Adri and Joe talk about books: The 2021 Locus List

Joe: This year feels especially weird to me because we just got done talking about last year’s Hugo Awards, which means that we were actually talking about work published in 2020. Now we’re sliding right from that into talking a bit about some of the best of 2021, albeit in a somewhat different format than our Best of 2021 chat.

It’s the 2021 Locus Recommended Reading List and it’s time to stuff our faces full of all of the glory that is all of the books and maybe start thinking about this year’s awards races. No rest for the weary, eh?

Adri: Maybe a bit of rest, since we’re doing this a couple of weeks later than usual, a fact which is partly about how intense it has been going from 2021 awards season into 2022 this year, and partly because I got the new Pokemon game and disappeared for a week to complete my Pokedex.

Let’s be honest: it’s also partly because the time I would have spent getting excited over the list when it first came out instead got taken up by frustrations over what happens lower down in the Locus Awards ballot, and especially by their longlist of Best Magazine candidates that, when originally published, included some fanzines that hadn’t updated since 2018 (and earlier), while only two fanzines from the last 5 years of Hugo Best Fanzine shortlists were represented. There were also other notable exclusions, like YA speculative fiction magazine Cast of Wonders, which, along with the biased and limited selection of sites and magazines that Locus chooses to collect demographic data about, adds up to a picture of prioritising old-school fandom voices and systemically overlooking newer ones. The team at Locus have since gone some way to rectifying that (you can now vote for Nerds of a Feather without writing us in, if you are so inclined!) but it makes it difficult to get enthusiastic about the list overall when parts of it are so… disappointing.

That said, we’re here for Locus Recommended Reading List, not the Locus Awards themselves, and the list IS fun. So: what books are you excited to see here?

Joe: Yes, books! I always have to remind myself that Locus breaks out First Novels from the main Science Fiction and Fantasy categories - so Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun is there and not in fantasy (and, I still *really* need to read that one).

Is it weird to say that some of the books that I’m most excited to see on the list are the ones I haven’t read yet because the second year of the pandemic hit my reading habits differently than the first? It’s the reminder that these are books that I really need to pay attention to and not let slide for another six years until I forget why I was excited about them in the first place.

So - from that weirdly specific category, I’m excited to see

You Sexy Thing (Cat Rambo), The Actual Star (Monica Byrne), Light from Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki), and Jade Legacy (Fonda Lee). I was always going to read Jade Legacy as soon as I can get my hands on a copy, but the other three have been floating in and out of my consciousness for months now. Also! I’m long overdue to read Cherie Priest again and her latest novel, Grave Reservations, is on the Recommend Reading List. As an added bonus, it’s urban fantasy and this is going to be a big year for reading urban fantasy here at Nerds of a Feather (future hint, future hint).

For novels that I’ve read and loved, I am not at all surprised but am absolutely thrilled to see A Desolation Called Peace (Arkady Martine), We Are Satellites (Sarah Pinsker, who can do no wrong), Out Past the Stars (K.B. Wagers), The Wisdom of Crowds (Joe Abercrombie), and Soulstar (C.L. Polk). I may not have read nearly as many new novels last year as I might have wanted to, but the ones I did were damned good.

Adri: “Not surprised but very happy” covers a lot of my favourite books that made this list. I have read The Actual Star, Light from Uncommon Stars and Jade Legacy and all rank among my favourite books of 2021, as do books like The Jasmine Throne (Tasha Suri), Soulstar (C.L. Polk), Black Water Sister (Zen Cho), and Sorrowland (Rivers Solomon).

This isn’t the first year I’ve said this, but the First novel category is also particularly stacked. P Djeli Clark (A Master of Djinn), Nghi Vo (The Chosen and the Beautiful), Cassandra Khaw (The All-Consuming World) and A.C. Wise (Wendy, Darling) all have significant, high profile careers in shorter fiction, and two of the three works from the fan favourite “sapphic trifecta” (The Unbroken by C.L. Clark and She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan) are also in here.

Like you, there’s also several books I badly need to get around to reading: Far From the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson has come very heavily recommended to me, The Echo Wife by Sarah Gailey and We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker both involve authors I don’t like to miss, and I’m long overdue checking out Gautam Bhatia’s The Horizon (and, indeed, its predecessor The Wall).

Joe: And now I’m adding to my impossible to-read list because I’m with you on wanting to read Guatam Bhatia, obviously starting with The Wall.

The flip side of talking about all of the wonderful novels that were recommended by the various reviewers at Locus is that there are equally wonderful novels left off the list. I’d almost call out those misses as snubs because I’m in the middle of Academy Award commentary and that’s an overused buzzword in that sphere, but we’ve put together our own list for a number of years now and frankly, we miss really great stuff ourselves and we don’t even have the same sort of rules in play that Locus does in terms of needing a certain percentage of recommendations to the make the list.

With that said, the miss that stands out the most to me is Savage Bounty from Matt Wallace. I’m a big fan of Matt’s writing since Envy of Angels exploded angel nuggs into my brain and everything I’ve read since has been absolutely stupendous. Savage Bounty is the second of his Savage Rebellion epic fantasy series. I know Locus doesn’t often go for big budget epic semi-traditional epic fantasy (Joe Abercrombie notwithstanding) - but Wallace is doing a whole lot in these books and punches readers in the gut in the best possible way.

