Industry News

The 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize has announced its 33-title longlist. The award honors “mid-career authors in fiction,” and the winner receives a $50,000 prize and a residence at the University of California, Berkeley and/or Bay Area. The award is given by the New Literary Project. The 2025 longlist features several works of genre interest, including:

• Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino (FSG)
• Dead in Long Beach, California, Venita Blackburn (MCD)

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AudioFile magazine has published their picks for the best audiobooks of 2024 in categories including Science Fiction and Fantasy and Young Adult.

Science Fiction and Fantasy

• The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden (Random House Audio)
• The Crone of Midnight Embers, Iris Beaglehole (Podium Audio)
• The Mercy of Gods, James S.A. Corey (Recorded Books)
• The Stars Too Fondly, Emily Hamilton (HarperAudio)
• When Among Crows, Veronica

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Music and audiobook streaming service Spotify has released a list of the most popular audiobooks on their platform for 2024.

The most popular audiobook genres by Spotify listeners in 2024 were science fiction and fantasy, with romance close behind. Many of the most popular titles this year were romantasy. The top audiobooks  were:

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette

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The Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Colour has announced its judging panel for 2025: Saara El-Arifi, Mahmud El-Sayed, Rogba Payne, Amandeep Singh, and Amita Suman.

The Future Worlds Prize annually honors works of fantasy and science fiction from new writers of color based in the UK and Ireland. The winner receives £4,500, the runner-up receives £2,500, and the remaining six shortlisted writers each receive £850.

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The participants for the second Salam Award Workshop have been announced for the 2025 session. The workshop will run for ten days beginning on February 17, 2025, and will host 14 writers at LUMS in Lahore, Pakistan. The instructors for this session are Karen Joy Fowler and Robert V.S Redick. The cohort for the 2025 workshop includes:

• Zaynah Abbas
• Tooba Afraz
• Saher Hasnain
• Omar Ali Jehangir
• Kehkashan Khalid
• Maeeda Khan

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NPR has published a list of “Books We Love” in 2024, compiled by NPR journalists and associated critics. The full list of 350 books includes an extensive Sci Fi, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction category, with numerous other works of interest on the list as a whole.

Sci Fi, Fantasy and Speculative Fiction

• The Bad Ones, Melissa Albert (Flatiron)
• Fledgling: The Keeper’s Records of Revolution, S.K. Ali (Kokila)
• The

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by Elena Kovalenko

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a series called Perspectives in Translation, where creators discuss the many facets and challenges of translating fiction. The terms “source language” and “target language” will be used throughout this series.

If you’re a writer, translating your work into a different language may seem straightforward. After all, writing the thing was the hardest part, so now all you need is someone with good command of the language, a reasonable deadline, and that’s that! And it may just work that way, especially if you’re aiming for a market that’s linguistically and culturally close to yours. If not, well, as a translator, let me invite you to consider your work from a different perspective.

Names

This one is easy—just transliterate them and be done with it! But wait: Have you, the writer, given your protagonist or some other characters a name that, shall we say, speaks for itself? Or perhaps it sounds funny in English, lends itself well to puns, and is a perpetual source of in-universe jokes? Then it can become much trickier, because it’s increasingly strange for a foreign reader to see conversations that clearly hint at something or look like a set-up for a joke, only to have the hint never crystallize and the punchline never come.

In short, if the name is the backbone of your story, some parts may require significant adaptation and perhaps even creative rewriting. In other cases, best practice would be to just leave it as is—trust me, I’ve seen enough variations of poor Bilbo and Frodo’s last name based on different possible translations of the word “bag” than I ever cared to. To give another example, transforming Severus Snape’s name into what was essentially “Evillus Evull” (true story) didn’t exactly pan out in the end, did it?

In-Universe Terminology

Needless to say, its consistency and coherence are crucial for SFF—fantasy probably even more so than science fiction—as the terminology is one of the main things that make your universe come to life. Usually, the in-universe magic/science/combination thereof has a key concept that, once translated, makes it easier to weave that semantic web in a different language. But if, say, the prophecy you mentioned in book one of your series will turn out to be completely misunderstood in book three, the wording used in translation really needs to be ambiguous enough and yet fitting from the very beginning for the plot twist to work.

