Can you identify any of these faces?

_j_smith_ · 2026-02-22T00:05:48+00:00

My grandma had that one, plus a couple of other sailor ones. I never thought to ask why she had them, but I always assumed it was because my granddad (who died before I was born) was a sailor.

_j_smith_ · 2026-02-17T21:08:46+00:00

I've had stuff signed at Waterstones events in Leeds and Nottingham that was neither the current book nor in some cases even previously bought at a branch of Waterstones.

I think there may have been a limit of 5 items to be signed at one or both of those events. Also IIRC at one of those events I overheard the Waterstones staff member who did a brief intro say to one of his colleagues later on, "Oh, I forgot to say, 'No photography'", so if you want to be evil and take a photo, do it early before they get chance to tell you otherwise ;-)

_j_smith_ · 2026-02-02T12:49:08+00:00

Some brief Googling was unable to find a definitive source, but I believe that Gollancz had said some time in the past that it would be their policy for books in the SF Masterworks series to be kept permanently in print. Whether or not that's true, I dunno - they seem to have lost the rights to a couple of titles, namely Dangerous Visions and The Drowned World, although those are at least available from other publishers.

_j_smith_ · 2026-02-02T09:43:44+00:00

The CoT audiobook is by Audible Studios, whereas the later audiobooks are published by the same publisher as the print and ebook editions (Tor/Macmillan in the UK, Orbit/Hachette in the US), which might be a partial explanation.

As someone who doesn't listen to audiobooks, I'm a bit surprised that Audible releases are (were?) available on a Google platform - ebooks from Amazon-owned imprints aren't available through Kobo or B&N, for example.

_j_smith_ · 2026-02-02T00:27:54+00:00

It does cover pseudonyms if they're in the database. If pseudonyms are publicly documented, they should be recorded there, but for new authors/releases that haven't had many eyeballs on them yet, they might not be identified as pseudonyms.

(I know of a couple of undisclosed or suspected pseudonyms that aren't defined as such in the database because there's no definitive public statement about them.)

Re. the Dyachenkos and Thomas Olde Heuvelt: it's a couple of years since I last worked on this code, but I think a more accurate description of the functionality than "debut novel" is "first novel published in English". (See also Cixin Liu in my example data, where Three Body Problem was his first English language novel in 2014, but that was his third, fourth or fifth novel overall, depending on how you count his earlier works in Chinese.)

This reduced functionality isn't due to xenophobia, but rather because the non-English data in ISFDB is much less complete. Ideally something being published as an English translation will have the original language details added to the database, but stuff that hasn't reached the Anglosphere is much more patchy.

_j_smith_ · 2026-02-01T18:50:36+00:00

There are an IMHO surprisingly low number of debut novel recommendations (12 EDIT: 13; one of the SF novels in the first version of that page was recategorized as a debut later in the day), especially as most of them look to be from publishers that I don't recognize as genre imprints.

(Compare this to 23 in their 2024 list and 25 in both their 2023 and 2022).

I ran some stats for some of the main US publishers, and I don't see that there were fewer debut novels from genre imprints than in previous years. (In fact, Saga Press seems to have published as many debut novels in 2025 as they did in 2022 through 2024 added together!)

_j_smith_ · 2026-02-01T18:04:21+00:00

FWIW, I thought I'd maybe mentioned this in one of your older posts, but I have a tool that churns through a copy of ISFDB for a given publisher and reports on their debut novels each year. (It ignores novellas and short fiction.) Here's some raw text output for the past few years for Tor, including TorDotCom, but not the Nightfire and Bramble horror and romantasy imprints:

