"Magic for Beginners" is a fantasy novella by American writer Kelly Link. It was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in September 2005. It was subsequently published in Link's collection of the same name, [1] as well as in her collection Pretty Monsters, [2] in the 2007 Nebula Award Showcase, [3] and in the John Joseph Adams-edited anthology Other Worlds Than These. [4]
Jeremy Mars is a young teenager who (like many of his friends) is a fan of — and also a character in — a mysterious television program called The Library. The story follows his life, and those of his friends and family, as various episodes of The Library are broadcast at irregular intervals.
"Magic for Beginners" won the 2006 Nebula Award for Best Novella, [5] the 2005 BSFA Award for Short Fiction, [6] and the 2006 Locus Award for Best Novella, [7] and was nominated for the 2006 Hugo Award for Best Novella, [8] the 2006 World Fantasy Award—Novella, [9] and the 2006 Theodore Sturgeon Award. [10]
Nancy Pearl compared "Magic for Beginners" to M. C. Escher's Drawing Hands , saying that it is "intricate, wildly imaginative and totally wonderful". [11] Cory Doctorow called it the "standout" story in Link's 2006 eponymous collection, describing it as "absurdist magic realism, like Douglas Coupland wandering through a Márquez novel". [12] At SF Site , Rich Horton stated that "Magic for Beginners" was "one of [his] favorite stories of this decade", and "a delight", [13] while at Subterranean Press Magazine , Dorman T. Shindler compared it to being mildly intoxicated. [3]
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of its licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.
John Joseph Vincent Kessel is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He is a prolific short story writer, and the author of four solo novels, Good News From Outer Space (1989), Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997), The Moon and the Other (2017), and Pride and Prometheus (2018), and one novel, Freedom Beach (1985) in collaboration with his friend James Patrick Kelly. Kessel is married to author Therese Anne Fowler.
Ian McDonald is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.
Kelly Link is an American editor and writer. Mainly known as an author of short stories, she published her first novel The Book of Love in 2024. While some of her fiction falls more clearly within genre categories, many of her stories might be described as slipstream or magic realism: a combination of science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, and literary fiction. Among other honors, she has won a Hugo Award, three Nebula Awards, and a World Fantasy Award for her fiction, and she was one of the recipients of the 2018 MacArthur "Genius" Grant.
Benjamin Rosenbaum is an American science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction writer and computer programmer, whose stories have been finalists for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the BSFA award, and the World Fantasy Award.
Martha Wells is an American writer of speculative fiction. She has published a number of fantasy novels, young adult novels, media tie-ins, short stories, and nonfiction essays on fantasy and science fiction subjects. Her novels have been translated into twelve languages. Wells has won four Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards and three Locus Awards for her science fiction series The Murderbot Diaries. She is also known for her fantasy series Ile-Rien and The Books of the Raksura. Wells is praised for the complex, realistically detailed societies she creates; this is often credited to her academic background in anthropology.
Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli-born writer, working across multiple genres. He has lived in the United Kingdom and South Africa for long periods of time, as well as Laos and Vanuatu. As of 2013, Tidhar has lived in London. His novel Osama won the 2012 World Fantasy Award—Novel, beating Stephen King's 11/22/63 and George R. R. Martin's A Dance with Dragons. His novel A Man Lies Dreaming won the £5000 Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize, for Best British Fiction, in 2015. He won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 2017, for Central Station.
Magic for Beginners is a collection of nine works of fantasy and light horror short fiction by American writer Kelly Link, released by Small Beer Press in 2005. The stories were all previously published in other venues from 2002 to 2005.
Aliette de Bodard is a French-American speculative fiction writer.
The 1987 Annual World's Best SF is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, the fourteenth volume in a series of nineteen. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in June 1987, followed by a hardcover edition issued in July of the same year by the same publisher as a selection of the Science Fiction Book Club. For the hardcover edition the original cover art by Tony Roberts was replaced by a new cover painting by Richard Powers.
Terry Carr's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year #16 is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Terry Carr, the sixteenth and last volume in a series of sixteen. It was first published in hardcover by Tor Books in September 1987. The first British editions were published in hardcover and paperback by Gollancz in December of the same year, under the alternate title Best SF of the Year #16.
Rachel Swirsky is an American literary, speculative fiction and fantasy writer, poet, and editor living in Oregon. She was the founding editor of the PodCastle podcast and served as editor from 2008 to 2010. She served as vice president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2013.
Ken Liu is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Liu has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards for his novel translations and original short fiction, which has appeared in F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and multiple "Year's Best" anthologies.
Ann Leckie is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. Her 2013 debut novel Ancillary Justice, in part about artificial consciousness and gender-blindness, won the 2014 Hugo Award for "Best Novel", as well as the Nebula Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the BSFA Award. The sequels, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy, each won the Locus Award and were nominated for the Nebula Award. Provenance, published in 2017, and Translation State, published in 2023, are also set in the Imperial Radch universe. Leckie's first fantasy novel, The Raven Tower, was published in February 2019.
This is a list of the published works of Aliette de Bodard.
Gregory Norman Bossert is an American writer and filmmaker. He has won the World Fantasy Award and is a finalist for the Sturgeon Award. He lives in Marin County, California, and works at Industrial Light & Magic.
"The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon" is a science fiction/magical realism novella by the American writer Elizabeth Hand. It was first published in the Neil Gaiman/Al Sarrantonio-edited anthology Stories: All-New Tales, in 2010, and subsequently republished in Hand's 2012 anthology Errantry: Strange Stories from Small Beer Press.
Nebula Awards Showcase 2007 is an anthology of award winning science fiction short works edited by Mike Resnick. It was first published in trade paperback by Roc/New American Library in March 2007.
"The Wedding Album" is a science fiction short story by David Marusek. It was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction in June 1999.