Industry News

Finalists for the 2025 Analog Analytical Laboratory (AnLab) Award and the 2025 Asimov's Readers' Awards have been announced.

The Analog AnLab Awards finalists are:

Novella

• Aleyara's Flight , Christopher L. Bennett (11-12/25)
• Apartment Wars , Vera Brook (1-2/25)
• Murder on the Eris Express , Beth Goder (3-4/25)
• The Return of Tom Dillon , Harry Lang (3-4/25)
• Under the Moons of Venus , Jay Werkheiser …Read More

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Horror author Thomas Tessier, 78, died March 26, 2026.

Thomas Edward Tessier was born May 10, 1947 in Waterbury CT. He studied at University College Dublin in Ireland and lived in the UK for many years before eventually returning to Connecticut.

Tessier's first genre novel was The Fates (1978), an SF horror, and he also wrote The Nightwalker (1979); Shockwaves (1982); World Fantasy Award nominee Phantom (1982); Finishing Touches (1986); …Read More

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Interview with Tristan Evarts

Tristan Evarts is the editor of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, and since 2019 he has overseen the publication of optimistic prose, poetry, non-fiction, and art. The magazine operates with a reverence for the classics of the SF canon while pushing to explore new ways of living, technology as a friend rather than enemy, and humanity adapting to present crossroads. Themes push writers to examine the different manifestations of utopia, ranging from language to disability to weird SF. Contributors include Beth Cato, Jean-Paul L. Garnier, and Bogi Takács. Cover artists range from Donato Giancola to Stephen Youll to Alyssa Winans. Every December, Utopia SF publishes an art special, showcasing a broad range of talent, with a portion of the profits donated to charity.  

Tristan gave me my start as an SF interviewer when he took me on as outreach manager in 2023, so it’s a real pleasure to be sharing this interview with him now.  

James Machell

JM: What do you think makes a really great utopian story?

TE: I think a great utopian story realizes that a utopian world isn’t the end game in and of itself, and that it’s really just a launching pad for truly discovering the universe and examining the more subtle but powerful aspects of what makes us human. It doesn’t accomplish this the way most people seem to want, by tearing down the utopia and setting us back to the apocalyptic and imperfect world we live in today, but by saying “Okay, we’ve gotten past our worst, childlike instincts. Not suppressed or ignored them, but actually learned to deal with them in a healthy way. What next?” We can still find conflict, but we get to solving it the right way in the end. We learn, we grow, we discover new mysteries, and when conflict arises, we show how to navigate it in a healthy way, even if it might take a while to get there. I’d point to many classic Star Trek episodes, or James White’s Sector General novels, as some good examples.

JM: Can you take us through how Utopia Science Fiction Magazine has developed since it was founded in 2019?

TE: It’s developed quite a lot. It went from a single-person, token-paying small operation in 2019 to what it is today: a globally staffed, pro-paying magazine. It’s been quite a journey and I owe an awful lot to all the staff and volunteer readers who have joined us over the years to help progress us to where we are today. And we’re not done yet! Our hope, as always, is to increase readership and subscribers, which helps drive up the amount we can pay authors and artists. We’ve come a mighty long way and there’s further still to go!

JM: What drew you to publishing utopian writing?

TE: Chiefly a desire to move away from the (at the time) crushing amount of dystopian fiction out there. You know the phrase: “You are what you eat.” The same is true that “you are what you read.” If all you read is dark, gritty, disparaging, cynical things about the world then that’s how you start to view it and, at least at an unconscious level, how you begin to shape the world around you. It’s a cyclical pattern—people who see the world as apocalyptic are more likely to see the darker things and when those get more attention, they take over our worldview. For a real-life example, just look at the news cycle and see how that affects people’s worldview and mental health. We need to see the good, the hopeful, especially when things are at their darkest. We need to know that we can (and will) overcome this and this is what it’s going to look like at the end. And seeing Utopia as a beginning and not an end is important too. I think, with the arrival of all the cozy books coming out, more people are starting to realize this. I think in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, we’re mentioned as part of the solarpunk movement and hearing that is quite an honor.

