SFX

1 min read

Miles Cameron switches from fantasy to space opera for ARTIFACT SPACE (out now, Gollancz), which centres on a vast merchant vessel. When on-the-run orphan Marca poses as a midshipman on the Greatship Athens, she gets caught up in a plot to destroy th

SFX

1 min read

Leiber’s father (also Fritz) was a successful actor, most notably playing Franz Lizst in Universal’s Phantom Of The Opera (1943). The book was expanded from The Pale Brown Thing, first published in the Jan/Feb 1977 editions of Fantasy And Science Fic

DIVA

1 min read

BOOK OF THE MONTH FICTION Kalynn Bayron Queering a fairytale isn’t new, but when it’s good it’s really good… For many LGBTQI women who were coming of age in the late 2000s, Ash by Malinda Lo may have been the first lesbian retelling of Cinderella the

SFX

1 min read

Neal Shusterman’s latest, GAME CHANGER (out now, Walker) centres on a teenage American football player, who’s… oh right, you’ve lost interest before I mention how he bounces into parallel worlds, right? Fair enough. Hannah Mathewson’s debut WITHERWAR

SFX

1 min read

RELEASED 6 FEBRUARY 352 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook Author Luke Arnold Publisher Orbit Fans of Black Sails will likely find the name Luke Arnold familiar. He played John Silver in the pirate series, as well as being a mainstay on numerous other

PC Gamer

1 min read

Never thought I’d say it, but it’s lovely to play as a goblin. Too much time wasted in the Warhammer fantasy world means I go in expecting to be a jittering, capering villain, only interested in sticking people with sharp things. But Master of Shado

Writing Magazine

1 min read

Various authors and publishers are making books and stories freely available to keep readers entertained during the pandemic. Though the magazine closed down last year, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show has put all 69 issues of the scien

SFX

1 min read

As ever, there’s tons more books we couldn’t fit in. Almost-human wolves and a living ship made of bones are among the delights of Laird Hunt’s dark fairytale in THE HOUSE IN THE DARK OF THE WOODS (out now, One). Alison Littlewood’s MISTLETOE (out no

The Millions

7 min read

1. The logic of novice programming goes something like this: Run function (x, y) If x is greater than y: Do this Else if y is greater than x: Do that Else: Something else happens. I quickly learned that computers don’t like choice, and they don’t lik

SFX

1 min read

RELEASED OUT NOW! 344 pages | Paperback/ebook Author Steve Feasey Publisher Bloomsbury A magic sword, an abandoned baby of mysterious origins, and a malevolent sorcerer looking to plunge the world into chaos… Dark Blade ticks off a lot of epic fantas

SFX

1 min read

Pick of the paperbacks this time: Adrian Tchaikovsky’s CAGE OF SOULS ( , out now, Head Of Zeus). Set when the sun is dying and less than 100,000 humans survive in the last city, it centres on a rebel confined on an island prison in a predator-filled

SFX

1 min read

Words have mystical power in Jay Posey’s space opera EVERY SKY A GRAVE (out now, Harper Voyager). Set in a future where mankind has mastered the Deep Language of the universe, it centres on an adept sent to a world that’s become corrupted. The world

NPR

3 min read

Elizabeth Lim's new young adult novel follows a girl who disguises herself as a boy and sets off for the emperor's court in place of her ailing father, who's been summoned as an imperial tailor.

Best Self Magazine

24 min read

April 3, 2017, New York, NY Photographs by Bill Miles ______________________________________ My mission is to awaken women, to turn women on, to have women truly live rather than play small. I must model that. ~ Regena Thomashauer, ‘Mama Gena’ Kriste

Writing Magazine

1 min read

The University of Glasgow School of Critical Studies has launched the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic. The new venture’s inaugural event was a free Zoom lecture on 16 September by fantasy author Ellen Kushner, followed by a discussion panel on f

WHO

1 min read

With concerts and live theatre productions – as well as interstate travel – now possible, fans of fairytales and musicals should head to Sydney later this year. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella will premiere at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre in Novembe

Fortean Times

2 min read

It is a commonplace among fairyists that the fairies seen today in midnight walks are not the same as those seen 800 or even 100 years ago. Twenty-first century fairies are smaller: they are often doll-sized, or even butterfly-sized. They frequently

Watch

3 min read

“USUALLY, I’M TRYING TO ESCAPE FROM reality,” says best-selling author Alice Hoffman, who is noted for embracing magical realism in such novels as Practical Magic, The Dovekeepers, and The Marriage of Opposites. At first glance, her 28th work of adul

SFX

1 min read

⏵ RELEASED 17 JUNE 480 pages | Paperback/ebook/audiobook ⏵ Author Hannah Whitten ⏵ Publisher Orbit Books Wolves run through fairy tales, flashing a tooth here, a tail there. But if you pick this up expecting to see familiar motifs popping up, you’ll

Writing Magazine

1 min read

Established in December 2021, Bag of Bones Press aims to ‘champion and publish budding writers of horror and dark fiction who may not have had a traditional or formal education in the literary arts’. Submission calls are open to anyone and everyone T

Literary Hub

6 min read

In the happy country of fairies, one leaves it only to find one’s way back. One suffers only to become happy, whereas pain is for us an enigma and life a struggle without end where the better people are the first to fall. There, in the country of fai

Woman & Home

3 min read

The distinction between good and evil in fairy stories is always very clear, and though good doesn’t always win, evil is, if not vanquished, then at least exposed for what it is. However, the fairy stories I grew up with were very different to the ‘s

Writing Magazine

1 min read

Kopfkino Media is a brand new US ‘boutique publisher specializing in dark genre fiction’. The editors love horror. Their first project is an anthology, Midnight in the Dying Garden: Fairy Tales for the End of the World, a combination project consisti

The Atlantic

3 min read

No wonder, then, that the news of a new live-action Cinderella in the works was greeted by Slate's Alyssa Rosenberg with a certain amount of ambivalence. The "fairy tale" is "ripe for revision," Rosenberg argues, and hopes that we might see a Cindere

Brides Today

2 min read

There is much in common between weddings and fairy tales… A fairy tale romance, a fairy tale celebration, and, of course, a happily-ever-after. The idea of spending your life with a special someone is certainly enchanting, and yet, the modern woman a

Writing Magazine

1 min read

Enchanted Conversation is a monthly US webzine for adult readers with a love of classic fairytales. Originally debuting in 2007, the site relaunched this summer and now publishes one story per month and two non-fiction articles. The editor is Kate Wo

All About History

1 min read

A common trope in fairy and folk tales is magical protection. This can take the form of an enchanted object, such as a hero’s shield, or it can take the form of a space or place, like the mythical Isle of Avalon in Arthurian myth, sheltered from the

ImagineFX

1 min read

LOCATION: Belgium MEDIA: Photoshop, Procreate WEB: www.margawart.com “Fairy tales and mythical creatures have always had a very special place in my heart,” says Margarita. “I love creating illustrations full of magic and mystery, and telling my own s

The Advocate

1 min read

Isaac Fellman, author of The Two Doctors Górski and, under his pretransition first name, The Breath of the Sun, won the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror for the latter. An archivist at a queer historical societ

PEARL

8 min read

Fairy tales belong to ancient human heritage. They are not tied to any particular country or people, so we find the same or similar themes everywhere. They are stories that have no relationship at all to earthly human history. Fairy tales tell nothin