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.

THE BEST OF R.A. LAFFERTY is out now: fiction to “knock your brain off its axis”!


Today, readers in the UK can read the stories that ‘will knock your brain off its axis’ (Bill Hader)! Published in the UK by Gollancz, THE BEST OF R.A. LAFFERTY is a collection of the author’s best short fiction! Here are the details…

Edited and collated by Jonathan Strahan, with a volume introduction by Neil Gaiman, THE BEST OF R.A. LAFFERTY is the authoritative collection of short fiction by R.A. Lafferty.

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.

This is a great way to discover the works of a master of sci-fi!

If you’d like more by Lafferty, Gollancz has also published an omnibus edition of his novels SPACE CHANTEYFOURTH MANSIONS and PAST MASTER. A number of the author’s books are also available in the UK via Gollancz’s SF Gateway project.

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

THE BEST OF R.A. LAFFERTY, coming soon!


In early April, Gollancz is due to publish a new collection of R.A. Lafferty‘s best short fiction! Here are the details…

Edited and collated by Jonathan Strahan, with a volume introduction by Neil Gaiman, THE BEST OF R.A. LAFFERTY is the authoritative collection of short fiction by R.A. Lafferty.

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.

This is a great way to discover the works of a master of sci-fi!

If you’d like more by Lafferty, Gollancz has also published an omnibus edition of his novels SPACE CHANTEY, FOURTH MANSIONS and PAST MASTER. A number of the author’s books are also available in the UK via Gollancz’s SF Gateway project.

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

Out Now: THREE GREAT NOVELS by R.A. Lafferty…


An omnibus edition collecting THREE GREAT NOVELS by R.A. Lafferty is out now, published by Gollancz. Including the acclaimed novels SPACE CHANTEY, FOURTH MANSIONS and PAST MASTER, here’s the omnibus’s synopsis…

Three early masterpieces from one of science fiction’s great stylists.

Acclaimed, as one of the most original voices in modern literature, Raphael Aloysius Lafferty drew more from traditional oral storytelling techniques than from the usual pulp roots of SF. His inventive style and fondness for tall tales marked him out from his contemporaries, and writers of the calibre of Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe acknowledge him as a major influence and force in the field. His fiction has garnered numerous award wins and nominations and he has been given the prestigious SFWA Grand Master Award and the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

This volume contains three of his early novels: the Hugo- and Nebula-shortlisted Past Master, space opera re-telling of The Odyssey, Space Chantey, and Fourth Mansions, also shortlisted for the Nebula.

A whole host of Lafferty’s novels have also been made available in the UK as eBooks (including the three in the omnibus), published by Gollancz’s SF Gateway. We’ve including the novels’ individual synopses, below.

SPACE CHANTEY, originally published in 1968…

Set in the far future, Space Chantey chronicles the adventures of Space Captain Roadstrum and his crew, on a journey through galaxies resonant with myth and peril as Roadstrum valiantly battles to return across the cosmos to Big Tulsa, the Capital of the World, and to his wife and young son Tele-Max.

FOURTH MANSIONS, originally published in 1969…

Seven very special people blending to create a higher form of humanity…

A laughing man living alone on a mountain top, guarding the world…

The returnees, men who live again and again, century after century…

A dog-ape plappergeist who can be seen only from the corner of the eye…

And a young man named Foley, very much like you or me, who begins to find out about these people and these things, and how they are shaping the destiny of the world…

‘Of all the contemporary authors generally considered to be part of the fantasy and science fiction genres, Lafferty is without doubt the most original.’ Supernatural Fiction Writers on FOURTH MANSIONS

PAST MASTER, also originally published in 1968…

The golden planet of Astrobe, made in the image of Utopia, now faced a crisis which could destroy it forever; and yet, no one could understand it: In a world where wealth & comfort were free to everyone, why did so many desert the golden cities for the slums of Cathead and the Barrio? Why did they turn away from the Astrobe dream and seek lives of bone-crushing work, squalor and disease?

The rulers of Astrobe didn’t know, so they sought in humankind’s past for a leader who could give them the answers. They brought to life the one man out of history who would most want to destroy Astrobe!

‘Marvelously inventive… Profound wit and high adventure.’Roger Zelazny on PAST MASTER

‘As with everything the man writes, the wind of imagination blows strongly, with the happy difference that in a novel he can reach full  gale-force. Lafferty defies categorization; his work is unlike anyone else’s. This is a great galloping madman of a novel, drenched in sound and color.’Harlan Ellison on PAST MASTER

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

A new omnibus of THREE GREAT NOVELS by R.A. Lafferty coming soon in the UK


In August, Gollancz is due to published an omnibus edition collecting THREE GREAT NOVELS by R.A. Lafferty! Here’s the volume’s official synopsis…

Three early masterpieces from one of science fiction’s great stylists.

Acclaimed, as one of the most original voices in modern literature, Raphael Aloysius Lafferty drew more from traditional oral storytelling techniques than from the usual pulp roots of SF. His inventive style and fondness for tall tales marked him out from his contemporaries, and writers of the calibre of Harlan Ellison, Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe acknowledge him as a major influence and force in the field. His fiction has garnered numerous award wins and nominations and he has been given the prestigious SFWA Grand Master Award and the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

This volume contains three of his early novels: the Hugo- and Nebula-shortlisted Past Master, space opera re-telling of The Odyssey, Space Chantey, and Fourth Mansions, also shortlisted for the Nebula.

Here are some more details for each of the novels included in the book. Let’s start with SPACE CHANTEY, which was first published in 1968…

Set in the far future, Space Chantey chronicles the adventures of Space Captain Roadstrum and his crew, on a journey through galaxies resonant with myth and peril as Roadstrum valiantly battles to return across the cosmos to Big Tulsa, the Capital of the World, and to his wife and young son Tele-Max.

First published in 1969, FOURTH MANSIONS was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel…

Seven very special people blending to create a higher form of humanity…

A laughing man living alone on a mountain top, guarding the world…

The returnees, men who live again and again, century after century…

A dog-ape plappergeist who can be seen only from the corner of the eye…

And a young man named Foley, very much like you or me, who begins to find out about these people and these things, and how they are shaping the destiny of the world…

PAST MASTER, also originally published in 1968, was nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Best Novel awards…

The golden planet of Astrobe, made in the image of Utopia, now faced a crisis which could destroy it forever; and yet, no one could understand it: In a world where wealth & comfort were free to everyone, why did so many desert the golden cities for the slums of Cathead and the Barrio? Why did they turn away from the Astrobe dream and seek lives of bone-crushing work, squalor and disease?

The rulers of Astrobe didn’t know, so they sought in humankind’s past for a leader who could give them the answers. They brought to life the one man out of history who would most want to destroy Astrobe!

Many of Lafferty’s novels have also been published in the UK by Gollancz’s SF Gateway project (as eBooks).

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