Locus, Hugo, and Ignyte nominations for Aliette de Bodard!


In case you missed the great news: Aliette de Bodard has received four Locus Award nominations, a Hugo Award, and an Ignyte Award nomination! Let’s start with the Locus nominations…

Aliette’s has two novellas among the finalists in the Novella Category. OF DRAGONS, FEASTS AND MURDERS, published by JABberwocky, is a stand-alone story set in the same work as the Dominion of the Fallen series. Here’s the synopsis…

Lunar New Year should be a time for familial reunions, ancestor worship, and consumption of an unhealthy amount of candied fruit.

But when dragon prince Thuan brings home his brooding and ruthless husband Asmodeus for the New Year, they find not interminable family gatherings, but a corpse outside their quarters. Asmodeus is thrilled by the murder investigation; Thuan, who gets dragged into the political plotting he’d sworn off when he left, is less enthusiastic.

It’ll take all of Asmodeus’s skill with knives, and all of Thuan’s diplomacy, to navigate this one — as well as the troubled waters of their own relationship…

The Dominion of the Fallen series is published by Gollancz in the UK, and Roc Books and JABberwocky in North America. (While a stand-alone, this novella is set after the events of the third novel in that series, THE HOUSE OF SUNDERING FLAMES.)

The second finalist novella is SEVEN OF INFINITIES, one of the author’s many acclaimed Xuya stories, published by Subterranean Press (North America) and JABberwocky

Vân is a scholar from a poor background, eking out a living in the orbitals of the Scattered Pearls Belt as a tutor to a rich family, while hiding the illegal artificial mem-implant she manufactured as a student. 

Sunless Woods is a mindship — and not just any mindship, but a notorious thief and a master of disguise. She’s come to the Belt to retire, but is drawn to Vân’s resolute integrity.

When a mysterious corpse is found in the quarters of Vân’s student, Vân and Sunless Woods find themselves following a trail of greed and murder that will lead them from teahouses and ascetic havens to the wreck of a mindship — and to the devastating secrets they’ve kept from each other.

Aliette’s third Locus finalist nomination is for the short story IN THE LANDS OF THE SPILL, which was published in the AVATARS INC Sci-Fi Anthology, edited by Ann Vandermeer.

Meanwhile, the novelette THE INACCESSIBILITY OF HEAVEN has been nominated for three awards! Published in the July-August 2020 issue of Uncanny Magazine, it is up for the Hugo, Locus, and Ignyte Best Novelette Awards!

Night. A night like any other in Starhollow: the headlights of cars, small and lost between the skyscrapers; the smell of hydromel and wine wafting from those few bars still open; and above me, the distant light of the stars, a constant reminder of the inaccessibility of Heaven.

I climbed the stairs to my flat, exhausted, my arms covered in claw-marks. At the shelter I worked at, drunken Fallen had started attacking some of the newcomers—and had turned on me when I’d tried to intervene…

The Locus Awards winners will be announced June 26, 2021, during the virtual Locus Awards Weekend.

Voting for the Hugo Awards are open now to members, and will close on November 19th. The award winners will be announced during DisCon III, which will be held in Washington, D.C., between December 15th-19th.

Voting for the Ignyte Awards is open now to anyone who wants to vote, and will close on May 21st. The award winners will be announced on September 18th.

Many congratulations, Aliette!

McDonald, de Bodard and Lafferty are Locus Award Finalists!


We are delighted to share the news — in case you missed it — that Ian McDonald, Aliette de Bodard and R.A. Lafferty are all finalists in this year’s Locus Awards! Congratulations for these very well deserved nominations! Winners of the awards will be announced on June 27th.

Read on for some more details.

