Afrofuturism Bundle
Fri 31 May 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Ayize Jama-Everett, bundles| Posted by: Gavin
Hey, there’s a week left to get your hands on the current Afrofuturism collection on Storybundle. Ayize Jama-Everett’s debut novel The Liminal People is part of it as well as nine other books, which together make an essential library of recent hits. If you can get it, don’t miss out.
Free Copies of And Go Like This
Thu 23 May 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., John Crowley| Posted by: Gavin
Don’t miss this: you have until May 28 to enter to win one of 15 free advance reading copies of John Crowley’s fifthcoming (see below) new short story collection, And Go Like This, on LibraryThing.
This is the third book of Crowley’s we will have published — how amazing that sentence still is — after Endless Things and The Chemical Wedding. And good news for all, the first trade review just came in from Publishers Weekly:
“A compassionate, ruminative eye frames the sepia-tinted worlds of the fifth collection from erudite fantasist Crowley (Ka). The stories are drawn from the last 20 years of Crowley’s long career and span the breadth of speculative and literary short fiction. . . . This collection’s recurring refrains—“pay attention,” Shakespeare, injuries and aging, the agony of making choices—coalesce into a reading experience like a long afternoon spent with an intimate, excellent raconteur.”
Read the full review on Publishers Weekly.
SBP at WisCon 2019
Mon 20 May 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Carol Emshwiller, conferences, conventions, Laurie J. Marks| Posted by: Gavin
Next weekend I’m happy to say I’ll be back at WisCon for the first time in a while. I’ll be running the Small Beer table in the dealers’ room on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — but I have to leave on Monday morning so do come before then!
I love the future WisCon imagines and present it inhabits, and Memorial Day weekend in Madison — with the farmers’ market and all those great restaurants — is a great place to be.
Twelve years ago we worked with Laurie J. Marks to make sure Water Logic would be available when she was Guest of Honor at WisCon 31 and the great news here is that Laurie is coming back to WisCon, and, if the shipping gods allow it, we will have all four new editions of her Elemental Logic series.
I am not 100% sure whether the rebound Water Logic will arrive on time. Fingers crossed. The rebinding means the trim size will be a tiny bit smaller than the other 3 volumes — just so that nothing is ever quite neat and square — but the choice was either recycling hundreds of books or rebinding.
The good news: we will definitely have Fire Logic, Earth Logic, and lo after these many long years: Air Logic.
We’ll also have the new issue of LCRW, a few books, some zines, and if all goes well the new issue of Reckoning.
On Friday afternoon if I’m not in the dealer’s room, you can find me at the Tiptree Bake Sale.
I don’t do many panels now, given that if I’m away from the table I want to hear other voices speak not mine, but there was one panel I did sign up for that I’m looking forward to. I hope to listen more than speak, am hoping to laugh but may cry:
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4 stars
Fri 10 May 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin
Over the years, the first three volumes of Laurie J. Marks’s Elemental Logic series each received a starred review in Booklist. I am delighted to say that the fourth and final volume, Air Logic, which comes out next month, has just received a starred review, too!
Fire Logic
“Marks is an absolute master of fantasy in this book. Her characters are beautifully drawn, showing tremendous emotional depth and strength as they endure the unendurable and strive always to do the right thing, and her unusual use of the elemental forces central to her characters’ lives gives the book a big boost. This is read-it-straight-through adventure!” — Booklist (starred review)
Earth Logic
“Marks produces another stunner of a book. The powerful but subtle writing glows with intelligence, and the passionate, fierce, articulate, strong, and vital characters are among the most memorable in contemporary fantasy, though not for the faint of heart.” — Booklist (starred review)
Water Logic
“How gifts from the past, often unknown or unacknowledged, bless future generations; how things that look like disasters or mistakes may be parts of a much bigger pattern that produces greater, farther-reaching good results.” —Booklist (starred review)
and now Air Logic
“The entire series is highly recommended to anyone looking for a series that presents not only a queer fantasy world, but also one of the most well-wrought and engaging fantasy worlds out there.” — Booklist (starred review)
Nuekom Award Shortlists
Thu 9 May 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Abbey Mei Otis, Awards, Claire G. Coleman| Posted by: Gavin
These are words to brighten the day: there are two Small Beer titles on the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Debut Award Shortlist:
- Alien Virus Love Disaster: Stories by Abbey Mei Otis
- Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman
Last year, the inaugural year for the awards, Juan Martinez’s Best Worst American and Christopher Rowe’s Telling the Map were both finalists for the award with Best Worst American being one of the winners.
Here’s the full press release with all of the finalists, congratulations, one and all!
These 10 Books May Be Telling Us the Future
HANOVER, N.H – May 9, 2019 – Ten books that dare to imagine how society collides with the future have been named to the shortlist of the 2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards.
