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Nominations are now open for the 2026 Hugo Awards, the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book, and the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. These awards will be presented at LACon V, the 84th World Science Fiction Convention, to be held August 27-31, 2026 in Anaheim CA. The convention says,

Emails are going out to eligible nominators (those who became a member of LAcon V by January 31, 2026, …Read More

SF author Jeffrey A. Carver, 76, died February 6, 2026 in Massachusetts. He suffered multiple strokes and entered a coma after a lung transplant in July 2025.

Jeffrey A. Carver was born August 25, 1949 in Cleveland OH. He studied creative writing at Brown University and marine affairs at University of Rhode Island. His debut novel, Seas of Ernathe, began the space opera Star Rigger series, including Star Rigger's Way …Read More

The 2026 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF), which will send a North American fan to MetropolCon, the 2026 Eurocon in Berlin Germany, has selected its nominees. Voting has begun, and all votes must reach the administrators by 11:59 p.m. British/Irish time on April 7, 2026.

The candidates for this year are Lisa Hertel and Katrina Kat Templeton. Voting is open to any individual with their donation of £3 or $4 to …Read More

The Climate Fiction Prize has announced its 2026 longlist. Founded by Rose Goddard, Imran Khan, and Leo Barasi and supported by Climate Spring, the prize seeks to celebrate the most inspiring novels tackling the climate crisis.

Shortlisted titles and authors of genre interest include:

• Dusk, Robbie Arnott (Astra US / Vintage UK)
• Every Version of You,Grace Chan (Affirm US / Verve UK)
• Helm,Sarah Hall (Mariner US / Faber …Read More

The Audio Publishers Association (APA) has announced the finalists for the 2026 Audie Awards, recognizing distinction in audiobooks and spoken-word entertainment. Finalists of genre interest include:

Audiobook of the Year

• Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins, narrated by Jefferson White (Scholastic Audio)
• King of Ashes, S.A. Cosby, narrated by Adam Lazarre-White (Macmillan Audio)
• Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy, narrated by, Katherine Littrell, Saskia Maarleveld, Cooper Mortlock & Steve West …Read More

The Odyssey Writing Workshop has announced the application deadline for the 2026 Your Personal Odyssey Writing Workshop (YPO). The remote program began in 2022 and is an intensive, one-on-one workshop experience in which students may pick a six-week, 12-week, or 18-week pace on writing topics of their choice and assignments of their own designs.

The six-week session begins June 1, 2026. The 12-week session begins August 12, 2026. The 18-week …Read More

Author Ayida Shonibar and illustrator and animator Aude Abou Nasr are the 2025 recipients of the Otherwise Fellowship (formerly the Tiptree Fellowship).

Each winner receives a $500 grant and work produced as a result of this support will be recognized and promoted by the Otherwise Award, which celebrates works of speculative fiction that imagine new futures by exploring and expanding our understanding of gender roles. Through the Fellowship program, the …Read More

Author and editor M. CHRISTIAN died in the emergency room January 1, 2026.

M. Christian was born in Whittier, CA. They were the managing editor at Future of Sex, and they published several novels, collections, anthologies, and works of short fiction, predominantly erotica. Their novels include vampire thriller The Very Bloody Marys (2007), gay horror Me2 (2008) and Finger's Breadth (2011), erotic SF Painted Doll (2014), and Running Dry (2006) …Read More

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced Gay Haldeman as the winner of the 2026 Kevin O'Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award. The award is presented for outstanding work on behalf of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

The announcement notes, among other things, that Haldeman was a founder of the University of Iowa Science Fiction League in 1975 and the club secretary of the Washington …Read More

SF and mystery writer, reviewer, and essayist James Sallis, 81, died January 27, 2026 in Phoenix AZ of a long-term illness.

James Sallis was born December 21, 1944 in Helena AR. He taught at Phoenix College, Otis College, and the Piper Center. He published well over 100 pieces of speculative short fiction, beginning with Kazoo (1967) in New Worlds, a magazine he went on to briefly co-edit. Others have appeared …Read More

On February 2, 2026, Neil Gaiman released a blog post denying the accusations of sexual misconduct made against him, the first public statement in almost a year from the author regarding the allegations, according to Variety.

As covered earlier by Locus, in August and September 2024, five women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Gaiman. In January 2025, New York magazine published a cover story on the allegations, …Read More

On January 24, 2026, DreamHaven Books owner Greg Ketter visited the site of the murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis MN and protested at an intersection guarded by ICE. ICE threw several canisters of tear gas into the crowd. According to a Facebook post written by Ketter,

I had no gas mask and I don't know what made me stay but I did. And I was screaming even louder.

I …Read More

The 2025 Aurealis Awards shortlist, recognizing the best in Australian speculative fiction, has been announced.

