-786362-09-4, £20.00, 213pp, hc, cover by Richard A. Kirk) Fantasy novel in four sections; one, ‘‘Wild Dreams of Blood’’, was apparently published previously as a novelette. Sara Jones discovers she’s the daughter of the god Odin. A signed, limited edition of 100 (-08-7, £40.00) is also available. PS Publishing, Grosvenor House, 1 New Road, Hornsea, HU18 1PG, UK; <www.pspublishing.co.uk>.

* Wilson, S.M. The Extinction Trials (Usborne 978-1-4749-2734-5, £7.99, 381pp, tp) Young-adult SF novel, the first in a series.

January 2018

SF Novels 3

Fantasy Novels 8

Horror Novels 0

Paranormal Romance 1

Anthologies 0

Collections 1

Reference 0

History/Criticism 0

Media Related 2

Young Adult 2

SF 1

Fantasy 1

Horror 0

Paranormal Romance 0

Other 0

Omnibus 2

Art/Humor 0

Miscellaneous 1

Total New: 20

Reprints & Reissues: 15

Total: 35

Year to Date

SF Novels 3

Fantasy Novels 8

Horror Novels 0

Paranormal Romance 1

Anthologies 0

Collections 1

Reference 0

History/Criticism 0

Media Related 2

Young Adult 2

SF 1

Fantasy 1

Horror 0

Paranormal Romance 0

Other 0

Omnibus 2

Art/Humor 0

Miscellaneous 1

Total New: 20

Reprints & Reissues: 15

Total: 35

Return to In This Issue listing.

BESTSELLERS

LOCUS BESTSELLERS

Numbers indicate months on list, and position last month.

HARDCOVERS

1) Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson (Tor) 3, 2

2) Iron Gold, Pierce Brown (Del Rey) 1, -

3) Artemis, Andy Weir (Crown) 3, 1

4) The Power, Naomi Alderman (Little, Brown) 3, 6

5) Neogenesis, Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (Baen) 1, -

6) Persepolis Rising, James S.A. Corey (Orbit US) 2, 3

7) The Princess Bride Deluxe Edition, William Goldman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) 3, 7

8) What the Hell Did I Just Read, David Wong (St. Martin’s) 2, -

9) Emergence, C.J. Cherryh (DAW) 1, -

10) The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage, Philip Pullman (Knopf) 4, 5

*) The Cruel Prince, Holly Black (Little, Brown) 1, -

*) Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing) 1, -

PAPERBACKS

1) Assassin’s Fate, Robin Hobb (Del Rey) 1, -

2) The Collapsing Empire, John Scalzi (Tor) 1, -

3) The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin (Ace) 1, -

4) Ready Player One, Ernest Cline (Broadway) 3, 1

5) Dune, Frank Herbert (Ace) 16, 8

6) Death’s Mistress, Terry Goodkind (Tor) 1, -

7) The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss (DAW) 52, 2

8) The Wrong Stars, Tim Pratt (Angry Robot US) 3, 3

9) A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin (Bantam) 84, -

*) The Last Wish, Andrzej Sapkowski (Orbit US) 1, -

TRADE PAPERBACKS

1) The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US) 14, 1

2) Ready Player One, Ernest Cline (Broadway) 24, 2

3) The Stone Sky, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US) 5, 3

4) The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden (Del Rey) 1, -

5) The Lost Plot, Genevieve Cogman (Ace) 1, -

*) The Obelisk Gate, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US) 7, -

7) Binti: The Night Masquerade, Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com Publishing) 1, -

*) Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer (FSG Originals) 8, 6

9) Red Rising, Pierce Brown (Del Rey) 4, -

10) Robots vs. Fairies, Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe, eds. (Saga) 1, -

MEDIA-RELATED & GAMING-RELATED

1) Welcome to Night Vale: It Devours!, Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor (Harper Perennial) 4, 3

2) Star Wars: The Last Jedi: The Visual Dictionary,Pablo Hidalgo (DK Children) 1, 1

3) Star Wars: Aftermath, Chuck Wendig (Del Rey) 20, -

4) Star Wars: Bloodline, Claudia Gray (Del Rey) 6, -

5) Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View, Anonymous, ed. (Del Rey) 4, 1

Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson returned to the top spot on the hardcover list this month, followed closely in second place by Pierce Brown’s Iron Gold (book four of the Red Rising series). Dark State by Charles Stross, book two in the Empire Games series (Tor), was the new runner-up. We had 47 nominated titles, up from 45 last month.

Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Fate (book three in her Fitz and Fool trilogy), barely edged out The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi to win first place on the paperback list. The new runner-up was Convergence by C.J. Cherryh, book 18 in her long-running Foreigner series (DAW). 55 titles were nominated, up from last month’s 52.

The two top positions on the trade paperback list remain the same as last month, with N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season narrowly beating Ready Player One by Ernest Cline to take the top spot on the trade paperback list. There were no new runners-up. We had 74 titles nominated, up from 56 last month.

Welcome to Night Vale: It Devours! by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor moved to the top of the media and gaming-related books list with a respectable lead over the second place finisher Star Wars: The Last Jedi: The Visual Dictionary by Pablo Hidalgo. There were no new runners-up. We had 28 titles nominated, down from last month’s 30.

Compiled with data from: Bakka-Phoenix (Canada), Barnes and Noble (USA), Borderlands (CA), McNally Robinson (two in Canada), Mysterious Galaxy (CA), Toadstool (two in NH), Uncle Hugo’s (MN), White Dwarf (Canada). Data period: January 2018.

Bestsellers continue after ad.

