Locus Online

The Legacy of Arniston House, T.L. Huchu (Tor 978-1-250-88309-4, $29.99, 400pp, hc) November 2024. Cover by Leo Nickolls.

When I sat down the week before Christ­mas to review The Legacy of Arniston House, the latest in T.L. Huchu’s Ed­inburgh Nights series, I had all four of his books stacked up beside my computer. I began reading the series just after Thanksgiving and quickly blew through the adventures of ...Read More

We Lived on the Horizon, Erika Swyler (Atria 9781668049594, $28.99, 336pp, hc) January 2025. Cover design by Laywan Kwan.

The ingredients of Erika Swyler’s We Lived On the Horizon are familiar enough: embodied AI, a highly stratified society, a postapocalyptic city os­sifying from techno-utopia to classist nightmare. But Swyler’s combination feels fresh; the main characters here move almost, though not entirely, outside the “real” plot, the revolution planners and ...Read More

The Year’s Best Science Fiction on Earth 2, Allan Kaster, ed. (Infinivox 978-1-88461-276-3, $19.99, 275pp, tp) December 2024. Cover by Maurizio Manzieri.

With anthology series that focus on robots and AI, and on space and time, I was surprised to come across Infinivox and Allan Kaster doing a series about science fiction on Earth itself; it seemed too mundane. Kaster addresses this in the first line of his introduction, ...Read More

The Garden, Nick Newman (Putnam’s 978-0593717738, hardcover, 400pp, $29.00) February 2025

Any SF reader worthy of the name must be conversant with The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, helmed by John Clute, et al. An online treasure house of knowledge, continuously updated and freely accessible, it’s a reference work I have relied on and quoted from innumerable times.

Less well-known is that team’s Encyclopedia of Fantasy. This mammoth ...Read More

Cast of Wonders 12/3/24 Strange Horizons 11/18/24, 12/9/24 Hexagon Winter ’24

Alexander Hewitt defies genre horror expecta­tions in “Emily” from the December Cast of Wonders. In it, a queer couple who are trying to adopt buy an old doll in anticipation of their new family member, only for the doll to begin to exhibit some… alarming behaviors. The narrator at first attributes these spooky goings-on to her partner ...Read More

We’re excited to share our picks for the top new releases in the SF, Fantasy, Horror, and YA fields this week! If you’re looking to keep up-to-date on future videos, and support what we do, come by and subscribe to our YouTube channel! We release a new video every week and we’re always looking for new books for you to add to your growing TBR pile!

  ...Read More

The Bookseller has announced the shortlists for the 2025 British Book Awards. Titles and authors of genre interest include:

The Frank R. Paul Awards, honoring “outstanding work in book and magazine cover art,” are open to submissions until April 15, 2025.

Awards administrator Frank Wu writes,

Galaxy Raiders: Abyss, Ian Douglas (Harper Voyager 978-0063205741, trade paperback, 400pp, $18.99) February 2025

I think most folks are well aware of how SF/F/H concepts trickle out into the public domain, and percolate through the minds of citizenry who might never have read a relevant book or even experienced a relevant media presentation. Take “teleportation,” for instance. Once an abstruse notion that meant nothing to the average citizen of ...Read More

Analog 11-12/24

“That Far, Uncharted Ocean” by Auston Haber­shaw in the November/December issue of Analog features recurring characters and a world appear­ing in previous Analog stories by the author. Amos Tambly is recruited by the Thraad, snaillike aliens, who want to win a sailing regatta but have no knowledge of boats and are afraid of the ocean. Amos agrees, but ultimately learns that the Thraad intend to wipe ...Read More

We are so happy to release our fifth episode of The Storytellers, our series of Zoom-recorded author readings! Previously, we had Daniel Abraham read ‘The Wind’. Today we are pleased to show Henry Lien reading from the first chapter of Peasprout Chen: Future Legend of Skate and Sword, the first in his middle grade series revolving around a sport of his own invention combining kung fu and figure skating: ...Read More