John Joseph Adams

Editor John Joseph Adams joins UpperPen to discuss curating The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2025 anthology, how stories make it through the slush pile, and what editors really look for in great speculative fiction. Welcome to UpperPen, where we explore the craft of writing, editing, and publishing. In this conversation, John Joseph Adams—award-winning editor, publisher, and series editor for The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy—pulls back the curtain on how anthologies come together, what he likes in a short story, and the evolving world of science fiction and fantasy publishing. Whether you’re a reader, writer, or editor, this episode is packed with insight into the creative and editorial process behind some of today’s best science fiction and fantasy. You can find John at JohnJosephAdams.com. About John Joseph Adams:John Joseph Adams is the editor of numerous acclaimed anthologies and the series editor of The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, published annually by Mariner Books. His work has been a finalist for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards, and he is known for championing emerging voices in speculative fiction.Find me at: UpperPen.comNew episodes Fridays at 11 AM ESTSubscribe for more conversations on writing, editing, and the publishing world.#WritingCommunity #ScienceFiction #FantasyBooks #Publishing #UpperPen #JohnJosephAdams #BestAmericanScienceFictionAndFantasy #SpeculativeFiction #BookEditing #WritersLife #Podcast #AuthorInterview

Award-winning editor John Joseph Adams talks about working on The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy anthology series, and working on anthologies in general. Source

#ads Stream any unabridged audiobook of your choice with premium access by starting your trial on: https://booksreader.space/al-1958/ Title: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 Author: Hugh Howey, John Joseph Adams Narrator: Charlie Thurston, Frankie Corzo, David Lee Huynh, Cindy Kay, Korey Jackson, Remmie Milner Format: mp3 Length: 15 hrs and 40 mins Release date: 10-22-24 Ratings: 3.6 out of 5 stars, 10 ratings Genres: Fantasy Publisher's Summary: “These are dangerous stories. The kind that warp reality and threaten to change the world” warns guest editor Hugh Howey in his introduction. The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2024 promises a treasure trove of audacious characters, daring worldbuilding, and twisted realties. A sibling duo of supernatural hitmen. A traveling spellbreaker and his trusty alligator mount. Superheroes registering for work. Sentient spaceships with an AI-human interface grow up together with their human pilots.

John Joseph Adams here, publisher of NIGHTMARE. I recently had the honor and great pleasure of collaborating with Jordan Peele to edit the anthology OUT THERE SCREAMING: An Anthology of New Black Horror, and I'm pleased to present this story from the anthology for NIGHTMARE's listeners. So please enjoy "The Most Strongest Obeah Woman of the World" by Nalo Hopkinson, read by Robin Miles. To learn more about the book, visit johnjosephadams.com/OTS. This audio has been provided courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio from the book OUT THERE SCREAMING: an anthology of new black horror, edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams; read by a full cast. "The Most Strongest Obeah Woman of the World" is written by Nalo Hopkinson and read by Robin Miles. This story and audio production are © 2023 by Nalo Hopkinson and Penguin Random House LLC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy producer John Joseph Adams joins us to discuss the Dungeons & Dragons video game Baldur’s Gate III , which he’s played for more than 1,000 hours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to a special Bonus Season! Enjoy these sessions from this year's Worldbuilding Con ! It’s easy to get carried away by the desire to fully flesh out your fictional world. Our panel of industry experts will explain how much worldbuilding is enough - and how to deliver it for maximum impact, while avoiding the dreaded “exposition infodump prologue.” Why do we need to stop worldbuilding? What worldbuilding elements should be going on the page? What tricks create the illusion of deep worldbuilding without too much detail? Tips for guiding readers into a complex setting gradually To prologue or not to prologue? 🎙️ Speakers: John Joseph Adams is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and is the editor of more than thirty anthologies, such as Wastelands, Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms, and Epic: Legends of Fantasy. He is also editor (and publisher) of the Hugo Award-winning magazine Lightspeed and is publisher of its sister-magazines Nightmare and Fantasy. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award and an eight-time World Fantasy Award finalist. C.L. Clark is a BFA award-winning editor and the Nebula-nominated author of The Unbroken, the first of the Magic of the Lost trilogy, several short stories, and a few essays. When she’s not imagining the fall of empires, she’s trying not to throw her kettlebells through the walls. Chris Fox is the Amazon bestselling author of The Magitech Chronicles, Shattered Gods, and The Dark Lord Bert. He loves RPGs, and is very proud to have one of his own in print, all to impress a girl, now his wife and mother of his son. Jason Sizemore is the owner and editor-in-chief of Apex Magazine and Apex Books. He's been nominated for multiple Hugo Awards for his editing work. His most recent anthologies include DO NOT GO QUIETLY: STORIES OF RESISTANCE and APEX MAGAZINE: 2021.

