And here is the fifth and final of BSFA Best Novel shortlist reviews: Nina Allan's A Granite Silence. That this was on the list led to my impulsive decision to review the shortlist according to specific criteria concerning historical mechanisms of change and the idea of the SFF writer as historian.
Excellent article 💚
In fiction, meet my peatland expert, Elizabeth, in ALSTON MOOR as she endeavours to restore the North Pennines peatbogs. Coming September 2026 from @goldsmithspress.bsky.social @goldsf.bsky.social @unamccormack.bsky.social @sarahsuch.bsky.social
"The cover design for The Recollections was developed in close collaboration with Nina and Niall. We started by exploring Priest's archive of book cover designs for inspiration. A key reference was the cover design for The Affirmation – Nina mentioned that Chris had a love for simplicity and bold typography on book covers, so it felt appropriate to go in this direction." – Tom Joyes
Faber hardback edition of The Affirmation by Christopher Priest: author's name in white, title in strong yellow on a dark red background.
!["The cover [of The Affirmation] was minimalist: no artwork of any kind, but with yellow lettering on a deep red background. It is one of the most handsome books of mine Faber ever published."
– Christopher Priest, The Recollections](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:mz766vwnwirgwczslyyhokf7/bafkreicqjlzvr6vtgtl25nni74ol5tzmlylverltzm2h3623ma5l5x3os4)
"The cover [of The Affirmation] was minimalist: no artwork of any kind, but with yellow lettering on a deep red background. It is one of the most handsome books of mine Faber ever published." – Christopher Priest, The Recollections
3D render of The Recollections: dark red text on a yellow background.
Designing the cover, part one: Tom Joyes has provided brilliant covers for all of Briardene's books to date, and this week I want to take a moment to acknowledge the various influences and choices that went into the striking cover for The Recollections. His website is tomjoyes.studio
My review of Aliya Whiteley's The Misheard World is up at @locusmag.bsky.social. This was the first great SFF novel I read in 2026, and a standout even in Whiteley's top-notch bibliography. locusmag.com/review/the-m...
Four-year-old’s reading vocabulary now includes his name, wow and Hattifatteners.
We have some news!
Happy publication day to @bentufnell.bsky.social!
PARADISE is out now.
www.influxpress.com/paradise
Nuevo relato: "Una soñadora llega a la ciudad tomada", de Malcolm Devlin. Malcolm regresa al blog con una segunda historia distópica (pero esta con un toque weird), con la que celebramos la reciente publicación de su 1ª novela en el mercado español. cuentosparaalgernon.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/u...
You can now read the Spanish translation of "A Dreamer Arrives in the Occupied City", by @malcolmdevlin.bsky.social, in Cuentos para Algernon. First published in Interzone. Enjoy it! cuentosparaalgernon.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/u...
Book covers for And Then I Woke Up / Y Entonces Desperté. A man suffers acute “Fancis Bacon Exploding Pope Head” in a pink room.
Look at this handsome beast. And Then I Woke Up / Y Entonces Desperté from @obscuraed.bsky.social, translated by Mª Pilar San Román and that glorious Sam Araya cover back again.
The Thread Jamie made his landing in the world so hard he ploughed straight back into the earth. They caught him by the thread of his one breath and pulled him up. They don't know how it held. And so today I thank what higher will brought us to here, to you and me and Russ, the great twin-engined swaying wingspan of us roaring down the back of Kirrie Hill and your two-year-old lungs somehow out-revving every engine in the universe. *All that trouble just to turn up dead* was all I thought that long week. Now the thread is holding all of us: look at our tiny house, son, the white dot of your mother waving.
The Circle for Jamie My boy is painting outer space, and steadies his brush-tip to trace the comets, planets, moon and sun and all the circuitry they run in one great heavenly design. But when he tries to close the line he draws around his upturned cup, his hand shakes, and he screws it up. The shake's as old as he is, all (thank god) his body can recall of that hour when, one inch from home, we couldn't get the air to him; and though today he's all the earth and sky for breathing-space and breath the whole damn troposphere can't cure the flutter in his signature. But Jamie, nothing's what we meant. The dream is taxed. We all resent the quarter bled off by the dark between the bowstring and the mark and trust to Krishna or to fate to keep our arrows halfway straight. But the target also draws our aim - our will and nature's are the same;
we are its living word, and not a book it wrote and then forgot, its fourteen-billion-year-old song inscribed in both our right and wrong - so even when you rage and moan and bring your fist down like a stone on your spoiled work and useless kit, you just can't help but broadcast it: look at the little avatar of your muddy water-jar filling with the perfect ring singing under everything.
