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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)

Image may contain: cat

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)

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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)

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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.

25767772Here 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 MussiSarah 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.

32719024Girton 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.

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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! 🙂

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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

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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! 🙂

 

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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!

Bloodmage - The Age of Darkness 2 (Paperback)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… 🙂