Another possible snag a translator might hit is if your in-universe terminology is actually based on another language, perhaps even the target language. With the former, what becomes lost in translation will likely be a case-by-case thing, depending on whether you just used the existing foreign words or got creative with meanings and word formation. In the latter case, the magic system will inevitably lose some of its original air of mystery. I mean, “We call this mark in the shape of a lightning bolt a molnija” just hits differently from “We call this mark in the shape of a lightning bolt a lightning bolt.” Usually, though, minor rewording will be enough to keep everything clear and consistent.

Cultural and/or Religious References

These kinds of references could become a problem for your narrative if they are both too subtle and too alien for your new target audience. To be fair, the opposite has also been known to happen. The funniest example of such a disconnect is probably Christian symbolism in Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime mecha series that originally borrowed some references…for the aesthetic. And sure enough, the Japanese audience appreciated the aesthetic for what it was, but among European viewers, it inspired a hot debate about hidden meanings and connections to actual religious concepts.

As for cultural aspects, think Taco Bell being the only restaurant chain in the movie Demolition Man. While immediately recognizable to an American, for someone from a different country “Taco Bell” might at best be “an American fast food chain” or actually mean nothing at all. It might be clear from the context—and your reader can google this stuff, of course—but it might not quite land regardless. Worse still is when a plot point hinges on such a detail: for instance, a book series where teenage protagonists arrive too late to stop an evil scheme because the plans they had stolen had “military time” on them, and it turned out that none of the leads really knew what “normal time” it corresponded to. For someone like me, in whose culture you use “7 p.m.” and “19” interchangeably, this was beyond baffling. I remember going back and rereading that part of the book several times, trying to figure out what I was missing. Similar comprehension challenges tend to occur when there is a lot of focus on popular culture. Sometimes a work just turns out to be too local for an international reader.

Footnotes and Long-Winded Explanations

After reading all this, you might feel that it’s absolutely necessary to provide your foreign reader with ALL the context by adding footnotes, explanations in parentheses, or tediously long prefaces. As commendable as that is, please consider that overloading your text with comments and notes to make sure the audience gets the full picture could turn reading your book into something not unlike continuously consulting a dictionary—useful and informative, but maybe not exactly enjoyable. While it might make sense to add some explanations here and there or outline some crucial aspects in a preface, it would probably be best to keep it reasonable. You and your reader both want your story to flow, not trip over the building blocks of the narrative.

In Conclusion

This little overview cannot possibly cover all the aspects that go into translating something as complex as a story. Every story is unique, and so every translation experience is unique. You may find that none of these things are relevant to your manuscript, or maybe all of them are. Ultimately, translation is just another tool for you to do what you’ve always wanted: reach your audience and show them your world. And a tool it may be, but it’s a sophisticated one, and there is definitely more to it than just taking the words you’ve written and replacing them with the same words in a different language, hoping to create the same impact. Writing stories is magic, and coupled with considerate and well-researched translation, it’s magic that can reach far and wide.

Elena Kovalenko has been a translator/interpreter for 15 years, working on a range of topics from current events to thriller movie scripts, and an avid SFF reader for most of her life. When not holed up somewhere with a book or trying to bridge the gap between cultures via relaying ideas into a different language in speaking or writing, she enjoys long walks, baking, and learning random new skills.

The post Translation vs. Adaptation: The Continuous Struggle for Optimal Ratio appeared first on SFWA.

España Sheriff is the winner of the 2024 Rotsler Award for “long-time wonder-working with graphic art in amateur publications of the science fiction community.” The award was announced during Loscon 50, held November 29 – December 1, 2024 at the Marriott Los Angeles Airport Hotel in Los Angeles CA.