Ian’s third Luna novel, MOON RISING, is nominated for Best Science Fiction novel. Published in the UK by Gollancz, in North America by Tor Books, and widely in translation, here’s the synopsis…

The continuing saga of the Five Dragons, Ian McDonald’s fast-paced, intricately plotted space opera pitched as Game of Thrones meets The Expanse

A hundred years in the future, a war wages between the Five Dragons — five families that control the Moon’s leading industrial companies. Each clan does everything in their power to claw their way to the top of the food chain — marriages of convenience, corporate espionage, kidnapping, and mass assassinations.

Through ingenious political manipulation and sheer force of will, Lucas Cortas rises from the ashes of corporate defeat and seizes control of the Moon. The only person who can stop him is a brilliant lunar lawyer, his sister, Ariel.

Witness the Dragons’ final battle for absolute sovereignty in Ian McDonald’s heart-stopping finale to the Luna trilogy.

Aliette’s Xuya acclaimed collection OF WARS, AND MEMORIES, AND STARLIGHT is nominated for Best Collection. Published by Subterranean Press, here’s the synopsis…

A major first collection from a writer fast becoming one of the stars of the genre… Aliette de Bodard, multiple award winner and author of The Tea Master and the Detective, now brings readers fourteen dazzling tales that showcase the richly textured worldbuilding and beloved characters that have brought her so much acclaim.

Come discover the breadth and endless invention of her universes, ranging from a dark Gothic Paris devastated by a magical war; to the multiple award-winning Xuya, a far-future space opera inspired by Vietnamese culture where scholars administrate planets and sentient spaceships are part of families.

In the Nebula award and Locus award winning “Immersion”, a young girl working in a restaurant on a colonized space station crosses paths with an older woman who has cast off her own identity. In the novelette “Children of Thorns, Children of Water”, a shapeshifting dragon infiltrating a ruined mansion finds more than he’s bargained for when his partner is snatched by eerie, child-like creatures. And in the award-winning “Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight”, three very different people — a scholar, an engineer, and a spaceship — all must deal with the loss of a woman who was the cornerstone of their world.   

This collection includes a never-before seen 20,000-word novella, “Of Birthdays, and Fungus, and Kindness”, set in Bodard’s alternative dark Paris.

R.A. Lafferty is also up for Best Collection, for THE BEST OF R.A. LAFFERTY, which is published by Gollancz and contains a number of Lafferty’s award-winning fiction. Through their SF Gateway imprint, Gollancz publishes a whole host of Lafferty’s work. Here’s the synopsis for the nominated collection…

Acclaimed as one of the most original voices in modern literature, Raphael Aloysius Lafferty has been awarded and nominated for a multitude of accolades over the span of his career, including the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

This collection contains 22 unique tall tales, including:

Hugo Award-winning
‘Eurema’s Dam’ — introduced by Robert Silverberg

Hugo Award-nominated
‘Continued on the Next Rock’ — introduced by Nancy Kress
‘Sky’ — introduced by Gwenda Bond

Nebula Award-nominated
‘In Our Block’ — introduced by Neil Gaiman

And more stories introduced by other modern masters of SF who acknowledge.

R.A. Lafferty as a major influence and force in the field.

Zeno represents R.A. Lafferty in the UK and Commonwealth, on behalf of the JABberwocky Literary Agency in New York.

Congratulations Aliette de Bodard on Locus Award Nomination!


AlietteDeBodard-AuthorPicAliette de Bodard has done it again! The Zeno blog has seen a veritable flood of congratulations for Aliette over the past few years, as her short fiction racks up an impressive string of nominations.

Today, we’re delighted to share the news that her recent story THE WAITING STARS has been nominated for a 2014 Locus Award, in the Novelette category!

What makes this extra-special news, is that THE WAITING STARS has also been nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards this year.

The novelette was first featured in THE OTHER HALF OF THE SKY anthology, published by Candlemark & GleamTHE WAITING STARS is available to read for free on Aliette’s website – on screen, or to download in Mobi, ePub, or PDF. It’s a perfect opportunity to try Aliette’s work

Huge congratulations to Aliette once again! Another very-well-deserved nomination!

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