SFSF Awards 2018

Roll up, roll up, set fire to the curtains and smash the lights! No wait, that’s Brexit. Anyway, apologies once again for the lack of communications this last year, we’ve felt like Schrodinger’s Cat, trying to keep the box closed so we don’t have to face the outside world for much of it.

But we did manage to get SPFBO award winner Rob Hayes and double British Fantasy Award nominee Anna Smith Spark to speak at The Grimdark SFSF, and the crowd was suitably entertained by a truly banging body count. You can rest assured too that 2019 will feature more SFSF events, especially in light of the excellent news that Sheffield will host Fantasycon in 2020. Surely not even Off The Shelf Festival will be able to ignore that.

Right, time to put the snark away, because this is the legendary annual awards post, administered by a shadowy, unelected cabal of immoral and merciless sociopaths under the control of an authoritarian foreign power!

No, wait, that’s Brexit again.

Anyway, these are the brilliant books we wholeheartedly and enthusiastically recommend to you all. With pictures of cats, of course. And there are multiple winners because that’s the rules, folks!

Best Collection/Anthology

N K Jemisin, How Long ’til Black Future Month (Orbit)

Skadi eyes up the winners

Best Novel (the Skadi Award)

The Tower of Living & Dying, by Anna Smith Spark (Harper)
The Bitter Twins, by Jen Williams (Headline)
The Synapse Sequence, by Dan Godfrey (Titan Books)
Darksoul, by Anna Stephens (Orbit)
Rosewater, by Tade Thompson (Orbit)
Children of Artifice, by Danie Ware (Fox Spirit)

Mycroft contemplates completion

The Mycroft Award for Best Completed Series

The Wounded Kingdom, by RJ Barker (Orbit)
The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells (Tor.com)
The Ben Garston trilogy, by James Bennett (Orbit)

Advertisement

SFSF Awards 2017

Again, it’s been something of a quiet year for SFSF. We’ve been hibernating and plotting, and working on lots of other things, and fitting the Socials in with everything else on the calendar proved to be one step too far – our apologies for that, but we will be back in the new year, promise!

Meanwhile, it’s time for the annual giving of awards! Last year’s format worked nicely, so we’ve kept the judges, the rituals, and the absolute lack of public accountability to bring you a selection of worthy winners that we believe you should all read.

Best Anthology

Pacific Monsters, ed. Margret Helgadottir (Fox Spirit Books)
Escape Artists Podcasts (Pseudopod, Cast of Wonders, Escape Pod, Podcastle)

Best Novel (The Skadi Award)

So many contenders for this one this year! Thank the gods everyone’s a winner, eh? Imagine the bloodshed and chaos if we had to choose just one…

The Court of Broken Knives, Anna Smith Spark (Voyager)
Under the Pendulum Sun, Jeanette Ng (Angry Robot)
Age of Assassins, RJ Barker (Orbit)
The Ninth Rain, Jen Williams (Hodder)
The Rift, Nina Allan (Titan)
100 Best Video Games That Never Existed, Nate Crowley (Rebellion)

The Mycroft Award for Best Completed Series

Shades of Magic, VE Schwab (Titan)
Fitz and the Fool, Robin Hobb (Voyager)

SFSF Six – RJ Barker and Sarah Mussi

SFSF Six happens on Saturday June 24th, at the Rutland Arms, on Brown Street in Sheffield! (It’s just up the road from the Showroom Cinema and the Hallam Uni Students’ Union!)

And our guests? One of this year’s big debut authors from Orbit Books, RJ Barker, and an author already established in the field of YA fiction, whose latest novels Here Be Dragons and Here Be Witches are published by Sheffield-based Vertebrate Publishing – Sarah Mussi.

Here Be Dragons was released in 2015 and follows Ellie Morgan as she finds secrets and danger up in the mists of Snowdonia. Here Be Witches, the second in the series, came out in March this year and now the stakes are even higher as Ellie and her friends must battle against a White Dragon and the prospect of an eternal winter…

Sarah’s publishers, Vertebrate Publishing, have a passion for the outdoors and are best known for a great range of books on mountain biking, hillwalking, and climbing guidebooks and autobiographies. But they also have an expanding line of fiction tied in to these sports, and Sarah’s Snowdonia Chronicles books will appeal to anybody who also loves the great outdoors. SFSF is also happy to support a local publisher – long live Indie presses!

Sarah Mussi was born in Gloucestershire. After her education at a girl’s school in Cheltenham, she completed a post graduate degree at the Royal College of Art before leaving the UK for West Africa. She lived in Ghana, West Africa for over eighteen years, marrying a Ghanaian and teaching in Accra. Sarah now lives in Brixton and teaches in Lewisham, splitting her holidays between England and Ghana. She’s on Twitter over here!

