Follow-up on this: Notwithstanding that Waterstones is selling them, am I correct that two of the chosen SF books (Automatic Noodle and Monsters & Mainframes) aren't actually published by UK publishers? (Tordotcom and Girl Friday, respectively, both US based I believe).

Stephen Baxter sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/baxter... was born on this day, so here are some of his magazine and book covers (Artist: John Picacio, Manchu, Jim Burns and Bob Eggleton):

State of the genres in the UK: 25 fantasy books (and an entire separate romantasy list), 18 horror books, and 5 science fiction books, one of which is a Brandon Sanderson collection that isn't out yet www.waterstones.com/blog/the-bes...

🫰SNAP!🫰 My latest column for the excellent @ancillaryreviewofbooks.org, on Tochy Onyebuchi, Joy Sanchez-Taylor, and what to read to understand what you’re reading. How might we fill the “imagination gap” in our fictions?

The website of Alter Magazine - a space for “new literary writing on science, technology, and progress from South Asia,” has just gone live: www.altermag.com The first long-form piece - my essay on the secret history of Indian science fiction - will be published on 22 Nov. Watch this space!

Here's a repost of my sort of TOC for anthologies of the best short science fiction between 1989 and 2018. richhorton314252.substack.com/p/great-shor...

Some most anticipated in H1: Glyph, Ali Smith (Jan) Loss Protocol, Paul McAuley (Feb) If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light, Kim Choyeop (Mar) Nonesuch, Frances Spufford (Mar) What We Are Seeking, Cameron Reed (Apr) The End of Everything, M John Harrison (Jun) Isabel J. Kim, Sublimation (Jun)

Spent the evening looking through publisher catalogues and oh god why am I thinking about June 2026 books already.

“THE OTHER SHORE is a poised and powerful collection about what binds us to the world, and to each other.” @niallharrison reviews new work from @rebeccacampbell.bsky.social

I read the Booker Prize shortlist (again). Rum do, this year - but not uninterestingly. On the bourgeois novel:

Reminder: Please submit recommendations by Nov. 14th for the Otherwise Award jury to consider! Nominate works of speculative fiction - #sciencefiction, #fantasy, and more - that expand or explore our notions of gender: otherwiseaward.org/award/2025-o...

I very much approved of how this discussion centred the weirdness of Big Bird, since that is I think a big part of what gives it a sense of scale and even - albeit in the context of decline - *wonder*. Elsewhere, it also speaks to Jacqui’s thoughts on redemption (or lack thereof) in fiction here:

I liked Rebecca Campbell's collection The Other Shore: locusmag.com/review/the-o...

I liked Rebecca Campbell's collection The Other Shore: locusmag.com/review/the-o...

Dr. Yaszek and her students are currently working on a history of Black science fiction, which if it's anything like her THE FUTURE IS FEMALE and SISTERS OF TOMORROW will be outstanding. As a sidenote, the ILLUSTRATED FEATURE SECTION was a syndicated tabloid insert aimed at Black readers.

This may interest some of you: The first space opera by a Black Author, John P. Moore's THE MARTIAN TRILOGY, is now available, thanks to the work of Dr. Lisa P. Yaszek and others. Originally published in THE ILLUSTRATED FEATURE SECTION in 1930. www.amazon.com/Martian-Tril...

Great discussion that reminds me how fascinating I found this novel about a world where the fall is all that's left. And timely to remind UK readers that we can think about it for awards, because for us it's a 2025 book.

Among other things, what gets me about this book is free of genre convention it is, while also being recognisably of genre. We talk occasionally about SF that starts from the world as it is today rather than SF's conventional assumptions; this for me is one version of what that can look like.

Among other things, what gets me about this book is free of genre convention it is, while also being recognisably of genre. We talk occasionally about SF that starts from the world as it is today rather than SF's conventional assumptions; this for me is one version of what that can look like.

At first glance I can see only two other instances of a WFA/Hugo double: The City & The City and Strange & Norrell. www.sfadb.com/World_Fantas...

Issue 778 Table of Contents, November 2025

Our latest link round-up is live! Reviews, essays, some events and CFPs from around the web for lovers of speculative fiction and criticism: ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2025/11/01/w...

As if by magic, this review (the Swift one, aka read this everyone) is now online. locusmag.com/review/when-...

As if by magic, this review (the Swift one, aka read this everyone) is now online. locusmag.com/review/when-...