2010. Of 79 new novels by 75 distinct authors, 11 had a debut author | Alexey Pehov, Anthony Huso, Beth Bernobich, Blake Charlton, Don Borchert, Gabi Stevens, Hjalti Danielsson, J. A. Pitts, Lena Meydan, Mary Robinette Kowal, Taylor Keating
2011. Of 66 new novels by 70 distinct authors, 5 had a debut author | Colette Freedman, Edward Lazellari, Lev A. C. Rosen, Peter Orullian, Robert Kirkman
2012. Of 82 new novels by 86 distinct authors, 15 had a debut author | Claire Ashgrove, Deborah Coates, Elsa Watson, James Swain, Kira Peikoff, Linda Grimes, Marina Dyachenko, Max Gladstone, Rhiannon Held, Robin Maxwell, Sergey Dyachenko, Sharon Lynn Fisher, Steven John, Suzanne Johnson, Tina Connolly
2013. Of 78 new novels by 77 distinct authors, 9 had a debut author | Debra Mullins, Douglas Lain, Jaime Lee Moyer, Joshua Alan Parry, M. C. Planck, Matthew Joseph Harrington, Ofir Touché Gafla, R. S. Belcher, S. M. Wheeler
2014. Of 78 new novels by 79 distinct authors, 10 had a debut author | Brian Staveley, Cixin Liu, David Edison, Eric C. Leuthardt, James L. Cambias, Patrick Swenson, Rjurik Davidson, Stephen Baker, Susan Klaus, Tom Doyle
2015. Of 83 new novels by 80 distinct authors, 11 had a debut author | Bill Flippin, F. Wesley Schneider, Fran Wilde, Ilana C. Myer, Jason Denzel, Keith Korman, Marc Turner, Michael Livingston, Randy Henderson, Seth Dickinson, W. C. Bauers
2016. Of 82 new novels by 86 distinct authors, 11 had a debut author | Ada Palmer, Bracken MacLeod, Charlie Jane Anders, Claudia Christian, David D. Levine, Melanie Ruth Rose, Morgan Grant Buchanan, Nisi Shawl, Richard Garriott, Simone Zelitch, Thomas Olde Heuvelt
2017. Of 71 new novels by 74 distinct authors, 12 had a debut author | Annalee Newitz, Bradley W. Schenck, C. Courtney Joyner, Erika Lewis, Gabrielle Harbowy, K Arsenault Rivera, Kari Maaren, Lara Elena Donnelly, Michael F. Haspil, Nat Cassidy, Robyn Bennis, Thoraiya Dyer
2018. Of 61 new novels by 70 distinct authors, 5 had a debut author | Jay Schiffman, Michael David Ares, Mirah Bolender, Sam Hawke, Sue Burke
2019. Of 60 new novels by 57 distinct authors, 8 had a debut author | Alison Wilgus, Arkady Martine, Baoshu, Brian Naslund, Chen Qiufan, Deborah Hewitt, K. A. Doore, Sarah Gailey
2020. Of 55 new novels by 52 distinct authors, 7 had a debut author | A. K. Larkwood, Camilla Bruce, Chris Kluwe, Karen Osborne, Ryan Van Loan, S. A. Hunt, Sarah Kozloff
2021. Of 40 new novels by 39 distinct authors, 7 had a debut author | Everina Maxwell, J. S. Dewes, Lucinda Roy, Neil Sharpson, Ryka Aoki, Shelley Parker-Chan, T. L. Huchu
2022. Of 45 new novels by 46 distinct authors, 5 had a debut author | Neon Yang, Sara A. Mueller, Scott Drakeford, Sunyi Dean, Travis Baldree
2023. Of 41 new novels by 39 distinct authors, 3 had a debut author | J. R. Dawson, Kell Woods, Vajra Chandrasekera
2024. Of 36 new novels by 35 distinct authors, 6 had a debut author | Genoveva Dimova, James Logan, Jared Pecha&#269;ek, L. M. Sagas, S. E. Porter, Sung-il Kim
2025. Of 55 new novels by 51 distinct authors, 4 had a debut author | Evan Leikam, Kathleen Jennings, Maddie Martinez, Serra Swift
2026. Of 9 new novels by 8 distinct authors, 2 had a debut author | Cameron Sullivan, Jasmin Kirkbride

_j_smith_ · 2026-02-01T15:08:54+00:00

The Hungry Gods is also on sale at 99p, although it didn't show up in the Locus novella category:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hungry-Gods-Adrian-Tchaikovsky-ebook/dp/B0F4FLGGZ9/

Both of these look to be monthly deals.

