iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Void Star by Zachary Mason, from 2017 and set in the 2100s: a sleek high-def post-cyberpunk novel, gorgeous in parts, the sort of thing I'm surprised Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy haven't already adapted for TV; but goodness how the future changes.

A copy of Void Star by Zachary Mason, on a black desk

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Thanks to a combination of pre-orders, slow orders, review copies and straight-up impulse buys, this week has not been kind to my shelves. At least I've already read the Hall...

A pile of books, spine out. Bottom to top: Revolution in the Heart ed. Jonathan Strahan; Peaceful Remission by Jonathan Djob Nkondo; Night of a Thousand Hells by Intan Paramaditha; Passage by Colin Thubron; Down With Gargamel! by Luis Othoniel Rosa; Paradise Burns by Pol Guasch; Riverwork by Lisa Robertson; The Floating World by Ben Eastham; China+100 ed. Xueting C Ni; and the wafer-thin Burning Snowflake by Sarah Hall.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Arrived this morning, read this evening. It's only 40 pages; will be delivered as a lecture this Saturday. Sets out Hall's perspective on how her writing of nature has evolved. Clear and purposeful. manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/events/sarah...

A cover of Burning Snowflake by Sarah Hall: white text over blue and red outlines of plants and plant-like shapes, sitting on a black desk.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Additional repost for this to give a shout-out to the UK cover

UK cover for Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Monica Ojeda. Black author/title text superimposed on a volcanic eruption rendered in a Van Gogh-like flurry of blues, purples, reds and orange.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

OK then: forty years of Clarke awards, which is your favourite decade of winners?

The first decade of Clarke winners:

1996 — Fairyland, Paul J. McAuley
1995 — Fools, Pat Cadigan
1994 — Vurt, Jeff Noon
1993 — Body of Glass, Marge Piercy
1992 — Synners, Pat Cadigan
1991 — Take Back Plenty, Colin Greenland
1990 — The Child Garden, Geoff Ryman
1989 — Unquenchable Fire, Rachel Pollack
1988 — The Sea and Summer, George Turner
1987 — The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood

The second decade of Clarke winners:

2006 — Air, Geoff Ryman
2005 — Iron Council, China Miéville
2004 — Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson
2003 — The Separation, Christopher Priest
2002 — Bold as Love, Gwyneth Jones
2001 — Perdido Street Station, China Miéville
2000 — Distraction, Bruce Sterling
1999 — Dreaming in Smoke, Tricia Sullivan
1998 — The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell
1997 — The Calcutta Chromosome, Amitav Ghosh

The third decade of Clarke winners:

2016 — Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky
2015 — Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
2014 — Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
2013 — Dark Eden, Chris Beckett
2012 — The Testament of Jessie Lamb, Jane Rogers
2011 — Zoo City, Lauren Beukes
2010 — The City & the City, China Miéville
2009 — Song of Time, Ian R. MacLeod
2008 — Black Man, Richard Morgan
2007 — Nova Swing, M. John Harrison

The fourth decade of Clarke winners:

2026 — When There Are Wolves Again, EJ Swift
2025 — Annie Bot, Sierra Greer
2024 — In Ascension, Martin MacInnes
2023 — Venomous Lumpsucker, Ned Beauman
2022 — Deep Wheel Orcadia, Harry Josephine Giles
2021 — The Animals in that Country, Laura Jean McKay
2020 — The Old Drift, Namwali Serpell
2019 — Rosewater, Tade Thompson
2018 — Dreams Before the Start of Time, Anne Charnock
2017 — The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

Same translation of the same book; 2021 Honford Star edition on the left, 2026 Brazen edition (being marketed, at least on Amazon, as "the new novel"). Quite different vibes, I would say.