Kinda wish it wasn't Substack, but glad that there is now somewhere for John Clute to put new writing

Couple of reviews up on the Locus site this week, first up Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei: locusmag.com/review/saltc...

In the first entry in a new series that re-examines overlooked SFF in translation, @coimeas.bsky.social draws our attention to language, gender, and more in Elia Barceló’s NATURAL CONSEQUENCES, tr. Andrea Bell & Yolanda Molina-Gavilán (Vanderbilt University Press)

Couple of reviews up on the Locus site this week, first up Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei: locusmag.com/review/saltc...

New blog post: in which I discuss books 2, 3, and 3.5 in @aptshadow.bsky.social Tyrant Philosophers series, "the richest and most complete exploration of the theme of totalitarianism and its inherent contradictions in all of Tchaikovsky's recent work." wrongquestions.blogspot.com/2025/10/hous...

Announcing the longlist for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2025! Featuring 10 languages, 12 publishers, 4 collections of poetry - and much more. The longlist travels from Argentina to South Korea, from Haiti to Romania, from Sweden to Slovenia. tinyurl.com/4cu8sdv9

“EVERYTHING WILL SWALLOW YOU has been a story about how time and place are bound together by human lives, a portrait of one specific life in its place… It is, somehow, both earthy and bittersweet.” @niallharrison reviews @dj-acid-reflux.bsky.social

Been waiting for this one to go up - my Locus review of Everything Will Swallow You by Tom Cox. Lots I liked about it. locusmag.com/review/every...

Been waiting for this one to go up - my Locus review of Everything Will Swallow You by Tom Cox. Lots I liked about it. locusmag.com/review/every...

Congratulations to Vajra Chandrasekera (@vajra.me), recipient of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for Rakesfall! Chandrasekera's book was chosen by authors Matt Bell, Indra Das, Kelly Link, Sequoia Nagamatsu, and Rebecca Roanhorse.

Ian Mond on the second Bora Chung of the year: locusmag.com/review/midni...

early galleys of the collaborative dystopian utopian puerto rican speculative fiction novel of your dreams (with a cat historian) are here

Well this sounds extremely up my street. "Roganovich imagines something alive and unclassifiable that has been roaming planet Earth since its creation ...The novel’s narrators bear witness to the organism’s appearances: in [abbreviated list of years] 1504, 1888, 1945, and 2036"

On Tuesday, October 21st—Ursula's birthday—we'll announce the recipient of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction! Join Theo Downes-Le Guin and guest host Ebon Moss-Bachrach on YouTube for a live announcement at 9 am PDT. The announcement will happen here: www.youtube.com/@ursula.k.le...

Apropos the Mercury Prize, the episode of Song Exploder about "People Watching" is really good open.spotify.com/episode/6S2f...

Interesting to pair this, which makes the point that most translated SF is from non-genre-specialist publishers, which has an impact on the types of SF that get translated (a point I broadly agree with), with ...

Good review (and lots of other interesting books covered too). My review of this is in the October Locus, won't be online for a bit, but I liked it a lot.

I'm interested in the question here about post-Broken Earth books. Opening suggestion: The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. Science fantasy, distinctive voice and strong sense of argument/viewpoint, narrative marries personal and (world/society-scale) political.

I'm interested in the question here about post-Broken Earth books. Opening suggestion: The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. Science fantasy, distinctive voice and strong sense of argument/viewpoint, narrative marries personal and (world/society-scale) political.

Very upset, I did not need another entry on the list of things I really want to read before the end of the year

Took me a while to get through this episode (two hours!), but this is a great set of interviews with some of the people behind the current incarnation of SH (including Gautam)

Great piece. What I particularly like in here is the discussion of the novel's balance between witnessing and acting as responses to things in the world.

“THE CREATOR is a more ambiguous title than it first appears, with every character in the story fitting the role at one point or another.” @niallharrison reviews Aliya Whiteley

"When We are Wolves Again is not only the novel we have been waiting for from E. J. Swift, one of the UK’s brightest younger talents in speculative fiction, but the novel we also have been waiting for as readers." Amen to that. strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

"When We are Wolves Again is not only the novel we have been waiting for from E. J. Swift, one of the UK’s brightest younger talents in speculative fiction, but the novel we also have been waiting for as readers." Amen to that. strangehorizons.com/wordpress/no...

A brief piece on Aliya Whiteley's latest novella: locusmag.com/review/short...