And RJ Barker – what can we tell you about RJ and the Age of Assassins? Set in a world ravaged by magic and the ambition of noblemen, this debut epic fantasy features a cast of assassins, knights and fools which will delight any fan of Brent Weeks, Robin Hobb or Assassin’s Creed.

Girton Club-foot, apprentice to the land’s best assassin, still has much to learn about the art of taking lives. But their latest mission tasks him and his master with a far more difficult challenge: to save a life. Someone, or many someones, is trying to kill the heir to the throne, and it is up to Girton and his master to uncover the traitor and prevent the prince’s murder. In a kingdom on the brink of civil war and a castle thick with lies Girton finds friends he never expected, responsibilities he never wanted, and a conspiracy that could destroy an entire land. AGE OF ASSASSINS is coming to Orbit this August.

RJ Barker lives in Leeds, with big hair and a family. They are slowly coming to terms with being owned by a cat. You can find RJ on Facebook here and Twitter there.

As usual, we’ll have a stash of books to give away, we’ll be asking questions and hearing readings from both authors, and we hope to see you there!

Click THIS LINK to get to the Eventbrite page for full details and to join the event mailing lists. (We do appreciate knowing numbers in advance, and booking is free!) You can also find us on Facebook, and on Twitter, and one day we might even figure out Instagram.

Local Events Roundup

Hello everybody!

We thought you might like to know about the following genre-related events over the next couple of months. You’ll certainly see us in the crowd at most of them – we’d like to say hi to you all too!

• Robin Hobb will be signing copies of her latest FitzChivalry novel, Assassin’s Fate, at Waterstones in Orchard Square, Sheffield, on Tuesday 2nd May, at 12.30pm. Be sure to turn up early!
• Ben Aaronovitch, author of Rivers of London, and the other PC Grant books, including last year’s The Hanging Tree (and writer of Remembrance of the Daleks too!) will be in conversation with Professor Jane Hodson as part of the University of Sheffield’s Festival of Humanities, at Yellow Arch Studios, on Wednesday 10th May at 7.00pm. Tickets are free via Eventbrite.
• Our good friends over at Humber SFF have a barnstormer of an event planned for Saturday 27th May at Hull’s Central Library. None other than genre giants Peter Crowther and Ramsey Campbell! You seriously cannot miss this one. And again, the tickets are free via Eventbrite!
• There’s no confirmed event page to link to yet, but Saturday 1st July sees Waterstones in the spotlight again, with Adrian Tchaikovsky and Anna Smith-Spark visiting the shop. This looks like being a full-on SFSF-style event from what Anna has told us (oh, we name-drop…), with more names planned in too – so keep your ears to the ground for more news!

Of course there’s the small matter of SFSF #6 on Saturday 24th June too – and more about that in the next post! 🙂

Save the Date: 24th June 2017

We’ve been away too long! Fear not however – we return!

Just… not quite yet.

You’ll have to wait until Saturday June 24th for the next Social, but we promise it’ll be well worth the wait. Already we have one of this year’s most hotly anticipated debut fantasy authors scheduled to descend from Orbit – but we can’t say much more until the line-up is confirmed!

One thing that’s definitely confirmed though – a new venue. For various reasons, we will be operating from the Rutland Arms, on Brown Street, where you will find bar snacks and beer aplenty. Full details, of course, in the forthcoming official news post, but meanwhile…

Save The Date.

Oh, and don’t forget that both York Pubmeets and Humber SFF are hosting events over the next couple of months – for all the details, click the links!

Humber SFF – Feb 25th
York Pubmeet – March 11th

SFSF Awards 2016

Hello one and all, and welcome to the inaugural edition of the hopefully annual SFSF Awards, in which we tip a pint glass to some of the very best Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and WTF? (that one’s for you, Angry Robot) we encountered during 2016. No juries were hung, no votes were rigged, and electoral colleges and referendums were punted very firmly off the edge of the world. Most importantly, you can stand and applaud whenever you feel like it. Nobody’s judging you here.

(Um… except us. But in a good way.)

Best Anthology

Monstrous Little Voices – ed. David Thomas Moore (Rebellion)
Fight Like a Girl – ed. Joanne Hall & Roz Clarke (Grimbold Books)
African Monsters – ed. Jo Thomas & Margret Helgadottir (Fox Spirit Books)

How can you choose between these three? Imaginative spinnings of Shakespearian characters into a web of diverse perils; kick-ass stories of physically and mentally tough women crossing all genres; a sumptuously designed volume of African-centric monster stories that dares you not to enjoy it. How do you choose?

If you’re like us, then you don’t. They all win. And more power to them.