Adri: I agree. I think Savage Legion also got overlooked, and it’s a shame because the series is doing fantastic things in its subgenre, and I wish it was more well known! I read the first book on your recommendation and I have no regrets about doing so.

Joe: It did, Locus missed it last year.

Adri: At the risk of just listing everything on our recommended reading list that isn’t the Locus list, there are a few things I’d have liked to see here. There are several literary fiction “crossovers” on the list, but no love for Several People are Typing by Calvin Kalsuke, a hilarious novel in chat log form about a man who accidentally uploads his consciousness to his work’s Slack channel, and all the weird and wonderful workplace happenings that surround that. I also think that Jennifer Marie Brissett’s Destroyer of Light has been very underrated this year: a retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth from the perspective of a newly colonised, tidally locked planet struggling with resource inequality and violence, it plays with time and space and intertwining paths in a really interesting way.

It also surprises me that there isn’t more love for the Rick Riordan Presents line in Young Adult. Yes, it’s a Middle Grade imprint. No, Middle Grade is not the same as YA. I have wonderful friends who advocate for the recognition of YA SFF and prefer people like me stopped crossing the streams when it comes to those two age brackets, and I see the argument for not doing so even as I personally like broad categories and chaos. But, what is relevant here is that Darcie Little Badger’s book is also middle grade and made the Locus Young Adult list, so I’d have loved to see it joined by the likes of City of the Plague God by Sarwat Chadda, or Tristan Strong Keeps Punching by Kwame Mbalia. Just saying.

Joe: That might be the case of Darcie Little Badger being known to the adult fiction reviewers (as well as the YA reviewers), so she has the visibility. You’d think that the Rick Riordan Presents line would have that visibility as well, but I think it’s still tied to who the author is. I believe Rebecca Roanhorse’s Race to the Sun from Rick Riordan was on the 2020 list but Roanhorse is a known quantity in this particular quantity and perhaps that’s what we’re seeing.

That’s a whole separate conversation about identifying blind spots, but that’s my takeaway for what you’re seeing. YA and Middle Grade are one of my blind spots, for now and until my kids age into those categories, but I’m not representing the field either.

Do you want to talk about Novella and Short Fiction? I don’t have much to add to it this year, but you are more than welcome to monologue for a bit.

Adri: Always! The thing about short fiction (especially short story, but to a lesser extent novelette as well) is that there’s just so much good stuff: even as someone who reads well above the average amount of short fiction, the whole category can feel like one big blind spot. I’m really open about my own limitations and preferences, and while I wish I had time to regularly read more publications, I’ve accepted that it’s not going to happen without giving up something else that I’m not willing to part with (or getting a paid full time “read short fiction for a living” job offer which… lol.)

So, there are plenty of stories on here that I’m like, yes, that one! (e.g. everything by Kel Coleman, "Quintessence" by Andrew Dykstal, "Meditations on Sun-Ra’s Bassim" by Yah Yah Scholfield," Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" by Sarah Pinsker… and so, so many others) there’s also a lot of stuff that I haven’t read or don’t remember as well as I want to. It’s so easy for stories even by favourite authors, like C.L. Polk or Elizabeth Bear, to pass me by if they’re not in a magazine I’m paying attention to. It’s sad, but that's the life of a short story aficionado. 

Quickly, I’ll also mention two things I think should be on here as well: one is Malka Older’s fantastic story in Constelacion, “The Badgers Digestion”; and the other is anything by Filip Hajdar Drnovšek Zorko, who had a fantastic year of work in Podcastle, Beneath Ceaseless Skies and elsewhere and is also Astounding Award Eligible.

In Novella, I’m delighted to see Lagoonfire by Francesca Forrest here: this is a great little universe about a decommissioner of gods working for a repressive government, and sadly it looks like this is going to be the last of small press Annorlunda’s works, so I hope more people pick it up and that Forrest finds somewhere to continue writing these stories. In terms of publishers, it’s also a significantly less Tor dot com dominated list than previous years, with a significant number of magazine published novellas making the cut as well as all four works in Neon Hemlock’s 2021 novella series (justifiably so: it’s an amazing set). I’d have liked to see The Future God of Love by Dilman Dila, published by Luna Press Publishing.

I’m a little surprised that Elizabeth Bear’s A Blessing of Unicorns is here, having originally been published in audiobook only in 2020: I thought we had collectively moved past the idea that audiobook publishing isn’t “real” publishing after the nonsense with Mary Robinette Kowal’s Lady Astronaut novelette, but I guess the upshot of that is that the story did get nominated for its first print appearance, so as far as Hugo precedent is concerned that makes it the “real” point of eligibility. Then again, we almost included the story in our list and would have done based on quality alone, so I don’t hate that it’s here.

Now I’ve successfully monologued, I think it’s time for our favourite activity of these roundups: vaguely authoritative shortlist guessing. What are your thoughts on the books we’re likely to see in the Nebulas and, of course, the Hugos?

Joe: My very vague sense for last year is that it was perhaps not the highest profile of years in terms of new authors breaking through or more established writers writing novels that are getting a lot of attention. It feels like a quieter year, which doesn’t at all mean that last year wasn’t another high quality year. Do you agree with that or is it just a symptom that I wasn’t as plugged in as much as I wanted to be and as I usually am?

But, with that in mind, I think the Hugo and Nebulas are going to be chaos in regards to predictions.