JM: In addition to publishing science fiction stories, poetry, non-fiction, and art, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine also offers a critique service, helping budding writers to find their feet. You’ve also recently taught an Apex creative writing class. Can you describe your approach to assessing a piece of writing,  and some of the suggestions you’re most likely to make?

TE: Let’s start off with assessment. When I look at a story there are a few things I’m really hoping to see before I go on to accept it. The first is: does the story grip me from the first paragraph? If I make it to the end of the first page and am not thoroughly engrossed with a story or character, I’ll usually pass on it. Second is pacing and momentum. If a story starts off strong, does it carry through the rest of the piece? Sometimes, for short pieces, I’ll read through it entirely, but for longer pieces, there’s a trick to use. In the well-written, well-structured story, you can read the first and last sentences in each paragraph without reading anything in the middle and still walk away with all the essential information you need for plot and story. If you do that and stumble or get confused, it means the story has pacing issues and depending on how far from the mark that goes, I may decide it requires more editing than any of us have time to do before the next issue and pass on it. Third is the ending. The last line a person writes is the single most important line they will write. It’s going to decide if the story stays in my memory, awakens that feeling of wonder, or simply fizzles into the frustrating silence of unfinished or underdeveloped potential. So, if it’s got a strong start and consistent pacing, but the ending is flat or leaves us in a rather dismal or dystopian way, I’m liable to pass on it.  If I accept it and decide to work with the author to edit it into shape, there are a lot of suggestions I might make depending on what the piece needs. My goal is always to elevate the writer – to get them to perfect their craft a bit more, to push harder and write better by cutting out extraneous words, adding complexity to the themes and ideas, and really project their message out into the world. 

JM: Roughly, what is the acceptance rate for stories submitted to Utopia Science Fiction Magazine?

TE: We receive hundreds upon hundreds of submissions in a given year and only publish a total of 15 to 20 stories in a given year. So, like all magazines, there’s a small acceptance rate based largely on limited space. We have to reject a lot of great stories just based on that alone. 

JM: Utopia Science Fiction Magazine has recently published its Weird Science Fiction issue. What themes can we be on the lookout for in the future?

TE: We have the cozy issue in June, and August is always an ‘anything goes’ field where we try to publish the best of the best. Every June/July the editors of Utopia meet up and discuss what we want the themes for the next volume to be. There are always a lot of good ideas passed around, but only a few issues we publish. So, what’s on the horizon for next volume’s themes? You’ll just have to stay tuned!

JM: What are some of the books and stories you wish you could travel back in time and publish yourself?

TE: That is a very good question and one I’m not sure I can answer. There are a lot of stories I love, but I’m glad they’ve been published elsewhere. It gives us a chance to read them, to learn from them and push the envelope farther in terms of ideas, technique, etc. We have a part of our magazine called The Vault where every issue I go back and find some amazing, public domain, stories to publish. So, in essence, if there are stories I really love I can go back in time and publish them in this manner  (after a very exhausting and extensive search for the public domain and copyright registrations). 

JM: When you’re not at the helm of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, you’re running Castle Books & Tea. Can you tell us a bit about your life as a bookseller and are you offering any good deals on rare books at the moment?

TE: Castle Books and Tea was born out of a bizarre moment when I realized I had free time, and it felt so unnatural I panicked and decided to launch a side project. I’m happy to say I no longer have anything remotely considered free time anymore. But it’s a real passion project— one of our specialities is vintage science fiction books. I’ve been to a lot of places to stock books and bought some amazing collections from people to resell. We’ve had books signed by Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Roger Zelazny, and a lot more. It’s fun to track down some of the harder to find books too, like Soviet Sci-Fi or the novels of Clifford D. Simak. We usually have a big sale in May to celebrate our anniversary (this year is the start of our 5th) and a lot of small sales throughout the year.

JM: What are some of the tropes and subjects that you’d prefer that authors avoid in submissions?

TE: I have read far more books about robots, AI, etc. than I ever hoped could have existed. While we find things about these books to like, it’s an exhausted topic and I find myself preferring more novel ideas. Otherwise, it’s a lot of what other sci-fi magazines hope to avoid seeing. We’re particular in that we really don’t need to see any dystopian, post-apocalyptic, shoot-em-dead stories. As our name suggests, these types of stories really aren’t for us.

