Asking the Wrong Questions

Gautam Bhatia might best be known to science fiction and fantasy fans as the editor in chief of Strange Horizons , and as the author of the intriguing, Ursula K. Le Guin-meets-China Miéville novels The Wall and The Horizon . In his everyday life, however, Bhatia is a lawyer and a scholar of the Indian constitution. These specialties come to the fore in his third novel, The Sentence , which takes the surprisingly rare step of examining how laws, constitutions, and trials play a role in fantastic worldbuilding. Set in a city that emerged from a bloody civil war with a tentative, shaky arrangement held in place by an order of lawyers, The Sentence examines how a single legal action might end up impacting on a whole society. My review, which appeared in last month's Locus, is now online . Nila – and her trusty roommate and sidekick Maru – discuss both the facts of the case and the merits of their legal strategy. Should she try to impugn long-accepted testimony, or take a purely proce...

The nominating period for the 2025 Hugo awards, which will be handed out this summer in Seattle, is now open, and will continue until March 14th. Members of the 2024 Worldcon in Glasgow, Scotland, and those who became members of the Seattle Worldcon before January 31st, 2025, are eligible to nominate. There are instructions for how to log into the nomination website, and how to contact assistance if you're not sure about your eligibility, at the Seattle Worldcon site. Before I get into the works I'm planning to nominate this year, I'd like to mention that my book, Track Changes: Selected Reviews , is eligible in the Best Related Work category. I'm very proud of the work I and Briardene Books publisher Niall Harrison did on this book, and its reviews and public reception have been gratifying—earlier this month it appeared on the Locus Recommended Reading List and the longlist for the BSFA award for non-fiction. If you're nominating in this category, I hope you...

Usually when I put together a recent reading roundup, I try to come up with some sort of common thread or guiding principle for the books discussed. This time around, we've just got a grab-bag of some of the best reads from the end of 2024 and the beginning of 2025. Two of these books are short, weird exercises in pushing at the very edges of what fantastic fiction can do. Another is doing the same thing to literary fiction. One is core science fiction, and another plays fascinating games with what core fantasy can be. And the last one is a prototypical plotless, closely-observed literary novel, and a reminder of how great that can sometimes be. In other words, whatever you're in the mood to read next, you might find something to suit your tastes in this post. The Repeat Room by Jesse Ball - The first half of Ball's short, disquieting novel plays out like a familiar near-future dystopia, with shades of 1984 , The Trial , and Squid Game . A large group of people have been s...

In all the uproar of this past weekend, it has probably been easy to miss that both the Locus Recommended Reading List (which compiles the recommendations of the magazine's staffers and contributors) and the BSFA longlists (from which the shortlist and eventual winners of the BSFA award will be selected) were published. I'm pleased to report that Track Changes , my collection of reviews, has been chosen to appear on both lists' respective non-fiction categories. The BSFA award is voted on by members of the British Science Fiction Association. Voting for the shortlists will conclude on February 28th. The Locus Recommended Reading List is used as a primer for the Locus poll , which is open to subscribers of the magazine as well as non-subscribers (though the latter's votes count for half). The poll will be open until April 15th. Track Changes was also mentioned by several of the contributors to Locus 's 2024 in review. Graham Sleight calls is "a long-overdue ...