The Adelaide Fan Review

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!

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.

No prize for guessing which is the mad scientist…

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/

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

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/

There’s a very interesting essay at SpeculativeInsights called Lives under Empire, which looks at the politics of forever wars.

“The novella Lives under Empire by Premee Mohamed, two novelettes (“The Weight of What is Hollow” and “Forsaking All Others”), and the short story “The General’s Turn” each follow different subjects of the Treotan Empire, a militant dictatorship that has grown habituated to unceasingly waging imperial wars. This format gives Mohamed ample space in which to illustrate the impact of unceasing warfare on the daily lives of imperial subjects. The depth of each story also allows protagonists from diverse walks of life to ponder their relationship with the regime—and whether this relationship needs to change, and at what cost.”
— https://www.speculativeinsight.com/essays/lives-under-empire

I wonder if this essay by Eric de Roulet might lead to an interesting discussion at Critical Mass about dealing with Empire in the real world?

Jeff Harris has suggested another article on empire: I suggest reading the discussion of empires in science-fiction (see link below) is not only clearer and more readable, but relief from “lives under empire”‘s plodding quasi-academic style. 

https://reactormag.com/side-eyeing-science-fictions-love-of-empire/

So for the Critical Mass meeting on February 18th at the Minor Works Building
(There’s a wide path between 50 and 52 Sturt Street which will take you to the Minor Works Building)

(A) We shall discuss the two articles on empire

and then (B) we each discuss a work of interest for 5 minutes — either an old SF work worth reading (pre 1980), or a new work which has impressed you (post 2020).

Critical mass Zoom meeting.
Time: Feb 18, 2026 6:30pm Adelaide / 7pm Melbourne / 10am London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84725647281?pwd=xOiFBfqxjaYVhDgYZxs1Ac5WeG5889.1

Meeting ID: 847 2564 7281
Passcode: 805107