Every February, Locus Magazine comes out with their Recommended Reading List. It is an exhaustive list of all the best Speculative Fiction of the last year. Literally it is one stop shopping for your Speculative Fiction readers...all of them.
This is an excellent resource to help readers and develop your collections. First, take the list itself, and check your collections. Do you own these books? You should. These are some of the best titles in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror from 2020. Second, use it to help readers who want books in these genres, but also, to help readers who want to give these genres a try-- especially the stories and novellas. These are proven winners, titles you can suggest with ease as they were vetted by a group of experts. [see below].
And they make this list every single year, so BACKLIST! You know I love the backlist. Seriously though, you need to assess your collection, you want a suggestion that is on the shelf, you want to discover a new voice in the genres [check the story, debut, and novella categories for that], you want to make a display? For all of these things and more, you need to look back more than just one year. Don't worry. I made it easy on you.
Click here to pull up a list of each year's list beginning with 2020 and going backward. It's a link that is RA and Collection Development gold.
There are many books on this year's list that I have read and reviewed too; including many of my speculate favorites from last year.
This is one of my favorite resources every year. It is a treasure trove of CD and RA gold. Bookmark it and use it for guaranteed crowd pleasing suggestions for all of your speculative fiction fans.
Below is the intro to the 2020 list by the editors of Locus Magazine.
Welcome to the annual Locus Recommended Reading List!
Published in Locus magazine’s February 2021 issue, the list is a consensus by the Locus editors, columnists, outside reviewers, and other professionals and critics of genre fiction and non-fiction — editor-in-chief Liza Groen Trombi; reviews editor Jonathan Strahan; Locus reviewers Liz Bourke, Alex Brown, Karen Burnham, Katharine Coldiron, Paul Di Filippo, Amy Goldschlager, Paula Guran, Rich Horton, Maya James, John Langan, Russell Letson, Adrienne Martini, Ian Mond, Colleen Mondor, Tim Pratt, Elsa Sjunneson, Gary K. Wolfe, and Alvaro Zinos-Amaro; Bob Blough; critics and authors Gwenda Bond, James Bradley, Niall Harrison, Paul Kincaid, Cheryl Morgan, Adam Roberts, and Graham Sleight. Art books were compiled with help from Arnie Fenner, Karen Haber, and senior editor Francesca Myman. Short fiction recommendations had input from editors and reviewers Rachel S. Cordasco, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, Vanessa Fogg, Maria Haskins, Charles Payseur, Nisi Shawl, TG Shenoy, Sheree Renée Thomas, Sean Wallace, and Alison Wise, plus our own reviewers. Locus thanks all involved for their time and their expertise. Essays by many of these contributors, highlighting and discussing their particular favorite books and stories, are also published in the February issue, along with the Magazine Summary and Book Summary for 2020.
We looked at over 900 titles between short and long fiction. The final list comprises our best recommendations for your consideration. There will be titles you loved that do not appear here; any one of the recommending group would have built a distinct list, but this is the aggregate, compiled with great affection for the field.
You can let us know what your favorites were by voting in the 2021 Poll & Survey. The Poll decides the winners of the Locus Awards, presented in June 2021 at the Locus Awards Weekend, and is open to all to vote on. The Survey helps us be a better magazine. Thank you for participating!
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