The Nebulas have their own particular flavor which only partially overlaps with the Hugos. A possible Nebula ballot could look like this:

• A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine
• Soulstar, by C.L. Polk
• We Are Satellites, by Sarah Pinsker
• A Master of Djinn, by P. Djeli Clark
• She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan

But, I could make a strong argument that Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful or Helene Wecker’s The Hidden Palace picks up a nomination, possibly Hummingbird Salamander (VanderMeer) or The Witness for the Dead (Addison) or The Echo Wife (Gailey). It’s absolutely wide open.

Equally wide open is the Hugo Awards. Give me another month to finalize my actual Hugo predictions, but right now I might guess something like this:

• The Galaxy and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers
• A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine
• She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan
• Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki
• The Echo Wife, by Sarah Gailey
• Termination Shock, by Neal Stephenson

I don’t feel strongly about the Neal Stephenson, it could be akin to my Ministry for the Future prediction last year, though Ministry was a much stronger potential nominee in my mind (and which I still think should have made the ballot). I really only feel good about 3 of these and if I’m wrong there then I really have no idea what’s going to make the ballot. Possibly the P. Djeli Clark? Something that I’m not even thinking about?

The Chosen and the Beautiful feels more like a Nebula novel as a Gatsby retelling, but Vo just won a novella Hugo last year. So, what do I know? What do you think?

Adri: I agree with you on the Nebulas, except my top 5 prediction would substitute either Soulstar or We Are Satellites for Nghi Vo’s The Chosen and the Beautiful. There are some things that just feel like Nebula things, and that’s one of them.

My thoughts on Hugo ballot prediction are not as well-formed as yours, but I think you are correct in that I have fewer books with “yeah, that’s definitely going to be on a Hugo ballot” vibes this year. Since the quality of my own reading didn’t drop off, I think that’s a sign that there’s actually a lot of stuff that would feel right on there, and I really like that things feel less predictable.

That said, there are still two novels that I’d be surprised to not see on the ballot: A Desolation Called Peace and The Galaxy and the Ground Within are both sequels of previous Hugo winners (Desolation for best novel and Galaxy for best series), from authors that continue to be very much in the Hugo conversation, and they’re both great books. I also think that Light From Uncommon Stars and She Who Became the Sun are ahead of the pack as buzzy debuts. I’d really like to see The Unbroken up there too, and I hope at a minimum some of the fantasy-specific awards recognise how good it is.

I’m not sure what we’ll see in the last two spots. Maybe The Echo Wife, but Magic for Liars wasn’t a Hugo finalist. Maybe We Are Satellites, but Song for a New Day wasn’t. The Witness for the Dead doesn’t seem to have captured hearts in the same way as The Goblin Emperor did (I also wasn’t sure what to make of it, though I’m looking forward to the sequel). I also don’t think we’re going to have a Neal Stephenson book this year, for no reason other than that I didn’t realise he had a book out in 2021.

So, if I’m locking in predictions, let’s go for two books I hope will be up there in Hugo voters’ consideration: The Unbroken by C.L. Clark and The Actual Star by Monica Byrne. The latter is one of my favourites and it’s the kind of thing that would be right at home in the Clarke shortlist (please don’t sleep on it, Clarke Award judges), but I want it to be on a Hugo ballot too, so here is me speaking it into being.

And that’s it! Any final thoughts before we wrap this up?

Joe: As you said, I would not be shocked at all to see The Chosen and the Beautiful on the Nebula Ballot and I am fully on board with A Desolation Called Peace and The Galaxy and the Ground Within as Hugo finalists. Those were my two near locks.

I wanted to put We Are Satellites on my pre-prediction and maybe it’ll make it there for the real prediction next month, but I do agree that the lack of nomination for the more topical (and somewhat more buzzy) A Song for a New Day kind of hurts. Sarah Pinsker can do no wrong in my book, but if I’m making predictions about what I *think* will happen and not what I want to happen - I’m not sure it’s going to make it with the Hugos.

The tricky thing is that one metric to use in predictions is whether a writer has made the novel ballot before. That doesn’t apply to debuts, but once we’re on to a second or third novel and it isn’t a real “breakout” compared to the earlier ones, it’s the best we can do in guessing the nominating habits of others.

One book that I wonder if we’re overlooking, at least in regards to the Hugo Awards is Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. The Martian wasn’t eligible when it broke out because it had been previously self published and Artemis was a let down after The Martian - but Project Hail Mary hits a lot of the same buttons as The Martian and I think has a real chance in a year that isn’t as locked in as others. That’s why Neal Stephenson was my outlier prediction. Four time finalist, one time winner, most recently on the ballot in 2016 for Seveneves. I don’t think Termination Shock has the same buzz as Seveneves but if nominating is more diffuse it could still make it.

By the time I make final predictions, Project Hail Mary will probably overtake Termination Shock, but I won’t be, well, shocked if it happens.

Adri: You make a good point, and there are probably people out there who are shocked we’ve forgotten an Andy Weir book came out last year! After Artemis, I can’t say I’m rushing out to read more of Weir’s work, but he hasn’t been on a best novel ballot before and having new things to read is always a good part of the Hugo experience.

And with that, there’s nothing left to do but wait for some ballots to drop!