Two beautiful poems by Don Paterson about his son Jamie. ‘The Thread’ (from Landing Light, 2003) and ‘The Circle’ (from Rain, 2009).
¡Odio los prólogos! El experto en literaturas de anticipación, Antonio Torrubia, tótem de la librería Gigamesh de Barcelona, es el prologuista de "Y entonces desperté", la nueva novela de Malcolm Devlin que le da la vuelta y resucita el mortecino género zombi.
Sí, amigas. Odio los prólogos, por eso me cuido mucho al aceptar uno. Y no me arrepiento de haber escrito el de 'Y entonces desperté', de @malcolmdevlin.bsky.social, que publica @obscuraed.bsky.social esta semana. Lo tenéis en @librujula.bsky.social 🧟♂️ but not 💻🔥
librujula.publico.es/odio-los-pro...
Hoy toca decidir.
¿Te atreverás a despertar?
🔪🎀🧟👁️🔪🎀🧟👁️🔪🎀🧟👁️
🔪Y entonces desperté🔪
🖋️ @malcolmdevlin.bsky.social
Trad. de Mª Pilar San Román
Prólogo de @toliol.bsky.social
🎨 Samuel Araya
A golden skull-shaped key floats against a blue background
An estate agent is forced to choose between a sale and his humanity when facing the inhuman eldritch forces that feed off rental tenants across the United Kingdom.
Next week... "Agency" by @georgesandison.bsky.social
Edited by @datlow.bsky.social
Art by Jamie Keenan
Cuando un virus afecta a la forma en la que las personas perciben la realidad que las rodea… resulta complicado estar seguro de nada.
Esto es lo que sucedió.
🔪Y entonces desperté🔪
🖋️ @malcolmdevlin.bsky.social
Trad. de Mª Pilar San Román
Prólogo de @toliol.bsky.social
🎨 Samuel Araya
🔹11/02/2026🔹
Ya casi está aquí, la primera novela de Malcolm Devlin en español. Y que además está francamente bien, como hace ya un tiempo os explicaba por aquí: cuentosparaalgernon.wordpress.com/2022/09/07/l...
Cover for This'll Make Things a Little Easier by Attila Veres
"At once startling and merciless, THIS'LL MAKE THINGS A LITTLE EASIER is unafraid to take us into a very strange territory that keeps opening up into spaces weirder and stranger still. An impressive follow up to THE BLACK MAYBE. Veres just keeps getting better and better." - Brian Evenson
You can now read the Spanish translation of the terrific "The Hanging Game", by Helen Marshall (@manuscriptgal.bsky.social), in Cuentos para Algernon. First published in @reactorsff.bsky.social edited by @annvandermeer.bsky.social. Enjoy it! cuentosparaalgernon.wordpress.com/2026/01/19/e...
Grey and yellow/gold colours, cover showing sketch of a moorland ruin and a curlew, spine in yellow with detail image of cover's line drawing
I’m thrilled to reveal the stunning cover art for my novel, ALSTON MOOR. Coming 29 September! I’m so grateful to cover designer Heather Ryerson and the team at @goldsmithspress.bsky.social @goldsf.bsky.social. 📚@unamccormack.bsky.social @sarahsuch.bsky.social
More: annecharnock.com/alston-moor/...
Agency by George Sandison. The cover of the Tor Original ebook, showing a key in the shape of a key. The book is a cosmic horror short story about landlords predating on human souls. Arguably non-fiction really.
I've been procrastinating on the right moment to share this, but the cover release and opening pre-orders might just be it.
AGENCY by me!
It's a cosmic horror about commercial landlords from nether-hell dimensions. #nonfiction #fnar
www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0GBYKFTV8
www.amazon.com/Agency-Tor-O...
