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)

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 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.

 

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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!

SFSF Social – June Report

The third SFSF Social went off with a bang last night – if you weren’t there, here’s a taster of what you missed (and some advance details of the next Social too).

Back at Eten Cafe, where we had the first Social at the start of the year, authors Jacey Bedford and Paul Kane joined an audience of over 30 (including the chap on the bar, who was working the evening because he’s an SF fan), for readings, questions, and general conversations. There was the small matter of a few books to give away too…

Jacey Bedford

Introduced by Darren Johnson-Smith, who bears a rather striking resemblance to that noted teller of spooky Sheffield tales Mr P Dreadful, Jacey kicked off proceedings with a reading from Empire of Dust, a space opera set roughly five hundred years in the future. In answering the questions that followed, Jacey dealt with the history of the book itself, which was originally intended to stand on its own, and the dangers of accidentally committing trilogy.

We also heard an excerpt from her forthcoming historical fantasy Winterwood, which isn’t due for release until next year. Featuring a privateer heroine and witchcraft in Napoleonic times, it has already gone onto my TBR list…

Paul Kane

Paul Kane gave us an excerpt from his Arrowhead series – a post-apocalyptic Robin Hood story, pitting bows and arrows against Challenger tanks. He told us more about the series, about picking up old characters years later, and his new story collection Monsters. And, speaking of Monsters, Paul also read from one of the stories in that collection, the award-winning A Chaos Demon Is For Life. If you’re going to Edge-Lit on 11th July, you’ll be able to hear more from Monsters at the books official launch event there.

There were books to give away too, including copies of Monsters and The Hooded Man (with thanks to Alchemy Press and Paul himself) and Empire of Dust (and thanks to DAW Books) – and much, much more, as you can see below (more thanks to Richard Webb and Phil Lunt, the drinks are on us)! So many in fact, that we still have some for next time!

One for the covetous bibliophiles!

Speaking of which, SFSF #4 will be taking place during Sheffield’s Off The Shelf Festival in October – specifically, Saturday 17th October, so that it won’t clash with FantasyCon in Nottingham the following weekend. We’ll be putting up the page on Eventbrite shortly, but mark the date in your diary now, and spread the word! If there’s a York Pubmeet in the meantime, we’ll let you know about that too. And going forward, we do intend to carry on into 2016 – if you know of a writer you’d like to see as one of our guests, please do let us know…

So, thank you very much to Jacey and Paul for being our guests, and thank you to everybody who came along and made the afternoon a success; we couldn’t do this without you!

And, by way of thanks to Eten Cafe, if you enjoyed their hospitality, why not vote for them in the 2015 EatSheffield Awards? The link to the voting form is here, and Eten is in the Licensed Cafes & Bars category.