Two covers of the same novel by Choi Jin-young (tr. Soje), with different titles. On the left, To The Warm Horizon (Honford Star 2021) is sepia-coloured, with detailed black line drawings of a tree branch, a run down house, mountains (with some white highlights), and the silhouette of a woman's head. On the right, Everything Happened At Once (Brazen 2026), has the title/author/translator in a red circle that hovers above a blue plain with yellow mountains in the background; the circle evokes a dying sun or a balloon, but is also dripping blood onto the landscape. In the foreground, bottom left, are two women embracing, small figures in a vast landscape. The style is minimalist with strong line work.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

I'm not sure how this happened, but I've acquired more books

A stack of books, spine out, bottom to top: Eco-Travel by Michael Cronin; Sublimation by Isabel J Kim; The Coffin of Honey by Geoffrey D Morrison; A Return to Self by Aatish Taseer; The Language of Liars by SL Huang; The War of Time by Alejo Carpentier; Plastic Prism Void by Violet Allen; Eurotrash and Air, both by Christian Kracht; Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth; and Hush Now, Canary by Mustafa Khalid

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

I would! I would also say, though, that while the Calvino link is definitely there, The Mulai is somewhat more directly unsettling than most Calvino (in my experience). This is the start of my Locus review, not online yet.

By their epigraphs shall ye know them. Munir Hachemi’s second novel The Mulai (2023, tr. Julia Sanches) has six, which is extremely generous, and between them they give a clear sense of the type of writer Hachemi is, and the type of novel that will follow. They include quotes from: a postapocalyptic science fiction novel by Raphael Pinedo that I don’t believe has been published in English; Borges; the TV series Raised by Wolves, in which two androids raise humans in an isolated colony; a short novel about colonialism and memory, The Witness by Juan José Saer; an untranslated work by Héctor Libertella that seems to be an experimental novel, or a theory-fiction hybrid; and last but not least The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. They speak to a story that will be intensely political and analytical, by a writer whose interests range across popular and academic culture, science fiction and literary fiction. The Mulai is short, unsentimental, and unashamedly conceptual, to the point of sometimes being quite difficult reading; but I suspect it is going to stay with me.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Recent acquisitions. A couple of these are review copies, and I did also have a birthday, but I regret to say that this is mostly my own fault.

A stack of books, spines out, bottom to top: In Other Worlds exhibition book by Liam Young; The Wreck by Lizzy Stewart; The Given World by Melissa Harrison; The World Bank and The Market of Seleukia by Jan Morris; The Ultraviolet Catastrophe by Susan Finlay; Fabrications by Zachary Mason; City of Rats by Copi tr. Kit Schluter; The Killing of a Chestnut Tree by Oliver K Langmead; Love Chronicles of the Octopodes by Karen An-Hwei Lee; The Jaguar's Roar by Micheliny Verunschuk tr. Juliana Barbassa; Centrefolding by Kirsty Dunlop; Before the Rocket by Loranne Vella tr. Kat Storace; The Oldest Bitch Alive by Morgen Day; and Planet City ed. Liam Young.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

And three pre-2026 books that I really enjoyed, if only to prove that not *everything* I read is contemporary. Some of them are from as long ago as 2023!

Covers of Greyhound by Joanna Pocock, Penance by Eliza Clark, and Landscapes by Christine Lai

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

Some honourable mentions. It's been a really strong year for first novels so far!

Covers of Loss Protocol by Paul McAuley; One Leg on Earth by 'Pemi Aguda; Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Mónica Ojeda; Sublimation by Isabel J Kim

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

I didn't review The Illuminated Man, but I thought it was an extraordinary and very moving book

Cover of The Illuminated Man by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

"what I felt when the novel released me was more immediate. I felt the urge to go outside, to run around and shout, not to celebrate the novel’s brilliance (although I think it is brilliant), but simply to prove that, for now, something real still exists."

Cover of The End of Everything by M John Harrison

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

After much dithering, my favourite six books of the year so far

Covers of six books: Event Horizon by Balsam Karam; Animal Spiral by Luis Othoniel Rosa; The Illuminated Man by Christopher Priest & Nina Allan; On the Calculation of Volume IV by Solvej Balle; What We Are Seeking by Cameron Reed; The End of Everything by M John Harrison

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

This is living up to the cover so far

A copy of Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun by Mónica Ojeda, being held up outside in sunlight; the cover art is a volcanic eruption as it might have been rendered by Van Gogh, in temperature-gradient colours from yellow through red and purple to blue.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 30/05/2026

POD pbs it is! Very basic - not even any back cover text - but I guess it doesn't cost Peter Owen much to make their backlist available in this way.