AUDIBLE.COM (AUDIO)

SCIENCE FICTION

1) Ready Player One, Ernest Cline (Random House Audio)

2) Zero Hour: Expeditionary Force, Craig Alanson (Podium)

3) Artemis, Andy Weir (Audible Studios)

4) The Dispatcher, John Scalzi (Audible Studios)

5) Altered Carbon, Richard K. Morgan (Tantor)

6) Alien: River of Pain, Christopher Golden (Audible Studios)

7) Columbus Day: Expeditionary Force, Craig Alanson (Podium)

8) Blood World: Undying Mercenaries, B.V. Larson (Audible Studios)

9) Red Rising, Pierce Brown (Recorded Books)

10) Ender’s Game: Special 20th Anniversary Edition, Orson Scott Card (Macmillan Audio)

FANTASY

1) A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin (Random House Audio)

2) The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkein (Recorded Books)

3) Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson (Macmillan Audio)

4) American Gods: The Tenth Anniversary Edition, Neil Gaiman (HarperAudio)

5) Outlander, Diana Gabaldon (Recorded Books)

6) Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook, Christina Henry(Recorded Books)

7) Norse Mythology, Neil Gaiman (Harper Audio)

8) The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss (Brilliance)

9) The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson (Macmillan Audio)

10) Words of Radiance, Brandon Sanderson (Macmillan Audio)

BARNES & NOBLE (PRINT)

HARDCOVERS

1) Artemis, Andy Weir (Crown)

2) Iron Gold, Pierce Brown (Del Rey)

3) The Power, Naomi Alderman (Little, Brown)

4) Oathbringer, Brandon Sanderson (Tor)

5) Child of a Mad God, R.A. Salvatore (Tor)

6) The Gone World, Tom Sweterlitsch (Putnam)

7) Shroud of Eternity, Terry Goodkind (Tor)

8) The Princess Bride: Deluxe Edition, William Goldman (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

9) The Lord of the Rings: Deluxe Edition, J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin)

10) 1637: The Volga Rules, Eric Flint, Paula Goodlett & Gorg Huff (Baen)

PAPERBACKS

1) Silence Fallen, Patricia Briggs (Ace)

2) The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss (DAW

3) A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin (Bantam)

4) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (Del Rey)

5) The Way of Kings, Brandon Sanderson (Tor)

6) The Wise Man’s Fear, Patrick Rothfuss (DAW)

7) Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card (Tor)

8) Dune, Frank Herbert (Ace)

9) American Gods, Neil Gaiman (Morrow)

10) Aliens Abroad, Gini Koch (DAW)

TRADE PAPERBACKS

1) Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (Simon & Schuster)

2) Altered Carbon, Richard K. Morgan (Del Rey)

3) The Martian, Andy Weir (Broadway)

4) Red Rising, Pierce Brown (Del Rey)

5) The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden (Del Rey)

6) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick (Del Rey)

7) The Magicians, Lev Grossman (Penguin)

8) The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams (Del Rey)

9) The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss (Daw)

10) A Darker Shade of Magic, V.E. Schwab (Tor)

MEDIA & GAMING-RELATED

1) Star Wars: Thrawn, Timothy Zahn (Del Rey)

2) Welcome to Night Vale: It Devours!, Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor (Harper Perennial)

3) Star Wars: Darth Plagueis, James Luceno (Del Rey)

4) Star Trek: Discovery: Drastic Measures, Dayton Ward (Gallery)

5) Star Wars: The Last Jedi Visual Dictionary, Pablo Hidalgo (DK)

SMASHWORDS (EBOOK)*

SCIENCE FICTION

1) The Echoes of Sol: Books 1-3, Charissa Dufour

2) Last Call Book Nine, Angela White

3) Wither, Amy Miles

4) The Calderan Problem, Joseph R. Lallo

5) Carnie’s Tale: A Spinward Fringe Story, Randolph Lalonde

6) Ichor Well, Joseph R. Lallo

7) Mayhem and Mutiny, Charissa Dufour

8) Spinward Fringe Broadcasts 1 and 2: Resurrection and Awakening, Randolph Lalonde

9) Riker’s Apocalypse: The Promise, Shawn Chesser

10) Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10: Freeground, Randolph Lalonde

FANTASY

1) Fated, Karen Lynch

2) Fairest, Chanda Hahn

3) The Blade’s Memory, Lindsay Buroker

4) Forgotten Silence, Quinn Loftis

5) Reckoning, Amy Miles

6) The Frey Saga Book II: Pieces of Eight, Melissa Wright

7) Fable, Chanda Hahn

8) Reign, Chanda Hahn

9) It’s You, Book One, Katy Regnery

10) Redemption, Amy Miles

About this list: Every month, Smashwords reports the Top 20 Bestselling Science Fiction and the Top 20 Bestselling Fantasy titles based on gross dollar sales. Sales from the previous month are aggregated across Smashwords’ global network of ebook retailers and public library platforms, including iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, Gardners, OverDrive, Odilo, Baker & Taylor, the Smashwords store, and others. Smashwords is the world’s largest distributor of ebooks by indie authors.

Return to In This Issue listing.

NEW & NOTABLE

Kelly Barnhill, Dreadful Young Ladies (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 2/18) Newbery Medal winner Barnhill’s first collection presents nine fantastic stories for adults, infused by her very distinctive, poetic voice, with tales full of fairytale elements, interesting insects, and ladies who refuse to follow the rules, including the title character of the quirkily dystopian novella, ‘‘The Unlicensed Magician’’.

Paolo Bacigalupi & Tobias S. Buckell, The Tangled Lands (Saga 2/18) Noted authors Bacigalupi and Buckell teamed up to create this feudalistic fantasy world, where any use of magic causes the growth of poisonous brambles strangling the land, for two novellas, one by each author, back in 2010. Those two are now joined by two new novellas, again one by each author, further exploring this world of lost glories and a tyrannical regime. ‘‘While each story works on its own individual terms, the collective effect is that of a series of intriguing trailers for a tantalizing epic film.’’ [Gary K. Wolfe]

Brooke Bolander, The Only Harmless Great Thing (Tor.com Publishing 1/18) The story of the Radium Girls, factory workers poisoned by radiation in the early 20th century, gets a strange, tragic twist in this alternate-history fantasy novella, in which the dying women are replaced by elephants, with their own long memories and lore.

