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James by Percival Everett (Knopf) is the winner of the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year 2024, and fantasy novel Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (Random House Children’s Books) is the winner for Children’s Book of the Year.

Shortlisted titles are nominated by Barnes and Noble booksellers. The winner was announced on November 15, 2024.

For more, see the Barnes and Noble website.

While you are here, please take ...Read More

MILESTONES

ROY GRAHAM, K ARSE­NAULT RIVERA, and SASCHA STRONACH are now represent­ed by Arley Sorg of kt literary.

LAURA BLACKWELL is now represented by Jake Lovell of Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

AWARDS

JOHN HORNOR JACOBS received the Heasley Prize for Fiction, presented October 22, 2024 at his alma mater, Lyon College in AR.

BOOKS SOLD

TIM LEBBON sold folk horror novel Secret Lives of the Dead to Cath Trechman ...Read More

Author, actor, critic, and filmmaker Tim Sullivan, 76, died November 10, 2024 in hospice care in Newport News VA.

Timothy Robert Sullivan was born June 9, 1948 in Bangor ME. He studied literature and got his degree at Florida Atlantic University, and spent time in Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Southern California.

He began publishing SF with “Tachyon Rage” in 1977 (as Timothy Robert Sullivan). “Zeke” (1981) was a Nebula Awards ...Read More

Time magazine has released a list of 100 Must-Read Books of 2024. Works of genre interest include:

• Ghostroots, ’Pemi Aguda (Norton)
• The Book Censor’s Library, Bothayna Al-Essa (Restless)
• Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino (Farrar, Straus, Giroux)
• Your Utopia, Bora Chung (Algonquin)
• You Glow in the Dark, Liliana Colanzi (New Directions)
• A Sunny Place for Shady People, Mariana Enríquez (Hogarth)
• James, Percival Everett (Doubleday)
• The Bright

...Read More

Author Bruce Boston, 81, died November 11, 2024. He was best known as a poet, but was also a prolific prose writer. He was the recipient of the first Grand Master award presented by the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA) in 1999.

Bruce David Boston was born July 16, 1943 in Chicago IL and grew up in Southern California. He moved to the Bay Area in 1961 and attended UC ...Read More

The winners of the second Fishing Fortress Science Fiction Awards, honoring the best in Chinese SF writing, were announced on November 9, 2024.

Sci-Fi Master Achievement

• Han Song

Sci-Fi Promoter Achievement

• San Feng

Sci-Fi Educator Achievement

• Li Guangyi

Sci-Fi Publisher Achievement

• Yang Feng

Sci-Fi Translator Achievement

• Li Keqin

Sci-Fi Academy Award

• Yan Feng

Marco Polo Award

• Francesco Verso

Best Novel

• Once Upon a Time in Nanjing, Tianrui Shuofu

Best

...Read More

A.D. Sui is a Ukrainian-born, queer, disabled science fiction writer, and the author of THE DRAGONFLY GAMBIT and the forthcoming Erewhon novel, THE IRON GARDEN SUTRA (2026). She is a failed academic, retired fencer, and coffee enthusiast. Her short fiction has appeared in Augur, Fusion Fragment, HavenSpec, and other venues. When not wrangling her two dogs you can find her on every social media platform as @thesuiway – https://thesuiway.ca/

Jean-Paul L. Garnier is the owner of Space Cowboy Books bookstore and publishing house, producer of Simultaneous Times Podcast (2023 Laureate Award Winner, BSFA, Ignyte, and British Fantasy Award Finalist), and editor of the SFPA’s Star*Line magazine. He is also the deputy editor-in-chief of Worlds of IF & Galaxy magazines. In 2024 he won the Laureate Award for Best Editor. He has written many books of poetry and science fiction. https://spacecowboybooks.com/

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JPG – The Dragonfly Gambit has all of the elements of space opera: a big story, politics, empire, worldbuilding, etc., but unlike most modern space operas the book is short – how did you manage to create such a large-scale story in so few words, and what are your feelings on space opera as a sub-genre?

A.D. S – First, thank you so much! I want to say that space opera has a long-running tradition of glorifying empires. They’re almost the natural default government system in far-future science fiction, which positions them as a sort of inevitability. But historically, we know this isn’t true. Empires fall all the time. That’s the whole point. So, I really wanted to focus on a time of an empire falling.

