This year’s Locus Awards ballot features the literary work of South Asian nominees across multiple award categories. The awards, inaugurated in 1971 by the monthly California Bay Area-based magazine Locus, recognize science fiction and fantasy literature. The ballot, available for free and online voting (through April 15) to magazine readers, is seeded with nominees based on Locus’s 2017 Recommended Reading List, compiled by editors, reviewers and other industry professionals.
Readers who don’t think they are familiar with South Asian science fiction and fantasy may want to check out a recent two-part essay by Mimi Mondal, “A Short History of South Asian Speculative Fiction.” Part I shares various early South Asian works of science fiction as well as works from the post-Independence period, mostly in regional languages, while Part II features contemporary writers writing in English, including diasporic authors.
Want to learn more about South Asian spec fic? Author Mimi Mondal (@Miminality) has some suggestions for your #TBRList : https://t.co/Hxg9L3GP99 pic.twitter.com/SGWFgnG96p
— Tor.com (@tordotcom) February 4, 2018
For the 2nd part of @Miminality's South Asian Speculative Fiction History, we get a peek at more recent authors, including @rajanyk @mamohanraj @samitbasu @divyastweets @sabaatahir @SomanChainani and more! https://t.co/F4EXpQLdqX pic.twitter.com/3rrcMLI3Y9
— Tor.com (@tordotcom) February 26, 2018
Mondal is also one of this year’s Locus Awards nominees. After the Locus Awards list was publicly released on Feb. 1, she wrote on Twitter about several writers also nominated, including among them “fellow South Asian authors who are both an inspiration and an aspiration.”
South Asian-authored titles on the list include Mohsin Hamid‘s Exit West for fantasy; Mahvesh Murad & Jared Shurin’s The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories for anthology; Alexandra Pierce and Mimi Mondal’s Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler for anthology and non-fiction; Indrapramit Das‘s “The Moon is Not a Battlefield” for novelette; Vina Jie-Min Prasad’s “A Series of Steaks” for novelette; and also Priya Sharma‘s “Mercury” in the novelette category.
The short story category of Locus’s list features S.B. Divya’s “An Unexpected Boon,” Usman T. Malik‘s “The Fortune of Sparrows”, and second nominations for Indrapramit Das (“The Worldless”) Vina Jie-Min Prasad (“Fandom for Robots”) and Priya Sharma (“The Crow Palace”). Devi Pillai, publisher for Tor/Forge Books, appears on the ballot for the editor category.
Read (or listen to) "The Worldless" by Indrapramit Das (@IndrapramitDas). https://t.co/osccVGvxR4 #FreeFiction #SF pic.twitter.com/hmyNae7LWd
— Lightspeed Magazine (@LightspeedMag) March 7, 2017
Evening Space Unicorns! @vinajiemin's short story "Fandom for Robots" came in Second Place in the Uncanny Magazine 2017 Favorite Fiction Reader Poll! Congratulations, Vina! https://t.co/y88zxHOYEU pic.twitter.com/T0WkWG20BO
— Uncanny Magazine (@UncannyMagazine) February 13, 2018
The 2018 Locus awards will be presented in Seattle during the June 22-24 weekend, and the full list can be viewed on the magazine’s website.
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Pavani Yalamanchili is an editor at The Aerogram. Find her on Twitter at @_pavani, and follow The Aerogram at @theaerogram or on Facebook.