Posted by: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, Hugo Award Winner for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him

Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy

Adri and Joe talk about books: 2019 Locus Recommended Reading List

Joe: It’s not that I consider the publication of the Locus Recommended Reading List to be the start of any particular awards season (because, as we all know, Hugo Awards Season is eternal) - but perhaps moreso than any other publication releasing their Best of the Year list at the end of 2019 or even putting together my own list in January, the Locus Recommended list is really the impetus for a wider conversation about the shape of the genre. As such, I am very glad you are able to join me again this year for that wider conversation.

What are your initial impressions about this list?

Adri: it's long! Was it this long last year? And once again there are so many great things that I can confirm, and even more that I've been eyeing up and haven't made it to.

But yeah, it feels long. Particularly the number of novella choices. So many books!

Joe: The overall list feels about right compared to previous years, but novella is about twice as long as last year with perhaps a wider range than in recent years past.

My count might be slightly off, but I read a smidge more than 60 books published in 2019 - a number which does include novellas, nonfiction, and non-genre works - and I generally consider myself reasonably well read in the genre, but the Locus Recommended list reminds me just how much I haven’t read. I’ve owned the book since publication early in the year, but I still haven’t read Elizabeth Bear’s Ancestral Night and Alix E. Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a major gap in my reading.

Adri: Ancestral Night is excellent and will probably be on my Hugo ballot! My own likely-shocking-to-you omission is Middlegame by Seanan McGuire, which I’m very unlikely to read before nominations close. Storm of Locusts and The City in the Middle of the Night are on my physical TBR and I am going to do my best to make those happen.

This year I had some preparation for discovering how much brilliant stuff I haven’t read through my participation in developing a niche awards shortlist - but this is still the moment that really drives it home. I’m proud, though, that this year I can spot my occasional experiences and favourites through more of the list (aside from art books, non-fiction and reprint anthologies), instead of being concentrated in the longer fiction. All that short fiction I stuffed in my eyeballs in 2019 seems to have paid off! That said, paying more attention to those lists means looking at more things I want to read and haven’t, including Aliette de Bodard’s Of Wars, And Memories, and Starlight, and Ted Chiang’s Exhalation, as well as oversights in our own longlist picking process - i.e. how did I miss that Sarah Pinsker’s amazing novelette “The Narwhal” is a 2019 original?

Joe: There’s only so much time to read everything. I didn’t read The Future of Another Timeline until after our longlists went up and it absolutely would have made the list. I am, of course, naturally distressed that you have not read Middlegame. My love and appreciation for Seanan McGuire’s fiction is well established the last few years, but Middlegame is a major level up for McGuire. It’s impressive.

The Locus lists are fairly robust, I’m still a little surprised not to see The Dragon Republic from R.F. Kuang on the fantasy list. The Poppy War was a monster debut and The Dragon Republic is just as good. I haven’t read either of the next two, but The Rage of Dragons from Evan Winter was a very buzzy debut, as was Megan O’Keefe’s Velocity Weapon (buzzy, but not a debut). It’s hard to find real fault with the breadth of the list, but the omission of those three are somewhat surprising.

Adri: I agree that The Dragon Republic felt like a very strong continuation of Kuang’s series, so I’m also a bit surprised that it’s not included. The same goes for Turning Darkness Into Light by Marie Brennan, which is an absolutely delightful continuation of the Lady Trent universe with a great new protagonist. Frances Hardinge’s new novel Deeplight surprisingly doesn’t make the young adult list.

An omission that I’m perhaps less surprised about, but that maybe indicates the US bias of the list, is the lack of Jen Williams’ The Poison Song: this is the close of her Winnowing Flame Trilogy, which has already won British Fantasy Awards for books one and two despite the fact neither of those made it onto the list in their respective years either. I’ve only read the first in the series but it’s one a lot of UK people love (I know, because I’m being compelled to read it for SCKA), and given that the Hugo nominators are going to have a higher-than-usual Brit contingent thanks to Dublin I wouldn’t be surprised if it broke the Hugo Best Series longlist, at the very least.

Joe: I’m not sure I’ve heard of Jen Williams or her series. If I had, the books just rolled right past me. I’m not saying I’m representative, because Elizabeth Bear’s lack of Best Novel Hugo nominations proves that I’m not - but usually I think I’m at least aware of what’s out there. I found a blindspot.

Adri: It’s one that’s well worth checking out, international availability notwithstanding.

We did this last year but I’m almost afraid to ask this year, with so many amazing books out there. What do you see making the awards shortlists this year?

Joe: I’ve thought about this more than I’d like to admit, so I put together a Build-a-Ballot for the Hugo Awards this year.

Start with Gideon the Ninth, The City in the Middle of the Night, The Light Brigade, and The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Select between two and four of these novels. I would be shocked if only one of them hit the Hugo ballot.

Next, consider The Future of Another Timeline, A Memory Called Empire, Middlegame, A Song for a New Day, The Raven Tower, and Magic for Liars. Pick one to two of these, depending on how many you picked from the first category.

Then - look at the final list and if you still have an empty spot on your ballot, pick one: The Testaments, Ancestral Night, Black Leopard, Red Wolf, The Dragon Republic, The Empress of Forever, Gods of Jade and Shadow, The Rage of Dragons, Storm of Locusts, Wanderers, and Velocity Weapon. I would consider these longer shots at the ballot, but they are reasonable long shots.

