The shortlist for the 2025 British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards has been announced.
Best Novel
- A Granite Silence, Nina Allan (Riverrun)
- Project Hanuman, Stewart Hotston (Angry Robot)
- When There Are Wolves Again, E.J. Swift (Arcadia)
- Edge of Oblivion, Kirk Weddell (Troubador)
- The Salt Oracle, Lorraine Wilson (Solaris)
Best Shorter Fiction (for novelettes and novellas)
- Cities Are Forests Waiting to Happen, Cécile Cristofari (Newcon)
- The River Has Roots, Amal El-Mohtar (Arcadia)
- “The Art of Time Travel”, Teika Marija Smits (One Million Times)
- “Descent”, Wole Talabi (Clarkesworld 5/25)
- “The Apologists”, Tade Thompson (Clarkesworld 11/25)
Best Short Fiction
- “25 Peppercorns”, Emma Burnett (Mythaxis Fall ’25)
- “One Step at a Time”, Rick Danforth (Vivid Worlds)
- “Godzilla as a Young Man Named Mike”, E.M. Faulds (PodCastle 7/29/25)
- “The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends”, Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 3-4/25)
- “Of Seagrass Fins and Slippery Fingers”, A.J. Van Belle (Augur 8.2)
Best Collection (for collections and anthologies)
- The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories, André M. Carrington, ed. (Luna Press Publishing)
- Uncertain Sons and Other Stories, Thomas Ha (Undertow)
- Black Friday, Cheryl S. Ntumy (Flame Tree)
- Who Will You Save?, Gareth L. Powell (Titan)
- Creative Futures: Beyond and Within, Allen Stroud, ed. (Flame Tree)
- Blood in the Bricks, Neil Williamson (NewCon)
Best Fiction for Younger Readers
- Sunrise on the Reaping, Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)
- “The Ghost Merchant”, Rick Danforth (The Colored Lens Spring ’25)
- The Secret of the Sapphire Sentinel, J. Dianne Dotson (Android)
- Doctor Who: Lux, James Goss (Penguin)
- Secrets of the First School, T.L. Huchu (Tor)
- Doctor Who: The Robot Revolution, Una McCormack (Target)
Best Non-Fiction (Long)
- Writing the Magic: Essays on Crafting Fantasy Fiction, Dan Coxon & Richard Hirst (Dead Ink)
- Speculation and the Darwinian Method in British Romance Fiction, 1859-1914, Kate Holterhoff (Ohio University Press)
- Colourfields: Writing About Writing About Science, Fiction Paul Kincaid (Briardene)
- That Very Witch: Fear, Feminism and the American With Film, Payton McCarty-Simas (Luna Press Publishing)
- Fantasy: A Short History, Adam Roberts (Bloomsbury Academic)
- Dispelling Fantasies: Authors of Colour Re-imagining a Genre, Joy Sanchez-Taylor (Ohio State University Press)
Best Non-Fiction (Short)
- “Spec Fic and the Politics of Identity: Finding the Self in Other”, Eugen Bacon (Strange Horizons 3/24/25)
- “The Legacy of Discworld”, Rick Danforth (The British Fantasy Society)
- “When People Giggle at Your Name, or the 2025 Hugo Awards Incident”, Grigory Lukin (self-published)
- Review of When There Are Wolves Again, Paul March Russell (Strange Horizons 10/6/25)
- “Comparing colonialisms in Dan Simmons’ novel The Terror and its AMC Adaptation”, Fiona Moore (Foundation 4/1/25)
Best Translated Short Fiction
The list for Translated Short Fiction not yet been announced.
Best Artwork
- Jenni Coutts for the cover art of Dark Crescent by Lyndsey Croal (Luna Press Publishing)
- Jenni Coutts for “Mushroom Fairy” (self-published)
- Spencer Fuller for the cover art of The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Arcadia)
- Sam Gretton for the cover art of The Salt Oracle (Solaris)
- Nick Wells for the tesselated cover art of The Fractal Series (Flame Tree)
- Tziano Zhou for “Highway Above the Clouds” (self-published)
Best Audio Fiction
- Just Let Me Help, Tara Campbell (Space Cowboy)
- Five Finger Stories, Rick Danforth (Tall Tale TV)
- Unicorn Spotting, Rick Danforth (The Tiny Bookcase)
- Wasteland: A Dex Legacy Story, Emily Inkpen (Alternative Stories)
- The Dex Legacy Series 3, Emily Inkpen (Alternative Stories)
