Awards onslaught

Awards season is coming for the SF/F world, and a handful of organizations have been announcing their shortlists of books and stories published in the last year. I just posted about the finalists for the Compton Crook Awards and Philip K. Dick Awards but in recent days, the British Science Fiction Association, the Bram Stoker Awards and The LA Times unveiled its finalists for their respective awards.

These types of awards are always useful if you're looking for a good, curated crop of books to check out from the last year.

British Science Fiction Association Awards

Presented since 1970, the awards are voted BSFA members and members of that year's national science fiction convention, Eastercon. Voting is now open, and will close on Friday, April 3rd at 23:59. 

Best Novel

• The Salt Oracle by Lorraine Wilson 
• Edge of Oblivion by Kirk Weddell
• When There Are Wolves Again by E. J. Swift
• Project Hanuman by Stewart Hotston
• A Granite Silence by Nina Allan

Best Short Fiction

• "One Step at a Time" by Rick Danforth (Vivid Worlds)
• "The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends" by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 63)
• "25 Peppercorns" by Emma Burnett (Mythaxis Magazine, Issue 43)
• "Of Seagrass Fins and Slippery Fingers" by A. J. Van Belle (Auger Issue 8.2)
• "Godzilla as a Young Man Named Mike" by E.M Faulds (Podcastle)

Best Shorter Fiction

• "Cities are Forests Waiting to Happen" by Cecile Cristofari (Cities Are Forests Waiting to Happen)
• "The Apologists" by Tade Thompson
• "The Art of Time Travel (In One Million Times)" by Teika Marija Smits (One Million Times: A Science Fiction Anthology Series)
• "Descent" by Wole Talabi
• "The River Has Roots" by Amal El-Mohtar (The River Has Roots)

This year’s Eastercon, Iridescence, will be at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel from the 3rd of April to 6th of April 2026, where the winners will be announced.

Here's the full shortlist.

Bram Stoker Awards

The Bram Stoker Awards are awarded every year since 1987 by the Horror Writers Association, which honors "Superior Achievement" in the horror field. Awards are selected via a process that produces a recommended reading list, then a preliminary ballot, before being whittled down to a final ballot.

Here's a selection:

Superior Achievement in Long Fiction

• Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud
• “Uncertain Sons” by Thomas Ha
• “Squid Teeth" by Sarah Langan
• Pam Kowolski is a Monster! by Sarah Langan
• “Wolf Moon, Antler Moon” by A.C. Wise

Superior Achievement in a Novel

• Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
• King Sorrow by Joe Hill
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter Stephen Graham Jones
• The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Girl in the Creek by Wendy N. Wagner

Superior Achievement in Short Fiction

• “Stomata” by L.E. Daniels (Darkness Most Fowl)
• “Inheritance” by R.J. Joseph (Full Throttle: A Dark Dozen Anthology)
• “Saint Dymphna’s School for Borderland Girls” by Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece (Weird Horror #10)
• “[Ir]reversible” by Anna Taborska (Witches and Witchcraft: An Anthology of Stories, Poems, and Essays)
• “Autogas Ferryman” by Champ Wongsatayanont (Nightmare Magazine #156)

Here's the full list of finalists. The winners will be announced at this year's StokerCon, which will take place in Pittsburgh, PA from June 4th to June 7th, 2026.

The LA Times Book Awards

And finally, the LA Times Book Awards have been around since 1980, but they added a dedicated science fiction and fantasy category (originally named for Ray Bradbury) in 2019. Here are this year's finalists:

• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
• Esperance by Adam Oyebanji
• The Death of Mountains by Jordan Kurella
• Luminous: A Novel by Silvia Park
• Death of the Author: A Novel by Nnedi Okorafor

Here's the full list of nominees, and the winners will be announced at a ceremony during the LA Book Festival on Friday, April 17th, 2026 at 7 pm.