JM: Any tips for budding writers who’d like to make Utopia Science Fiction Magazine their first place of publication? 

TE: Write every day and read every day. Read the stories you like and read them for technique, not just for story. Read what Utopia has published. A lot of them are available for free through our site, Medium, and Substack. Also don’t get discouraged. You will get rejected. A lot. But that’s all just practice for when you get accepted. And you will. Just keep improving your craft. 

Tristan Evarts

Tristan Evarts is the editor-in-chief of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine and has been for the past seven years. He has a Bachelor’s in English and Philosophy with a specialization in creative writing and a Masters in Library and Information Science. When not editing, he is working at the library or at his bookshop, Castle Books and Tea, or growing his eclectic collection of books.

James Machell

James Machell is a British writer. He contributes to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and curates its Substack. He also serves as Outreach Manager for Utopia Science Fiction Magazine and was the 2025 Contest Chair for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. Find him on Bluesky @jamesmachell.bsky.social or YouTube @Fell-Purpose.

Interview with Tristan Evarts

Tristan Evarts is the editor of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, and since 2019 he has overseen the publication of optimistic prose, poetry, non-fiction, and art. The magazine operates with a reverence for the classics of the SF canon while pushing to explore new ways of living, technology as a friend rather than enemy, and humanity adapting to present crossroads. Themes push writers to examine the different manifestations of utopia, ranging from language to disability to weird SF. Contributors include Beth Cato, Jean-Paul L. Garnier, and Bogi Takács. Cover artists range from Donato Giancola to Stephen Youll to Alyssa Winans. Every December, Utopia SF publishes an art special, showcasing a broad range of talent, with a portion of the profits donated to charity.  

Tristan gave me my start as an SF interviewer when he took me on as outreach manager in 2023, so it’s a real pleasure to be sharing this interview with him now.  

James Machell

JM: What do you think makes a really great utopian story?

TE: I think a great utopian story realizes that a utopian world isn’t the end game in and of itself, and that it’s really just a launching pad for truly discovering the universe and examining the more subtle but powerful aspects of what makes us human. It doesn’t accomplish this the way most people seem to want, by tearing down the utopia and setting us back to the apocalyptic and imperfect world we live in today, but by saying “Okay, we’ve gotten past our worst, childlike instincts. Not suppressed or ignored them, but actually learned to deal with them in a healthy way. What next?” We can still find conflict, but we get to solving it the right way in the end. We learn, we grow, we discover new mysteries, and when conflict arises, we show how to navigate it in a healthy way, even if it might take a while to get there. I’d point to many classic Star Trek episodes, or James White’s Sector General novels, as some good examples.

JM: Can you take us through how Utopia Science Fiction Magazine has developed since it was founded in 2019?

TE: It’s developed quite a lot. It went from a single-person, token-paying small operation in 2019 to what it is today: a globally staffed, pro-paying magazine. It’s been quite a journey and I owe an awful lot to all the staff and volunteer readers who have joined us over the years to help progress us to where we are today. And we’re not done yet! Our hope, as always, is to increase readership and subscribers, which helps drive up the amount we can pay authors and artists. We’ve come a mighty long way and there’s further still to go!

JM: What drew you to publishing utopian writing?

TE: Chiefly a desire to move away from the (at the time) crushing amount of dystopian fiction out there. You know the phrase: “You are what you eat.” The same is true that “you are what you read.” If all you read is dark, gritty, disparaging, cynical things about the world then that’s how you start to view it and, at least at an unconscious level, how you begin to shape the world around you. It’s a cyclical pattern—people who see the world as apocalyptic are more likely to see the darker things and when those get more attention, they take over our worldview. For a real-life example, just look at the news cycle and see how that affects people’s worldview and mental health. We need to see the good, the hopeful, especially when things are at their darkest. We need to know that we can (and will) overcome this and this is what it’s going to look like at the end. And seeing Utopia as a beginning and not an end is important too. I think, with the arrival of all the cozy books coming out, more people are starting to realize this. I think in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, we’re mentioned as part of the solarpunk movement and hearing that is quite an honor.

JM: In addition to publishing science fiction stories, poetry, non-fiction, and art, Utopia Science Fiction Magazine also offers a critique service, helping budding writers to find their feet. You’ve also recently taught an Apex creative writing class. Can you describe your approach to assessing a piece of writing,  and some of the suggestions you’re most likely to make?