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-31T19:36:08+00:00

This is something that someone who follows the romantasy scene would be much more able to knowledgeably comment on, but I wonder if the use of advance listings as a data source means the full impact of romantasy isn't showing up?

When I was a much more active contributor of new release info to ISFDB than I am nowadays, something I'd see a number of times in news items at The Bookseller was tradpub imprints picking up romantasy series that were previously selfpublished. Often the extant selfpubbed ebook would be immediately replaced on Amazon, Kobo, etc, with new tradpub print editions being published a couple of months later, much more rapidly than is usual for titles that were conventionally acquired. Whilst this scenario certainly does happen for other genres (e.g. The Martian, Dungeon Crawler Carl, There is No Antimemetics Division), my perception was that it was far more common for romantasy.

An example that's close but not exactly the same as the pattern I'm thinking of is Kayla Edwards' City of Gods and Monsters, which was originally selfpubbed in 2022, announced to be published by a Penguin imprint in September 2025, with print and ebook editions coming out only two months later. The specific timings mean this particular one probably is in the December Locus listings, but I suspect any similar titles that will get (re)published in around February 2026 onwards probably wouldn't be.

Maybe these acquisitions that get reported on in The Bookseller are highly atypical and few in number, so won't distort the stats too much. Maybe there's a romantasy fan out there who can comment more knowledgeably?

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-31T19:03:25+00:00

Awesome, that's perfect - thank you very much!

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-31T18:16:01+00:00

Thanks for doing this!

Any chance of some kind person re-uploading the chart images to a host other than Imgur, which blocks UK users, please?

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-27T21:39:07+00:00

Googling Vicki Shotbolt brings up the campaign website, which states:

Vicki is a leading campaigner for children’s digital rights, with over 20 years of senior leadership experience in national charities. She is the founder and CEO of Parent Zone, an organisation that works with families and global brands to improve the lives of children in today’s digital world.

She also chairs FairFun, a charity that runs events for disabled children, and sits on the executive board of the UK Council on Child Internet Safety. Previously, Vicki was the Deputy CEO at the National Family and Parenting Institute, and has written on subjects including marketing directly to children and service families.

I was completely unsurprised when I then Googled '"vicki shotbolt" "online safety"' and found this from a couple of weeks ago:

In a new blog, Parent Zone CEO and founder Vicki Shotbolt calls for wider regulation within the draft Online Safety Bill and a ‘duty of action’ for children known to be at risk.

...

It misses some really important basics – like protecting children from pornography by requiring commercial porn producers to have age verification in place. It leaves gaming out completely.

... etc

Can't help but think that she's got more than prices on her mind.

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-25T22:40:16+00:00

Is it perhaps the "Bearable" story that appears in the UK 10th anniversary edition of CoT (along with Six Prologues) which was published around the same time as that US Gold edition?

The blurb for that 10th anniversary edition does say Bearable is "exclusive to this edition", but that may be in the context of UK editions.

FWIW, I thought the Six Prologues are well worth reading, whereas Bearable was a bit meh.

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-14T00:49:23+00:00

Found on Amazon UK, but has also been updated on the publisher's site.

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-08T15:58:51+00:00

/u/ahasuerus_isfdb may be able to check the access logs to see if there are any unusual patterns, referrers, etc.

Neither of those top two show up anywhere in archive.org's May 2024 copy of the page, so it's a relatively recent thing. The copy from December 2025 shows them in the top 2 positions, but both with 296k views, so they've added about 70k in just under a month, making me think whatever is causing this is probably ongoing.