Copies of two novels by Knut Faldbakken, cover out: plain green edition of Sweetwater and plain black edition of Twilight Country.

Copies of two novels by Knut Faldbakken, spines out: plain green edition of Sweetwater and plain black edition of Twilight Country.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

And now three out of four of the ones I've read have made the shortlist. Guess I should really look up the other three...

Shortlist for the 2026 Ondaatje Prize for writing with a sense of place: A House for Miss Pauline by Diana McCaulay, Greyhound by Joanna Pocock, Helm by Sarah Hall, Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal, The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine, and The Finest Hotel in Kabul by Lyse Doucet

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

I think it's interesting more because it's how someone who centres authors -- and Budrys is definitely that type of reviewer -- finds the argument for encouragement wrong on its own terms. What has set him off is some (in his view) unrealistically positive blurbs from people who should know better.

More Budrys: "Only Keith Laumer, of all those pressed into service as shills by Terry Carr, speaks an undeniable truth about The Two-Timers, an Ace Science Fiction Special. “Smoothly written, immensely readable,” he says correctly. “Painfully good,” says Harlan Ellison. “A damned fine book,” says Lester.

No. No. It is a reasonably well told narrative about a man who wants so much to bring the dead back into his arms that he succeeds in crossing time, where he does indeed find his beloved—in his own arms, he being still married to her in that parallel world."

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

I haven't listened to the podcast that occasioned all this discussion yet, but I did just read a review column by Algis Budrys (obviously in the author-critics camp) from February 1969, and he says this when reviewing Bob Shaw's second novel The Two Timers

Algis Budrys writing about reviewing in February 1969; not specifically about debuts, although it was attached to a review of a second novel: The Two Timers by Bob Shaw.

"Come on. If you praise a mediocre book, because you want to sell more copies, or because you like writing blurb copy, or because you sincerely believe the writer deserves good things, what you are doing is helping to perpetuate the book’s errors. You stand in danger of encouraging a writer you like to inject cosmic SF elements into a human story, to that story’s inevitable diminution of impact. You stand in danger of encouraging a man to think of gimmicks, of driving him directly into the arms of a seductive way of life in which things are made so pleasanly flattering that one loses the guts to actually put out any unusual work. The process is plain to see, and always has been. And where it starts, and who it starts with, is not in the obviously sycophantic and ponderous extravagances that every interesting new writer encounters and can recognize; it starts with the well-intentioned distortions of those he respects and who often wish him well"

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Gagarin! (I assume.) No idea about a direct follow up, but if you haven't listened to their other albums I think they all have good stuff.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

Is All My Love by Agnes Lidbeck speculative? A story in three acts.

Actually I: Back cover of All My Love by Agnes Lidbeck states "Meanwhile the country around them changes" and "Freedoms are curtailed" without stating where or when the story is set.

Act II: publicity letter states that the books is "near dystopian, but in a way that feels too close to home to be comfortably labelled as such"

Act III: the opening page of the book is headed "Summary of the committee of inquiry into the period 2026-2032"

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

Always neat to come across the longlist for a prize you don't follow closely where you have, without intent, read a quarter of the selections. Really interesting juxtapositions. The ones I've read are A Granite Silence, Greyhound, Helm and Saraswati; liked them all.

4x4 arrangement of the covers of books longlisted for The 2026 RSL Ondaatje Prize:
A Granite Silence by Nina Allan
A House for Miss Pauline by Diana McCaulay
Big Time by Jordan Prosser
Enchanted Ground: Growing Roots in a Broken World by Steven Lovatt
Frogs For Watchdogs by Seán Farrell
Greyhound by Joanna Pocock
Helm by Sarah Hall
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Lifelines: Searching for Home in the Mountains of Greece by Julian Hoffman
Love, Sex & Frankenstein by Caroline Lea
Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal
The Benefactors by Wendy Erskine
The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People's History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet
The Whispers of Rock by Anjana Khatwa
Theory & Practice by Michelle de Kretser
Goonie by Michael Mullen

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Takes me back to New Weird days ... are you saying they are Richard Morgan in this context? urchin.earth.li/~twic/cgi-bi...