The award was established in 1998 by the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests, Inc. The winner receives a $300 honorarium. ...Read More

The Clarion Workshop in San Diego CA has announced the instructors for its 2025 session: Elizabeth Bear, Premee Mohamed, Cadwell Turnbull, Annalee Newitz, Jedediah Berry, and GennaRose Nethercott. Jac Jemc is faculty director.

The workshop will be held June 29, 2025 – August 9, 2025 at UC San Diego. Applications for the workshop opened on December 1, 2024 and close February 15, 2025.

While you are here, please take a

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Nominations are now open for the 2025 Dragon Awards, presented by Dragon Con. “There is no qualification for submitting nominations or voting – no convention fees or other memberships are needed.” Voting closes July 19, 2025.

For last year’s winners, see our prior post. For more information about nominations and to vote, see the official Dragon Awards page.

While you are here, please take a moment to support Locus with

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Winners for the 2024 Kitschies, awarded for “the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining fiction that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic,” have been announced.

The Red Tentacle (Novel)

• WINNER: Julia, Sandra Newman (Granta)

• Infinity Gate, M.R. Carey (Orbit)
• In Ascension, Martin MacInnes (Atlantic)
• Jungle House, Julianne Pachico (Serpent’s Tail)
• The Premonition, Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Asa Yoneda (Faber & Faber)

The Golden Tentacle

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by Libby Schultz

The future of digital currencies offers science fiction writers a unique opportunity to enhance their worlds. As a fintech founder and entrepreneur in the crypto industry, I navigate these topics daily alongside regulators, innovators, and organizations. Related challenges impact every level of society, from the people struggling to make ends meet, to the rarified oligarchs.

Here are five ways to explore how digital currencies create and solve problems in your fictional universe. Please note that my words are intended solely for worldbuilding and are not legal or financial advice.

Gold Makes the Rules

Those in power rule, and in modern societies, whoever has the gold has the power. Digital gold is no exception. The powerful create systems of governance to keep that power, operating from ideals and values that vary as much as their methods.

So how can this be used to enhance a story?

When starting off, it helps to establish the goals of the governing system, then decide how digital currencies might be used to create rules, incentives, and punishments. Identify conflicts that might naturally arise between the people in control, those fighting to take control, and those being controlled, along with everyone else who might be dragged along for the ride.

The United States controls the flow of money through its reserve currency, influencing global trade and alliances. While it’s important to protect a nation and its citizens, red tape often exists to make intermediaries rich. Decentralized currencies disrupt these fiefdoms, allowing people to coordinate and move money from anywhere in the world through a borderless peer-to-peer system. 

Some digital currencies are used to hedge against inflation and currency debasing, but a pure independent system does not exist. Furthermore, dollars are usually needed for rent, food, property, and tax, and the US controls who can convert digital currencies into dollars. It can also punish bad actors who never touch dollars with fines, arrests, asset seizure, and imprisonment. Since people often fight through money, a battle between opposing monetary systems can season conflicts between people, factions, and nations in your story.

The Consequences of a Public Ledger

Many blockchain ledgers are public and permanent. This is great for transparency and proving where money is—no one could pretend they were rich by renting a fancy car, for example—but now think about how an autocratic surveillance state might use them to monitor their citizens. Public records would report every move as citizens spy and gossip about each other’s spending habits and compete for the most “correct” financial trail. Someone might try to hide by coercing another person to transact on their behalf.

There is also plenty of inspiration from real-world events. Tech-savvy people track and critique how money is spent from ICOs. Internet bots publish the trading activity of whale crypto investors. Permanent ledgers can uncover crime from a single connection, as was the case for a now infamous hacker Jimmy Zhong. He walked free for nearly a decade until a single transaction helped the IRS trace him to a Silk Road hack, uncovering 51,680 BTC (~$3.4 billion at the time).

The Key Is in the Hand of the Beholder

There’s an industry proverb: “not your keys, not your crypto,” which references a feature of many digital currencies called the private key. A private key authorizes actions such as voting, moving currency, or signing a contract. For purposes of worldbuilding, the key can be a digital signature for whatever the writer imagines. It could control currency, security, vehicles, voting rights, declare wedding vows, or even be a signal of identity. Additionally, the key could be digital, physical, or anything in between.

