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Awards Watch

Hi! Welcome to Speculative Fiction Picks. This newsletter follows all things speculative fiction, but it centers around the annual Hugo Awards. First presented in 1953 and presented annually since 1955, The Hugo Awards are science fiction’s most prestigious award. The Hugo Awards are given to media in 15 categories voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Convention ("Worldcon"). Anyone with a ticket to Worldcon can vote on the winners.

I have a LIST of 115 Science Fiction or Fantasy novels and 20 Horror Novels from 2024  that are eligible. I’ll be watching these books over the next few months to try to predict the winner. Feel free to weigh in on my Facebook page or Threads site with your opinions and reviews.

New Novels

We/re starting out this year with an Amazon Editor's Choice in Eiren Caffall's All the Water in the World. In the tradition of Station Eleven, a literary thriller set partly on the roof of New York’s Museum of Natural History in a flooded future.

All the Water in the World is told in the voice of a girl gifted with a deep feeling for water. In the years after the glaciers melt, Nonie, her older sister and her parents and their researcher friends have stayed behind in an almost deserted New York City, creating a settlement on the roof of the American Museum of Natural History. The rule: Take from the exhibits only in dire need. They hunt and grow their food in Central Park as they work to save the collections of human history and science.

Inspired by the stories of the curators in Iraq and Leningrad who worked to protect their collections from war, All the Water in the World is both a meditation on what we save from collapse and an adventure story—with danger, storms, and a fight for survival. In the spirit of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and Parable of the Sower, this wild journey offers the hope that what matters most – love and work, community and knowledge – will survive.

On Jan 7, Sue Lynn Tan brings the continuatioin of her Celestial Kingdom Books. Immortal is inspired by Chinese mythology (and set in the same world as her Celestial Kingdom books) this standalone fantasy from author Sue Lynn Tan features a compelling new heroine—the resourceful leader Liyen. Pledged to serve the immortals who protect her kingdom of Tianxia, Liyen runs into trouble when she catches feels for the legendary God of War.

On Jan 14, Alex Pheby concludes his Cities of the Weft series with Waterblack. One thousand million infants are dead, and Nathan Treeves is back. He’s become the Master of Waterblack, the City of the Dead. And Sharli, once a sacrifice, then an assassin, is now a trained God-Killer. She has killed many ― but failed in killing Nathan Treeves years ago. Soon, she and the Women’s Vanguard will have another chance, even as The Master, The Mistress, and the Atheistic Crusade hurtle toward their final confrontation.

Also out on Jan 14: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix.

“In Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, the author of How to Sell a  Haunted House and The Final Girl Support Group delivers another searing, completely original novel and further cements his status as a ‘horror master’ “ (NPR).

Fifteen-year-old Fern is sent to Wellwood House in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, to give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened. She arrives at the home in the sweltering summer of 1970, pregnant, terrified, and alone. Under the watchful eye of the stern Miss Wellwood, she meets a dozen other girls in the same predicament.

Everything the girls eat, every moment of their waking day, and everything they’re allowed to talk about is strictly controlled by adults who claim they know what’s best for them. Then Fern meets a librarian who gives her an occult book about witchcraft, and power is in the hands of the girls for the first time in their lives. But power can destroy as easily as it creates, and it’s never given freely. There’s always a price to be paid...and it’s usually paid in blood.

Again on Jan 14 we're treated to an epic fantasy debut from the U.K. Author Ed Crocker introduces the vampire city of First Light, where the rich get richer and the poor have to drink whatever blood they can find. When palace housemaid Sam stumbles into the wrong room, she must team up with a failed sorcerer and a werewolf assassin to unravel a vast conspiracy.

Finally, on Jan 14th Water Moon from Samantha Sotto Yambao debuts. On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.

Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.

Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.
But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.

On Jan 21 the much anticipated third book in Rebecca Yarros' Empyrean series will hit the shelves. Onyx Storm picks up as Violet Sorrengail, a small but mighty dragon rider, prepares for war against the Venin, a species of human who have sacrificed their souls to steal power from the land.After more than a year at Basgiath War College, Violet realizes that support for the Venin, a.k.a. the Dark Wielders, does not only lie beyond the walls of the competitive military school, but also within its ranks. Unsure of who to trust, Violet embarks on a fantastical journey to find allies who can help her hone her emerging powers, which may ultimately be the key to winning this battle for supremacy.

We round out the month with Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy winner Katherine Addison, on Jan 31, The Orb of Cairado is set in the world of The Goblin Emperor. Five years ago, Ulcetha Zhorvena was studying at the University of Cairado, working toward becoming a scholar first-class in the Department of History, when a prized artifact disappeared. Ulcetha was deftly framed and expelled. Now, he works for a crooked importer, using his knowledge of elven history to write provenances for the fake artifacts the importer sells. When the airship Wisdom of Choharo explodes, killing the emperor and three of his four sons, it also takes Ulcetha's best friend, Mara Lilana. But Mara leaves behind a puzzle–the one thing Ulcetha can't resist. And the puzzle leads Ulcetha back to the Department of History...and maybe to a chance to clear his name.