From the challenges of life on a floating Arctic city, to epidemics of forgetfulness and zombification, to an Earth occupied by amphibious aliens, the Neukom shortlist forces readers to grapple with uncomfortable twists to familiar storylines of climate change, social justice and technological innovation.
The second annual speculative fiction awards program will be judged by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. Awards will be presented for a debut book and for a book in the open category.
“Artists and writers continue to take on the important role of challenging us with their visions of ‘what if,’ often picking up where scientists and technologists either neglect to or forget to go,” said Dan Rockmore, director of the Neukom Institute. “This year’s entries are testament to the extraordinary creativity and thoughtfulness that is finding its means of expression in speculative fiction.”
2019 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards Shortlist of Books:
Open Category
Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller (Ecco, 2018)
Plum Rains by Andromeda Romano-Lax (Soho Press, 2018)
Red Clocks by Leni Zumas (Little Brown, 2018)
The Night Market by Jonathan Moore (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017)
Theory of Bastards by Audrey Schulman (Europa, 2018)
Debut Category
Alien Virus Love Disaster: Stories by Abbey Mei Otis (Small Beer Press, 2018)
Infomocracy by Malka Older (Tor, 2016)
Severance by Ling Ma (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018)
Terra Nullius by Claire G. Coleman (Small Beer Press, 2018)
The Book of M by Peng Shepard (William Morrow, 2018)
“It’s been gratifying to play a part in reading and selecting such unique and strong fiction from so many different points of view. We’ve particularly enjoyed encountering writers we had not read before—and it’s especially gratifying to find so many new voices, who we believe readers will be encountering for decades to come. The Dartmouth prize is a much-needed addition to the current slate of science fiction awards,” said spec fic writer and co-judge Jeff VanderMeer.
The winning books will be selected from the shortlist in late May.
Each award winner will receive a $5,000 honorarium that will be presented during a Dartmouth-hosted panel to discuss the genre and their work.
“We’re looking forward to selecting the winners. This is such a strong list and a difficult choice for us but a very good problem to have! It’s wonderful to see so many writers taking chances and showing us other ways to view the world we live in today and what our tomorrows could be,” said spec fic editor and co-judge Ann VanderMeer.
The Neukom Institute for Computational Science is dedicated to supporting and inspiring computational work. The Literary Arts Awards is part of the Neukom Institute’s initiative to explore the ways in which computational ideas impact society.
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About the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards
The Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards is an annual awards program to honor and support creative works around speculative fiction. Established in 2017, the awards program is an open, international competition sponsored by the Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College. The awards aspire to raise general awareness of the speculative fiction genre, as well as the interconnectivity between the sciences and the arts. The awards serve as part of the Neukom Institute’s initiative to explore the ways in which computational ideas impact society.
LCRW: Book of the Week
Wed 8 May 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal.| Posted by: Gavin
Hey! Guess which zine is the library bingo winner this week? LCRW! Zebulon Wimsatt of Concord Public Library wrote up LCRW for the Concord Insider’s “Book of the Week” feature:
“But perhaps the greatest joy of LCRW’s is the rather left-field work on display, even and especially from these established authors. Le Guin contributes poems to LCRW no. 16; to no. 26, Ted Chiang gives an essay on folk biology, memory, and whither science fiction should aspire; to issue no. 6, Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club, contributes the story ‘Heartland,’ about a fast-food worker in The Land of Oz. . . . Bonus local flavor: Lady Churchill’s was first sold out of Avenue Victor Hugo Bookshop (then of Newberry Street in Boston, now of 1 Lee Hill Road in Lee). One of the shop’s proprietors is the novelist Vincent McCaffrey, and his A Slepyng Hounde to Wake (from, you guessed it, Small Beer Press) is available on our shelves. It’s about a bookseller who solves murders.
Read the whole column here and borrow LCRW from you local library through Hoopla here — and visit AVH online or in Lee.
Spring Zines & Postcards
Thu 2 May 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Kelly Link, Ursula Grant, Zines| Posted by: Gavin
I just added the zines Kelly and Ursula made in March to the site: Horoscope Stories, I Hear You’re Working on a Novel, Writing Rules, & Monster Land, as well as the Horoscope Postcards made from Ursula’s illustrations of Kelly’s stories. All the info is on this page:
And Go Like This on Edelweiss
Wed 1 May 2019 - Filed under: Not a Journal., Edelweiss, John Crowley, Kim Scott, Laurie J. Marks| Posted by: Gavin
Reviewers, booksellers, librarians, bloggers, et al, I just added an uncorrected advance reading copy of John Crowley’s November 2019 collection And Go Like This: Stories to Edelweiss for downloading and reading.
Also available there (at least until the publication date for Air Logic): Laurie J. Marks’s four Elemental Logic novels — Fire Logic, Earth Logic, Water Logic, and Air — as well as our award-winning September drop-in title Taboo by Kim Scott.