Unlike a bank, which moves money on behalf of a client, a private key holder acts on their own behalf at all times. This safeguards them from a bank run, government asset seizure, and mishandling of funds, such as when FTX used billions of dollars in customer funds to fund its sister company Alameda Research. 

However, there’s no protection from mistakes or misfortune. Money phished, hacked, or sent to the wrong place? Lost the key? Too bad, it’s gone forever. This also means that institutions and criminals will come for you directly. Getting kidnapped for ransom or blackmailed is nothing new, but with private keys, once someone steals a key, they control everything it touches. The more powerful the key, the more its holder becomes a target.

When worldbuilding, consider what access keys should have, how people and institutions might be forced to surrender a key, and how they might protect themselves.

Not all digital currencies use private keys, though. A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is controlled by a governing organization and may have complete surveillance and control over the currency. Due to how CBDCs are presented, people sometimes can’t tell the difference. Some fun plot ideas might include a government that pretends to let its citizens have control, only to later reveal that it controlled everything all along, or a criminal organization that creates fake digital currency under the guise of helping the poor.

Integrate the Familiar with the New

Just as it helps to learn about the trials of space exploration when writing a futuristic space opera, digital currencies can be more deeply explored by studying the history of money. Digital currencies inspire familiar virtues and vices, such as greed, avarice, scams, taxation, and philanthropy. This common thread can be used to make the story more relatable and timeless.

For example, a common crypto scam involves a fake token posing as a real token in order to steal money. The scammers convince unsuspecting victims to buy it, perhaps selling it at an attractive discount. This is quite similar to how people made fake gold, and later, counterfeit bills. Though the method is different, counterfeiting is still possible in your crypto-driven world.

Tie It into Your World

In some cases, a heuristic approach is easier than deciding on what technology to include. Here are some questions to help you explore:

• What kind of government is in power, and what are their goals? How might digital currencies enforce its rules?
• What might characters need digital currencies for? Is there anything they can’t buy?
• How does the government enforce and protect its monetary system? How do people protect themselves and their assets?
• Are monetary records public? Why or why not?
• What are legitimate (and illegitimate) ways people acquire money?
• What happens if someone doesn’t have money?

It probably seems strange that something created out of thin air is worth trillions, but it’s been a long time since the dollar and other nations fully collateralized their currencies. Even when this was the case, shiny metal couldn’t feed a starving person, give shelter or protection, unless someone believed it had value. Like religion, money is a shared experience that’s as real as we believe it to be. In 2010, 10,000 BTC bought two pizzas, and now belief makes those same tokens worth over half a billion dollars. Even fictitious monetary concepts, such as in the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, can be a foundation for culture and beliefs. 

Though it might appear dry on the surface, money can be a window into intrigue and character motivation. By exploring economics and financial systems, you will learn why digital currencies exist and get a glimpse into a future that could spark your next big idea.  

Have fun, take risks, and find those great narrative returns.

Libby Schultz is a fintech founder, technologist, CEO, educator, and thought leader in the crypto and gaming space. Her professional writing career spans over a decade in Web3 and gaming. Her 2024 5-star debut novel and BookLife Editor’s Pick, Win Condition, is a science fiction cautionary tale about crypto and gaming, inspired by her work in both industries. She studied data science at Carnegie Mellon and is a crypto subject matter expert for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. When not living as a digital nomad, she trains as a circus performer and studies everything about Shiba Inus. You can get her book and find out more about her at https://lib.life/.

The post Enriching Characters and Sociopolitics with Digital Currencies appeared first on SFWA.

The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced the addition of Poetry and Comics categories to the Nebula Awards.

Award eligibility begins in January 2025, and the first awards for the new categories will be presented at the 2026 Nebula Awards Ceremony.

