The Locus Awards! You guys get it by now. The Locus Awards don’t count as one of th eones that I “really” cover, so I don’t read everything. There are a lot of things! I generally read the short categories and use the Locus Awards as an opportunity to sort of calibrate my reading list and whatnot.
That said, I done did read a bunch of these, and, you know, whatever it is i’m doing here1 wouldn’t be complete without the Locus awards because, as always, there’s nothing else to write about in mid-June.
1 you know I do keep promising that “about” page. I really should get on that. There’s a whole, like, explanation of the site involved. Fourteen years on.
The Locus Awards are also blessedly free of most of the nonsense of the other summer book awards, which makes it a nice respite from, say, trying to figure out who is still mad at whom, or however much worse any given, say, Hugos are.
As always, I’m skipping Artist, Publisher, Editor and Magazine. I could probably do more talking about them than usual, but why change things now?
Away we go!
Collection
Boy, this is a great field. Really. There’s just some real top flight stuff. Peter S. Beagle is long overdue for a best-of collection2. Michael Swanwick and Catherynne Valente are also both due, and the latter’s is especially rich. That said, I always feel weird about best-ofs in this category, and this year is no exception. Luckily, the field made it easier.
2 I have read very little Peter S. Beagle and am, in fact, probably somewhere in the exact market for which The Essential Peter S. Beagle, Parts 1 & 2 is meant.
Premee Mohamed’s stories are great, go read No One Will Come Back for Us. I haven’t read as much Tananarive Due as I’d like3, but the material in The Wishing Pool and Other Stories that I’m familiar with is very good. Suzan Palumbo’s stories are great, go read Skin Thief.
3 although see below
Sarah Pinsker’s Lost Places would have won in any other year I’ve ever written about book awards, but of course, if you’ve been with me this far, you’re probably aware that I have a favorite writer4, and that she made a new book, and that it’s in this category and, well, here we are. It’ll probably happen in the Horror Novel category next year as well. A real Mike Tyson, that Link.
4 the only other favorite writer I’ve had as an adult was Neil Gaiman.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Kelly Link, White Cat, Black Dog
Anthology
Once again we run up against my general ambivalence about the inclusion of best-ofs here. On the one hand, granting an award to a best-of is saying “this truly is representative of the best, as decided in this place and time by these people”, which is useful in the sort of long-term cultural memory sense that awards can come to occupy5, but also kind of boring in the “what about giving awards to things for being new things successfully6” way.
5 nb: “can” not “will necessarily”. I’m not entirely sure that the 2024 Locus Magazine awards are going to come up in very many conversations even in the far-off future, but you know, weirder things happen
6 these two factors are, roughly and broadly, the two things that an awards institution is contributing to. Or two of the things anyway.
Anyway, as always I choose to cast my lot in the direction of “best-ofs already serve as best-ofs, let’s churn up some other titles here”, and, in fact, am going to declare rightfulness on the back of ambition itself. This is a shame for the third volume of the continually-excellent Best of World SF series, which you should all go get into anyway, but I think is the correct decision otherwise.
Jordan Peele’s Out There Screaming, Shane Hawk’s Never Whistle at Night and Nisi Shawl’s New Suns 2 are all the sort of things that I ordinarily go for here, but I’m especially charmed by Wole Talabi making a real go at a shared-world project7. I’m pleased enough by it that, while the other stories in this paragraph have kind of a higher average quality level, Mothersound is the best one here for both trying something that’s very hard and for doing a good job of it.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Wole Talabi, Ed., Mothersound: The Sauútiverse Anthology
Short Story
Ten is a lot of nominees for any category. In this case, there’s always the issue where the nominating body doesn’t read as much short fiction as long, and so this ends up being a kind of overview of the other stories that are kicking around other awards conversations. I suppose that would tie into my usefulness argument above, but what it means is that in this case I have actually read each of the nominees.
This is also a mass-voted year, so this category sometimes often suffers a popularity bias, which is a way of segueing into the notion that several of the stories in this category were…not exceptional examples of the craft, even in a couple of cases where I otherwise like the author.