TE: Let’s start off with assessment. When I look at a story there are a few things I’m really hoping to see before I go on to accept it. The first is: does the story grip me from the first paragraph? If I make it to the end of the first page and am not thoroughly engrossed with a story or character, I’ll usually pass on it. Second is pacing and momentum. If a story starts off strong, does it carry through the rest of the piece? Sometimes, for short pieces, I’ll read through it entirely, but for longer pieces, there’s a trick to use. In the well-written, well-structured story, you can read the first and last sentences in each paragraph without reading anything in the middle and still walk away with all the essential information you need for plot and story. If you do that and stumble or get confused, it means the story has pacing issues and depending on how far from the mark that goes, I may decide it requires more editing than any of us have time to do before the next issue and pass on it. Third is the ending. The last line a person writes is the single most important line they will write. It’s going to decide if the story stays in my memory, awakens that feeling of wonder, or simply fizzles into the frustrating silence of unfinished or underdeveloped potential. So, if it’s got a strong start and consistent pacing, but the ending is flat or leaves us in a rather dismal or dystopian way, I’m liable to pass on it.  If I accept it and decide to work with the author to edit it into shape, there are a lot of suggestions I might make depending on what the piece needs. My goal is always to elevate the writer – to get them to perfect their craft a bit more, to push harder and write better by cutting out extraneous words, adding complexity to the themes and ideas, and really project their message out into the world. 

JM: Roughly, what is the acceptance rate for stories submitted to Utopia Science Fiction Magazine?

TE: We receive hundreds upon hundreds of submissions in a given year and only publish a total of 15 to 20 stories in a given year. So, like all magazines, there’s a small acceptance rate based largely on limited space. We have to reject a lot of great stories just based on that alone. 

JM: Utopia Science Fiction Magazine has recently published its Weird Science Fiction issue. What themes can we be on the lookout for in the future?

TE: We have the cozy issue in June, and August is always an ‘anything goes’ field where we try to publish the best of the best. Every June/July the editors of Utopia meet up and discuss what we want the themes for the next volume to be. There are always a lot of good ideas passed around, but only a few issues we publish. So, what’s on the horizon for next volume’s themes? You’ll just have to stay tuned!

JM: What are some of the books and stories you wish you could travel back in time and publish yourself?

TE: That is a very good question and one I’m not sure I can answer. There are a lot of stories I love, but I’m glad they’ve been published elsewhere. It gives us a chance to read them, to learn from them and push the envelope farther in terms of ideas, technique, etc. We have a part of our magazine called The Vault where every issue I go back and find some amazing, public domain, stories to publish. So, in essence, if there are stories I really love I can go back in time and publish them in this manner  (after a very exhausting and extensive search for the public domain and copyright registrations). 

JM: When you’re not at the helm of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine, you’re running Castle Books & Tea. Can you tell us a bit about your life as a bookseller and are you offering any good deals on rare books at the moment?

TE: Castle Books and Tea was born out of a bizarre moment when I realized I had free time, and it felt so unnatural I panicked and decided to launch a side project. I’m happy to say I no longer have anything remotely considered free time anymore. But it’s a real passion project— one of our specialities is vintage science fiction books. I’ve been to a lot of places to stock books and bought some amazing collections from people to resell. We’ve had books signed by Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Roger Zelazny, and a lot more. It’s fun to track down some of the harder to find books too, like Soviet Sci-Fi or the novels of Clifford D. Simak. We usually have a big sale in May to celebrate our anniversary (this year is the start of our 5th) and a lot of small sales throughout the year.

JM: What are some of the tropes and subjects that you’d prefer that authors avoid in submissions?

TE: I have read far more books about robots, AI, etc. than I ever hoped could have existed. While we find things about these books to like, it’s an exhausted topic and I find myself preferring more novel ideas. Otherwise, it’s a lot of what other sci-fi magazines hope to avoid seeing. We’re particular in that we really don’t need to see any dystopian, post-apocalyptic, shoot-em-dead stories. As our name suggests, these types of stories really aren’t for us.

JM: Any tips for budding writers who’d like to make Utopia Science Fiction Magazine their first place of publication? 

