In which I learn about the forthcoming existence of a) China+100 and b) Palestine Minus One

Right then, excluding review copies, here's my pile of aspiration/despair.

Starting Sarah Hall's Helm, which includes the following standalone sentence in its first chapter, which works (presumably deliberately) as a Hemingway-esque six word story: "Comet, ash cloud, mass extinction, redo."

Been waiting for this one to go online: @abigailnussbaum.bsky.social does what so many anthology reviewers don't quite do, and tackles the overall project as well as digging into individual stories: locusmag.com/review/the-e...

Good to know that at least some people are keeping the As Others See Us classics alive: 'In What We Can Know, which McEwan has called a work of “science fiction without the science”...'

International book buying in 2025: it has taken me four months to acquire an actual copy of Portalmania, having reviewed it from pdf. But I guess its arrival is a good excuse to link to my review again! locusmag.com/review/porta...

Programme klaxon! The programme team are working on lots of ideas to bring you a brilliant programme, but we need to hear from you! We’ve created a *very* short survey for you to pass on your suggestions and to tell us if you’d also like to take part in programme: forms.office.com/e/rN9T4wEX1N

Strange Horizons published our first issue 25 years ago this month! 🎉 Thank you to everyone who has ever read, shared, submitted, donated! We wouldn't be here without you and we hope you'll continue to support us into the future!

Just turned the last page and: yes, that was excellent. The mix of humour and steel, the balance of the specific and the broadly thematic ... a great concept, executed with great skill. I'm off to read everyone's reviews.

Birds and War: @pflugu.bsky.social reviews MOONS SONGS: THE COLLECTED STORIES OF CAROL EMSHWILLER, edited by Matthew Cheney (@thirdmanbooks.bsky.social)

John Clute sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/clute_... joint editor of the SFE, was born on this day; he's wrote a few entries too: 7,856 solo & 1423 in collaboration (over 3.1m words). He also co-edited Interzone 1982-1984. Some related artwork (Judith Clute, St John Child, Richard Kadrey & Robert Mason):

The piece quoted in here that speaks to me is the Christine Smallwood one: "Criticism is an act of autobiography. The work of making an argu­ment, coming to a judgment, or simply choosing which books or objects to give time and attention to is inevitably, helplessly, an expression of values"

Drops today: This week's ARB @NewBooksNetwork podcast features @nickrigordon in conversation with Liz Evans Weber, translator of “New Story of the Stone” by Wu Jianren @ColumbiaUP asianreviewofbooks.com/podcast-with...

Partly in defiance of Ian's assertion, and partly because I've just trudged through a book and a review that were hard work, I am finally allowing myself to get around to this even though I have other deadlines: 20% in, absolute delight, total confidence in the voice of the story.

Longlist for (US) National Book Award for Translated Literature announced www.nationalbook.org/2025-nationa...

This is a really lovely tribute to an incredible event. Did it for the first time yesterday, quite an overwhelming experience.

Today's soundtrack youtu.be/raLiluuTfcY?...

Read as @niallharrison reviews THE ISLAND OF LAST THINGS by @emmasloley.bsky.social: “Sloley seems to have set out to provoke her characters (and by extension her readers) into doing the work of imagining better”

An ok novel set in the current consensus near-future locusmag.com/2025/09/the-...

An ok novel set in the current consensus near-future locusmag.com/2025/09/the-...

Caught up to Foundation 3x06 and they did the thing and I enjoyed it.

Profile Books catalgue, Spring 2026, via @kirkdalebooks.bsky.social

In the September Locus I have reviews of Everything Will Swallow You by Tom Cox; Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei; The First Thousand Trees by Premee Mohamed; When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift; and The Creator, Aliya Whiteley. Busy month! locusmag.com/2025/09/issu...

In the September Locus I have reviews of Everything Will Swallow You by Tom Cox; Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei; The First Thousand Trees by Premee Mohamed; When There Are Wolves Again by E.J. Swift; and The Creator, Aliya Whiteley. Busy month! locusmag.com/2025/09/issu...

