Welcome to the latest outing of the Gollancz newsletter! As well as soaking up the warmth of the appropriately SFnal warmest winter since people started worrying about this sort of thing, Gollancz has also been basking in the glow of our authors' success on the shortlists for the two major UK SF awards. The British Science Fiction Association Award for best novel features M. John Harrison's Nova Swing, Jon Courtenay Grimwood'sEnd of the World Blues and Roger Levy's Icarus on a shortlist of five. Look out also for The Last Witchfinder by James Morrow published by our sister list Weidenfeld and Nicolson. The BSFA award should be announced at Eastercon. Which happens at Easter.

And then on 2^nd May the Arthur C. Clarke Award will be presented. A shortlist of six titles includes Nova Swing,End of the World Blues, and Adam Roberts' Gradisil. Good luck to all.

And in the States, the seven-book shortlist for the Crawford Award for best new fantasy writer (previously won by our own Joe Hill, whose Heart-Shaped Box we publish later this month) includes The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. The award will be announced in March at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts. Read on for more news about the book.

Away from the awards but equally satisfying in its own way was the release of Locus magazine's recommended reading choices for 2006. Locus is the leading genre magazine and we were especially thrilled to have nine Gollancz books, plus one from Orion Children's and one from W&N, recommended from a year that has been a very strong one for the genre as a whole. Steve Baxter's Emperor, the aforementioned End of the World Blues, Nova Swing and Justina Robson's Keeping it Real were picked out on the SF list and Mary Gentle's Ilario and James Morrow's The Last Witchfinder made the Fantasy list. The first novels list had two of our fantasy debuts from 2006: Joe Abercrombie's The Blade Itself and Scott Lynch's The Lies of Locke Lamora. Ursula Le Guin's Voices was on the YA pick, and in Collections, Al Reynolds' Galactic North and Steve Baxter's Resplendent were recommended. Both Steve and Al featured in the Best Novella section too, with, respectively, 'The Siege of Earth' (from Resplendent) and 'Nightingale' (from Galactic North). Again congratulations to all. The Brits really are coming. OK so Scott and Ursula are American but they're both Gollancz author so that's nearly as good . . .

For those of you who don't have access to a shop that stocks Locus magazine, do check out their website. As well as being possessed of immaculate taste in genre books (!) Locus is the home for some of the most interesting commentary and reviewing of SF and Fantasy and is particularly invaluable as a source of any information worth knowing on what is going on in the worlds of SF and Fantasy publishing. Check out their SF links page which is a doorway to all sorts of SF goodness, whether it be online magazines and message forums or links to author blogs. Now that's quite enough trumpet blowing.

What else has been happening at Gollancz towers? *reaches for trumpet* Fans of Scott Lynch will be delighted to know that the sequel to The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies is now safely delivered. Second book blues on the Seas? Absolutely not. The new book hits the waves and sees the Gentleman Bastards embroiled in some fantastic action with Pirates. Pirates like you've never seen before. We've also taken delivery of superb new novels from Ian McDonald, Paul McAuley and Richard Morgan. 2007 is already shaping up to be fantastic year for the list.

We're also just putting the finishing touches together on the production of a very exciting new book that hails not from the UK but from Poland. Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish . Sapkowski's already immense in Europe (2,000,000 copies sold) and come April when we publish The Last Wish he's going to make a real splash here too.

Oh and just wait until you see the debut novel by young American author Patrick Rothfuss that we've just acquired. The Name of the Wind is a wonderful epic fantasy just perfect for everyone who enjoys Robin Hobb and Trudi Canavan. You don't mind waiting for it until September do you?

Simon, Jo and Gillian
Gollancz Editorial Team