As far as the structure goes, I can’t remember who said it, it might have been one of my agency siblings, but in a novel, each scene fights for its right to exist. In a short story, every sentence does. A novella is somewhere in between, so my editing wasn’t as ruthless as it would have been for a short story, but I was definitely focusing on each sentence delivering either character development or new information, and preferably both. Also, as much as it is a space opera, it also has *one* location where most of the action takes place. So, I could really go into a lot of detail about the world/order of things by describing this one place instead of jumping between locations.  

JPG – One of the themes in the book is sacrifice and martyrdom, sacrifice being an arcane tradition to the culture in the book – can you speak about the nature of sacrifice and weighing individual characters against large-scale problems?

A.D. S – It’s a bit of a pipe dream to think that one person can shift the tides of history. I don’t think anyone is that special. It’s one of the reasons why, as a genre, science fiction and fantasy are moving away from, or challenging, the Chosen One narrative. But how often do you see a disabled protagonist who is a woman, in her thirties, and by every marker, a failure, be The Chosen One? That was fun to write, and yes, very self-indulgent. 

Now, sacrifice and martyrdom were two themes that felt natural when having a conversation about militaries. Martyrdom is baked into military culture, you can’t escape it. Historically, militaries uphold and immortalize those who lose their lives in combat. We label these people as heroes while simultaneously treating them terribly while they’re still alive or if they remained alive (see the utter lack of any decent veterans’ services). It’s easier to herald someone as a hero than to actually treat them as such. There is a tension in there between the shine of heroism, and the loss of life and the absolute meaninglessness of it while it’s still there. 

JPG – Many of the characters are fighter pilots, and there some epic dog fights in the novella. Can you speak about writing action scenes in space?

A.D. S – Oh, so much fun! I am notoriously not great when it comes to writing action scenes and things get even trickier in space. Where is up in space? Who knows, not me. There was a lot of ‘paperclip flying over my laptop’ involved in developing those. 

Fun fact: since there is no air resistance in space those fighters don’t need to be aerodynamic at all. They can just be cubes. That’s a fun thought! 

JPG – The book is written in a casual tone which emphasizes the confidence of the protagonist, Nez. Can you speak about her self-assuredness amidst disability and being ostracized? 

A.D. S – That’s my Eastern European sense of humor coming through. The logic behind gallows humor goes as such: if you can laugh about it, then it’s not so bad, and Nez has had a lot of bad stuff happen to her and a lot of people treat her poorly. In many ways, it’s a wall she places between herself and everyone else. A few times during the story you see the cracks form and you peek inside and see how these insults get to her, how difficult it is for her to execute her plan, how much her disability frustrates her even as she believes herself capable. But to the outside observer she’s calm and confident. It’s all a ruse, one she keeps up until the very end. 

JPG – Similarly, the antagonist, Rezal, masks weakness with bravado – can you speak about this choice and how she counterbalances Nez?

A.D. S – Rezal is an interesting character because she has just as much to lose as Nez if she is found out, but where Nez can use the image of the “poor, disabled woman” to her advantage to get people to underestimate her, Rezal can’t. Her whole persona is built around the image of perfection and indestructibility. One of the games that Nez and Rezal are playing is the assessment of how capable each one is. Each one knows the other’s secret and tries to force their hand to reveal it. 

JPG – Even though most of the story takes place on a spaceship, the decadence of power is vividly described, as are the unnecessary accouttrements of power. Tell us about using setting to explore power dynamics.

A.D. S – So many of the visual elements in Rezal’s living quarters are inspired by Russian aristocracy. I’m Ukrainian, so we’ve been fed this idea of the “superior Russian culture” for a very long time. Progress was positioned as gold-framed oil portraits and heavy, long, dining room tables. Carpets and applique wallpaper. This comes up several times in Rezal’s and Nez’s conversations about what progress is and what the colonies were before the Rule. Nez, and her people are positioned as “uncivilized” before the Rule and suggested that they should be grateful to assimilate into a prosperous empire.
We also see that this decadence of décor does nothing to stop the ultimate fall. From her “shithole” apartment and then her equally unimpressive quarters aboard the mothership, Nez manages to achieve her goal, even if she never improves her “status”. The shiny things mean nothing to her, same as the “Great Russian Culture” means nothing to me. 