In other news, SFWA is hiring for a full time position of Office Assistant, and a contract position of Nebula Awards Project Manager. They’re also looking ...Read More

The Washington Post included numerous genre works on their Best of the Year lists.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy list featured 11 titles chosen by their critic Charlie Jane Anders:

• The Fox Wife, Yangsze Choo (Holt)
• Metal From Heaven, August Clarke (Erewhon)
• Annie Bot, Sierra Greer (Mariner)
• The Wings Upon Her Back, Samantha Mills (Tachyon)
• The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed (Tor.com)
• The Tusks

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Winners for the National Book Awards (NBA) have been announced.

The winner in the fiction category is James by Percival Everett (Doubleday), who sometimes writes SF. (See his entry in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.)

Winners were honored at the 75th National Book Awards Ceremony on November 20, 2024.

For more information, including the complete lists of winners, see the National Book Foundation site.

While you are here, please

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Edmonton (AKA ᐊᒥᐢᑿᒌᐚᐢᑲᐦᐃᑲᐣ / Amiskwacîwâskahikan), Canada has announced a bid to host the 88th World Science Fiction Convention in 2030.

Northern Alberta Science Fiction Society chair Mike Johnson said, “Edmonton is one of Canada’s youngest and fastest-growing cities. It’s bubbling with ideas, creativity, diversity, and a can-do attitude. It has an energy that I think science fiction fans from around the globe will find themselves aligned with.”

The committee “has ...Read More

Hachette Book Group has announced its purchase of Sterling Publishing from Barnes & Noble.

Sterling Publishing includes the imprints Union Square & Co., Union Square Kids, Boxer Books, Puzzlewright Press, plus stationery brands. Sterling’s output includes various genre books and gift editions of classic works.

B&N CEO James Daunt cited Union Square’s recent expansion and its need for more resources as a publisher. “Union Square has [outgrown] the infrastructure of ...Read More

by Jeremy Zentner

Editor’s note: This piece is part of a rolling series, Writing from History, in which creators share professional insights related to the work of using historical elements in fictional prose.

Fifty million dead, continents in ashes, and the emergence of a global struggle between two superpowers: World War II changed the path of history forever. It’s only natural that it would be a hot topic for historical fiction, especially the niche genre of alt-history. However, there are many approaches to writing alternate realities for World War II and its aftermath. Writers might benefit from exploring existing work in this subgenre when crafting their own.

Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) is probably the most well-known alt-history involving World War II. It’s also a work that explores the concept of alt-history within the narrative itself. In this timeline, Axis powers conquered the world, splitting the United States between Germany and Japan. Within the American Underground is a subversive book that tells the tale of the Allies winning the war, though not the same way as in our timeline. This provides a layer of irony for readers of Dick’s novel. The Man in the High Castle focuses on slice-of-life vignettes involving characters sometimes pretending to be someone they’re not, amid major plot intrigues like Germany’s plans to annihilate Japan. By the end, facades are lifted, exposing people to harsh realities in an unstable world. Dick’s approach requires a certain amount of narrative ambition, because it goes well beyond the scope of historical knowledge and hints at a larger, more psychedelic approach to the multiverse. 

Some writers have drawn from Dick’s example to blend other science-fiction aesthetics with alt-history. Like Dick’s novel, Peter Tieyaras’s The United States of Japan involves a contraband story that imagines a world without fascism, in a US divided between Germany and Japan; only, instead of a book, a video game is the forbidden medium. The narrative priorities are different, though. This novel depicts a 1980s Japanese pop culture that rebels against the status quo, so we get more of a pulpy escapade that follows investigative tropes and uses oodles of cyberpunk technology. Tieyaras was clearly inspired by Dick, but his writing is  also reminiscent of William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984). The result is a work that honors its predecessors by creating a new world in the long shadow of genre classics.

Writers do not have to reach for dramatic science-fictional elements to create a thrilling alt-history novel, though. In Robert Harris’s Fatherland, a Kripo officer, Xavier March, investigates a plot that unravels the most horrendous cover-up of all time: the Holocaust. In a 1960s world where the Nazis dominate Europe, an aging Hitler wishes to open friendlier relations with the US and perhaps enlist US support against the Soviet Union. This is a pulpy novel that doesn’t dwell too much on hidden philosophies or fantastical technology. All that’s needed is a sure hand with police-procedurals and mystery plotting; the tragic horror of uncovering atrocity will provide the bulk of the narrative’s alt-history weight.