Lois McMaster Bujold, Penric’s Fox (Subterranean 2/18) The charming adventures of sorcerer/scholar Penric and his demon Desdemona continue in this fourth novella in this series, set in the world of the Five Gods introduced in The Curse of Chalion. Set after the second volume, Penric and the Shaman, this takes Penric on a visit to Easthome in the Weald, where he gets tangled up in the investigation of a sorceress’ murder. Originally available as an e-book (Spectrum Literary Agency 2016), this is its first appearance in print.

Sue Burke, Semiosis (Tor 2/18) First contact takes a fascinating turn in this SF first novel of biochemistry and the nature of sentience. A human colony seeking a harmonious home struggles on the world Pax, unaware the native plants communicate, and humans will have to find a way to join the conversation to survive. ‘‘A wholly surprising and exceptionally crafted generational story of how these two worlds manipulate each other... a magnetic meditation of biochemistry and humanity.’’ [Adrienne Martini]

S. Jae-Jones, Shadowsong (Wednesday Books 2/18) Music, madness, and the Goblin King return in this powerful young-adult fantasy, the conclusion to the duology begun in the acclaimed Wintersong. Liesl finds life back in the world above harder than she expected, her beloved brother withdrawn – and the borders between worlds seem to be crumbling.

John Kessel, Pride and Prometheus (Saga 2/18) The Regency romance of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice collides with the gothic SF horror of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in this gripping novel, which provides new perspectives on both classics. Unmarried Mary Bennet falls for the mysterious Victor Frankenstein and befriends his Creature, still waiting for his promised bride. ‘‘It is an attempt to yoke together the social vision of Austen and the gothic proto-SF of Mary Shelley, to see what kinds of fields can be plowed with those beasts. (Yeah, yeah, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, except this book isn’t a funny-once stunt.)’’ [Russell Letson]

Nnedi Okorafor, Binti: The Night Masquerade (Tor.com Publishing 1/18) The third novella in the SF trilogy begun in the Hugo and Nebula Award winning Binti. Back on her home planet, violence breaks out and it’s up to Binti to embrace change, and find a way to end the violence. ‘‘A very uplifting book…. The prose is vivid and unadorned, the pacing strong, and the novella as a whole, deeply compelling.’’ [Liz Bourke]

Anjali Sachdeva, All the Names They Used for God (Spiegel & Grau 2/18) A first collection gathering glowing praise, this presents nine stories, three new. Despite a definite literary bent (the published stories originally appeared in literary magazines), many of these varied tales use elements of SF or fantasy to explore humanity’s hopes and fears – and beliefs, whether in gods or science.

Vandanna Singh, Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories (Small Beer 2/10) A noted writer of short SF, Singh offers 14 stories (one original) in this new collection, with tales ranging from near-future to far, space opera to hard SF, and some more experimental works. ‘‘Story, in fact, and how we are defined by it, is really Singh’s grand theme… it’s what makes her one of the most compelling and original voices in recent SF.’’ [Gary K. Wolfe]

E.J. Swift, Paris Adrift (Solaris 2/18) A college student takes a year off in Paris, finds a time portal in the bar where she works, and tries to change the past to prevent the destruction of humanity – only her changes have unexpected consequences. ‘‘Swift’s prose is well crafted, and her characters breathe a sort of gap-year-encounters-larger-than-reality hallucinogenic life.’’ [Liz Bourke]

Jeff VanderMeer, The Strange Bird (MCD X FSG Originals 2/18) VanderMeer expands on the fascinating world of Borne in this painfully beautiful SF novella, which follows a lab-created cross of bird and human who manages to escape her creators, only to find herself in a post-apocalyptic outside world full of more strange creations of science and other dangers. Originally published as an e-book 8/17; this is the first print edition.

Jo Walton, Starlings (Tachyon 2/18) Walton’s first fiction collection has 16 poems, a play, and 20 stories, although Walton herself says that only two are ‘‘actual short stories.’’ The rest are an entertaining mix of experiments, extended jokes, pieces inspired by myths and folklore, and chapters of unwritten novels, often on the light side but also revealing Walton’s distinctive imagination and her interest in the forms stories can take.

Return to In This Issue listing.

TERRY BISSON: THIS MONTH IN HISTORY

April 20, 2022. Mending wall. Uber/Gringo’s SanSelf™ robot wallbuilder rips into panicking Albuquerque suburbs at 2.3 kph, apparently lured off-latitude by a carload of undocumented historians with a souped-up Spanish-speaking TomTom™. POTUS vows Mexico will pay for removal.

April 1, 2076. Poles reverse. Millions worldwide awaken to sound of migratory birds hitting their windows and find their financial records and favorite photos unrecoverable. Bitcoin plunges to $9.95 US.

April 29, 2076. Fill ’er up. Car collectors Q-up at last Indiana 76 for final top-off as gasoline ban spreads to recalcitrant auto states. Free paper maps.

April 6, 2113, Branding abandoned. Justice Dept angrily drops controversial experiment in alternative penalties, citing ‘‘troubling’’ new fashion of RA (Resisting Arrest) brow tattoos, popular with rappers, celebs and discontented teens. April Still Rolling Stone cover called ‘‘last straw.’’

–Terry Bisson

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LOCUS LETTERS

Dear Locus,

I am editing the anthology series Best Horror of the Year (Night Shade Books) and am currently reading for the eleventh volume, covering material published in 2018.

I am looking for stories and poetry from all branches of horror: traditional-supernatural to the borderline, including high-tech sf horror, supernatural stories, psychological horror, dark crime, or anything else that might qualify. This is reprint, so I’m only reading material published in or about to be published in 2018. Deadline is December 15th 2018. Authors should check that their publishers are sending review copies to me as I only request them once. If a book or magazine is coming out after the deadline, I’ll look at galleys or manuscripts.