Best Collection

Signs in the Moonlight – David Tallerman (Digital SF)
Shadow Histories of the River Kingdom – Juliet E McKenna (Wizard’s Tower Press)

Best Novella

Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan Maguire (Tor)
Patchwerk – David Tallerman (Tor)
Winter – Dan Grace (Unsung Stories)

Best Novel (The Skadi Award)

Sherlock Holmes & The Servants of Darkness – Paul Kane (Rebellion)
Chasing Embers – James Bennett (Orbit)
Revenger – Alastair Reynolds (Gollancz)
13 Minutes – Sarah Pinborough (Gollancz)
False Hearts – Laura Lam (Macmillan)
A Close and Common Orbit – Becky Chambers (Hodder)

The Mycroft Award for Best Completed Series

The Copper Cat trilogy – Jen Williams (Hodder)
The Age of Darkness – Stephen Aryan (Orbit)

Congratulations, one and all! We hope to see you next year! 🙂

 

New Event – Mini SFSF 26/4/16 – Stephen Aryan

We’re rather chuffed and bouncy today – not least because it’s Friday, but also because we can tell you about the next event!

On Tuesday 26th April, SFSF is co-hosting a signing and launch event for Stephen Aryan‘s new epic fantasy novel Bloodmage at Waterstones, Orchard Square, Sheffield. Bloodmage is the follow-up to last year’s rather awesome Battlemage, from Orbit Books, and we’ll have copies of both books available for sale and signing on the night.

Here’s the book blurb:
The people of Perizzi have survived the battlemage war, but their future is looking darker than ever…BYRNE is a member of the Watch, investigating a series of murders in which the corpse was drained entirely of life. FRAY’s expertise with magic is needed to catch the killer, but working with the Watch destroyed his father, years before. CHOSS is a champion fighter, trying to diffuse a war in the underworld that threatens to turn the streets red with rivers of blood. KATJA is a spy from a foreign land, attempting to prevent a massacre that will topple two dynasties and destroy the fragile peace in the city for ever. Watchmen and spies, assassins and criminals will clash on the streets in this magic-fuelled adventure from the author of Battlemage.

You can see the event page and location details at the Waterstones site, and we’ll be adding on an Eventbrite link very shortly.

Naturally, it wouldn’t be a SFSF without at least a few little giveaways, but you’ll have to be there on the night to see what we got… 🙂

SFSF#5 -Patchwerk Foxy Moonlit Fun

The 20th February saw our 5th (yes 5th – doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun!) Social event. We had a nice mix of familiar and new faces, and for me, it’s especially nice to see people travelling from a little further afield than the suburbs of the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire to come and join us for what is rapidly becoming a semi-regular hoot!

Hosted once more at Eten Cafe, our guests for the day were David Tallerman, with multiple books currently arriving on the genre scene, and Adele Wearing of Fox Spirit fame.

David hails from West Yorkshire, and brought not one, but TWO new books with him to the days’s festivities. First up was Patchwerk, published by Tor.com’s novella imprint tells the story of Dran Florrian and his machine Palimpsest. David read us a section involving a flashback as to Dran’s revelation as to how the machine could be brought to life and the beginning of the adventure true, which I am looking forwards to reading to see what happens; not least as the story involves a multiverse, for which I have a soft spot conceptually  (although it might not be a while as my TBR pile is slowly shrinking… it’s still too big!)

David Tallerman reading from Patchwerk

After questions and a short break, where people had a chance to say hellos, get a drink, stretch legs, browse the shop (yes, we had a shop as a new development!) we returned to meet Aunty Fox.

Adele Wearing runs Fox Spirit – a small press who in the short time it’s been up and running have managed to find and publish some wonderful authors and stories whether solo books or as part of the Fox Pockets series of anthologies (several of whom have attended events with us – including Jo Thomas, K.T. Davies, and Steven Poore) and also last year won the Best Indie Press award at the BFS awards. Not afraid to diversify, you can find everything from centuries old translations of Italian language books, right up to apocalyptic flash fiction. She proceeded to give us the run down on what it’s like being a publisher (you’ll remember we’ve also had other guests at previous events from the ‘other side of the fence’) and the journey Fox Spirit has taken so far, before opening up to questions, which were many and varied! I felt this was a really interesting talk, as at the end of the day, without small press and genre publishing there would be no-one willing to take a risk on something the least bit unconventional, so it was really refreshing to hear from that side of the world!.

Another break followed, before David returned with the second of the two books he’s recently gotten out into the world – ‘The Sign in the Moonlight‘ being a collection of fully illustrated short stories, with a nod to authors past including Lovecraft, Doyle and H.G. Wells and brought out with Digital Fiction Publishing after a bit of a bumpy journey, by all accounts. David read one of the short stories from the book and explained a bit about the journey of creating and collating the works and his inspirations behind them (or not, as may be!)

