Shrike Fantasy

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World Fantasy Award Finalists 2026: Alix Harrow, THE EVERLASTING

Find out more HERE. Harrow’s novel is a clever take on the Arthurian legend. Its dual narrators, the chronicler Mallory (a nod to Sir Thomas Malory who wrote Le Morte d’Arthur, the 15th century clever take on the Arthurian legend?) and the knight-champion Una (a nod to the main female character in Book I of The Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenser’s 16th century clever take on the Arthurian legend?)…

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The World Fantasy Award announces 2026 finalists

It has been quite the wait! At last the finalists are announced. Here are the short-listed candidates for Best Novel: Audition for the Fox, by Martin Cahill Once Was Willem, by M.R. Carey The Secret Market of the Dead, by Giovanni De Feo The Everlasting, by Alix E. Harrow The Adventures of Mary Darling, by Pat Murphy The winners in this and all the other categories will be announced at the…

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It's August 4, 2026, and There Will Come Soft Rains

Before and after picture of the effects of a nuclear blast on a house in a nuclear testing program. Source: Library of Congress. Accessed from the blog of Dylan Spaulding on the Union of Concerned Scientists web site. You know that eerie feeling when reality catches up with science fiction? I had it in 1984. And no, Orwell’s predictions in 1984, that dystopian classic, did not come true that…

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See my poem in the summer 2026 issue of Gyroscope Review

I am honored to join the wonderful writers of this issue! Find it online HERE, as well as directions for ordering a paper copy.

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Hugo Award Finalists 2026: My Favorites

So hard to choose! So many of these entries were superb. But these two are my favorites: Tesh’s The Incandescent is bursting with color and fascinating characters and amazing landscapes and tons of magic. Tchaikovsky’s Shroud is tense, driven, completely absorbing–and it asks some big questions. They are very, very different novels. One is fantasy, the other is SF. I loved them both, and for…

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The Hugo Award for Best Novel short-list: SHROUD

Here’s my last post reviewing the finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The award will be presented on Aug. 30 2026 at LaCon, Anaheim, California. The list of finalists: A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–reviewed HERE The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK)–reviewed HERE The Raven Scholar, Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)–reviewed…

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The Hugo Award for Best Novel: THE RAVEN SCHOLAR

Here’s my fourth post documenting my quest to read and review all six finalists for the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novel, to be announced on August 30, 2026, in Anaheim, California, at LAcon: The finalists: A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–reviewed HERE The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK)–reviewed HERE The Raven Scholar, Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US;…

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The Hugo Awards for Best Novel: THE EVERLASTING

Here’s my third post reviewing the finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Novel. The award will be presented on Aug. 30 2026 at LaCon, Anaheim, California. The list of finalists: A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–reviewed HERE The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK)–reviewed in this post The Raven Scholar, Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US;…

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The Hugo Awards for Best Novel: A DROP OF CORRUPTION

Here’s my next post in my quest to read and review all six finalists for the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Novel, to be announced on August 30, 2026, in Anaheim, California, at LAcon: Again, the list of the finalists: A Drop of Corruption, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)–reviewed in this post The Everlasting, Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK) The Raven Scholar, Antonia Hodgson (Orbit…

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The 2026 Hugo Awards finalists for Best Novel: Two nominees

Thanks to Amy from Pixabay for this image. License: royalty-free, free for commercial use The longest-running major awards in speculative fiction are the Hugos. The World Science Fiction Society presents awards for Best Novel and many other works in other categories at the World Science Fiction Convention (“Worldcon”), and has done so since 1953. The voters’ decision for this year’s awards (HERE…

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The Nebula Awards Announced!

The winner for Best Novel! Great choice for the Best Novel award, Nebula voters! See my review HERE. (I keep calling these awards the 2026 Nebula Awards, when they’re actually the 2025 awards, because they are given to works published or produced in 2025.) The cover of this amazing novel tells you a lot. Look at the old-timey type used for most of the title. Except that second “Hunter”–written…

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Another Nebula Finalist

Find out more HERE. I was not planning to add anything more to my posts about Nebula Awards finalists, but I just realized something important about this book, nominated for Best Novella, and I had to post about it. How did I miss this, when I scanned the list of novellas? Most of my posts are about novels, only occasionally about works in the other categories. And now I find I can’t resist…

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Speculative Animated Movie Fiction. . .and the Animal Bond, part 3: FLOW

Accessed from Wikipedia, published here under the fair use doctrine. Of movie posters: may be used when the primary reason is not illustration but commentary on the film or the artistry of the poster. My grandson and I agree on this–oh, and so does Jubjub, our cat, who finds it fascinating. Flow is the best animated movie ever. Maybe the best movie ever, period. Am I exaggerating? Maybe. . .but…

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Speculative Animated Movie Fiction. . .and the Animal Bond, part 2

By Heritage Auctions, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9301761 The whole reason for these movie posts? After I read The Last Unicorn, I became intrigued by the animated film. That’s when I realized that of course there are other interesting films exploring the animal-human bond. Beyond the three I’m writing about, there are many, many more, both animated and live action. But…

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Speculative Animated Movie Fiction. . .and the Animal Bond, part 1

Poster art for Walt Disney’s Fantasia (1940) In this part of the series on the human-animal bond in speculative fiction, I’ll review three animated films, one from the ’40s, one from the ’80s, one recently released. Notice I didn’t label this post “the human-animal bond.” In one of these movies, there isn’t one IN the movie, just in what the movie accomplishes for us. In one, there’s a bond, but…

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Speculative Fiction explores the human-animal bond: Animals a bit more unusual

In the last post, I gave mini-reviews of a number of speculative fiction novels exploring the tight bonds humans have with the usual suspects: cats, dogs, horses. In this post, I take a look at novels about more unusual animals. And that includes mythical beasts! ANIMALS A BIT MORE UNUSUAL It’s not all cats, dogs, and horses. Here are four novels that reach beyond the usual cozy human-animal…

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Speculative Fiction Explores the Animal Bond: Cats, Dogs, Horses, Oh My

The human-animal connection stretches back millennia. The earliest domesticated animal, the dog, probably evolved from wild canines around 15,000 years ago. The horse came much later, around 5,500 years ago. As for the cat–wait–is a cat ever domesticated? Or does the relationship go the other way around? There’s some evidence of human-feline companionship going back 9,500 years, but cat…

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