I will look at e-versions of anthologies and collections if they are navigable and have running heads. Otherwise, I will not read them. I always prefer print, if your book is available that way.

You can query as to whether I have your collection or an anthology/magazine in which you have a story at <datlow@yahoo.com>.

There is a summation of ‘‘the year in horror’’ in the front of the volume. This includes novels, nonfiction, poetry, art books, and ‘‘odds and ends’’– material that doesn’t fit elsewhere but that might interest horror readers. But I must be aware of this material in order to mention it.

Ellen Datlow

Best Horror of the Year Volume Eleven

PMB 391

511 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10011-8436

I regularly read many magazines/webzines that publish horror (Black Static, Dark Discoveries, Cemetery Dance, F&SF, The Dark, Nightmare, and crime digests, etc.) and I receive many anthologies and single-author collections.

Again, ask your publisher to send me the magazine or book. For online publications, e-mail individual files, mentioning on the MS where the story has been published.

If I choose a story you will be informed. For confirmation that I‘ve received something, enclose a self-addressed-stamped postcard and I will let you know the date it arrived.

–Ellen Datlow

Return to In This Issue listing.

OTHER OBITUARIES

Karen Anderson (2009)

Writer KAREN ANDERSON, 85, died March 18, 2018 in Los Angeles. Anderson began publishing work of SF interest with ‘‘The Innocent Arrival’’ in Galaxy (1958), and is best known for novels written in collaboration with her husband Poul Anderson. They co-wrote Roma Mater (1986), Gallicenae (1987), Dahut (1988), and The Dog and the Wolf (1988) in the King of Ys series, and The Golden Horn (1980), The Road of the Sea Horse (1980), and The Sign of the Raven (1980) in the Last Viking series. Some of their story collaborations appeared in The Unicorn Trade (1984). Anderson also published poetry extensively, including the first known science fiction haiku, ‘‘Six Haiku’’, in F&SF in 1962.

June Millichamp ‘‘Karen’’ Kruse was born September 16, 1932 in Erlanger KY. She was active in fandom from her teenage years. In 1950, as high schooler in the Washington DC area, she co-founded a Sherlock Holmes society, ‘‘The Red Circle Society.’’ She joined the Washington Science Fiction Association in 1952, and that year began publishing fanzine Die Zeitschrift fur Vollstandigen Unsinn, later shortened to The Zed. She attended the 1952 Worldcon in Chicago, where she met Poul Anderson (and many others in the SF field). She attended Catholic University for a year before moving to California to join Poul Anderson; they were married in 1953, and remained together until his death in 2001. She became active in California fandom, and was a member of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Association; they gave her a Forry Award for life achievement in 2010. Anderson was legendary in costuming circles, winning numerous prizes over the years, and she continued to publish fanzines, including Goliard, Alif, Calmatema, Vorpal Glass, and assorted single-issue ‘zines. She was the first person to use the term ‘‘filk music’’ deliberately in print (referring to a song by Poul Anderson). She loved theater, and staged many plays and filk performances at conventions. She was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2003. She also published interior artwork and drew fantasy maps, and showed her work at convention art shows.

She is survived by their daughter, Astrid Anderson Bear, her husband Greg Bear, two grandchildren, and her brother and sister-in-law.

MY MOTHER, KAREN ANDERSON by Astrid Anderson Bear

‘‘So what was it like, growing up as the child of Poul and Karen Anderson?’’ Whenever I’m asked, I say, ‘‘It’s all I knew, so I really can’t compare it to anything.’’ But just as a fish knows that water is its home, I know that the worlds of imagination and creativity are mine, thanks to that remarkable couple. They were truly a team, my parents, and with the death of my mother, that team is now completely gone from this Earth, but they live on in their accomplishments and the memories of all who knew them.

My mother was born in Kentucky, but circumstances brought her family to Washington DC while she was in her teens, and she delighted in having the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution available to her. Her love of knowledge had the riches of the world to feast on. I’m not quite sure how she became of aware of science fiction – cruising the library shelves, probably, and she was also a fan of the Buck Rogers comic strip, playacting stories with those characters with her two younger brothers – but she knew she had found her people. She also loved mystery fiction, and while still in high school founded a Baker Street Irregulars scion society, The Red Circle, which I believe is still going.

She attended the 1952 WorldCon in Chicago, where she met up-and-coming SF writer Poul Anderson, and they then proceeded to have that time-honored SF tradition, a long-distance romance. He was in Minneapolis, she was in DC, and they decided that they both really wanted to be on the West Coast, so settled in Berkeley, California, where they were married at a ceremony attended by their good friend Tony Boucher, who was the editor of F&SF at the time.

The greater Bay Area really was a hotbed of SF activity at the time, the mid-1950s and 1960s. Not only was Boucher editing F&SF from there, but the active SF writing community included J. Francis ‘‘Mick’’ McComas, Reg Bretnor, Miriam Allen DeFord, Jack Vance, and later Frank Herbert, Peter Beagle, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Phil Dick, Bob Heinlein, Avram Davidson, Randall Garrett, Bob Silverberg, Terry Carr, and many others. The long running Bay Area SF club, The Elves, Gnomes, and Little Men’s Chowder and Marching Society (Little Men’s for short) was one of the social focal points, along with the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) and the San Francisco Baker Street Irregulars scion society, The Scowrers and the Molly Maguires. So we had a busy life, filled with writers, editors, fans of all sorts. Mother loved these events, and would plunge into the thick of the conversations, both soaking up and delivering knowledge, opinions, and wit.

Another gathering was the poker club called The Outpatients. This took turns being held at players’ houses, starting in the afternoon, with a dinner break, then more card playing after dinner, but winding up by about 9pm, as many of the members didn’t keep late hours. Boucher, McComas, and Bretnor were mainstays of the group, and Mother and Tony had a bit of a competition as who could put together the best dinner.