Best Science Fiction Novel

• Letters to Our Robot Son, Cadance Bell (Ultimo)
• Arborescence, Rhett Davis (Fleet UK)
• Volatile Memory, Seth Haddon (Tordotcom)
• Dark Sands, J.S. Harman (self-published)
• Wastelands, Samira Lloyd (Arianhrod)
• All We Have, Tony Shillitoe (Millswood)

Best Science Fiction Novella

• Quiet Like Fire, Cameron Cooper (Stories Rule)
• Photo in the …Read More

The five-title shortlist for the annual Tähtivaeltaja Award has been announced, honoring the best science fiction published in Finland. The award is sponsored by Helsingin Science Fiction Seura (Helsinki Science Fiction Society). The nominees are:

• Königsbergin kyky rakastaa [La capacidad de amar del señor Königsberg], Juan Jacinto Muñoz-Rengel, tr. Satu Ekman (Moebius)
• Kesuura, Marisha Rasi-Koskinen (Schildts & Söderströms)
• Joutsenlaulu, Johanna Sinisalo (Otava)
• Gliff, Ali Smith, tr. Kristiina Drews (Kosmos)
…Read More

Welcome to the LocusRecommended Reading List…

We saw some fabulous books come out last year and are so pleased to let you know about them! Our recommendations are compiled annually by the Locus reviewers, editors, and columnists; outside reviewers; and other professionals and well-known critics of genre fiction and non-fiction. This year we looked at over 1,000 titles between short and long fiction.

Note: we know there will be books …Read More

Locus is thrilled to announce two of the field's talented and award-winning authors, Tananarive Due and Stephen Graham Jones, will be headlining the 2026 Locus Awards as Guests of Honor this May. Novelists Due (The Reformatory, a NYT Notable Book) and Jones (The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, NYT Bestseller) will grace the stage in Berkeley, California, on May 30, 2026, as we celebrate the science fiction, fantasy, and horror …Read More

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the preliminary ballot for the 2025 Bram Stoker Awards.

Superior Achievement in a Novel

• Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, Kylie Lee Baker (Mira; Hodder & Stoughton as Bat Eater)
• Wake Up and Open Your Eyes, Clay McLeod Chapman(Quirk)
• Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix(Berkley)
• King Sorrow, Joe Hill(William Morrow)
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga)
• Angel Down, …Read More

The American Library Association (ALA) announced the winners of the Youth Media Awards at a press conference held on January 26, 2026 in Chicago IL and virtually.

The Alex Awards for the ten best adult books that appeal to teen audiences went to multiple works and authors of genre interest, including:

• Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert, Bob the Drag Queen (Gallery)
• The Favorites, Layne Fargo (Random House)
• The Whyte …Read More

John Mecklin, editor-in-chief of theBulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has announced the winners of theBulletin's first short fiction contest, Write Before Midnight. Judge Kim Stanley Robinson declared a seven-way tie between:

• The Hard Problem , Beston Barnett
• Countdown , Alex Dabertin
• What the People Want , Patrick Hutson
• A Modest Briefing , Robert Levinson
• Good Boy , Kerri Brady Long
• On Behalf of …Read More

Vector 298 (Nov 2023) is now unsealed: bit.ly/Vector298

As the guest editors Stewart Baker and Phoenix Alexander write in their editorial:

The articles in this issue of Vector work in both directions, teasing out the ways archives and libraries can be informed by SFF works while also exploring the assumptions SFF works make about libraries and archives.

In “The Librarian, The Computer, The Android, and Big Data,” Nichole Nomura and Quinn Dombrowski ask the question of whether librarians exist in the future of Star Trek—certainly a topic of relevance to today’s “AI search” upheavals. In “The Queen a Librarian Dreams of,” Kathryn Yelinek examines the connection between information literacy and restorative justice in the fantasy world of Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue. 

Next up are a pair of trips through fictional archives. In “Archives, Information, and Fandom,” Tom Ue and James Munday consider how the Halliday Journals from the world of Ready Player One present the impacts of (mis)direction and information surplus on researchers. Grace Catherine Greiner’s “Finding Nothing Can be Finding Something” explores the capital-A Archives in Patrick Rothfuss’s Kingkiller Chronicles, with its interest in medievalisms, access, and “simultaneous bookishness and orality.”

Hopping back to libraries, Guangzhou Lyu’s “Library of Disassembled Past” takes a look at a floating library in China Mieville’s The Scar, exploring how libraries can serve as places of “deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation.” In “Magic and Critical Librarianship,” Ellie Campbell interrogates the ways libraries and other memory institutions can institutionalise racism, colonialism, misogyny, and homophobia, as shown in three fantasy short stories. And the last article in the issue, Monica Evans’s “You Are the Library,”considers how digital games can engage players in “library-like mechanics,” drawing on the long history of the value of information and exploration in game design.

Whether you’re a librarian thinking about installing a science fiction reading room, a fantasy novelist looking for worldbuilding nuggets for your next doorstopper about nautical librarians, a SFF academic who’s intrigued by archives concepts in games, or just someone who’s stopped by the information desk of this editorial to ask where the metaphorical toilets are, we hope you’ll enjoy your time with the insightful explorations of libraries, archives, and the future of information that make up this issue of Vector!

Cover by Kalina Winska. Original artwork title: The ethereal and eternal contest, with no winners and no losers, occasional bursts of anger, frustration, and perhaps…shame; waves of humility are often too weak to reach the edge of the world. (graphite, acrylic paint, gouache, and ink on wood panel, 36 x 48 inches, 2020).