It’s hard to do much with any short story category this year in any event, no matter how hard, say, N.K. Jemisin (“Reckless Eyeballing”) or P. Djeli Clark (“How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub”) try, it’s probably going to be Rachael K. Jones here, just like it probably will be everywhere else7. Sometime somebody writes the right story at the right time.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Rachael K. Jones, “The Sound of Children Screaming”
7 actually it already didn’t win the Nebula, but that still feels surprsing
Novelette
The nice thing about a couple of runaway winners in a row is that I didn’t have to do much actual thinking about rightfulness. Now I have to get down to dithering.
There are a handful of genuine actual standouts here, mostly from the usual suspects: Nghi Vo’s “The Fox Roads,” Kelly Link’s “Prince Hat Underground”, and Naomi Kritzer’s previously-celebrated “The Year Without Sunshine”, any of which could very easily be the winners here, but I think that Sarah Pinsker has once again hit upon an idea that I love very much (the foundation-level economic structures and knock on effects that drive things for the upper classes even in the face of, in this case, literal magic), and done it well, so this one goes to “One Man’s Treasure”.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Sarah Pinsker, “One Man’s Treasure”
Novella
Mammoths at the Gates is my current-favorite Riverlands book, Thornhedge and Linghun are as good here as they were back at the Nebulas, and my favorite remains The Crane Husband. Done and dusted.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Kelly Barnhill, The Crane Husband
First Novel
This is a pretty stacked category. Back at Nebulas time I was pretty bullish on The Saint of Bright Doors. Since then I have read both Some Desperate Glory, which I liked even more, but which is also moot, because gang, Chain Gang All-Stars is so damn good, and this is the first award it’s come up for that I write about, which is a crime, because it should have won a bunch more awards. I don’t want that to distract from how much I also think you should go find The Saint of Bright Doors and Some Desperate Glory.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Chain-Gang All Stars
Young Adult Novel
Well, it was bound to happen one of these years. I have not read a single dang one of these books. Oh, I’ll read Promises Stronger than Darkness pretty soon here8, but it’s, you know, long. Anyway. That’s the rightful winner because it’s the one of these I’m at all excited about. Ymmv.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Charlie Jane Anders, Promises Stronger than Darkness
8 because it’s also under Hugo consideration.
Horror Novel
Well, with that unpleasantness behind us, we can move on to a category I know significantly more about. There’s lots of good stuff here, including Stephen Graham Jones’s Don’t Fear the Reaper, the best middle book I’ve read in many years but still very much a middle book, and Silvia Moreno Garcia’s Silver Nitrate, which runs up against my very short patience for books about old Hollywood but scary. SMG is a very good writer, and I look forward to catching back up with the next one.
The big three, though are perhaps the ones that you’d guess. Grady Hendrix’s How to Sell a Haunted House is great, and continues displaying Hendrix’s genuinely-incredible talent for setting scary-ass supernatural horror events in very real worlds with very real consequences. Tananarive Due’s The Reformatory took a little while to get clicking, but once the it builds up its momentum, it really works. It gets full points for the most exciting back half in this category.
Victor Lavalle’s Lone Women is not just my favorite of these, but it’s probably my favorite of Lavalle’s work by far, a tall order given 1) how much I liked The Ballad of Black Tom and 2) how much I don’t always go for historical fiction. It’s a year for surprises!
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Victor Lavalle, Lone Women
Fantasy Novel
The horror category is always a highlight9 and, well, after all that, I’m afraid I’m let with some opinions I’ve mainly already disgorged. Moniquill Blackgoose’s To Shape a Dragon’s Breath is an interesting and worthwhile take on a magic school story. There’s a lot of cool stuff in it, most of which is (very cool) dragons.
9 especially since both of the horror awards I follow – the Stokers and the Shirley Jackson Awards – are impossible to read the material in time to write about them here. I’ve tried with each
Much better, and my favorite here, is S.L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws, which retells a folk tale in one of the most satisfying ways anyone has all year.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: S.L. Huang, The Water Outlaws
Science Fiction Novel
As tempting as it is to throw awards at Martha Wells every time she makes the mistake of not withdrawing Murderbot from them10, and as much as I’m pretty sure I’ve called as many of these for Ann Leckie as anyone, I just really like The Terraformers, and frankly, I think it should win stuff.
THE RIGHTFUL WINNER: Annalee Newitz, The Terraformers
10 that’ll teach ‘er!
Ohio Needs a Train 