Anticipated Adaptations

This month is classic horror month. Right away, in Peter Pan's Neverland Nightmare, Peter abducts Michael Darling, and Wendy strikes out to rescue her brother from 'the clutches of the evil Peter Pan.' Along the way, she meets Peter’s accomplice, Tinkerbell, taking heroin and believing that it's pixie dust. This British independent slasher film is the third installment in The Twisted Childhood Universe.

No sooner do we have Peter under control than we need to fight Universal’s Wolf Man. A family in a remote farmhouse is attacked by an unseen animal. As the night stretches on, the father transforms into something unrecognizable.

Prime Video also gives us a time-traveling Bourne Identity thriller in The Man with No Past this month. An amnesiac man awakens in an unknown city. While he seeks the truth about his past, he becomes embroiled in a time-transcending battle with his fate in the balance.

We return to a kinder, gentler world on Feb 27, when director Isaiah Saxon brings us an adorable Ochi, who looks a lot like a furry Grogu. In The Legend of Ochi, a girl in a remote village is raised to never go outside after dark and to fear the reclusive forest creatures known as the ochi. When a baby ochi is left behind by its pack, she embarks on an adventure to reunite it with its family. On the journey, she learns to communicate with this elusive animal species.

On March 14th, Netflix will bring to life Simon Stålenhag’s The Electric State. An orphaned teenage girl journeys across a dystopian retro ‘90s American West with a sweet but mysterious robot and an eccentric drifter in search of her younger brother. This quirky story is full of action and special effects but quickly becomes emotional and compelling.

Also on March 14, Paramount Pictures will bring us Novocaine, about a mild-mannered banker determined to rescue the love of his life from a hostage situation. His only advantage is that he can’t feel pain.

And get those midnight margaritas ready…Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman are in talks to return for a sequel to Practical Magic!

Meanwhile, In Our Solar System

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer recently captured this image of the star WOH G64, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud over 160,000 light-years away. This is the first close-up picture of a star outside our galaxy. The star is in the process of dying, ejecting dust and gas before becoming a supernova. Image credit: ESO/K. Ohnaka et al.

Jupiter is a world of storms, including magnetic tornadoes. Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is the largest storm in the Solar System. At over 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) across, it’s wider than Earth. This ultraviolet image of the gas giant from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a dark region around the south pole, within which is an oval of more concentrated haze. New research suggests that this feature might be caused by swirling vortex dynamics in Jupiter’s magnetic field.

Image credit: Troy Tsubota/Michael Wong/UC Berkeley/NASA.

My thanks to the Planetary Society for the pictures and articles.

Encounters of the Third Kind

I hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into what Speculative Fiction has in store for 2025. To continue to get this newsletter about your favorite genre in your email, Subscribe for FREE:

In addition to the newsletter, I'll occasionally send you book, movie, and TV series reviews. I also try to feature a book a month and read a small excerpt with the review, like a podcast.

I'm an award-winning science fiction author living in Flagstaff, Arizona. Currently, I'm looking for fans of Science Fiction and some Dark Fantasy who want to develop a long-term relationship with an author as a beta reader. Beta readers get advanced copies of my novels in exchange for their opinions and suggestions for the story. I sometimes ask specific questions, but mostly, I rely on my beta readers to highlight potential issues with my plot, characters, pacing, consistency, flow, and typos. They make my manuscript the best it can be before it's published.

The story I'm currently sending to beta readers is an adult climate fiction set one hundred years in the future, where climate change has devolved western North America into a feudal version of the Wild West. Every life depends on water owned by the few, and the sentence for an unauthorized pregnancy is to wander the desert until dead.

Sixteen-year-old ranch hand Aldin idolizes eighteen-year-old Claire. Even after Balder splits her lip at a general assembly of the ranch's workers, Claire defiantly refuses to name her baby's father. But rather than allow Balder to strike Claire with a cane, Aldin steps forward, tacitly admitting fatherhood. Four months after being forced off their ranch, Claire gives birth to her son in The Long Now, a real-world, eighty-foot, forgotten monument to generational responsibility.

Despite their death sentence, Aldin promises his involuntary bride he will stand by her and see her to safety. To keep his promise and win over his reluctant wife, Aldin must conquer the omnipresent predator that prowls this arid land—thirst.

If you think you might like to join Aldin and Claire on their odyssey across a scorched American Southwest, just click the button below.

The rest of you, stay tuned for a sneak peek of the novel.

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