The 2012 Hugo Awards nominations are out, and amongst the typical gritty fantasy and zombie apocalypse novels are Jo Walton's Among Others, which sounds genuinely intriguing.

Simon Morden's Samuil Petrovitch thrillers: a trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic, near-future London, wins this year's Philip K. Dick Award.

Author Christopher Priest whips out his epeen and gets in a nerd rage over the 2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist. Is it because it's that bad? Or is it because he's not on it this year?

2011 James Tiptree, Jr. Award winner Redwood and Wildfire, by Andrea Hairston, is about a hoodoo woman who migrates from backwoods Georgia north to modern Chicago at the turn of the 20th century.

A stunning speculative fiction debut -- and a refreshing change from spaceships and swords -- is Karen Lord's novel Redemption in Indigo.

A lot of news in the book world recently, not the least of which is the appearance of journalist Anthony Shadid's memoir, House of Stone. Welcome to Random Book News, Volume V or so.