My parents often had parties at our Orinda house, and she loved being hospitable and welcoming to all who came. Potlucks at other events were another opportunity to cook something marvelous, and her clam chowder for the Little Men’s annual picnic is still remembered.

She loved to experiment with new dishes and try new ingredients and cuisines. So I grew up with a broader view of what food could be than most suburban kids of that era – Asian and South Asian, European and Scandinavian specialties were particular favorites.

And then there was the deer. One New Year’s Day Mother went to a party that my father was too hung over from the night before to care to attend. She came home late in the afternoon saying ‘‘Look what I found!’’ It was a yearling deer that had been hit by a car in the Berkeley hills – not legal to take home, but it was very fresh and still warm she found it, and she hated to see it go to waste. With the help of a neighbor who hunted, it was cleaned and hung in the garage, and she and Tony went to work researching how best to cook this delicacy. The recipe for the result, Venison Sevagram, appears in Cooking Out of This World, the 1973 SFWA cookbook edited by Anne McCaffrey.

She was a talented artist in many fields – she drew (including the maps that appeared in some of my dad’s books), painted, and of course was an accomplished costumer, participating in numerous SF convention masquerades, often taking top prizes. She also took part on a couple of the futuristic fashion shows that got started in the 1960s. She retired from masquerade costuming following the classic presentation we did in 1969 titled, The Bat and Bitten, feeling that it was appropriate to stop at the top of her game in that field.

She was also a writer, publishing some short stories and poems in F&SF and other magazines, as well as a variety of essays and other works in fanzines and apas. She was my dad’s first reader, and her insightful comments were always helpful to him. They loved hashing out plots and worldbuilding together. They collaborated on several works, most notably The King of Ys historical fantasy trilogy, which gave them an excuse to spend several weeks in Brittany researching that region.

Their love of travel and my dad’s worldwide readership took them to many countries, both as tourists and convention guests: highlights were Egypt, England, France, Poland, Germany, Scandinavia, Japan, Greece, and Italy.

They both loved participating in the Contact: Cultures of the Imagination conferences, and she was in her element there, designing aliens and languages, while my dad worked on world building and orbital mechanics.

In 1966, the gatherings that later turned into the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) started happening, and Mother dived into that with enthusiasm. Here her love of history, research, costuming, cooking, and hospitality had a grand field to play on, and we all had a fine time with that for years. She dived deep into heraldry, and earned the title Laurel Queen of Arms, as well as the Order of Pelican, Order of the Laurel, and the title Baroness.

Another passion of both my parents was astronomy, and Mother loved going out with her Celestron telescope to star and planet gaze. My parents were able to attend many moon and shuttle launches on Florida, thanks to Joe Green’s guidance on how to obtain press passes. After Dad died, she chose her home in Tujunga, near Los Angeles, partly for its convenience to the LASFS clubhouse, but also because it was at a high enough elevation that she could see the stars.

She also delighted in doing both plant and bird ID in the field, and many a cross country drive or camping trip would bring a call to stop so she could check out just what that flower or bird might be.

Mother always loved going to conventions, both to see old friends and make new ones. It is especially nice to see so many Facebook posts from folks saying that they appreciated her being so welcoming and friendly to them.

In her later years, Mother’s various ailments made it hard for her to get out much, and she missed the lively social scene she had been such a part of. It’s lovely now to imagine her at the great bar con in the sky, greeting my dad and all the old friends who have gone on ahead.

–Astrid Anderson Bear

•

Author, editor, critic, and historian Peter Nicholls, 78, died March 6, 2018 in Melbourne, Australia. Nicholls created (and edited, as long as his health would allow) The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, arguably the single most essential reference work in the field of SF.

Peter Nicholls (2014)

Nicholls began working on The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction in the mid-’70s. He was general editor of the first version, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction: An Illustrated A to Z (1979), with John Clute as associate editor. That volume won the first Hugo Award for Nonfiction in 1980. He was co-editor of the second edition, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993, with updates published on CD-ROM), with Clute, and it won a Nonfiction Hugo as well. Nicholls was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2000, which curtailed (but did not eliminate) his contributions, so he served as editor emeritus of the third edition (2011), which won a Best Related Book Hugo in 2012; that edition is still being expanded in digital form at <www.sf-encyclopedia.com>, with editors John Clute & David Langford, and Graham Sleight as managing editor.

Peter Douglas Nicholls was born March 8, 1939 in Melbourne. He was an academic specializing in English literature in the ’60s and ’70s, wrote documentaries, did book and movie reviews for BBC radio beginning in the 1974, worked as an editor, and published SF criticism extensively in journals and magazines. He was the first administrator of the Science Fiction Foundation (1971-1977) and edited its magazine Foundation from 1974 to 1978. He edited Science Fiction at Large: A Collection of Essays, by Various Hands, about the Interface between Science Fiction and Reality (1976), collecting essays from a 1975 symposium he organized. With David Langford & Brian M. Stableford, he wrote The Science in Science Fiction (1982), and alone wrote Fantastic Cinema: An Illustrated Survey (1984). In 1968 he went to the US on a Harkness fellowship, and he was an expatriate for the next two decades, living in the US and UK before returning to Australia in 1988.

Nicholls won a Pilgrim Award from the SFRA in 1980, an Eaton Award in 1995, and a Peter McNamara Award in 2006, all for his scholarly contributions. He is survived by wife Clare Coney and their children.

MEETING PETER by Gregory Benford

Appropriately, I met Peter Nicholls in a London pub. He was holding forth with grand generalizations on genre gradations, back to the bar, pint in hand, booming voice filling the room. He quickly asked me what it was like to work with Martin Rees at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, correctly guessing that I was working there on theory for jets emitted from black hole accretion disks. In his brusque Aussie way, Peter kept up with science because he thought it seminal to SF – unlike any other critic I know.