JPG – One aspect of the characters that stuck out to me is the tenderness between adversaries, how did you use this to heighten the drama of the story?

A.D. S – I’ve heard a number of times now that Dragonfly is an enemies-to-lovers story, and it’s not! There is no love there. There are many people who have complicated and mainly negative feelings towards one another. They also have sex.
The moments of tenderness serve a purpose. I didn’t want to write characters that were all bad, comedically bad even. Plenty of terrible people in history had soft spots for family members, for their pets. I wanted to highlight that, specifically in Rezal. There is no redemption for her, she is borderline evil, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t want connection. That’s the most awful part of it, I think, that people who commit horrible atrocities are also people who want to be loved and cared for. Those two drives don’t cancel out one another. They co-exist, and that’s why we should always be careful. It’s not the comedically evil people that are the most dangerous. 

JPG – In relation to the previous question, tell us about using sexuality as a weapon, seduction versus betrayal, and how the corruption of power plays into this while personal feelings are also on the line.

A.D. S – I think at some point Rezal buys into the idea that Nez is into her, and Nez really *is* into Rezal. But this is more of a “game recognizes game” scenario than genuine affection. It’s all part of them trying to get the other to slip, just another technique. I also think sex is a great opportunity to demonstrate the ways in which power might shift even if for a moment. 

*shout out to my editor, dave, who didn’t edit the sex scene in the book because if he did I would have shriveled up and never written anything ever again. 

JPG – In some ways this book is about revenge, but it didn’t feel like the classic revenge tale – how did you navigate this trope while keeping it fresh?

A.D. S – I never thought of Dragonfly as a revenge story. To me, it’s a redemption story of how Nez figures out what she stands for and how far she’s willing to go for her convictions. Shay rightfully calls her out on her moral high ground early in the book. Even given the circumstances, she had participated in the very structure she is attempting to bring down. She even wanted to thrive within its parameters without challenging them. That’s a fact. She has to reckon with that before she can move ahead.
Shamefully, I hadn’t read that many classic revenge stories, so I am largely unfamiliar with the tropes!

JPG – What’s next for you, and what are you currently working on?

A.D. S – I recently announced that I’ll be having not one, but two whole books coming from Erewhon. So, I’m currently in editing land, trying to keep my search history from placing me on a watch list. (shameless plug) I’d encourage anyone curious about what’s coming up to subscribe to my newsletter, Facts for Fiction [https://thesuiway.beehiiv.com/subscribe]. 

BizarroCon has announced the winners for the 2024 Wonderland Book Awards for Excellence in Bizarro Fiction.

Best Novel

• WINNER: Edenville, Sam Rebelein (William Morrow)

• The Last Night to Kill Nazis, David Agranoff (CLASH)
• Elogona, Samantha Kolesnik (WeirdPunk )
• Glass Children, Carlton Mellick III (Eraserhead)
• Soft Targets, Carson Winter (Tenebrous)

Best Collection

• WINNER: All I Want is to Take Shrooms and Listen to the Color of

...Read More

The 2024 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF), which “will send a European fan to the 2025 Worldcon in Seattle,” is open for nominations until December 20, 2024.

TAFF “was created in 1953 for the purpose of providing funds to bring well-known and popular [science fiction] fans familiar to those on both sides of the ocean across the Atlantic. Since that time TAFF has regularly brought North American fans to European conventions ...Read More

Clarion West has announced that their next six-week workshop will be held virtually instead of in-person, and will run June 22-August 2, 2025. The new format is “designed to give students more time to write, additional lecture time with instructors, and more experimentation with workshopping models.” The instructors will be Maurice Broaddus, Malka Older, Diana Pho, and Martha Wells. Applications open on December 1, 2024 and close February 15, 2025. ...Read More

Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape; Grove Atlantic US) is the winner of the 2024 Man Booker Prize. It depicts the lives of astronauts, and is “the first Booker Prize-winning book set in space.”

This year’s shortlist also included James by Percival Everett (Mantle;Doubleday US).

The £50,000 prize is “open to works by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.” This year’s judges

...Read More

ActuSF has announced the winners for the 2024 Prix de l’Uchronie. The prize is awarded to works of alternate history, written or translated into French and published between September 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023.

