Locus News

Bruce Boston (1943-2024)
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
2024 Fishing Fortress Awards Winners
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 More2024 Wonderland Awards Winners
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
2024 TAFF Nominations Open
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 Virtual Workshops
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
Harvey Wins 2024 Booker Prize
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 More2024 Prix ActuSF de l’Uchronie Winners
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
2024 Premio Italia Winners
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
O’Connor Wins Older Writers Grant
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
Miyazaki Wins Forry Award
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
2024 Ignotus Awards Winners
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
Alaskan Book Ban Ruled Unconstitutional
Terry Pratchett’s ‘Night Watch’ Re-Release
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
Inaugural PEN Heaney Prize Shortlist 2024
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
2024 Ignyte Award Winners
The Ignyte Awards Committee has announced the winners of the 2024 Ignyte Awards, which “seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.”
Outstanding Novel: Adult
WINNER: The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
- To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, Moniquill Blackgoose (Del Rey)
Brooklyn Books and Booze
Ledia Xhoga, Keith R.A. DeCandido, Katherine Silva, Catherynne M. Valente read at the Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room in Industry City, Brooklyn NY on October 15, 2024 as part of the Brooklyn Books & Booze Reading series, hosted by Randee Dawn.
While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with a one-time or recurring donation. We rely on reader donations to keep the magazine and site going, and ...Read More
Shelfies Newsletter
In September 2024, Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin launched a free new weekly newsletter called Shelfies. Each week they feature a photo of a bookshelf from an author, artist, collector, or book lover, along with a brief essay “discussing some of their most treasured or interesting books.” Contributors so far include Jeffrey Alan Love, Cheryl S. Ntumy, George E. Osborn, Kieron Smith, and Kaaron Warren. For more, or to sign ...Read More
Querbalec Wins Prix Julia Verlanger
Les Sentiers de recouvrance by Émilie Querbalec (Albin Michel Imaginaire) won the 2024 Prix Julia Verlanger.
The award is presented by the Foundation de France, and is awarded to “a science fiction work of adventure, fantasy or fantastique.” The award was created by Jean-Pierre Verlanger in memory of his wife, who wrote under the pseudonym Gilles Thomas.
The award was announced on November 3, 2024, during the Nantes Utopiales Festival. ...Read More
2024 Booker Prize Shortlist
The six-title shortlist for the 2024 Booker Prize has been announced, with works of genre interest including James by Percival Everett (Mantle) and Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape)
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 are Sara Collins, Justine Jordan, Yiyun Li, Nitin Sawhney, and chair Edmund de Waal.
Shortlisted authors
...Read MorePublishers Weekly Best Books 2024
Publishers Weekly has announced its list of the best books of 2024, divided into 13 categories.
The Book of Love by Kelly Link (Random House) and James by Percival Everett (Doubleday) were on the overall Top 10 list.
The best books in the SF/Fantasy/Horror category are:
- Memorials, Richard Chizmar (Gallery)
- Metal from Heaven, August Clarke (Erewhon)
- Midnight Rooms, Donyae Coles (Amistad)
- The Mercy of Gods, James