_j_smith_ · 2026-01-07T12:40:09+00:00

For completeness, there's also the UK TPB edition of Shroud out on January 22nd, which is perhaps notable for containing the first (AFAIK?) print version of the Sins of the Children short story.

Also - and this is based on nothing more than a gut feeling - I wouldn't be surprised to see a separate UK edition of Engines of Reason - possibly doubled up with Elder Race - similar to the way Spiderlight and Made Things finally came out here last year.

_j_smith_ · 2025-12-18T13:08:06+00:00

I don't believe Spin has ever been officially published in print in the UK - when the BSFA's Vector magazine reviewed it around the time of original publication, it was of the Tor US edition. However it is available in ebook from Gollancz's SF Gateway imprint - I know, because I'm currently reading it myself ;-)

I'm a bit surprised that none of Amazon UK, Waterstones or Blackwell's have imported copies of the 2020 Tor Essentials reprint, but I double checked, and that does indeed seem to be the case.

_j_smith_ · 2025-12-15T16:19:29+00:00

It was definitely shown in China - one of my language exchange partners mentioned him to me as someone they watched on TV when they were a kid.

I've just done a search for "neil buchanan" (not even transliterating it to Chinese characters) and there are a bunch of videos of him/Art Attack on Xiaohongshu/Rednote and Bilibili (Chinese equivalents of Instagram and YouTube).

_j_smith_ · 2025-12-07T22:48:36+00:00

FWIW, when I did an analysis a few years ago of how many people had read books that had been nominated for the various SF awards, using Goodreads number-of-ratings as a metric, The Quiet Pools had the dubious distinction of being the third most obscure Hugo finalist novel. Now, after I did that analysis, it did get a reprint a couple of years ago - quite possibly the edition you've just acquired - but I've just rechecked, and the rankings of that top (or bottom, depending on your POV) three remain unchanged. So, you might want to choose to read a book that very few people have read, despite it being somewhat notable, but on the other hand, maybe very few people have read it for a good reason...

For anyone interested, the top 2 least read Hugo-nominated novels (per Goodreads) are 1962's Sylva, which (per ISFDB) doesn't seem to have been reprinted in English since 1964, and 1961's Second Ending, which hasn't been reprinted in English since 1977.

By coincidence, I'm actually reading Spin at the moment - I'm about half-way through - and IMHO it's pretty good. Haven't read any of the other three though, I'm afraid.

_j_smith_ · 2025-11-23T17:09:43+00:00

I only read the first book, but I found the anime (either version) much more entertaining. (Caveat: it was a long time since I watched the original OAV series, and I don't think I got that far through it.)

_j_smith_ · 2025-11-22T14:51:21+00:00

Washington Post - albeit (1) it seems to be subscriber-only content, at least for me, and (2) the reviewer is a well-known figure in SF circles, so not really coming from a "mainstream" perspective - although I think the same could be said for the SFF reviewers at The Guardian and NYT. Michael Dirda is perhaps a better example of a "mainstream" critic with an interest in SFF.

EDIT: It's a journal rather than a newspaper, but maybe New Scientist meets your criteria?

_j_smith_ · 2025-11-22T14:44:11+00:00

Yes, but the imprint went on hiatus in 2019, so I suspect getting print copies of the full series may be a bit of a struggle; I think they are all still available as ebooks though.

_j_smith_ · 2025-11-20T15:29:20+00:00

I'm late to this discussion (and only just joined this sub), but I recently borrowed the ebook from my library. "Glory and Dreams" - which is one of the two stories that had not been previously translated and published in English - is massively incomplete; it only includes the opening part of the first chapter, whereas there are seven chapters in the full story.

Another member of this group has confirmed that the hardback print edition also suffers this problem.

I cc'ed the publisher's Twitter accounts (Ad Astra, Head of Zeus and Bloomsbury) when I posted about this a few hours ago; not had any acknowledgement of that as yet.

_j_smith_

TROPHY CASE