Reading a novel in which humans have been on a planet for half a millennium and a city has "ancient walls"

As this cogently argues, critical terminology often can't be frictionlessly transferred between mediums. But some of this rhymes with my experience thinking about and attempting to write about SF ... "whether a ‘poptimist’ critic could accept that any year in pop was a bad one..."

More tickets released due to popular demand! Join us for the launch of @commapress.bsky.social new anthology feat. stories & discussion from Mazen Maarouf, Anwar Hamed, and Basma Ghalayini. 🇵🇸 Palestine Minus One 🇵🇸 TONIGHT - 7pm @thebluecoat.bsky.social www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/palestine-...

Twenty-five years ago today, _Strange Horizons_ launched! @strangehorizons.bsky.social

I've started work on a Polish Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction inspired by @jessesword.com's work in English, and it's fun to track how Polish SF vocabulary has developed due to its various influences

Check out as @niallharrison reviews MODERATION by Elaine Castillo: “a story made fresh by a vivid and dexterous narrative voice, a voice that is by turns sardonically attentive to the specificities of each world and alive to the interfaces between them.”

I had a lot of fun with this one locusmag.com/2025/08/mode...

Just finished Dream State by Eric Puchner, which excels at what it sets out to achieve, and thus moved me deeply, even while knowing that what it is achieving is conventional, sentimental, and avoidant of the world barrelling towards us.

I had a lot of fun with this one locusmag.com/2025/08/mode...

The Arthur C. Clarke Award hasn't gone to a genre-published novel since 2019 (Rosewater). It's always taken a broad view of SF, but that's the longest run of "non-genre" winners in its history.

Thread up and down. I have reviewed 32 books for Locus so far this year; about 24 of them can be called science fiction (a few you have to squint); only about half of those are genre-published. Where "writing about the future" gets published has changed and might continue to change.

Yet more of the "general" Year's Best volumes going away. I genuinely don't understand why the big annual YB volumes were a reasonable commercial proposition for so long and then, quite suddenly, not. I don't mind "year's best [subgenre]" but I miss the overviews, with all their biases.

Minds in Transit by Joan Slonczewski: Review by Niall Harrison

This is turning into a good week for negative reviews!

F151 is off the printers! A special issue on 'women in the black fantastic' with features by Nisi Shawl and Sheree Renee Thomas. If you want to become a member of the SFF, you can join via the website. www.sf-foundation.org/new-membersh...

Thank you for your patience as we migrate servers and work on our website. For funsies our email has stopped working properly, so please use locusmag (at) gmail.com in the interim if you need to reach us. Here's a pic of Toto saying RAORR to tide you over...

Make science fiction nerdy again (in a good way) locusmag.com/2025/08/mind...

Make science fiction nerdy again (in a good way) locusmag.com/2025/08/mind...

"A book does not need to be able to be for everyone perfectly and without friction. In removing the friction, she has removed what might have made it a story at all."

Interesting discussion here of what a novella is/is not, picking up on me on AMOT, presumably saying that Service Model felt like it could have done with being a novella. I don't remember exactly saying that, but that does sound like the sort of opinion I would have.

Really interesting discussion about novellas in here.

Strong +1 for Mad Sisters of Esi from me. Haven't read The Midnight Shift yet, but Cheon Seon-ran also had a near future novel published in the UK earlier this year (A Thousand Blues), also very good.

Fascinating interview about a fascinating project, with mentions of essays by Paul Kincaid (included in Colourfields) and Niall Harrison (included in All These Worlds), both available from our shop: briardenebooks.uk/shop/

A brilliant selection. My review is in the current Locus, so probably won't be online in full until some time in September, but here's the thrust of it

Explore as @niallharrison reviews ANIMALS by @geoffryman: “at its best it is as perceptive, as piercing, as anything he has written. Animals is a fine novel about humans.”

A brilliant selection. My review is in the current Locus, so probably won't be online in full until some time in September, but here's the thrust of it