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Posts Tagged ‘awards’

This year’s Booker Prize winner is (gasp!) a science fiction novel! How fabulous. M. John Harrison won for The End of Everything. I haven’t read it, but now I want to.

Everything you need to know about The End of Everything by M. John Harrison, winner of the Booker Prize 2026

The End of Everything can be read as a thriller, a mystery, a satire, a dystopia, a road novel, a work of realism; whatever the reader is looking for can be found here, albeit told at a slant and with a twist. The book offers something for everyone!

And here’s a piece by one of the judges on reading the contenders, and the strange and wondrous experience of swimming through this uniquely human sea.

Judging this year’s Booker prize taught me our humanity cannot be captured by algorithms and data

The before times have come and gone, and we seem to be moving towards something new, but do not yet know what. In the meantime, people will continue to write novels that will console and enchant, challenge and provoke. My year of reading has shown what a gift that can be.

To consider for your to-be-read list!

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The 2026 MacArthur Fellows have been announced, and this year’s class is an interesting mix. From climate scientists to fiction writers, historians to chemists and more, the list provides a window into just some of the work being done by smart, enthusiastic, and creative people today.

These Fellows have found ways to capture some of the most important issues of our time, and it’s great to see such varied examples of constructive creativity, and to think of all the other people out there doing good work. Let’s hear it for flashes of genius!

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Well, this is cool. Robert J. Sawyer, who I believe is still Canada’s most decorated sci-fi author, just won the Aurora Award for Best Novel for The Downloaded 2: Ghosts in the Machine.

Sci-fi author Robert J. Sawyer among winners of the 2026 Aurora Awards | CBC Books

In the book, a starship crew and ex-convict Roscoe Koudoulian upload their digital consciousnesses into cyberspace as an asteroid is about to crash into the earth. While in the digital world, they come face to face with ghosts from their past — and learn that the existence of the human race could soon be destroyed.

I’m looking forward to reading this, and the rest of what looks to be a very promising slate of science fiction and fantasy!

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This weekend, The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association presented the 61st annual Nebula Awards. If you saw the finalist roster I shared in March and thought, “Gosh, I wonder who will win?” well, wonder no more!

Just some of the winners of the Nebula awards for the best speculative fiction from 2025:

The Nebula Award for Novel

★ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; Titan UK) ★ 

The Nebula Award for Novella

★ The River Has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia) ★ 

The Nebula Award for Novelette

★ “Uncertain Sons”, by Thomas Ha (Uncertain Sons and Other Stories, Undertow Publications) ★

The Nebula Award for Short Story

★ “Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything”, by Effie Seiberg (Diabolical Plots 5/25) ★

For more, see the complete list of finalists and winners at SFFWorld!

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I talk about science and fiction here, but I also like fantasy, science and otherwise. What’s up in the world of speculative fiction, fantasy edition? The World Fantasy Awards shortlist, that’s what!

Here’s the full ballot, with links to the short fiction list where available:

Here Are the 2025 World Fantasy Award Finalists – Reactor

Short Fiction

“Our Best Selves” by Hiron Ennes (Weird Horror Magazine #9)

“Godskin” by CL Hellisen (Strange Horizons, March 4, 2024)

“The V*mpire” by PH Lee (Reactor, October 2024)

“Raptor” by Maura McHugh (Heartwood: A Mythago Wood Anthology)

“Everything in the Garden is Lovely” by Hannah Yang (Apex Magazine #143, March 2024)

Do some of these look dark and scary and filled with content warnings? They do, but perhaps that’s your thing? If not, check out the other novels, novellas and more. 

Winners will be chosen and awards presented at the World Fantasy Convention in the UK this November! 

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I’ve been too focused on work lately. Mr Man had to remind me that the Nebula Award winners were announced earlier this month. Thanks, Mr Man!

Here’s the announcement: 2024 – The Nebula Awards®, and Locus has the list with online links for free-to-read stories.

As usual, the Nebulas provide a slate of interesting material for my reading list. I’m also happy to say that Canadian authors are well-represented in this year’s awards.

Canadian sci-fi scribes among the winners for this year’s Nebula Awards

The winners’ roster also includes an interactive game that sounds like something I very much want to check out: 

A Death in Hyperspace (via Stewart C Baker)

As an embodied ship Intelligence and fugitive former warship, you’ve faced many challenges.

But when your captain dies suspiciously halfway through a hyperspace transit, you know you’re in trouble. Not because you need a captain — you can pilot yourself just fine — but because, as an aficionado of mysteries and detective stories, you know there’s only one explanation: murder most foul.

Investigate your rooms.

Interrogate your crew and passengers.

Solve the mystery.

Will you find your way back to reality — or be stuck in hyperspace forever?

It beat out big names like Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and it’s free to play online? Sounds excellent!

Way to go, everyone!

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This year’s Genius Grants were announced this week. I love this award, not just for the secrecy and drama, or because deserving artists and innovators are being rewarded (monetarily, even!) for their work, but because the scope and creativity of their ideas helps us all think more expansively.

Here’s the 2024 MacArthur Fellows list – NPR

This year’s Fellows include performing and visual artists, writers, scientists, historians, activists and one filmmaker, Sterlin Harjo. The MacArthur Foundation considers these grants as investments in people whose “ideas, experiments, and solutions expand our expectations of what’s possible.”

Here’s to genius, whatever form it may take.

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Photo by “My Life Through A Lens” on Unsplash

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Fun, new reading recommendations! SFWA Announces the Finalists for the 59th Nebula Awards – SFWA

Here are links to the short story and novelette finalists. Most are free to read. For the full list with info links (including those below), see Finalists for the 59th Nebula Awards | MetaFilter.

Nebula Award for Novelette

Nebula Award for Short Story

I read this delightful short by R.S.A. Garcia with lunch: Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200 – Uncanny Magazine

You could meet him if you want but take off the recorder first. I tell you my story, but you have to ask him if you want to hear his.

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Photo by Nataliya Melnychuk on Unsplash

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