I don’t have a lot of opinions of the shorter fiction categories, but I fully expect The Deep and This is How You Lose the Time War to be on the ballot for Novella and something from Sarah Pinsker in a shorter category. A Song for a New Day might be a bit of a stretch in the second category above, but Pinsker has been so popular at shorter lengths with Hugo voters that I can’t discount the novel (also, I adored A Song for a New Day, but history tells me that appreciation is not enough to get my favorite on the ballot.)

Adri: I… can’t argue with much of this. I would rate A Memory Called Empire at a higher probability than The City in the Middle of the Night, but that may be me only paying attention to buzz from books that I’ve read.

Song for a New Day is a magnificent novel (and it’s so much fun to catch up with Luce Cannon in her younger days!) but I think it’s got a stronger chance at the Nebula ballot than the Hugo one, for nebulous (ha) “it just feels like a Nebula book” sorts of reasons. I feel similarly about The Future of Another Timeline, although since reading that last week it’s shot up my consideration. I haven’t read The Testaments in order to make sweeping comparative statements about the future of feminist SF, but I’ll make a sweeping objective one: The Future of Another Timeline is where I want it to be going.

In short fiction, I think To Be Taught, if Fortunate is also very likely to break into novella, and I’m also keeping a curious eye on two “tie-ins” whose respective series have been represented in short fiction before: “Glass Cannon” by Yoon Ha Lee (in Hexarchate Stories) and “Of Birthdays, and Fungus, and Kindness” by Aliette de Bodard (in Of War, and Memories, and Starlight). Both would have an uphill battle given the novella category is so dominated by standalone works these days - and the de Bodard collection is a Subterranean Press book with limited physical availability - but I’m interested in how it plays out nonetheless.

Joe: I could be wrong about The City in the Middle of the Night, but Charlie Jane Anders was on the ballot in 2017 for All the Birds in the Sky (an admittedly buzzier book, I think), but as good as that book was, I think The City in the Middle of the Night is better. It might even be more appealing across the board for nominators, but as mentioned before, what the heck do I know.

I completely agree with you on A Song for a New Day. It’s not the perfect Nebula book the way Blackfish City was last year, but it may well be far more of a Nebula book. And I also just checked Pinsker’s previous nominations and even though she’s been a three-time Hugo Award finalist, it was her Nebula nominations I was thinking about - she’s a seven-time Nebula finalist, including a win for “Our Lady of the Open Road”, the story Pinsker expanded into the novel. Well that’s interesting and if I had a do-over, I’d move it down into the long shot category.

The Future of Another Timeline is so good! It’s another novel I feel the author leveled up to write.

Adri: Yes, let’s pretend that there’s no way you can edit that prediction list now. It’s set in stone! Your future in genre punditry now hangs in the balance!

One thing I noted in last year’s list was that representation of Black authors was concentrated in YA (which is just as important but has different barriers to entry to adult SFF) and short fiction. This was not fully accurate on my part, as there were several Black authors in the first novel category for adult books who I didn’t pick up on (C.L. Polk, Bethany C. Morrow and Rebecca Roanhorse) - but I’m still happy to see progress this year with Black authors represented across the novel categories. Drayden is back in Science Fiction alongside Tade Thompson; Karen Lord and Helen Oyeyemi’s books are in fantasy; Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James is, somewhat bizarrely, in horror (I note that the horror list is otherwise all white, and hope that this book wasn’t moved in there just to prevent that from being the case); and Namwali Serpell, Cadwell Turnbull (whose debut, The Lesson, comes very highly recommended by the Skiffy and Fanty team and has been on my TBR for a while) and Ta-Nehisi Coates in First Novel. And, of course, there’s another very strong showing in YA, including LL McKinney, Akwaeke Emezi and Tochi Onyebuchi.

Of course, a skim through for one author demographic is no substitute for a full assessment of the diversity of a recommendation list, especially one as extensive and influential as the Locus List. But it is good to see.

Joe: YA does still seem to have the widest range of representation, but you’re right - there is a range of representation across all of the categories, to the point at least that we don’t have to say #LocusSoWhite - so that’s a good thing. It would be interesting to do a deeper dive in the numbers for each category of the Locus list, but that might be beyond the scope of this conversation though I’d love to see that report.

I am a bit surprised at the inclusion of Black Leopard, Red Wolf in Horror. That’s a straight up fantasy novel and while James is working with different traditions and it’s fairly bleak and you can make arguments about its literary merits compared to, say, Joe Abercrombie - it’s no more horror than any other grimdark fantasy (to the point that I care about *that* label). At least not that I was thinking about while I was reading it. Black Leopard, Red Wolf was certainly marketed as fantasy, which is really where we come up with most of these categories anyway.

I think we’ve come to the end of another episode of Adri and Joe Talk About Books. Do you have any final thoughts to wrap up this year’s Locus Recommended Reading List?

Adri: Well, as ever there’s a lot of reading to be done! My main takeaway from this year that we haven’t discussed yet is how wide a net this list casts: there’s a significant overlap between literary fiction with speculative elements and the “core” SFF scene and I’m glad this list offers a broad tent which incorporates the literary works whose SFF is worth celebrating (even as I smirk behind my hand at the non-inclusion of the likes of Ian McEwan). The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell, Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi and The Testaments are all sitting in my library pile right now and I’m grateful for the extra nudge to read them.

