Critical Mass April 15th: Nebula Awards Nominees

Critical Mass News, Snippets

Meeting on April 15th, 6:30 at the Minor Works Building
Entry via path between 50 and 52 Sturt street.

You can also join us via zoom:
6:30pm Adelaide, 7pm Melbourne

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82223110135?pwd=xNM1ZB0skJ1jbmCoPuWca1w1rqO92Q.1

We invite people to read two of the nominated works in novella, novelette or short story to offer their opinions. [You could also comment on a novel if you’ve read one on the list.]

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has released the finalists for the 2025 Nebula Awards.

Novella

  • Disgraced Return of the Kap’s Needle, Renan Bernardo (Dark Matter INK)
  • The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia)
  • The Death of Mountains, Jordan Kurella (Lethe)
  • Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
  • But Not Too Bold, Hache Pueyo (Tordotcom)
  • “Descent”, Wole Talabi (Clarkesworld 5/25)

Novelette

  • “Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh”, Marie Croke (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/9/25)
  • “Uncertain Sons”, Thomas Ha (Uncertain Sons)
  • “We Begin Where Infinity Ends”, Somto Ihezue (Clarkesworld 2/25)
  • The Name Ziya, Wen-Yi Lee (Tor)
  • “Never Eaten Vegetables”, H.H. Pak (Clarkesworld 1/25)
  • “The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends”, Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 3-4/25)

Short Story

  • “Through the Machine”, P.A. Cornell (Lightspeed 5/25)
  • “Six People to Revise You”, J.R. Dawson (Uncanny 1-2/25)
  • “In My Country”, Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 4/25)
  • “The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead”, E.M. Linden (PodCastle 2/18/25)
  • “Because I Held His Name Like a Key”, Aimee Ogden (Strange Horizons 6/16/25)
  • “Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything”, Effie Seiberg (Diabolical Plots 5/25)

The other categories can be seen here: https://locusmag.com/2026/03/2025-nebula-awards-ballot/

The 2026 World SF Bundle – Curated by Lavie Tidhar

Critical Mass News, Snippets

With writers from South Africa and France, Russia and India, Hungary and Italy and Malaysia and Australia, I’ve selected a whopping 15 titles – a mix of novels, novellas, short story collections and anthologies to give you a wide palate of tastes from around the world! I hope you find your next favourite here, discover new voices and explore the wide variety and imagination of speculative fiction from around our planet. I hope you enjoy them! – Lavie Tidhar

* * *

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of three books in .epub format—WORLDWIDE.

  • Broken Paradise by Eugen Bacon
  • The Last Pantheon by Tade Thompson and Nick Wood
  • ChloroPhilia by Cristina Jurado and translated by Sue Burke

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $30, you get all three of the regular books, plus TWELVE more books, for a total of 15!

  • The Map of Lost Places by Sheree Renée Thomas and Lesley Conner
  • New Adventures in Space Opera by Jonathan Strahan
  • Letters From an Imaginary Country by Theodora Goss
  • Central Station by Lavie Tidhar
  • Interstellar MegaChef by Lavanya Lakshminarayan
  • Black Hole Heart and Other Stories by K.A. Teryna translated by Alex Shvartsman
  • The Grief Hole by Kaaron Warren
  • Cities Are Forests Waiting to Happen by Cécile Cristofari
  • Futures to Live By by Ana Sun
  • Veg-humans by Clelia Farris and translated by Rachel Cordasco
  • Ecoceanic by Tarun K. Saint and Francesco Verso
  • The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard

This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com. You get a DRM-free .epub for all books!

Nova Mob 1 April – Celebrating Dan Simmons & John Varley

Critical Mass News, Snippets

A Nova Mob group discussion, looking at Dan Simmons and John Varley..

Consider your favourite novel or other work by either or both writers.

A story or anecdote about them – and perhaps you.

In this way we celebrate our connection with two of SF’s finest writers,
whose deaths in December 2025 (Varley) and February 2026 (Simmons) were a shock and a loss.

You are invited to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Please join us on-line!

Wednesday 1 April 2026
8.00pm – 9.30 pm Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney time|
7.30pm – 9.00pm Adelaide time

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4177583193?pwd=VjdPL1BhSTBNclN2YnRsejN3Y1hlUT09

Passcode: nova

Meeting ID: 417 758 3193

Critical Mass march 18th: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Critical Mass News, Snippets

We invite you to read some of the stories about these two by Fritz Leiber. In particular, Ill met in Lankhmar deals with how the two met.

We meet at the Minor Works Building at 6:30pm, 18th March Adelaide time.
(There’s a passage between 50 and 52 Sturt Street which leads to the Minor Works Building)

For those who can’t make it in person, you can join us via zoom (6:30pm Adelaide, 7pm Melbourne, 8am London)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89652887061?pwd=YURTfj9YrsptbF5VhI7kEqjxYTJohl.1

Meeting ID: 896 5288 7061
Passcode: 916547

2025 Nebula Awards Ballot

Critical Mass News

SFWA 2020 logo

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has released the finalists for the 2025 Nebula Awards.

Novel

  • When We Were Real, Daryl Gregory (Saga)
  • The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; Titan UK)
  • Katabasis, R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager US; Harper Voyager UK)
  • Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow; Gollancz)
  • The Incandescent, Emily Tesh (Tor; Orbit UK)
  • Sour Cherry, Natalia Theodoridou (Tin House; Wildfire)
  • Wearing the Lion,John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia)

Novella

  • Disgraced Return of the Kap’s Needle, Renan Bernardo (Dark Matter INK)
  • The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia)
  • The Death of Mountains, Jordan Kurella (Lethe)
  • Automatic Noodle, Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
  • But Not Too Bold, Hache Pueyo (Tordotcom)
  • “Descent”, Wole Talabi (Clarkesworld 5/25)

For the full list, see Locus magazine

New Doctor Who episodes found

Critical Mass News

reactor mag reports https://reactormag.com/daleks-master-plan-lost-episodes/:

Two Doctor Who episodes that no one has seen since the 1960s have, astonishingly, turned up. Among the objects in the estate of an anonymous collector, whose films were donated to the charitable trust Film is Fabulous! after his death, were copies of two episodes that aired in the show’s third season.