Prix Littéraire

• WINNER: Noblesse oblige, Maiwenn Alix (Slalom)

• L’Affaire Crystal Singer [Singer Distance], Ethan Chatagnier, translated by Michelle Charrier (Albin Michel Imaginaire)
• Le Huitième Registre 1. Le Silène assassiné, Alain Bergeron (Alire)
• Protectorats, Ray

...Read More

Winners for the 2024 Premio Italia Awards have been announced, honoring accomplishments in the field of Italian fantasy and science fiction.

International Novel

• WINNER: Le navi d’ossa [The Bone Ships], R.J. Barker (Meridiano Zero – Elara)

• L’archivio dei finali alternativi [The Archive of Alternate Endings], Lindsey Drager (Zona42)
• The Kaiju Preservation Society, John Scalzi (Fanucci Editore)
• Fattore Rh, Charles Stross (Mondadori)
• Project Hail

...Read More

by Carrie Finch

Editor’s note: This piece is part of an occasional series titled Writing by Other Means, in which authors share personal experiences and industry intel around different production contexts and writing tools.

Painters have brush and canvas. Dancers have mirrors and marley floors. Musicians have their instruments and the loving maintenance they require. Artists and craftspeople have beautiful tools with storied pasts that ground them in their history. There’s an easy access to the romance of the craft, a tantalizing indulgence that can feed the love and lift the passion when the grind of the work makes energy wane.

Writers type. A lot. It’s tough to be a writer in this era and not spend the bulk of our time typing. In the recent SFWA Blog article (Temporarily) Computer-Free Writing, N. R. M. Roshak wrote about alternative methods of getting our words onto the page, mentioning first the historic standard of pen on paper. Personally, I’ve found a lot of joy in writing by hand, especially using fountain pens. There’s a quiet pleasure in putting pen to paper, a sort of reaching back through time, thinking of the writers who–with similar tools–were able to create my favorite stories.

Why Use Fountain Pens

As writers, we’re cautioned against being too attached to any part of how we do our work. At every turn, we’re told “kill your darlings,” not just in prose but in process as well. And there is wisdom in this. There is a fine line between being particular and being precious. Don’t get too attached to your seat at the library, lest you find someone else sitting in it. Don’t get too attached to your corner café, lest it close, and suddenly you’re incapable of working at the pace you once could. Flexibility allows us to get our work done, even when the conditions aren’t right.

But there is something to be said for indulgence. There is something to be said for a routine that allows your mind to turn away from worries about the real world, the house that needs cleaning, the family that needs caring for, the boss that emails after hours, and turn toward the work of writing. Making that cup of tea. Turning on that specific playlist (or sometimes, that single song on repeat for hours). Adjusting the lamp to have the light just so.

Fountain pens can be part of that indulgence. The weight of the pen in your hand, the drag of it across a sheet of paper, can be such a satisfying tactile experience. Depending on your preferences, some pens will make noise as they scratch along the page. Others glide smoothly and silently. It can be such a delight to discover your preferred set of tools and to have that delight carry into your next writing session when you bring them out.

There are also practical reasons to use fountain pens. Earlier this year, R.J. Huneke wrote in his article Writing SFF With Paper and Pen Spurs Memory and Creativity about the benefits of using pen and paper, the way it can change our cognitive processes, allowing us to be creative in ways that typing might not. If you were inspired to try writing by hand, I highly recommend fountain pens. Unlike most pens, they require absolutely no pressure to deposit ink onto the paper, other than the weight of the pen itself. You no longer have to grip the pen or press down on the page, which can prevent fatigue and even injury.

Recently, I went to the San Francisco International Pen Show, three days dedicated to the world of fountain pens. And if there’s one thing I’ve seen to be consistent among fountain pen fans, it’s how excited we are to talk to anyone about pens. Show us the slightest bit of curiosity, and we’ll happily talk your ear off, offering our opinions on the ideal starter pen on the way.

Where to Start

And what is the ideal starter pen? The popular recommendations are the Lamy Safari and the Pilot Metropolitan, and whichever you pick I recommend starting with a fine nib. They come with ink cartridges, so all you have to do is click one into place and wait for the ink to start flowing. But if you want to use bottled ink, most pens will also come with a converter, a device that draws up ink into the pen. There’s a slight learning curve with a fountain pen, as the angle with which you hold the pen does matter. Prepare to play around with this a little bit until you find what’s comfortable for you.