Likewise, there are a couple of really cool pieces in the short fiction section with unusual publication histories: “I (28M) created a deepfake girlfriend and now my parents think we’re getting married” by Fonda Lee originally appeared in the MIT Technology Review, and Ted Chiang’s piece “It’s 2059, and the Rich Kids are Still Winning” from the New York Times’ series of editorials from the future. Alongside entries from Slate’s Future Tense series and the Ocean Stories anthology by sustainable technology foundation XPrize, I appreciate that speculative short fiction by excellent authors is out in these more “non traditional” sources, and that those who compile the Locus list make it easier for the likes of me to know a little more about what’s going on.

What are your takeaways from this year’s list?

Joe: I don’t read enough nonfiction within the genre, though to be fair I don’t read quite enough nonfiction in general, and to be even more even after reading more than 60 books published last year and 150 books overall I still don’t feel like I’ve read quite enough. I want to read all the books.

What was I talking about? Oh, right. Nonfiction books.Or, as we like to say when talking about the Hugo Awards: Related Work.

I had to double check the Locus list to see if there was another Ursula K. Le Guin book from last year to see if I can make an assumption about one of the slots on the Hugo ballot, but there is not.

What is on the Locus Recommended list for nonfiction is a number of very interesting works - Modern Masters of Science Fiction volumes on Joanna Russ and Kim Stanley Robinson, a Heinlein biography (reviewed by Paul here), Nnedi Okorafor has a short memoir, and a couple of books on the pioneering women of science fiction (Monster She Wrote, and The Lady of the Black Lagoon). I don’t know where I’ll find the time, but I want to read at least half of the nonfiction books on that list. It is also selfishly worth noting that we also recommended a number of those same works in our own Hugo Awards Recommended Reading List.

After all of that, if we’re still feeling the loss of Ursula K. Le Guin on the Hugo Awards ballot don’t worry, the Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin documentary is eligible for inclusion in Related Work (nonfiction films are generally considered Related Work rather than Dramatic Presentations). So there’s still hope that we won’t have a year without Le Guin being recognized at the Hugo Awards.

Adri: Stand by for the Ted Chiang sequel editorial: “It’s 2059, and Ursula K. Le Guin is still winning Hugos”...

That's all for this time! I look forward to talking again once the shortlists start dropping...

POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 3x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.

Adri, Nerds of a Feather co-editor, is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke. Find her on Twitter at @adrijjy.

Adri and Joe Talk About Books: 2018 Locus Recommended Reading List

Joe: The Locus Recommended Reading List is out, which is always something of an annual event. I don’t think this is an original idea, but I’ve long considered the Locus Recommended list to be one of the best snapshots of what is going on in the genre in a given year. It’s certainly not exhaustive, and there’s always going to be favorites left off the list, but from a high level - these are most of the important and noteworthy SFF books and stories from the previous year.

What are your initial impressions of the list?

Adri: At this stage, I think I’ve read over 50 novels (and a sizeable number of novellas) published in 2018, but I have to say that every time the Locus list comes out I have a moment of screaming into the void over what a drop in the ocean that is compared to the number of fantastic books that come out. This year is no exception and for every book I’ve read and am excited to see here, there’s another one I want to catch up on or want to find out more about! That is, of course, a brilliant problem to have compared to the alternative of having read everything...

Joe: I’d give myself around 60 books from 2018 (a down year), including novellas, and I think I have much the same reaction. I quickly scan the list thinking “that was good, that was good, damn it I haven’t read that one yet, that was good, what the heck is Theory of Bastards, that was good”, and so on. Besides the fleeting joy of seeing stuff that I like get recognized, it’s the combination of discovery and reminders that I like.

For example, I’m pretty sure I first heard about this on the Coode Street podcast, but there’s a science fiction novel titled Condomnauts and it’s about galactic sexual ambassadors from Earth, because sex is diplomacy. I’m just so glad this novel exists and that it made the Locus Recommended list.

I am reminded that I need to read Sam Miller’s Blackfish City. I fully expect it to end up on one of the awards ballots, probably the Nebula.

Adri: Yes to both those things! Blackfish City is great but having read it, it definitely “feels” like a Nebula book - although, saying that without qualification feels a bit obnoxious...

Joe: No, I agree. Without being able to really put my finger on it (and without having read it), Blackfish City *feels* much more like a Nebula book in that same way that I’m not surprised Autonomous made the Nebula ballot last year and not the Hugo (while fully noting that Autonomous placed 8th in the nomination tally - but if you asked me if Autonomous would get a Hugo or a Nebula nomination, I’d have said Nebula).

Of course, I hated The Three-Body Problem and wouldn’t have called it for either award, so what do I know?

Adri: I mean, there’s nothing on this year's list that I would be as annoyed to have to read for awards purposes as I was with Death’s End, so that’s definitely a good starting point.

Joe: Ignoring for a moment the lack of recognition for our own Feminist Futures project in Non-Fiction since it wasn’t actually published in book form, are there any other glaring omissions that jumped out at you?

Adri: So, apparently I’m being contrary this year, because two of my novel nominees and four of my favourite novellas didn’t make the cut. Of those, I’m most disappointed not to see Before Mars, by Emma Newman - I caught up on both of the more recent Planetfall novels last year and they both completely blew me away, especially this. I also think it’s a shame not to see any Book Smugglers stories here, especially as this is the last year for their publishing wing; they came out with some really interesting novellas last year, including Accelerants by Lena Wilson and Between the Firmaments by JY Yang.