“The Nightmare Begins” and “Devil’s Planet” both originally aired in November 1965. In the 13-episode The Daleks’ Master Plan arc—written by Dalek creator Terry Nation—the first Doctor (William Hartnell) faced the Daleks as they planned to take over the galaxy. This storyline, according to the BBC, was “dark and gritty,” and was “ordered to be wiped.” (There were kind of a lot of deaths.) Apparently, neither Australia nor New Zealand would take the episodes, finding them too violent, and “without their buy-in, selling to other markets was not profitable.” So these episodes have never been seen outside the UK. (A third episode in the arc was found in 2004.)

The two newly found episodes were apparently the gems in a collection that mostly included film of canals and trains.

…

A special screening is in fact taking place in London on April 4, which is the same day the episodes will arrive on BBC iPlayer.

Metropolis

Critical Mass News, Snippets

Currently screening on SBS is the SF classic Metropolis (note this is the newly restored version).

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city’s mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

No prize for guessing which is the mad scientist…

2025 Aurealis Award winners

Critical Mass News, Snippets

The 2025 Aurealis Awards winners, recognizing the best in Australian speculative fiction, have been announced.

Best Science Fiction Novel

  • WINNER: Wastelands, Samira Lloyd (Arianhrod)
  • Letters to Our Robot Son, Cadance Bell (Ultimo)
  • Arborescence, Rhett Davis (Fleet UK)
  • Volatile Memory, Seth Haddon (Tordotcom)
  • Dark Sands, J.S. Harman (self-published)
  • All We Have, Tony Shillitoe (Millswood)

Best Science Fiction Novella

  • WINNER: “The Hidden God”, T.R. Napper (Asimov’s 3-4/25)
  • Quiet Like Fire, Cameron Cooper (Stories Rule)
  • “Photo in the Chip”, Callum Lewis (Andromeda Spaceways Spring ’25)
  • Homecoming, Thomas K Slee (Refraction)
  • All My Guns are Trans and Gay and They’re Ruining My Fucking Life, Maddison Stoff & Corey Jae White (self-published)

You can read anbout the winners in other categories in this article from Locus magazine:
https://locusmag.com/2026/02/2025-aurealis-awards-winners/

Critical Mass March 18th: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Critical Mass News, Snippets

In the ancient city of Lankhmar, two men forge a friendship in battle. The red-haired barbarian Fafhrd left the snowy reaches of Nehwon looking for a new life, while the Gray Mouser, apprentice magician, fled after finding his master dead. These bawdy brothers-in-arms cement a friendship that leads them through the wilds of Nehwon, facing thieves, wizards, princesses, and the depths of their desires and fears.

The late Fritz Leiber’s tales of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser launched the sword-and-sorcery genre, and were the inspiration for the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons and Dragons.

“Fafhrd’s origins were easy to perceive in his near seven-foot height and limber-looking ranginess, his hammered ornaments and huge longsword: he was clearly a barbarian from the Cold Waste north even of the Eight Cities and the Trollstep Mountains.”

“The Mouser’s antecedents were more cryptic [than Fafhrd’s] and hardly to be deduced from his childlike stature, gray garb, mouse-skin hood shadowing flat swart face, and deceptively dainty rapier; but somewhere about him was the suggestion of cities and the south, the dark streets and also the sun-drenched spaces.”

[The] early stories are playful and fun, if occasionally a shade awkward, but the series from the high days of the 60s is a complete joy. Tales like Bazaar of the Bizarre, The Lords of Quarmall and Ill Met in Lankhmar have all attractions of their predecessors, but more sophistication, more complex and well-handled plots, and deeper characterisation.
— https://fantasy-faction.com/2012/fafhrd-and-the-gray-mouser-by-fritz-leiber by Nyki Blatchley

We invite you to read some of the stories about these two by Fritz Leiber. In particular, Ill met in Lankhmar deals with how the two met.

We meet at the Minor Works Building at 6:30pm, 18th March Adelaide time.
(There’s a passage between 50 and 52 Sturt Street which leads to the Minor Works Building)

For those who can’t make it in person, you can join us via zoom (6:30pm Adelaide, 7pm Melbourne, 8am London)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89652887061?pwd=YURTfj9YrsptbF5VhI7kEqjxYTJohl.1

Meeting ID: 896 5288 7061
Passcode: 916547


Locus magazine publishes their recommended reading list

Critical Mass News, Snippets

Welcome to the Locus Recommended Reading List…

We saw some fabulous books come out last year and are so pleased to let you know about them! Our recommendations are compiled annually by the Locus reviewers, editors, and columnists; outside reviewers; and other professionals and well-known critics of genre fiction and non-fiction. This year we looked at over 1,000 titles between short and long fiction.

Note: we know there will be books you loved that didn’t make it; any one of our voting group would have a different exact list, of course. The list we share is our combined sum of opinions, assessed with a great affection and care for the field. We did not see everything that came out last year (though we tried!) and there will always be books that didn’t make it. No one in the group is allowed to vote for any titles they worked on or acquired.

See the detailed list here: https://locusmag.com/2026/02/2025-recommended-reading/