Category: Snippets

The Bookseller has announced the winners of the inaugural British Audio Awards. Categories, titles, and authors of genre interest include:

Science Fiction & Fantasy

• WINNER: Queen B, Juno Dawson, narrated by Nicola Coughlan (Harper Voyager)

• Count Zero, William Gibson, narrated by Alix Wilton Regan, Kyle Soller & Sebastián Capitán Viveros (WF Howes)
• The Shadow Rising, Robert Jordan (Macmillan Audio)
• Doctor Who: Agent of the Daleks, Steve Lyons, narrated by Nicholas Briggs & Maureen O’Brien (BBC Audio)
• Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, V.E. Schwab, narrated by Marisa Calin, Katie Leung & Julia Whelan (Tor)
• Bee Speaker, Adrian Tchaikovsky, narrated by Rod Hallett, Gabrielle Nellis-Pain & Adrian Tchaikovsky (Ad Astra)

More details at Locus magazine

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?

We’re gathering at ballaboosta at 7pm this Thursday, Jan 15th for dinner.
Come along and suggest what we should talk about this year, 2026.

If you wish to join us, and haven’t said you’re coming, please contact roman (websmith@internode.on.net) so that he can confirm the appropriate number of seats at the restaurant.

2025 Books We Loved: Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings

December 29, 2025

It’s Locus‘s 2025 Holiday Countdown of Staff Picks!

In case you missed it, Locus reviewer Alexandra Pierce chooses Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings: A lush, gothic story about home and family and place and secrets.

Read Alexandra’s full review online or in the September 2025 issue of Locus. …Read More

Favourite Books of 2025

• The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit)
• A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey)
• The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor Books)

Favourite Short Stories of 2025

• “Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” by Martha Wells (Reactor)
• “The Emergency Contact” by Arendse Lund (Analog)
• “The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For” by Cameron Reed (Reactor)
• “The Knight and the Butcherbird” by Alix E. Harrow (Amazon Original Stories)

See reactor magazine for details about favourite films, TV shows and more in 2025 at Reactor Mag

“Every Version of You sneaks in some really hard, fundamental questions about the mind-body problem, what it means to be human, what we are willing to sacrifice for another, and what – if any – is the difference between living and being alive.”
—Locus Magazine

Our guest (via zoom) in November is Grace Chan, whose novel Every Version of You won several best book awards in 2022, including the University of Sydney People’s Choice Award at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Not just a literary novel, but an excellent work of science fiction as well.

Every Version of You was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and The Age Book of the Year. It was longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Indie Book Awards. It has been optioned for a film adaptation.

We will talk with Grace Chan for about 20 minutes, then open the discussion up for comments/questions from the audience.
Several shorter works are available via links on her website.

The meeting will be at the community room at Christie Walk from 6:15pm
— entry from 101 Sturt Street.

Zoom details:
Time: Nov 13, 2025 6:30pm Adelaide, 7pm Melbourne, 9am London
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89371483403?pwd=VRKdKuDAjSxPIbOaNaUPecnbiofiD5.1

Meeting ID: 893 7148 3403
Passcode: 589451

• The Huntington has acquired the papers and personal library of Kim Stanley Robinson, acclaimed science fiction author of the Mars trilogy and The Ministry for the Future.
• The archive includes manuscripts, correspondence, notebooks, photographs, and Robinson’s personal reference library.
• Highlights include drafts of nearly all of Robinson’s major novels and annotated works by authors who have shaped his thinking.
• The collection will be processed with the goal of making it available to researchers by 2027. 

The Huntington announced today that it has acquired the papers and personal library of Kim Stanley Robinson, a New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. 

Robinson is the author of more than 20 books, including his bestselling Mars trilogy—Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993), Blue Mars (1996)—and the widely praised 2312 (2012), Shaman (2013), New York 2140 (2017), and The Ministry for the Future (2020). 

“It’s a deep pleasure to have my archive go to The Huntington,” said Robinson. “I remember visiting from Orange County when I was in school; as a lifelong library lover, I was amazed there could be such a big and beautiful one. Since then, I’ve known The Huntington as the home of the Octavia E. Butler papers, and I’m proud to have mine join hers there. Science fiction is the genre best suited to expressing Southern California—as our work will show. I’m also honored to have my papers join the library that holds those of other authors I admire, such as Hilary Mantel and Thomas Pynchon.” 

More details: https://www.huntington.org/news/huntington-acquires-archive-and-library-award-winning-science-fiction-writer-kim-stanley

“If you haven’t met star-traveler Ijon Tichy, clear a little room in your heart: he’s moving in.

Stanisław Lem is probably best known as the author of Solaris, but his stories about space voyager Ijon Tichy are his true gems. A critic in the ’70s wrote that Stanisław Lem was the most-read sci-fi writer in the world, and Lem is likely the most translated Polish sci-fi/fantasy author (though Andrzej Sapkowski, with the help of a certain white-haired Witcher, is rapidly closing the gap!).

But despite Lem’s enduring popularity, quiet Ijon—“Tichy” is a play on the word for “quiet” in Czech and Russian, stemming from an ancestor who remained silent throughout his own trial—remains a stranger to many readers today. And that’s a shame: Ijon Tichy is a lovable bumbler and a clear-eyed comedian. He represents the victory of a goodhearted, collegial comic over cynicism and solipsism. He may be more of a quiet observer than most heroes, but here are just a few reasons why Tichy is a sci-fi protagonist you’ll be very pleased to meet…”

Alex Przybyla, writing in Reactormag
“https://reactormag.com/stanislaw-lems-greatest-character-an-introduction-to-ijon-tichy/“

A good place to start is Lem’s Star Diaries

It’s worth a look at the Science Fiction roundup by Lisa Tuttle in The Guardian.
The September column looks at The Naked Light by Bridget Collins; Exiles by Mason Coile; Alchemised by SenLinYu; Saltcrop by Yume Kitasei; and Big Time by Jordan Prosser.

Exiles by Mason Coile (Baskerville, £16.99)In 2030, three astronauts arrive on Mars, on a one-way mission to prepare for full-scale colonisation. They find their robot-built base, the Citadel, severely damaged, and one of the robots missing. The remaining two offer different explanations: the missing robot malfunctioned and caused the damage before fleeing, or the Citadel was attacked by an unseen, hostile alien force, and the third robot went in pursuit and has not returned. A taut, terrifying thriller, sadly the last work from Mason Coile, a pseudonym of award-winning author Andrew Pyper, who died in January.

See the rest of the reviews in The Guardian