David Tallerman reading from Patchwerk

Finally, of course, was the raffle! I have to say that I did begin to worry as we bundled books together whether we might have (dare I say it) too many books! And the number kept growing, as Adele kindly donated Fox Spirit’s soon to be launched ‘African Monsters’ and it’s predecessor in the series ‘European Monsters’, Adrian Tchaikovsky snuck in a copy of his book ‘Guns of the Dawn’ (which he read from back at our first event) which quickly became highly coveted by those browsing the tables stacked high, and there were several others drawing attention as well. So many (if not most) left with more books than they arrived with!

As I’d also mentioned earlier, we also had a shop at this event, as Fox Spirit brought several of their books along for perusal and for sale – which seemed to go down well with the guests – if you were there, I’d be really interested what you thought to this – would you like more of this? If so I’ll see what we can do!

So all that remains, is to thank our guests once more for coming and talking with us, we really hope to have you back to future socials! And those who turned up to support us – we really hope that everyone enjoyed it and to see you at the next one!

 

 

 

SFSF Social #5 – 20th February 2016

Is it 2016 already? Good grief, the future’s nearly passed!

SFSF Social returns for the first event of the new year on Saturday 20th February, at 4pm, for another afternoon of readings, talks, Q&As, and a couple of freebies. We’re at Eten Cafe on York Street in Sheffield City Centre, and this time our guests will be:

David Tallerman.

Author of the Easie Damasco trilogy, which was released through Angry Robot Books, and also of Patchwerk, the latest release from Tor’s exciting novella imprint. David has also had stories published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Digital Science Fiction, Pseudopod, Interzone, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and the anthology Sharkpunk! amongst many others.

 

 

Adele Wearing.

Adele is the “Auntie Fox” of Fox Spirit Books, the Leicester-based, British Fantasy Award-winning, independent publisher of fine genre fiction such as 25 Ways To Kill a Werewolf (Jo Thomas), White Rabbit (KA Laity), and the anthologies Girl At The End of the World and Tales of the Nun & Dragon. Fox Spirit Books have also published the highly acclaimed European Monsters and African Monsters collections, edited by Jo Thomas and Margrét Helgadóttir.

 

Once again, we look forward to seeing you all there!

SFSF Social 4 – David Barnett & Ask The Agent with Amanda Rutter

It’s time to announce the guests for our fourth Social of the year – and the last until 2016, so do come join us at Eten Cafe on Saturday October 17th, as part of Sheffield’s Off The Shelf Festival, when we shall have:

David Barnett and Amanda Rutter.

Book your places now at this here linky!

David Barnett

David Barnett is an award-winning journalist and author based in West Yorkshire. He was born in Wigan, Lancashire, in 1970 and has worked in regional newspapers since 1989. He is the author of the Gideon Smith alternate history series from Tor Books, beginning in 2013 with Gideon Smith and the Mechanical Girl. David is also the author of Hinterland (2005, reprinted 2008), Angelglass (2007) and The Janus House and Other Two-Faced Tales (2009), all published by Immanion Press, as well as popCULT!, published in 2011 from Pendragon Press. His work has been translated into Czech, Russian and German. He is represented by the literary agent John Jarrold. His latest novel, Gideon Smith and the Mask of the Ripper, will be released by Tor (US) and Snowbooks (UK) in October 2015.

After training and working as an accountant for over a decade, Amanda Rutter became an editor with Angry Robot, helping to sign books and authors for the Strange Chemistry imprint. Since leaving Angry Robot, she has been a freelance editor, through her own company AR Editorial Solutions, BubbleCow and Wise Ink. She also finds time to write blog posts for Tor.com. In her free time, she is a yarn fiend, knitting and crocheting a storm. Amanda is an associate agent at the Red Sofa Literary Agency, and will be hosting an Ask The Agent session at the Social.

Now, this is an exciting opportunity to get some inside info on the publishing industry, especially for aspiring authors out there, and Amanda has excellent credentials. What we’d like to do, to make the session run smoothly, is ask that questions are submitted in advance as much as possible. You can do this in one of two ways: either by filling out the contact form here on this post (see below) or by emailing AskAmanda [at] kinsmeet.co.uk. All questions received will be forwarded on to Amanda. If you can’t attend the Social in person, we’ll post up answers to your question after the event.

 

Name(required)

Email(required)

Are you:

Attending SFSF Social Unable to attend

Question For Amanda(required)

Submit

Δ

Oh, and as ever, there will be books to be won in our slightly legendary raffle! (This time, I’m afraid, there will be a small charge of £1 for raffle entry to help cover room costs, but the Social itself is still free to all.)

And, lastly, a reminder – the 4th York Pubmeet takes place on Saturday September 19th, with guests Alex Davis and Marie O’Regan. All details are on this linky thingy – we hope to see you there!