It didn’t take them long to find a name for us; almost as soon as they knew it was women inside the rickety biplanes they couldn’t catch, the Germans called us witches. It was because of the sounds our idling planes made from the ground, the story went, as if the German soldiers had spent a lot of time with brooms and knew what they sounded like, engineless and gliding fifty feet above them in the dark. (The wires holding the wings in place made the whistle.) | Copyright 2015 by Genevieve Valentine. Originally published in Operation Arcana, edited by John Joseph Adams. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An excerpt from John Joseph Adams's question and answer session at Odyssey in the summer of 2020 on worldbuilding and what he'd most like to see in submissions.

Nicole Glover discusses her new fantasy historical novel “The Conductors” (John Joseph Adams, 2021) Check the book out here https://amzn.to/3uUG4lY Interview Timeline The Conductors is Nicole Glover’s debut novel. She is a fantasy fan and… Read More

Vivian sat at a café opposite Cass. Everything around her had a gritty, dingy quality. Even Cass looked run down, their face deeply tanned and distressingly wrinkled. They were old now, many decades past being the child that Vivian remembered. She looked down at her hands, so different than the black shadows that she’d grown accustomed to seeing during all her years as a Shade---the skin was covered in age spots and hung loose on the bones. | 2020 by Caroline M. Yoachim. Originally published in OR ELSE THE LIGHT, edited by John Joseph Adams, Christie Yant, and Hugh Howey. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Susan Hanfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With the right overlays, the city was charming---apartment buildings done up like giant row houses, seamlessly blending Victorian and modern sensibilities, boutiques and cafés on tree-lined streets, parks bathed in sunshine. Vivian Watanabe had lived on this block, once, in a high-rise apartment painted cornflower blue with trim in teal and white. She couldn’t see it now, not the way she used to. | Copyright 2020 by Caroline M. Yoachim. Previously published in BURN THE ASHES, edited by John Joseph Adams, Christie Yant, and Hugh Howey. Reprinted by permission of the author. Narrated by Susan Hanfield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/463113 to listen full audiobooks. Title: Or Else the Light Series: #3 of The Dystopia Triptych Author: Christie Yant, Hugh Howey, John Joseph Adams Narrator: Janina Edwards, Susan Hanfield, Judy Young, Mirron Willis, Justine Eyre, Gabrielle De Cuir, Paul Boehmer, Kathe Mazur, Stefan Rudnicki, John Rubinstein Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 11 hours 35 minutes Release date: July 7, 2020 Genres: Apocalyptic & Dystopian Publisher's Summary: Into the darkness within; or else the light … When Margaret Atwood wrote these words, she left open the possibility that even our darkest tales may harbor a glimmer of hope. In Or Else the Light, the third and final entry in the Dystopia Triptych, over a dozen of the best minds in science fiction conclude their stories with a descent into darkness, or perhaps a ray of light. Edited by John Joseph Adams, Hugh Howey, and Christie Yant, the Dystopia Triptych is a series of three anthologies of dystopian fiction. Ignorance Is Strength—before the dystopia—focuses on society during its descent into absurdity and madness. Burn the Ashes—during the dystopia—turns its attention to life during the strangest, most dire times. Or Else the Light—after the dystopia—concludes the saga with each author sharing their own vision of how we as a society might crawl back from the precipice of despair. Or Else the Light features all-new, never-before-published works by the following authors, in order of appearance: Carrie Vaughn, Tim Pratt, Rich Larson, Cadwell Turnbull, Karin Lowachee, Adam-Troy Castro, Caroline M. Yoachim, Hugh Howey, An Owomoyela, Seanan McGuire, Dominica Phetteplace, Alex Irvine, Tobias S. Buckell, Scott Sigler, Darcie Little Badger, Violet Allen, and Merc Fenn Wolfmoor.