SF² Concatenation

Current state

With our editor as one of 11% of the UK adult population without internet connection (according to the UK regulator Ofcom), and so whose been in digital lockdown, news has been coming in from team members on paper and USB memory sticks, as have book reviews. A couple of periods of lockdown lifting has meant that library cybercafes have at times been open and this has enabled some articles to be sent in. As to what this means, more in 'Forthcoming' below but things are still very much up in the air.

Thanks to those that have stuck with us.

New up...

Well, the good news, following a couple of months break in CoVID-19 lockdown, we are back with a full seasonal edition.  This means the return of a full seasonal news page, so the season's film, television and SF/F publishing news subsections have returned.  Also back are the popular forthcoming SF book, forthcoming fantasy, forthcoming SF non-fiction and popular science book listings.  SF² Concatenation is one of the few places on the internet that lists titles from several specialist SF/F/H imprints in one place.

As done every January, we have our choices as to the Best SF books and Best SF films of the previous year.  Just a bit of fun, yes, but over the years every year, one of either our choice of books or films, often both, subsequently go on to be short-listed for a major award (Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Locus etc.) some even win.  See our track record (scroll down).

By the way, if you have never checked out the seasonal news pages' science news sections then this time you might want to do so. The natural science section includes the season's round-up of SARS / CoVID-19 research, whose short summaries feature the titles of the primary research academic papers being reported and which you can cut-n-paste into 'Google Scholar' to see the whole paper or its abstract. Our reassurance to you that there is no fake news here. (One of the plus points of SF² Concatenation being founded and largely run by scientists.)

Also this edition sees the return of a full complement of standalone book reviews with over 30 titles reviewed.

For details of / links to the new content, scroll down to beneath 'Most recently added' below.

Forthcoming

Up mid-April 2021, our Summer edition*.  Alas, the bad news. Due to rising CoVID-19 hospitalisations, and not least the rise of a significant mutation in SARS-CoV-2, much of the UK went into hard lockdown in December. As alluded above, this means our news and reviews editor has returned to digital lockdown.  The bad news is that if this has not lifted by mid-March we will either have a reduced seasonal edition for the summer or, if it looks like lockdown will be lifted in early in May, we may hold off this edition until mid-May.  If the worst, reduced edition, case scenario comes about then at least we will have a raft of standalone book reviews as we have a few score of books in that have just gone out to our book review panel members.
* 'Summer' here being the northern hemisphere, academic year summer.

Up mid-September 2021, our Autumn edition.  The vaccine programme in the UK should have been completed, and even if it hasn't, the summer reduction in CoVID-19 (which is not tolerant to warm, dry conditions and is killed by ultra-violet in sunlight) should mean that lockdown will have ended. This in turn means that we should once again have a full autumnal edition.

As to the long-term future, much depends on vaccine efficay against the new strain of SARS-CoV-2.  However, if our species gets a break, we could be back to normal mid-year. Uf so, we should be able to sort out copyright permissions required for the resumation of our 'Best of Nature "Futures" stories'.

Meanwhile, hopefully you should find something below to tickle your fancy.  Also, why not have a snoop around our past material using the quick links on the short-cut column left of here.  There are plenty of articles and the past seasonal news pages have links to other items of interest including YouTube videos and film trailers.  There's also plenty of on the site to mine.  As a teaser we have included, in the last edition below, one, ten years old, from the archives.

Thank you for visiting us. (And thank those of you on social media for spreading the word that we are
still here. Appreciated.)

                ☺

Most recently added

v31(1) 2021.1.15 -- New Columns & Articles for the Spring 2021

• Newscast for the Spring 2021. This includes within it many key sections. See the master newscast link index that connects to all its SF/F genre and science news sub-sections.
   
• The British SF Association: A Year in the Chair -- Allen Stroud
• Creating a new SF/F publishing house -- Mark Bilsborough
• eFanzines: its curator reflects in its 20th year -- Bill Burns
• My Top Ten Scientists – Carole Stivers (biochemist & SF author)
• A Worldcon future -- developments from science symposia -- Jonathan Cowie
• CoNZealand -- The 2020 SF Worldcon -- Suzie Eisfelder
• DemiSemiQuaver -- The 2020 UK Filk Convention - Peter Tyers
• SF Convention Listing & Film Diary with links to con sites and film trailers
• Ten years ago. One from the archives: SF in Romania since the 1990 revolution -- Laurentiu Nistorescu, Antuza Genescu and Dorin Davideanu

v31(1) 2021.1.15 -- Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

• False Value - Ben Aaronovitch
• The October Man - Ben Aaronovitch
• The October Man (2nd review) - Ben Aaronovitch
• The Trouble With Peace - Joe Abercrombie
• Devil’s Blade - Mark Alder
• Doctor Who: At Childhood's End - Sophie Aldred
• Origamy - Rachel Armstrong
• Snowball - Gregory Bastianelli
• Beneath the World, a Sea - Chris Beckett
• Two Tribes - Chris Beckett
• Howling Dark - Jim Butcher
• The Wise Friend (2nd review) - Ramsey Campbell
• The Book of Koli (2nd review) - M. R. Carey
• Star Wars Rise of Skywalker – Expanded Edition - Rae Carson
• American Gods: The Moment of the Storm - Neil Gaiman, P. Craig Russell & Scott Hampton
• The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again - M. John Harrison
• Ink and Sigil - Kevin Hearne
• The Raven - Jonathan Janz
• Phantasmagoria Special Edition Series 3: M. R. James - Trevor Kennedy
• Tanith By Choice - Tanith Lee
• Of Ants and Dinosaurs - Cixin Liu
• A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine
• The Future of Another Timeline - Annalee Newitz
• Curse the Day - Judith O'Reilly
• Curse the Day (2nd review) - Judith O'Reilly
• Animal Farm - George Orwell
• Animal Farm (2nd review) - George Orwell
• Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell
• Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
• To Sleep in a Sea of Stars - Christopher Paolini
• The Living Dead - George A. Romero
• The Mother Code - Carole Stivers

