Karen Burnham Welcome to this panel on up-and-coming author N. K. Jemisin. Her debut fantasy novel has been nominated for six awards so far this year, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Tiptree awards. Last weekend (after this panel was concluded) we learned that The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (HTK) won the Locus Award for Best First [...]

(I’ve very, very, very slowly been re-reading Heinlein. Previous posts are here.) Heinlein’s The Number of the Beast might just be my all-time favorite of his adult novels. No, it’s not the writing, although it does clip along with that Heinleinian efficiency and knack for phrase. No, it’s not how seamlessly Heinlein creates new worlds [...]

On this week’s podcast we have Brett Cox (Norwich University) and Andy Duncan (Frostburg State University), co-editors of the anthology Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic. They discuss being on awards juries, slush pile reading, stories with crazy energy that can inspire strong reactions (both positive and negative), writers and critics, and being Southern [...]

For our final entry in the shorter (short story and novelette) category, this week we have “Plus or Minus” by James Patrick Kelly. He has published other stories with the same characters, including “Tourists” in Jonathan Strahan’s Eclipse 4. Here are some earlier comments on the story: Lois Tilton, Locus Online A sequel. Mariska’s mother [...]

This podcast starts out with Jeff and Liz talking about teaching, ideas, and process. Then the conversation strays to genre boundaries, and we ambush Gary to join us. From there we touch on music and jazz, how musical structure relates to narrative structure, and the history of genre boundaries. Your to-read list will grow long [...]

This week we’ll be talking about “The Things” by Peter Watts. It appears on the Locus, Hugo, BSFA, and Shirley Jackson shortlists, as well as most recently showing up on the Sturgeon Award list. This makes it by far the most nominated piece of short fiction this year, as well as being a rare cross-over [...]

Ian Sales’ has a photo tour of his critical bookshelf. Some excellent volumes there. Nicola Griffith points out that when a request for favorite SF books was put out to the general Internets, the responses came back with 96% male authors. Ouch. She suggests some possible remedies. On a related note, Joanna Russ’ How to [...]

In this edition of the Locus Roundtable podcast, we talk with Tim Akers and Daryl Gregory. The discussion ranges over genre blending, steampunk, writing process, and how themes enter into stories. They’ve both got books coming out in June: Dead of Veridon for Tim and Raising Stony Mayhall for Daryl.

This week we have for consideration another Nebula winner, a novelette, “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made” by Eric James Stone. This is a rare story from Analog making the awards rounds this year. We’ll start with a round-up of reviewer reactions. Lois Tilton, Locus Online: The narrator, Harry Malan, is the new President of [...]