The Locus Awards are put on by Locus Magazine, a monthly indie publication (since 1968!) focusing on SFF book news and reviews. They’re pretty good about including small press stuff in their weekly new releases posts, which is nice.
Winner highlights:
- Science fiction novel: The Man Who Saw Seconds, Alexander Boldizar
- Fantasy novel: A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher
- Horror novel: Bury Your Gays, Chuck Tingle
- YA novel: Moonstorm, Yoon Ha Lee
- First novel: Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell
- Novella: What Feasts at Night, T. Kingfisher
- Novelette: “By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars“, Premee Mohamed
- Short story: “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole“, Isabel J. Kim
- Anthology: The Black Girl Survives in This One, Desiree S. Evans & Saraciea J. Fennell, eds.
- Collection: Lake of Souls, Ann Leckie
Glad it was useful to you!
I have half a dozen nominees on my to-read pile (I’ll get to them some day), but of the entire list, I’ve only read I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons (ok, but no The Last Unicorn) and The Butcher of the Forest (great overall, imo).
Alternate histories seems like one of those oddball sub-genres that has to go somewhere; I guess I would maybe call them spec fic, if they’re not otherwise sci-fi or fantasy? But it seems like they lumped spec fic into the sci-fi category, which seems reasonable.
Yeah, I get it, it just feels very different to me. And, of course, as with all things, the line is blurry anyway. For instance, Orson Scott Card wrote an alternate history where the change is that American folk magic actually works, which seems pretty explicitly fantasy. It’s similar to the way it’s pretty hard to clearly differentiate between SF and fantasy. I get it, it’s just annoying.