v31(1) 2021.1.15 -- Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews

• The Oxford Guide to Plain English - Martin Cutts
• The Crowd and the Cosmos: Adventures in the Zooniverse - Chris Lintott
• Gardening for the Zombie Apocalypse - Isabel Lloyd & Phil Clarke
• Extraterrestrial: The first sign of intelligent life beyond Earth - Avi Loeb
• Future Politics: Living together in a world transformed by tech - Jamie Susskind

v30(5) 2020.12.15 -- A new story from the Nature Futures series

• Your guide to the ever-shrinking solitude on Planet Earth (1-page PDF short story) - Jo Miles
  In an increasingly interconnected world, it is ever more difficult to have a moment of peace. But it is possible, just! Here's how...
  
• The index to all of the Concatenation selection of Nature 'Futures' stories.
• The guidelines for prospective 'Futures' SF short stories authors.

v30(4) 2020.9.15 -- New Columns & Articles for the Autumn 2020

• Newscast for the Autumn 2020. This includes within it many key sections. See the master newscast link index that connects to all the news sub-sections.
   
• How Eastercon and Worldcon fandom survived lockdown -- Caroline Mullan
• Loncon 3 - The 2014 UK SF Worldcon. -- Mark Bilsborough A retrospective in light of the new UK, 2024 bid.
• Space exploration projects deploying in 2021 -- Ian Moss Forthcoming space missions.
• Keep Mars human free! - Jonathan Cowie  Keep Mars for the Martians.
• Ten years ago. One from the archives: Au Contraire - New Zealand's 2010 national convention - With the CoNZealand's 2020 Worldcon virtually now over, a look back at an earlier NZ natcon in Wellington that saw this year's Worldcon bid launched.
• 'Infringement: Brought down to Earth' (1-page PDF short story) by Timothy J. Gawne
  A new story from the 'Best of...' Nature Futures series.  Do you have the right to exist? Is your Earth's copyright valid...?
• The index to all of the Concatenation selection of Nature 'Futures' stories.
• The guidelines for prospective 'Futures' SF short stories authors.
  Autumnal edition Facebook alert, should you wish to promulgate/share or alternatively re-Tweet

v30(4) 2020.9.15 -- Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

• The Book of Koli - M. R. Carey
• The Faceless Old Woman Who Lives in Your Home - Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Candor
• The Peripheral - William Gibson
• The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires (2nd review) - Grady Hendrix
• Goldilocks - Laura Lam
• Octavia Gone - Jack McDevitt
• Slow Lightning - Jack McDevitt
• Howling Dark - Christopher Ruocchio
• The Last Emprox - John Scalzi
• Docile - K. M. Szpara
• Docile (2nd review) - K. M. Szpara
• Children of Ruin - Adrian Tchaikovsky
• The Doors of Eden - Adrian Tchaikovsky
• Making Wolf - Tade Thompson

v30(3) 2020.4.20 -- New Columns & Articles for the Summer 2020

• Newscast for the Summer 2020. This includes within it many key sections covering SF books, films and TV as well as science. See the master newscast link index that connects to all the news sub-sections.
   
• My Top Ten Scientists – Julie Novakova (SF author & biologist).  A number of SF authors are also scientists. But who are the scientists and the science that inspired these scientist authors?  This is part of an on-going series by SF authors with science qualifications.
• SARS-CoV-2, COVD-19 and the SF community: A briefing
• Wellington: for visiting SF folk 2020 – Jacqueline Brasfield et al.  OK, so this year's Worldcon that was scheduled for New Zealand will now not take place as a physical event.  But what might the tourism dimensions have been like? (This overview might perhaps encourage a future Worldcon bid and in any case there are NZ natcons every few years in Wellington well worth attending in combination with a holiday.)
• 2019/20 (12 months to Easter) SF Film Top Ten Chart and Other Worthies  (All archive annual film charts here)
• 'Please [Redacted] My Last E-mail' (1-page PDF short story) by Kurt Pankau
  A new story from the 'Best of...' Nature Futures series.  Any future e-mails you get from me are also really from me. Even if they completely contradict everything I’m saying right now…
• One from the archives: When the Children Read Fantasy - Terry Pratchett (1994)
• SF Convention go-er appeal.  At home in lockdown?  Do you have a favourite convention you go to time and again?  Want to make an SFnal mark?  How about giving them a promotional puff..?
• Gaia 2020 - Annual whimsical SF and/or science snippets and exotica
  (Previous years' Gaia columns here.)

Full 'What's New' list