TE: Write every day and read every day. Read the stories you like and read them for technique, not just for story. Read what Utopia has published. A lot of them are available for free through our site, Medium, and Substack. Also don’t get discouraged. You will get rejected. A lot. But that’s all just practice for when you get accepted. And you will. Just keep improving your craft. 

Tristan Evarts

Tristan Evarts is the editor-in-chief of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine and has been for the past seven years. He has a Bachelor’s in English and Philosophy with a specialization in creative writing and a Masters in Library and Information Science. When not editing, he is working at the library or at his bookshop, Castle Books and Tea, or growing his eclectic collection of books.

James Machell

James Machell is a British writer. He contributes to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and curates its Substack. He also serves as Outreach Manager for Utopia Science Fiction Magazine and was the 2025 Contest Chair for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association. Find him on Bluesky @jamesmachell.bsky.social or YouTube @Fell-Purpose.

The Pulitzer Prize Winners have been announced.Angel Down by Daniel Kraus (Atria) won in the Fiction category. Other finalists of genre interest include Auditionby Katie Kitamura (Riverhead) andStag Dance: A Quartetby Torrey Peters (Random House). In addition, Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) won in the Memoir or Autobiography category.

The Pulitzer jury said ofAngel Down: A breathless novel of World War …Read More

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Transworld has announced the launch 3AM Books, Penguin Random House's first dedicated horror imprint. The imprint will reflect the full range and ambition of horror today, bringing together established voices, bold new talent and a growing community of readers, according to The Bookseller.

Imprint leadership will include publishing director Rachel Winterbottom, editorial director Simon Taylor, editor Nicole Witmer, assistant editor Anna Carvanova, marketing executive Molly Openshaw, press officer Nina Lewis, …Read More

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Author and publisher Michael P. Spradlin, 65, died April 12, 2026.

Michael P. Spradlin was born and raised in Michigan. He worked at the Hearst Corporation for Avon Books and William Morrow, and later at HarperCollins. He wrote the Spy Goddess books, including Live and Let Shop (2005) and To Hawaii, with Love (2006); the Killer Species books, including Menace from the Deep (2013), Feeding Frenzy (2013), Out for Blood …Read More

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The five judges for the Philip K. Dick Award for works of science fiction published as paperback originals in the US during the year 2026 have been announced:

• Deji Bryce Olukotun, 1701 Anacapa St Unit 23, Santa Barbara CA 93101-1064; mobi files to starship@nigeriansinspace.com
• Adam Rakunas, 1431 26th Ave, Seattle WA 98122-3101; epub files to rak@giro.com
• Rebekah Sheldon, 817 S High St,Bloomington IN 47401-6160; pdf files to rsheldon@iu.edu
• Andrew …Read More

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We are pleased to announce that award-winning authors Sarah Gailey & Maggie Tokuda-Hall will be joining us as Emcees at the Locus Awards Weekend on May 29-31, 2026, in Oakland, California!We're delighted to welcome them both!

From their website: Sarah Gailey is a Hugo Award and British Fantasy Award winning, bestselling author of speculative fiction, short stories, and essays. They have been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, and …Read More

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SF/F author eluki bes shahar, 69, died April 7, 2026 of sepsis.

Bes shahar was born in June 1956. She also wrote under the names Rosemary Edghill and James Mallory. Her debut novel, Speak Daggers to Her (1994), was the first in the Bast series, followed by Book of Moons (1995), The Bowl of Night (1996), omnibus Bell, Book, and Murder (1998), several short fiction pieces, and collection Failure of …Read More

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By Suzie Gray

As digital spaces increasingly mediate the way in which we interact with ourselves and each other, I argue that this dynamic flow of human becoming within digital spaces crystallises as events or spectacles. Attention quickly shifts from one topic or individual to the next; quickly observed, reacted to, and circulated. Content creators are encouraged to perform in a way that perpetuates this cycle with appeals to emotion and rapidly following trends. This is by design, enabled by practices of the online attention economy.

In this article, I’d like to highlight an alternative way of engaging in online spaces as a Zoefuturist practice: the act of creating and maintaining Digital Gardens. These online environments are sites that eschew homogeneity of design or corporate branding, showcasing the personal touches of their creators. Visitors are allowed to carve their own paths (within reason) through these lightly curated spaces that share knowledge and information.