Two very similarly-colored light-gray red-eyed marten rats. The left, smaller one is Cervantes, nearly a month old, and the right, larger one is his mother Cowen.
"...Ursula would walk into town each morning because she imagined her sister’s house was pushing her out like a splinter of wood under the skin."
#ghostadvent Night 17: Her Alberta by @malcolmdevlin.bsky.social
www.weirdhorrormagazine.com/her-alberta
The Illuminated Man. Life, Death and the Worlds of JG Ballard by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan.
This book is about J. G. Ballard. This book is also about death, love and time travel. In 2024, Nina Allan's husband, the novelist Christopher Priest died. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which had metastasised into the bones, the same disease that killed the man whose biography he'd spent his last months working on - the cult author, J. G. Ballard. J. G. Ballard possessed one of the most astonishing imaginations of our age, and he had an intense and turbulent history: a childhood spent in the encroaching shadow of World War II, teenage internment in a Japanese prison camp - an experience famously fictionalised in Empire of the Sun. Ballard's novels are among the finest and most unusual fiction that has ever been published. Whether in the hyper-surrealism of High Rise or the erotic violence of Crash, he upended the morality and reality of our world.
Christopher knew many of Ballard's friends and colleagues personally. As a young writer, it had been Ballard's stories, most of all, that had helped cement his passion for science fiction. With much of their early work published in the same magazines, Priest knew about Ballard's world from the inside. He set out to write a biography that would make people understand what he already knew: that J. G. Ballard wasn't just a cult writer - he was one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. When Nina and Christopher first met, they bonded over their love for Ballard's writing, rereading his novels and stories together many times. When it became clear that Christopher would not have time to finish this biography, Nina promised him that she would complete it, patching together with her own voice the gaps that remained. If the book began as a tribute from Priest to Ballard, it is now also a love story written by Nina for Christopher. With access to never-before-seen material, The Illuminated Man explores the history and themes of Ballard's life and - with Ballardian strangeness - celebrates and mourns for those that are gone. This is the story of two deaths, three science fiction writers and one attempt to turn back time.
One for those 'most anticipated books of next year' lists. Allan on Priest on Ballard and everything in between.
A review! By a me! Of a very interesting book indeed.
The Coode Street Advent Calendar 2025 - Day 7
Jonathan talks to BSFA Award winner Aliya Whitely about what she's been reading, would recommend and has coming up.
www.podbean.com/eas/pb-7vyvv...
Half Price Engines Beneath Us and You Will Grow Into Them and other Influx goodies. And a very tangential excuse to repost this picture of my son's Halloween Lego house even though neither it nor the books have anything to do with Black Friday.
We're running a big #BlackFridaySale!
All Influx titles in paperback and eBook are a full 50% off (+P&P) until November 30th
Just use discount code BFRIDAY25 at checkout.
influxpress.com/shop
The cover of MAD SISTERS OF ESI with "The Washington Post" written above it and "Best SFF Novel of 2025" written below it.
A picture of The Washington Post article. Title reads "10 best sci-fi and fantasy novels of 2025" and the subtitle reads "From an indigenous vampire story to the tale of two sisters living in a cosmic whale, this year's books kept us guessing."
The Washington Post review of MAD SISTERS OF ESI. It reads: "Two sisters live inside a cosmic whale, visiting the innumerable worlds within its body, until one of them escapes into the universe outside. There, she uncovers the whale's origin story, which lies with another pair of sisters who lived on a shape-shifting island where everyone goes mad once a century. A poetic, metaphysical epic, "Mad Sisters" feels like it's in conversation with other recent books about people in surreal, liminal spaces questioning what everything means - and it's my absolute favorite book of the year. (Book World review.)"
MAD SISTERS OF ESI is one of The Washington Post’s 10 best SFF novels of 2025. In the sheer amount of what gets published each year and what gets lost, this feels like a small, precious miracle ❤️
I'm incredibly excited that this is coming out next year. Translated by the brilliant María Pilar San Román and published by @obscuraed.bsky.social.
Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand, Engines Beneath Us by Malcolm Devlin, and Fizz the cat who is about 13 years old and has still not written a single book
Bookmail! October sale pickups! From Influx Press! They arrived over a week ago but the cats liked sitting on the parcel and it is illegal to move them!