$Screenshot of an exchange between Richard Morgan ("The reason I've waded into this thread is that I see a very real danger of a portion of SF/F - what we might call the literary end - becoming so enamoured of its own purity that it fractions itself off and treats the remainder with exactly the same contempt that the mainstream literati now treat all SF") and M John Harrison ("I don't want that, Richard. I don't want what you want. I resent it. I've had it stuffed down my throat for nearly forty years. It's the boring old received wisdom of the genre") from the New Weird discussions in the early 2000s$

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Looking forward to reading this properly, but had to check the index for one particular thing first...

A copy of Jan Morris: A Life by Sara Wheeler. The cover is red at the top and bottom, with the subtitle in large pale block letters, sandwiching a photo of Morris with her feet up in front of a bookcase.

Photo of a page from Jam Morris: A Life discussing Hav (2006) and its reception. "To Morris's astonishment, the double Hav was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for 'best science fiction novel' of the year. She had not even thought it belonged to that genre. But to a certain extent it did." Also goes on to discuss Le Guin's Guardian review of the book.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

It is! (And bookmarks!) And the new edition is also foiled, if that's not clear from the static photo.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

This is a very cool thing from a generous publisher - Rabbit Hole books in Korea has published a revised edition of Bora Chung's fantastic novel Red Sword; they asked if they could use a quote from my Locus review, and have now sent me the new edition and some other promotional materials!

Two editions of Red Sword by Bora Chung: the UK edition from Honford Star trans. Anton Hur, and the revised Korean edition from Rabbit Hole books. Both covers are predominantly white, with a foiled blade cutting through; the blades are different on the two covers.

Photograph of a page from a promotional booklet accompanying the new Korean edition of Red Sword, showing a quote from my review in Locus! In the original, it is this section: "Red Sword is a story of doing, not thinking. The straight-faced nature of Red Sword is clearly deliberate. It is an outstandingly sustained exercise in breaking through from alienated claustrophobia into urgent resistance, with no clutter and no corollaries"

Photograph of the 2026 Rabbit Hole edition of Red Sword by Bora Chung with a selection of promotional items, including a booklet with an author interview and essay, some stickers, some bookmarks, and a rabbit pin. The belly band on the novel also features the quote from my Locus review.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Today's book post. And the first line of my @locusmag.bsky.social review: "I turned the last page of the latest installment of Solvej Balle’s rich and resonant On the Calculation of Volume and thought to myself, Tara Selter, you should meet Fitz Wahram." The rest is in the April issue!

A copy of On The Calculation of Volume IV by Solvej Balle

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 28/03/2026

Seems to me that genre-related non fiction is starting off 2026 pretty strong

Five non-fiction books about SF and fantasy published in early 2026, arranged spine-out: The Illuminated Man by Christopher Priest and Nina Allan; Considering the Female Man by Farah Mendlesohn; The Recollections by Christopher Priest; Imagination and Evolution: A Truer History of Science Fiction by John J Pierce; and Trace Elements by Jo Walton and Ada Palmer

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

There is of course this period of Asimov. If memory serves the montage extended onto Foundation's Edge and Foundation & Earth as well, but I don't have the right editions of those.

UK 90s copies of Foundation, Foundation & Empire and Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov, with a sine piece of cover art that splits across the three books, showing the infinite city sprawl of Trantor, with enormous centrepiece buildings rising up to be the focal point of each cover. I should know who the artist is, but have forgotten, and the editions do not say.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Happy 80th birthday to @garykwolfe.bsky.social. One of the great critical careers, telling the story of SF and fantasy for over thirty years now.

Photo of four books of reviews and criticism by Gary K Wolfe, laid out flat to show their covers: Evaporating Genres, Soundings: Reviews 1992-1996, Bearings: Reviews 1997-2001, and Sightings: Reviews 2002-2006.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Splinter! I knew he'd done it somewhere. Three parts, different tense in each.

Photo of part three of Splinter by Adam Roberts, written in future tense. "This vision, as it goes on, will have a much greater sense of something controlling it..."

