Hungry squid games? Best candidates for this year’s SF and Fantasy Awards
Ian Mond and Alex (Alexandra) Pierce – Victoria’s Locus writers – discuss their preferences, and perhaps who ought not to be there – in the forthcoming Awards season. Hugos, Nebulas, Ditmars, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, Vogels, Clarkes, and more – the lists are large, will your favourite award or author be mentioned? May the cream rise to the top.
Fresh to you and – for those wanting more, or an appetiser – here are Ian and Alex on the Coode St podcast.
Nova Mob meets 7:30-9pm Adelaide time / 8-9:30pm Melbourne time Wednesday, 6th May
Zoom link (unchanged, this link applies to all Mob meetings):
The meeting will be at 6:30pm May 20th at the Minor Works Building (follow the path between 50 and 52 Sturt Street)
Samantha Lane is exploring various definitions of Science Fiction in an attempt to understand the factor that unites all the media and stories that we understand as SciFi. SciFi is such a broad genre that it seems to defy definition. What any two members read can vary greatly in terms of themes, style and setting and yet they both acknowledge the other’s choice as SciFi. I would like to begin with what authors such Asimov, Dick and Le Guin think SciFi was and then take a step back to see how academics view the genre in a broader sense.
Samantha will present for about 25 minutes followed by 20 minutes of discussion.
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)
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
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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.
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
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)
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.
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.
The Adelaide Fan Review 
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