Overall, it’s quite interesting to see where sequels are being recommended and where they aren’t. I like that Tim Pratt’s The Dreaming Stars is here, as that’s shaping up to be a great series, and it’s nice to see Vivian Shaw’s irreverent horror-based urban fantasy, Dreadful Company, in the mix too, even if I’m still waiting for that series to capitalise on the potential of its female characters. Salvation’s Fire by Justina Robson - the second in a shared universe series kicked off by Adrian Tchaikovsky earlier in 2018 - is a bit of a surprise to me as the sole entrant for that series, but I do see the appeal even if I liked its predecessor better.

On the other hand, there’s no threequel love for Binti or the Wayward Children (in a much shorter overall novella list), and neither of John Scalzi’s novels - Head On and The Consuming Fire - get a mention. They’re my top contenders for the unusual “not on the Locus but made the Hugo ballot anyway” spot this year.

What did you expect, or want, to see here that isn’t?

Joe: The first thing I specifically looked for was Matt Wallace’s final Sin du Jour novella Taste of Wrath. I’m not entirely surprised it didn’t make the list simply because I’m not sure it’s received a fraction of the attention and love that the series deserved. I passionately and sometimes aggressively love those stories and it has been a perpetual disappointment to me that they haven’t been nominated for everything they are eligible for and even for some things they aren’t. I’m holding out for a Best Series Hugo nod, but maybe I shouldn’t hold my breath.

The second thing i looked for, and this was mostly out of curiosity, was whether anything from Serial Box made the cut. Nothing did. Because I’m that sort of wonk, I did a super quick check of previous years and the first season Tremontaine made the list. I’m not surprised by that either, because Tremontaine is an expansion of the Swordspoint world and I would expect to see Locus recognize Ellen Kushner. I do wonder if next year we’ll see recognition for The Vela or Ninth Step Station. Both seem like something that might get some extra attention, eyeballs, and acclaim.

Adri: Bookburners, helmed by Max Gladstone, also made in 2017 but I take the point about next year's list.

Joe: I didn’t notice it until you mentioned it, but the lack of Beneath the Sugar Sky from novella really does seem glaring. It’s perhaps my second favorite of the four (behind Every Heart a Doorway), and I have to think it’ll make the Hugo ballot.

Adri: Yes, it's on my novella ballot, and it's my runaway favourite of the Wayward Children series so far, although I freely admit there's a heavy dose of personal taste in there...

On the other hand, is there anything other than Blackfish City that’s jumped to the top of your TBR after seeing it here?

Joe: Sue Burke’s Semiosis. Would you believe I’ve had that on my Nook for pretty much all of 2018 and I still haven’t read it? Any mention of it has practically glowed with praise and I just never got around to it.

I do also want to read Chercher La Femme, the latest from L. Timmel Duchamp published by Aqueduct. Those two, along with Empire of Sand and perhaps Dread Nation are the ones to really catch my eye.

Adri: Conveniently for me, Semiosis just went on sale on Kindle UK! It’s been on my radar for a while and I’m really keen to check it out. The other one I’m very interested in is Tasha Suri’s Empire of Sand, a very intriguing looking fantasy set in a Mughal Empire-inspired world.

I’d actually had Chandler Klang Smith’s The Sky is Yours on my radar and then forgotten about it until now. I think in my mind, the neon cover got confused with the cover of Blackfish City, because apparently I can keep eighty different spaceship covers straight in my head but not two actually very different-looking city-based science fiction novels. Back on the list it goes!

Joe: From what I can tell, Locus tends to do a good job mentioning UK publishers, but just out of curiosity, how US-centric does the list feel to you?

Adri: Well, nothing jumps out as a glaring US-centric text, and I don't think there are any buzzy books that I've struggled to gain access to in the UK. One thing I did note is that there are a couple of things on my Hugo radar (although not my ballot) that are in “second wave” eligibility i.e. first publication in the US in 2018, which I don’t think the Locus list counts? Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time was a 2015 UK release that won the Clarke, my heart, and a 2018 US edition (in that order), but I don’t think that counts for this list, and the lack of Tchaikovsky overall makes me a bit sad. Terra Nullius, by Claire G. Coleman, was released by Small Beer Press in 2018, a year after originally being published in Australia, and it’s an absolutely searing take on colonialism that deserves a wider audience. I also noticed only one translation among the novels - Yoss - and surely there must be more worth noting? Jin Yong’s A Hero Born came out in English for the first time in 2018.

Joe: I expect Rachel Cordasco will have something to say about the lack of translation. I counted two (Frankenstein in Baghdad and the aforementioned Condomnauts).

The thing that jumped out at me with the UK publication is the Adam Roberts novel only with a UK publisher listed. I think Dave Hutchinson has had greater success in the UK than in the US. I just didn’t know if all of the books I was aware of was because they were more prominent in the US than in the UK, and if you’re more aware of them because of how they are positioned here versus books you’d actually see in the shops or discussed where you live.

Adri: Yes, I think the UK is pretty well represented in this list, at least based on the novel sections? Hutchinson’s Fractured Europe series has definitely been bigger in the UK (although I can’t quite bring myself to finish it despite owning Europe at Dawn, for a couple of reasons). Ben Aaronovitch is also huge, and Lies Sleeping was a really great entry to the Rivers of London series (probably the best since the fourth), so I’m happy to see that get some love! Jasper Fforde’s new standalone (Early Riser) isn’t here, and a new novel from him is always a big deal, but I’m not sure it’s at the level of quality where I’d expect it to appear. From a publishing standpoint, only The Dreaming Stars makes it for Angry Robot but there’s a fair bit of love for Solaris, which is based in the UK.