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

Algis Budrys on book reviewing, February 1966

First let me explain. Some of you have expressed a certain bewilderment at the tone I take; the occasional bursts of disrespect, the sometimes sly and illucid asides. “What is he trying to say?” they ask, thus betraying the fact we never speak of—that a review column these days must first of all be a vehicle for a philosophy of literature, and only secondarily a guide to my ideas on how your book money should be spent.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

Loved this. Locus review won't be online for a bit, but here's the conclusion.

Quote from Locus review of Loss Protocol by Niall Harrison: In other words, Loss Protocol is a novel about the only world that is ever available to us. It is a gnarly, ornery piece of work, one that I sense has not given up all of its secrets on a first read, but here is my preliminary conclusion: I think the absolute solidity of its initial realism is a kind of trap, an attempt to make you forget that you are reading a dream. But a dream it is, for Winters, for his author, and now for me, too.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

I had been doing ok this year, but thanks to a book event, a couple of pre-orders coming in, and then a trip to York to see friends, I have comprehensively fallen off the wagon

A stack of 15 books, bottom to top: The Oak & The Larch by Sophie Pinkham; Seven by Joanna Kavenna; Glyph by Ali Smith; A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar; The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams; The Fortunate Fall by Cameron Reed; Monk & Robot by Becky Chambers; Rondo by Kazimierz Brandys; Penance by Eliza Clark; Friendly City by Sofia Samatar; AI 2041 by Kai-fu Lee and Chen Qiufan; Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy; Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico; White Moss by Anna Nerkagi; and The Ultimate Threshold: A Collection of the Finest in Society SF edited by Mirra Ginsburg

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Exciting review copy received: The White Desert by Luis López Carrasco trans. Rosalind Harvey (Granta, June)

Back cover of the ARC of The White Desert by Luis López Carrasco, which is quite text heavy so I'm afraid I'm not going to transcribe more than the first paragraph: "The story of a millennial couple facing life on an increasingly fragile planet and a stirring reflection on our place in the cosmos - for fans of Martin MacInnes and Samantha Harvey." I am very much a fan of both the named writers.

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

Reading, listening, watching and doing in 2025. Onwards.

A grid of nine book covers: Portalmania by Debbie Urbanski, A Granite Silence by Nina Allan, Red Sword by Bora Chung, Everything Will Swallow You by Tom Cox, Sea Now by Eva Meijer, Ice by Jacek Dukaj, Notes From A Regicide, Dream Hotel by Laila Lalami, and The Book of Records by Madeleine Thien

A grid of nine albums covers: Constellation for the Lonely by Doves, Sword by Wisp, No Scope by Crushed, People Watching by Sam Fender, Mystery Park by Kathryn Williams, We Were Made Prey by Kathryn Joseph, We Were Just Here by Just Mustard, If You Asked For a Picture by Blondshell, and Bird by Low Island

Grid of nine film/TV posters: Thunderbolts, Wake Up Dead Man, The Diplomat (S3), ER (S6), Foundation (S3), Andor (S2), The Brutalist, Flow, Severance (S2)

Grid of nine photos of landscapes/events: a red misty sunset; the coast near Whitley Bay; three people and their reflections walking through a conference centre in Beijing; a parkrun in Garvagh Forest; a bird taking off from a hotel balcony in Amsterdam; Sam Fender at St James's Park; a view of Jesmond Dene; the Red Arrows flying over the crowd at the start of the Great North Run; the pond at Longshaw Estate

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Eva Meijer and Anne Thompson Melo in conversation about Sea Now at Toppings, Edinburgh

Three seated figures in front of a wall of books: Anne Thompson Melo (left), Eva Meijer (centre), and interviewer whose name I did not catch (right).

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Eva Meijer and Anne Thompson Melo in conversation about Sea Now at Toppings, Edinburgh

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Niall Harrison @niallharrison.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

"Death of the SF category but not SF content" latest: I count, I think, six science fiction novels in the NYT notable books list; none of them are categorised in the list as SF and none of them were published as SF. One was even marketed as Romantasy, it seems! www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/b...