Quickly, Peter always leading the conversation, we got into his latest category used in the Clute-Nicholls Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction: Big Dumb Objects. I didn’t see why they were dumb, meaning don’t need management. Like planets? No, like Ringworld. But even that needed managing because otherwise it would fall into its star, right?

So began our discussion across decades. It culminated in my writing the Bowl of Heaven novels with Larry Niven, with Peter kibitzing (a word I learned from him) all the way. He held, along with C.S. Lewis, that vast, strange landscapes writers should use ordinary characters. Gulliver had to be a common little man and Alice a common little girl, in her Wonderland. I learned much from such instruction.

He was like that: sailing through vast seas of genre knowledge, generous with his ideas, often opinionated and often right, moderating John Clute’s aversion to hard SF with a science fan’s sensibility.

He was also Australia’s first outright Hugo winner – a bright man as well as the gruff-voiced life of the party. Visiting his and Clare’s house was the high point of my 1999 Worldcon guest-of-honorship.

Peter aged well. He held up strongly against Parkinson’s, holding it at bay for 18 years – and it never defeated his stubborn spirit. I shall miss him terribly.

–Gregory Benford

•

Mary Rosenblum (2007)

Writer MARY ROSENBLUM, 65, died March 11, 2017 when the small plane she was piloting crashed near La Center WA. She lived in Canby OR.

Mary Freeman was born June 27, 1952 in Levittown NY. She attended Reed College, graduating with a biology degree. She began publishing SF with ‘‘For a Price’’ (1990), and notable stories include Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist ‘‘One Good Juror’’ (1997, with James Sarafin), Hugo Award finalist ‘‘Gas Fish’’ (1996), Tiptree Memorial Award finalist ‘‘The Eye of God’’ (1999), Nebula Award finalist ‘‘Night Wind’’ (2008), and Sidewise Award winner ‘‘Sacrifice’’ (2008). Some of her short fiction was collected in Synthesis and Other Virtual Realities (1996) and Water Rites (2007).

Her novels include Compton Crook Award winner The Drylands (1993), Chimera (1993), The Stone Garden (1994), and Horizons (2006). She also wrote mysteries under the name Mary Freeman, worked as a medical researcher, and taught cheesemaking. Though she came to flying late in life – she earned her pilot’s license at age 57 – she was an avid flier, and a past president of the Oregon Pilots Association.

MARY ROSENBLUM by Gardner Dozois

Mary Rosenblum, tragically killed in a plane crash a few weeks ago, was one of my students in a Clarion West class I taught, and went on to become one of the most prolific short-story writers of the ’90s, being an award finalist several times, and writing one of the earliest (and still among the best) series about the effects of global climate change with her Drylands stories. Like Kate Wilhelm, she too wrote mystery novels, under the name of Mary Freeman, and, also like Kate, she invested an enormous amount of her vast energy, enthusiasm, and shrewd practical knowledge of the marketplace into mentoring and workshopping with new writers, both in person and in an online mentoring program she created and ran for many years. Like Kate, Mary Rosenblum’s effect as mentor, adviser, and inspiration on generations of new writers can hardly be overestimated.

–Gardner Dozois

•

Scientist and author STEPHEN HAWKING, 76, died March 14, 2018 at home in Cambridge, England. Hawking was a brilliant physicist, whose many accomplishments include the discovery of ‘‘Hawking radiation,’’ the energy that emerges from black holes – a discovery that marked a turning point in modern physics. Hawking was also a popularizer of science, famous for bestselling non-fiction book A Brief History of Time (1988). He also co-wrote five middle-grade SF novels with his daughter Lucy Hawking, beginning with Golden Duck Award finalist George’s Secret Key to the Universe (2007, with Christophe Galfard).

Stephen William Hawking was born January 8, 1942 in Oxford, England. He attended University College at Oxford, where he studied math and physics and became fascinated by cosmology. He moved to Cambridge for graduate school, and earned his PhD in 1966. In 1963 he was diagnosed with ALS, with doctors estimating he had fewer than three years left to live. He proved to have a rare variant of the disease that progressed more slowly, and until 1974 was able to feed himself and move around under his own power, albeit with difficulty. While the disease eventually reduced his mobility until he could only move his eyes and flex a finger, he continued to communicate with a computerized speech synthesizer and remained mobile in a motorized wheelchair. His illness didn’t stop him from traveling the globe, and he visited all the continents, including Antarctica. In 2007 he took a parabolic flight so he could experience weightlessness, explaining that, ‘‘I want to show that people need not be limited by physical handicaps as long as they are not disabled in spirit.’’

Hawking married Jane Wilde in 1965; they separated in 1990. Her book about their relationship, Traveling to Infinity: My Life with Stephen (2007) became the basis for a film about Hawking, The Theory of Everything (2014). He married his nurse Elaine Mason in 1995; they divorced in 2006. Hawking is survived by three children from his first marriage.

•

Writer BILL CRIDER, 76, died February 12, 2018 at home in Alvin TX of cancer. Crider was best known as a crime and mystery writer, but he also wrote some works of SF/F/H interest, including horror novels Keepers of the Beast (1988), Goodnight, Moom (1989), Blood Dreams (1989), Rest in Peace (1990), and Just before Dark (1990) under pen name Jack MacLane. He also wrote several books with speculative elements for younger readers, including A Vampire Named Fred (1990) and the Mike Gonzo series, notably Golden Duck Award winner Mike Gonzo and the UFO Terror (1997). His alternate history "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" (2015) won a Sidewise Award.

Crider was active in Texas fandom, and made his last public appearance at the World Fantasy Convention in San Antonio in November 2017. He wrote numerous crime and mystery novels and series, as well as Westerns, and wrote some books under house names Jack Buchanan and Nick Carter.

