Russell Kirkpatrick, 65, died June 26, 2026 in Canberra Hospital. He was diagnosed with aggressive melanoma.

Kirkpatrick was born April 11, 1961 in Christchurch, New Zealand. He received a PhD in geography from the University of Canterbury and was at separate times a lecturer at the University of Waikato and the University of Canberra. He wrote the Fire of Heaven series and the Husk series, the latter known as Broken Man in the US and UK. Fire of Heaven is Across the Face of the World (2004), In the Earth Abides the Flame (2004), and The Right Hand of God (2005). The Broken Man series is Path of Revenge (2007), Dark Heart (2008), and Beyond the Wall of Time (2008). All three Broken Man books won Sir Julius Vogel Awards. He also wrote Silent Sorrow (2021), the first and only title in the Book of Remezov series.

Titan US publicity director Katharine T. Carroll, 68, died June 28, 2026. The cause was attributed to aortic dissection.

Carroll was born Katharine Trowbridge in January 1958. She attended Manhattan Country School, Riverdale Country School, and Boston University and lived in New York City and Maine. She began work as a publicist in 1980 with Time Inc., formed her own publicity consulting company in 1990, then joined Titan Publishing Group’s US branch as a publicist in 2008. She went on to work for Titan for 18 years. She is survived by her three children and mother.

On July 20, the US District Court for the Northern District of California granted final approval of the $1.5 billion settlement proposed in class action suit Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, in which authors accused the Amazon-backed company of illegally obtaining and using their books to teach its AI system.

According to a Bloomberg report, Bartz v. Anthropic is “the largest copyright class action settlement in US history,” paying “about $3,100 per author of more than 480,000 works,” with claims being filed for 440,490, that were downloaded from Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror by Anthropic. $122 million of the settlement money will go toward attorneys and litigation costs.

Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin said the settlement “provides meaningful relief to the Settlement Class given the reasonable range of Class Members’ possible recoveries, especially since further litigation would likely be complex, expensive, lengthy, and risky. The estimated per-work payment of approximately $3,000 is four times the minimum statutory damages amount for willful infringement.”

Maria A. Pallante, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers, said in a statement:

We applaud the court’s final approval of this settlement, which represents an important victory in the larger battle to hold big tech accountable for its unscrupulous appropriation of intellectual and creative properties that clearly belong to authors and publishers. In this case, the court recognized that downloading from pirate sites is not a choice we should simply accept as an efficiency for the infringer; on the contrary, it’s abhorrent conduct that should never be normalized.

Nor should fair use extend to training, which can easily be licensed like every other digital use in the modern copyright economy. Tech companies might like a copyright law with a giant hole in the place of exclusive rights, but that law does not exist. Partnerships, not piracy, are the best path forward.

For more, see the Bloomberg report and previous coverage in Locus.

Westercon 80, to be held in 2028 by the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS) in conjunction with Loscon 54, will officially be the final Westercon after voters at its 2026 business meeting ratified a motion to repeal its bylaws. Following Loscon 54/Westercon 80, the convention “will be deemed to have ‘returned its charter’ to the owner of the Westercon service mark, LASFS,” which will determine its future going forward.

Westercon’s press release cited a lack of bids to host the convention and the proliferation of localized conventions across western North America that “filled the same role that Westercon once held” as reasons behind its discontinuement. Active since 1948, Westercon will pay homage to its history with its final two events, a planned “retirement tour” spanning from the Bay Area to its birthplace in Los Angeles.

The penultimate Westercon (79) will be held jointly with BayCon 2027 at the Santa Clara Marriott in Santa Clara, California, July 2-5, 2027. For more information, visit Westercon’s website.

Following a “careful review,” Apex Magazine has removed the story “Vigil of the Tenth Air” from Apex #153 amid skepticism around the author’s potential use of AI tools for its writing.

Though ultimately not selected for publication, a shortlisted story for Apex imprint Violet Lichen’s upcoming ECO25: the Year’s Best Speculative Ecofiction was also struck from website listings after it came to light that other work associated with the author’s pen name was “recently removed from several other short fiction publications under suspicion of AI usage.”

In response, Apex Book Company, Apex Magazine, and Violet Lichen announced plans to reevaluate their submission guidelines, including “refining the language” of its AI clause and “expanding” the team’s internal review processes to more ably respond to concerns around LLM usage. The editorial team clarified that they do not intend to use AI screening applications or request early drafting papers for evidence “in the event a piece is suspected of AI use after publication,” and will converse directly with the author(s) involved “to discuss the story in further detail” and come to an appropriate resolution.

Apex‘s initial press release, posted by managing editor Darian Bianco, reaffirmed:

The Apex team is resolved to apply the lessons learned both from our experience, and from the invaluable reports and statements compiled by fellow indie publishers, to fortify our submission process against AI-assisted work, and to continue uplifting strange, surreal, beautiful speculative fiction written with passion and care by humans, for humans.

This comes after the recent news covered by Locus concerning speculation that some of the regional winners of the Commonwealth Prize may have at least partially used AI to generate their work—the Commonwealth Foundation has since announced that they are “satisfied that AI was not used to write the winning stories” after an investigation—and Hachette’s March decision to pull horror novel Shy Girl by Mia Ballard from shelves after information alleging its contents were AI generated was shared with the company by the New York Times.

Noidanlanka by J. S. Meresmaa (Myllylahti), is the winner of the 2026 Tähtifantasia Award, presented by the Helsinki Science Fiction Society for the best Finnish fantasy book published in the previous year. Other nominees were:

Matt Haig announced on Instagram plans to open a “bookshop and coffee place” called Golden, to be located in Brighton UK in the Seven Dials neighborhood, which according to Haig does not currently have a bookshop. The shop aims to open “by Christmas.”

Haig said,

My belief, as someone who grew up in a town without a bookshop, is that all communities should have a bookshop because bookshops save civilisation and make life interesting. This bookshop will be about freedom. We won’t be pushing things we don’t

want to push. Just good books. Curated by me and people I trust. Mind-bending books. Tearful books. Banned books. Fun books. Graphic novels. Kids books. Grownup books. Really cool music and art books. Books with words. Books that have no words but are really gorgeous to flick through. Books that are actually vinyl records. The best dead and living writers. It will also have some comfy places to sit and drink some really good coffee. The occasional evening event. No stuffy vibes. No genre snobbery. No high/low book classism. You are welcome here. And so is your dog.

Since the announcement, Haig reported receiving over 200 applications and work enquiries, and has created an email to handle work enquiries: hello@thegoldenbookshop.com, though he says that “we are still in the early phases and won’t be able to respond to everyone and at this point don’t know yet everything we need.”

For more, see the Instagram account of Matt Haig or Golden.