A writer might also choose a more intimate approach, as many authors with closer cultural ties to World War II atrocities have done. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007) is another investigative story, but Michael Chabon’s book is more interested in questions of ethnic destiny and survival on a philosophical level. In this world, the US takes in Jewish refugees before the end of World War II, and Germany is defeated by 1946 instead of 1945. The state of Israel is later defeated in the Arab-Israeli War, pushing the rest of the Jewish population to Sitka, Alaska, where the US government offers a lease on federal territory until the early 2000s. The story progresses with one of the top Yiddish detectives investigating a murder that is eventually connected to a terrorist plot. Our protagonist finds himself without a homeland, as do his people, but a counterfactual like this one serves to highlight ongoing resilience across timelines, a key theme for many writers of alt-history. 

Harry Turtledove, the master of alt-history to many, also framed work around Jewish characters, but within a more expansive career in the sub-genre. From writing about the American Civil War to the Byzantium, Turtledove’s range of historical what-ifs allowed him to craft a broad counterfactual lore. For some writers, the intricacy of their alt-history worlds is a strong part of market appeal. Still, Turtledove’s In the Presence of Mine Enemies (2003) is more of a family drama, which studies the impact of Jewish parents disclosing to their 10-year-old daughter the truth about their secret heritage, in a Nazi-dominated world. By the end, there is a major political shift in Germany that takes inspiration from Soviet history, especially the events that led to the collapse of the USSR. This approach allows Turtledove to write unique alt-history plots using a variety of historical events as source material. 

Another family drama is Philip Roth’s coming-of-age story, The Plot Against America (2004). Roth is a titan in the literary world and brings his own experiences of antisemitism in America to the work. Narrated as a faux autobiography, The Plot Against America describes how Charles Lindbergh (a suspected antisemite in real life) runs against FDR’s third presidential term on an anti-war platform. When elected, Lindbergh begins to disenfranchise the Jewish population by implementing gentrification and youth work programs. For this novel, Roth documented historical accounts of antisemitism in the thirties and forties through research and personal exposure. One scene, involving our narrator encountering a pro-Nazi German-American group at a beer hall, draws from a childhood account. Crafting stories like this takes a certain degree of personal authority, more than the average commercial fiction, but doing so can bring forgotten and undesirable social histories to light.

Even if writing about World War II is not your preferred counterfactual, studying the range of stories available within alt-history might inspire you to tackle your own historical era. The goal is always to match the form of your story with your aims as a storyteller. Whether you focus on the historiography of another timeline, individual reactions to extreme circumstances, or flawed characters in a gritty whodunnit, the possibilities for crafting a distinct tale are endless.

Jeremy Zentner is a librarian and a sci-fi addict. He has published short stories in sci-fi and supernatural fiction and was a finalist for the STBF Illinois Author Project. He lives in rural Illinois, USA.

The post The Many Alt-Histories of World War II appeared first on SFWA.

Auction house Christie’s has announced their “first sale dedicated to Science Fiction and Fantasy,” with bidding open from November 28, 2024 to December 12, 2024.

The auction “will explore the extraordinary history of the genres through the books, objects and artworks that continue to inspire new generations of readers and viewers.”

Highlights include The Dune Bible, “an extraordinary artefact from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s epic Dune project (estimate: £250,000-350,000);” an “exquisite ...Read More

The winner, finalists, and honorable mentions for the 2024 Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction have been announced.

The winner is “A Shrine by the Sea” by Syed Zain Haroon. Finalists are “The Shopkeeper’s Remedy” by Manahil Bandukwala and “The 11th Wish” by Raazia Sajid. Honorable mentions are “On the Moonglow Road” by Ramsha Farooq Raja and “Hexes on Exes” by Zuha Siddiqui.

The Salam Award, “a short story award to ...Read More