Crider was born July 28, 1941 in Mexia TX and attended the University of Texas at Austin, earning a BA in 1963, and got his MA at Texas State University, Denton in 1967. He earned his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin in 1972, and was an English professor at Howard Payne University from 1971-83 before becoming chair of the English department at Alvin Community College. In 2002 he retired to write full-time. He married Judy Stutts in 1965 (she predeceased him in 2014), and they had a daughter and son, who survive him.

Return to In This Issue listing.

EDITORIAL MATTERS

Welcome to our 50th anniversary issue! We cobbled together some kind notes from friends and colleagues as a centerpiece, but I want to take a moment to thank our readers for their support. We put in the work to put the magazine together, but without our readers, the work has no value. Thank you all for your ongoing interest and love for the field, and for your support of Locus. So far, so good!

This 50th year has at times seemed either eternally distant or rushing toward me at a breathtaking pace. It comes along with my own 15th anniversary here at Locus, and almost completes a decade since Charles died. We’ve weathered a recession, a move from the house we were ensconced in for almost 40 years, and now we’re facing a change industry-wide in advertising that is gutting our income streams. Forgive us the constant crowdfunding and pleading for donations; it’s our best chance to survive and I’d like to get at least another decade out of this old rag. A special thank you to those of you who have pledged support for the magazine by making donations or signing up for our Patreon. If you would like to show financial support for Locus, all the information can be found at <locusmag.com/donate>. As our current lease wraps up, the building manager is holding firm to a 50% raise in our terms, so we are looking for a new location and will need to raise funds to help cover the move. If you have any skills as a grant writer and would like to help us put together some proposals, we are also looking for volunteer or very affordable help in that arena.

Karen & Michael Ward

VISITORS WITH GIFTS

Karen & Michael Ward came by recently to drop off their almost complete run of Locus through issue 600. We normally can’t pay to ship these when people offer them back to us, but since they are locals, they brought them in themselves. I’m hoping this will allow us to complete a full run to send out for digitization. We didn’t have more than one full run that wasn’t bound into volumes, and once this deadline is over I’ll see if we have what we need to start that. Thanks, Karen & Michael!

LOCUS POLL DEADLINE

Tax Day is coming, and along with it the deadline for voting in the Locus Poll & Survey. It can be found at <locusmag.com/2018-locus-poll-and-survey/>, and there’s a big graphic for it on the homepage. Do not delay, vote now! We want to know what you thought about the books and stories and players of 2017. It takes only a few minutes, and your opinion is important and forms the results of the Locus Awards. The awards will be presented during the Locus Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, on June 23, 2018 at the Best Western Executive Inn, right across the street from MoPOP, which hosts the SF and Fantasy Hall of Fame and has some great exhibits right now including Infinite Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy: Worlds of Myth and Magic, Star Trek: Exploring New Worlds, Scared to Death, Marvel: Universe of Super Heroes, and Indie Game Revolution. Get your ticket and come to Seattle! It’s beautiful in June.

THIS ISSUE/NEXT ISSUE

Along with our interviews with Jeff VanderMeer and Tananarive Due, we’ve got spotlights on upcoming author Sarah Pinsker and series author Michelle Sagara, the center layout with anecdotes and blurbs for our anniversary, plus coverage of Stokercon and FOGcon. I was able to make it out to FOGcon for a half day to meet and interview Ada Palmer, who is smart and engaging. Francesca went to ICFA and interviewed Theodora Goss, and we’ve got Jeffrey Ford and Nick Harkaway in the can so look for two of those coming up in our next issue. I’ll be at Writers of the Future and then Nebula Awards, so say hi if you’re there!

–Liza Groen Trombi

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PHOTO LIST

Sam J. Miller (FM)

T. Kingfisher (FM)

Peter Clines (F/CNC)

Chandler Klang Smith (F/ECT)

Kate Wilhelm (REH)

Kate Wilhelm (F)

Virginia Bergin (F)

Fritz Foy (F)

Devi Pillai (FM)

Patrick Nielsen Hayden (FM)

Irene Gallo (AS)

Sheila Williams, C.E. McGill, Rebecca Kuang, Arthur Davis, Rick Wilber, Alexandra Barr, Brittney Hubley (FM)

Nick Mamatas (FM)

Nalo Hopkinson (F/BC)

Juliet Marillier (F/CS)

Jack Skillingstead (LT)

Sally Wiener Grotta, Malka Older, David Walton, Lawrence Schoen (F/TMB)

Jeff VanderMeer (FM)

Kameron Hurley (F)

Tananarive Due (AS)

Michelle Sagara (F/GNM)

Jenny Cambell & Ramsey Campbell (F/KMI)

Caitlín R. Kiernan & Kathryn A. Pollnac (ED)

Victor LaValle, Alan Baxter, Paul Tremblay (ED)

Ellen Datlow, Linda Addison, Lisa Morton (ED)

Thomas Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson (ED)

Joe Borrelli, Tim Waggoner (ED)

Patrick McGrath, Danel Olson (ED)

Adam Bolivar, Derrick Hussey (ED)

Craig Engler, Scott Edelman (ED)

Becky Spratford, Rose O’Keefe (ED)

Christopher Garden, Jaime Levine, James Moore (ED)

StokerCon Winners (F/KMI)

Marge Simon, Linda Addison, John Palisano (ED)

Chris Bennet, Rena Mason (ED)

Kerry Ellis, Eva Folsom (AS)

Heather McDougal, Jude Feldman (AS)

Julia Dvorin, Vylar Kaftan, Hal Heydt, Jed Hartman (AS)

Chris Cornell, Cath Schaff-Stump, Anne Leonard, Caitlin Seal (AS)

Ada Palmer, Andrea Hairston, Crystal Huff (AS)

Cathy Hindersinn, Lynne M. Thomas, Josh Pearce, Juliette Wade (AS)

Rebecca Gomez Farrell, Dominica Phetteplace (AS)

Madeleine E. Robins, Cliff Winnig, Ellen Klages (AS)

Laura Blackwell, Cassie Alexander, Naru Sundar, Marie Brennan (AS)