But yes, an increase in translation is something I’d love to see on this list from a selfish standpoint - I don’t read nearly enough of it to know what I’d like to see here (and I bounced pretty hard off the misogyny in the Yoss book I previously tried), but I’d love it if Locus could solve that problem for me. Of course, there already are people out there doing that work, and not all lists can do all things, so I guess I'll cope.

Joe: To the point that we can look at the Locus Recommended list and extrapolate out to the Hugo and Nebula Awards (I believe there’s something like a 75-80% hit rate on novels and novellas), what would you expect to see make the final ballots? Or, at least, what would you not be surprised to see make the final ballot?

Adri: My money is on The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal making both lists: it’s been a huge hit (including with you!) and while I have somewhat mixed feelings about the duology as a whole, I think it deserves to be recognised. I think The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang is also going places, although it will be interesting (and frustrating) to see if the first half of the plot, which takes place in a school with a teen protagonist, leads to people nominating it for the YA awards when it so clearly isn’t. And if Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning doesn’t make one or the other I’d be super surprised, given her short story wins last year. Finally, Catherynne M. Valente seems to fly under the radar of awards notice a lot of the time but there’s been a lot of buzz around Space Opera. While it’s not at the top of my personal list, as a fan of Eurovision I would not be sorry to see a book that takes its chapter titles from the contest’s greatest hits and its section names from the Captain Planet elements get some best novel love.

Joe: I agree that The Calculating Stars seems like as much of a lock as a book can reasonably be. I think it was a major hit in both nominating audiences and Kowal has been generally popular with both the Hugo and the Nebula crowds (she’s a two time Hugo winner for her short fiction and once more for Writing Excuses), plus the original Lady Astronaut novelette won a Hugo.

Space Opera seems likely. Like we discussed, Blackfish City seems reasonable for the Nebula. I won’t be surprised by Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Moon getting a Hugo nod. Robinson’s novels tend to get nominated (Shaman did not, but I expect Aurora would have had it been published in a normal Hugo year). Revenant Gun? Record of a Spaceborn Few? I will be surprised if Robert Jackson Bennett’s Foundryside makes the list. I just haven’t seen the conversation around it, and if his Divine Cities didn’t make it as individual novels, I don’t think this is the awards breakout. I won’t be surprised if Scalzi makes the Hugo ballot with one of his two novels.

The one I think you’re right about is Trail of Lightning. Traditionally, no. It’s not the sort of novel that gets recognized, but Roanhorse was so popular with “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience” and Trail of Lightning was so well received, that I’d also be surprised if it doesn’t make at least one of the ballots.

I expect to be disappointed by The Poppy War missing out.

I also won’t be mad if something like The Red Clocks sneaks onto the Nebula ballot. Or Madeline Miller’s Circe, but I think that’s a stretch.

Oh! I forgot the obvious one: Spinning Silver. I can’t imagine an awards season where Naomi Novik’s novel isn’t nominated for one award, if not both the Nebula and the Hugo.

Adri: I agree with you for Foundryside, unfortunately, although its on my ballot and I think it’s just as worthy as the Divine Cities (which were robbed last year). And yes, Spinning Silver feels like a near certainty - insofar as anything is - too.

I think Revenant Gun is the thing on my personal novel ballot that is most likely to make the final list (because apparently I’m rooting for some serious underdogs this year - though I’m also cross-pollinating with Tess of the Road, my hands-down favourite book of 2018, which I refuse to contemplate not being up for the Lodestar). However, it doesn’t feel as certain as the previous two novels - which would be a shame, because I think it’s a much stronger book than Raven Stratagem and did some unexpected but quite satisfying things with its final-act character arcs.

Joe: The one book not mentioned so far that I do have on my Hugo ballot is Nicky Drayden’s Temper. I liked Prey of Gods, but Temper was Drayden leveling up. I’d expect it more on the Nebula than the Hugo, if it gets anywhere.

Adri: Yes - Temper is another one that narrowly missed out for me, but between that and Prey of Gods, Drayden is basically on my autobuy list for future novels. I do also have to note that I think she’s the only Black novel author not on here for YA (this is not to disparage YA at all, but the barriers to entry in that field are different to those in adult SFF), which feels frustrating after the glow surrounding Jemisin’s three-Hugo streak. There are people and publications out there doing great things when it comes to increasing representation of marginalised voices in the genre; we’ve not touched on the short fiction categories but I was really pleased to see FIYAH Literary Magazine represented with 6 stories, 5 more than last year, among lots of other good venues. But it’s frustrating to see PoC representation continue to fall on so few shoulders in the novel lists. I hope there will be more detailed analysis of this (Natalie Luhrs has done a great breakdown for the last few years) because it's something worth keeping in mind when using these lists.

***

Joe: Hey - I really enjoyed this. We should do another one, maybe when the Nebula ballot is announced.

Adri: Absolutely! Thanks for putting this together and I look forward to seeing what this year’s awards reading has in store...


Adri is a semi-aquatic migratory mammal most often found in the UK. She has many opinions about SFF books, and is also partial to gaming, baking, interacting with dogs, and Asian-style karaoke.

Joe Sherry is a co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 & 2018 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.