Perhaps you’re asking: What about left-handed writers? The richly flowing ink can take a moment to dry, and most lefties will say this is just long enough for it to smear across the page and stain the side of their hand. But there are solutions available. Faster-drying inks, more absorptive paper, and finer nibs can all help avoid some common issues encountered by those who write left-handed.

There’s a wide world of pens, each settling in the hand differently. There’s also a wide world of nib styles. Not just the flexion in the metal, but also the grind of the nib, which can be fine-tuned for your hand by a professional. There are a multitude of inks available, and each one will feel slightly different as you write with it. 

And don’t forget the paper, each with a different texture, thickness, and rate of absorption, each giving a different writing experience. You don’t have to start anywhere special; your run-of-the-mill spiral notebook is just fine. But once you decide to explore further, there are plenty of videos and blog posts demonstrating how various papers soak up ink and whether they bleed or ghost (differing ways in which the ink is visible on the other side of the page). There are also paper sample packs available, so you can work with several papers before you commit to one. Some people prefer a smooth glide, others enjoy coarse feedback. Some people are fine with a bit of ghosting, others are repulsed by the thought. Just like with pens, you get to discover your own personal fit here.

I hope this inspires you to consider starting your own fountain pen journey or perhaps reignites an old hobby. Whatever you’re looking for in your handwriting experience, there’s a combination of tools that will feel just right for you. And like all things in life, the journey is part of the experience. Happy writing!

Carrie Finch is a writer in San Francisco, California. Her published fiction includes fantasy, science fiction, and horror. She goes by “geardrops” on every social media imaginable and would love to talk to you about fountain pens. carriefinch.com

The post Only as Good as Our Tools: Drafting by Hand and Fountain Pens appeared first on SFWA.

Paul Ryan O’Connor is the winner of the Speculative Literature Foundation’s (SLF) 2024 Older Writers Grant, which gives $1,000 to writers “fifty years of age or older at the time of grant application, and is intended to assist such writers who are just starting to work at a professional level.”

O’Connor was awarded the grant for his unpublished novel Gumshoe Frankenstein.

Applications for the Older Writers Grant are considered ...Read More

The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) has selected Hayao Miyazaki as this year’s recipient of the Forry Award for lifetime achievement in the SF field. Miyazaki is the founder of Studio Ghibli and has won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Spirited Award (2001) and The Boy and the Heron (2023), and has received nominations for Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) and The Wind Rises (2013).

The award, ...Read More

The Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror (AEFCFT) has announced the winners for the 2024 Ignotus Awards, honoring speculative fiction from Spain and beyond.

Novela extranjera (Foreign Novel)

• WINNER: Mi corazón es una motosierra [My Heart Is a Chainsaw], Stephen Graham Jones, translated by Manuel de los Reyes (Biblioteca de Carfax)

• Ascensión [Ascension], Nicholas Binge, translated by Gemma Benavent (Minotauro)
• Hermana Roja [Red Sister], Mark Lawrence, translated by

...Read More

In an October victory for freedom-to-read activists, the Matanuska-Susinta Borough School District in Alaska has agreed to pay $89,000 for indiscriminately removing 56 books from library shelves. In November of 2023, the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska, the Northern Justice Project, and eight local plaintiffs filed a suit against the district for the removal of these books from school libraries without due process. However, the district maintains that each ...Read More

An annotated version of Terry Pratchett’s 29th Discworld novel, Night Watch, will be released in Spring of 2025. The title will be released under Penguin Random House as a Penguin Modern Classic, recognizing Pratchett’s immense influence in the literary world as a genre author.

The edition will have a foreword by Rob Wilkins, managing director of Pratchett’s literary estate, and annotations by Dr David Lloyd and Dr Darryl Jones ...Read More

The shortlist for the inaugural PEN Heaney prize in poetry has been announced. The list included two works with speculative elements:

• Hyena! by Fran Lock (Poetry Bus Press)
• A Tower Built Downwards by Yang Lian, trans. Brian Holton (Bloodaxe Books)

A collaboration between English PEN, PEN Ireland/PEN na hÉireann, and the Estate of Seamus Heaney, the award honors a single book of poetry published in the United Kingdom or Ireland ...Read More