Megan O’Keefe, Effie Seiberg, Karen Rochnik, E.A. Foley (AS)

Nancy Jane Moore, Brenda W. Clough (AS)

Jeannie Warner, Karen Williams, Pat Murphy, Chaz Brenchley, Alene Kercheval (AS)

Kathryn Wilham (AS)

Sarah Pinsker (F/KNO)

Kate Wilhelm & Damon Knight (MKT)

Kate Wilhelm & Damon Knight (BG)

Kate Wilhelm (CNB)

Karen Anderson (F/KNB)

Peter Nicholls (DGH)

Mary Rosenblum (F/JMF)

Karen & Michael Ward (AS)

Photo Listing: (FM) Francesca Myman, (F/CNC) Colleen Cooper, (F/ECT) Eric Taxier, (REH) Rachel E. Holmen, (AS) Arley Sorg, (F/BC) Bill Clemente, (F/CS) Cat Sparks, (LT) Liza Groen Trombi, (F/TMB) Tim Burke, (F/GNM) Glenne MacKay, (F/KMI) Karen & Michael Iacobbo, (ED) Ellen Datlow, (F/KNO) Karen Osborne, (MKT) Mark Tiedemann, (BG) Beth Gwinn, (CNB) Charles N. Brown, (F/KNB) Kenn Bates, (DGH) David G. Hartwell, (F/JMF) Jim Fiscus, (F) Furnished.

AD LIST

Clarion

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Small Beer

Titan

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Tor

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MASTHEAD

CHARLES N. BROWN

Founder

(1968-2009)

LIZA GROEN TROMBI

Editor-in-Chief

KIRSTEN GONG-WONG

Managing Editor

MARK R. KELLY

Locus Online Editor

CAROLYN F. CUSHMAN

TIM PRATT

Senior Editors

FRANCESCA MYMAN

Design Editor

ARLEY SORG

Associate Editor

LAUREL AMBERDINE

JOSH PEARCE

Assistant Editors

BOB BLOUGH

Editorial Assistant

JONATHAN STRAHAN

Reviews Editor

TERRY BISSON

LIZ BOURKE

GARDNER DOZOIS

LILA GARROTT

AMY GOLDSCHLAGER

RICH HORTON

KAMERON HURLEY

RUSSELL LETSON

ADRIENNE MARTINI

COLLEEN MONDOR

GARY K. WOLFE

Contributing Editors

ALVARO ZINOS-AMARO

Roundtable Blog Editor

WILLIAM G. CONTENTO

Computer Projects

Locus, The Magazine of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Field (ISSN 0047-4959), is published monthly, at $7.50 per copy, by Locus Publications, 1933 Davis Street, Suite 297, San Leandro CA 94577. Please send all mail to: Locus Publications, 1933 Davis Street, Suite 297, San Leandro CA 94577. Telephone (510) 339-9196; (510) 339-9198. FAX (510) 339-9198. E-mail: <locus@locusmag.com>. Individual subscriptions in the US: $36.00 for six issues, $63.00 for 12 issues, $114.00 for 24 issues via periodical mail. First class individual subscriptions in the US: $45.00 for six issues, $76.00 for 12 issues, $136.00 for 24 issues. In Canada: $46.00 for 6 issues, $77.00 for 12 issues, $140.00 for 24 issues. Individual international subscriptions are $53.00 for six issues, $100.00 for 12 issues, $168.00 for 24 issues. Digital-only subscriptions are $27.00 for six issues, $48.00 for 12 issues. Print plus digital subscriptions (available only to individuals) are the print price plus a $1.00 extra per issue. Institutional subscriptions are $4.00 extra per year. Make checks payable to Locus Publications. All subscriptions payable directly in US funds only. Overseas checks must be drawn on a US bank and include computer encoding numbers at bottom. When converting from periodical mail to first class delivery, convert all remaining issues on your present subscription ($1.00 per issue). The later date on the mailing label is that of the last issue on your present subscription. If you change your address, please notify us immediately. Periodical mail is not forwarded. We subtract one issue from your subscription for each returned copy. We keep expired addresses on file, so tell us if your subscription is a renewal or completely new. British Subscription Agent: Fantast Three, 23 Listers Road, Upwell, Wisbech, Cambs PE14 9BW, UK. Japanese Subscription Agent: Yoshio Kobayashi, 4-32-6 Daizawa, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, 155-0032, Japan; Australian Subscription Agent: Justin Ackroyd, Slow Glass Books, PO Box 1280, Carlton, Victoria, 3053, Australia. Bookseller discounts available. Advertising rates on request. We take no responsibility for unsolicited submissions. Printed in the United States. Periodical postage paid at San Leandro, California, and all additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Locus Publications, 1933 Davis Street, Suite 297, San Leandro CA 94577. © 2018 by Locus Publications.

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Table of Contents

Cover

In This Issue

Jeff VanderMeer: Blur the Lines

Tananarive Due: Sense of Mission

Celebrating 50 Years of Locus

Kate Wilhelm (1928 - 2018)

Main Stories

The Data File

People & Publishing

Commentary: Kameron Hurley: Writing is Hard, and That’s OK

Short Fiction Reviews by Gardner Dozois

Short Fiction Reviews by Rich Horton

Reviews by Gary K. Wolfe

Reviews by Liz Bourke

Reviews by Adrienne Martini

Reviews by Carolyn Cushman

Reviews by Divers Hands: Russell Letson, Colleen Mondor & Lila Garrott

Audiobook Reviews by Amy Goldschlager

Photo Story: Galactic Philadelphia

Spotlight on: Michelle Sagara

Spotlight on: Sarah Pinsker

2017 British Book Summary

StokerCon

FOGcon

Magazines Received: February

Books Received: February

British Books Received: January

Bestsellers

New & Notable

Terry Bisson: This Month in History

Locus Letters

Other Obituaries

Editorial Matters

Photo List and Ad List

Masthead