What Will be the Next Breakout SF/F Novel?

Sure, we've all heard of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Game series, J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, and more recently Nnedi Okorafor's Binti series, but what are some new under-the-radar SF/F pieces that deserve their time in the spotlight? Sometimes the best pieces are the ones found in the nooks and crannies of the literary universe; you just have to dig hard enough to find them. We took the Minotaur by the horns and have compiled a few book recommendations from esteemed SF/F reviewers to give you some suggestions on what book to pick up next!

Reading Recs from the Pros

Marion Deeds from FantasyLiterature.com

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

I thought I had hit my vampire threshold until I read Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Certain Dark Things. (My review at fantasyliterature.com is here.) Morena-Garcia shows us a new take on supernatural bloodsucking creatures, and she provides a gritty, Gibsonian Mexico City as a backdrop. The book gives us novelty by creating various “races” of vampires; our main character, Atl, is from a line indigenous to the Americas. She is described as avian and her family crest is the hummingbird. Other vamps are more in the Bram Stoker tradition, and there is infighting among the bloodlines. Atl, a rebellious party girl, is the sole survivor of an attack on her clan by an encroaching vampire crime family, and she’s fled to the supposedly vampire-free Mexico City. As you might imagine, it’s not vampire-free at all. Once there, she enlists the aid of a scrappy human street kid named Domingo. The descriptions of Mexico City are sharp, by turns gritty, beautiful and romantic.

The List of Cli-Fi from SF/F Authors

(Click here to get right to the list!)

At FOGcon 2017, I'm moderating a panel on climate change and the geography of daily life. To facilitate our conversation, I put together this list of notable climate fiction (cli-fi) written specifically by science fiction and fantasy authors. I should point out that there is a much larger body of cli-fi work from writers in mainstream fiction, but I'm not including them here. Additionally, I'm inclined to include SF novels based on other planets, as well as secondary world fantasy, if climate change is one of the over-arching conflicts or themes.

Just a couple of other quick notes on the list. This will be a working document that I'll update periodically. As such, please share any books you think should be added in the comment section.

Unless the annotations are in quotes, they come from me. Having said that, I haven't read all these books (yet), so some of the annotations are simply me paraphrasing plot summaries from the publisher or author's website. (To that end, if you're making a book recommendation in the comments, feel free to write your own original annotation, and include a link to your homepage or social media handle and I'll quote you in the main article itself if/when I add the book.)

The Man Behind the Podcasts: Patrick Hester

If you hang out in the online SFF community much, you’ve likely run across Patrick Hester before. The guy is nutty busy. He blogs, tweets, writes a column on graphic novels for Kirkus Reviews, and runs three podcasts, the most notable being the SF Signal podcast, which has been nominated for a Parsec award and twice nominated for a Hugo Award. In addition to all that, Patrick is an emerging SFF author himself, and—oh yeah—he works a full-time day job! I had the great pleasure of interviewing Patrick for a new article I wrote at Blackgate, but since I could only use a small portion of our conversation and Patrick had so many great things to say, I decided to run with the full interview transcript here. Enjoy!

GC: Welcome, Patrick! Could you please describe your writing career up to this point in a nutshell.

In a nutshell, I got serious about writing in 2000 and spent the rest of the decade trying to write something I felt was worthy of publishing. I'm pretty obsessive about that part and didn't begin shopping a novel series and selling short stories until 2009. I now have a couple short stories out in anthologies, and have pushed some other stuff out myself as part of a hybrid/indie model I've been developing for myself. Still trying to sell the novels, though.

GC: How do you make ends meet?

I stand on street corners with a sign that reads: "Will write for money."

Kidding… I only do that at conventions. The rest of the time,

An Annotated Bibliography for Science Fiction and Climate Change

So, I just finalized a magazine article I've been working on for the last couple of weeks called "Can SF Save the World From Climate Change?" Hopefully, the article will be coming to a science fiction magazine near you soon, but seeing as how my research led me to some great reading material on the subject, I figured it'd be helpful to share my sources here and now. Below you'll find the annotated bibliography I included with my article, everything from the most up-to-date prognosis on our planet to the newest trends in literature dealing with climate change. I'd like to give a very special thanks to Bill McKibben of 350.org for taking the time to provide me with some of these great resources and for weighing in on the idea of SF inspiring creative solutions for dealing with climate change. Likewise, I'd also like to give a special thanks to John DeNardo of SF Signal. Thanks, gentlemen!

Climate Change: The Reality of the Situation

McKibben, Bill. “The Reckoning.” Rolling Stone. Issue 1162, August 2012. The popular article that drove home the notion that we’re already experiencing the effects of global warming. In addition to laying out the