Digital gardening is an act rather than a platform. Examples of these include repositories made on Obsidian, Quartz 4, and sites made on Neocities. The latter can be seen as a nod to website creators on Geocities during the early 2000s; as some might call a different time before the monetisation of online platforms. So how did we get here?

Yanis Varoufakis (2024) makes a distinction between what he calls Internet One and Internet Two; the former he describes as a “capitalism-free zone… a centrally designed, state-owned, non-commercial network.”[1] Emerging from the research project ARPANET (The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, now DARPA) in 1969, this early internet relied on global co-operation by using common/open protocols that were freely available to all participants. What Varoufakis terms as Internet One was a distributed network that was maintained by academic collaboration and public institutions.

However, while the protocol layer remained open, firms within this ecosystem needed sustainable revenue models. With the dotcom bubble in the early 2000s, the digital world had suffered a boom/bust and needed a way to maintain itself. Surviving firms had to prove durable profitability over hype to investors.  A pertinent example of this is Google, which over time managed to stay afloat with a model that would change the way we would experience digital and physical spaces. This marked the start of an economic structure focused on the commodification of behavioural prediction: Surveillance Capitalism.

Shoshana Zuboff (2019) states that this was both unprecedented and unbelievably powerful; under the guises of gamification and “free” onboard services, the rendition of our digital behaviour is cloaked in a veil of secrecy. Every click, scroll, and hover becomes the grammar to what she labels the “shadow text” of our characters, producing patterns of user behaviour to sell products back to these generated profiles. These structures, now normalised, begin to take on a more dramatic turn:

Surveillance capitalists’ interests have shifted from using automated machine processes to know about your behaviour to using machine processes to shape your behaviour according to their interests. In other words, this decade-and-a-half trajectory has taken us from automatic information flows about you to automating you.[2]

I theorize that the Ludopticon, a surveillance structure that I have coined as a portmanteau of Ludo, Latin for “I play” and Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon; a physical structure that would enforce strict social behaviour by means of its design. A central watchtower would be erected to make sure its inhabitants always felt that they were being surveilled; they, in turn, would self correct. Byung-Chul Han (2017) explains that unlike the physical panopticon, digital surveillance is aperspectival; lacking the blindspots from analogue optical systems.[3] Secret wishes, thoughts, and desires can be rendered from our subconscious scrollings, harvested from apps whose sole design is to keep you engaged and present. I argue that the Ludopticon has given us a share in compensation in the forms of public platforms and financial opportunities, as long as we keep feeding the machine. Our feelings, behaviours, and thoughts become converted into instrumental values; emotional hooks to drive engagement and value to shareholders.

The increased relevance of social metrics and its conversion to currency created a whole new market; a digital village square where we willingly opt-in to sell our personal selves for a public one. Not only do we play the casino of constant offerings, but we create the panels in the slot machine. This digital performance that thrives on consistency (not only of the act of posting but the topics involved) can reflect our daily lives on and offline. Similar to how a digital audio workstation (or DAW) can quantise raw notes to fit a digital tempo, our behaviours become more easily managed and predicted.

As the use of AI agents becomes more commonplace (bots that can predict our behaviours and make actions on our behalf), what is the end goal to this slow erosion of agency?

Zuboff explains that the goal could be the “right to the future tense” that is being taken from us. It is uncertainty that is incompatible with this model of capitalism:

Uncertainty is not chaos but rather the necessary habitat of the present tense. We choose the fallibility of shared promises and problem solving over the certain tyranny imposed by a dominant power or plan because this is the price we pay for the freedom to will, which founds our right to the future tense. In the absence of this freedom, the freedom collapses into an infinite present of mere behaviour, in which there can be no subjects and no projects: only objects.[4]

In many cases, certainty has its benefits in terms of safety and security; but this is in exchange for our freedoms to the benefit of the market. Surveillance capitalism creates a profile of its user through behavioural surplus who, by means of the Ludopticon, is optimized to be consistent in order to be favoured by the platform’s algorithm. The Ludopticon is therefore at odds with a person’s growth or becoming. They remain frozen within Zuboff’s “infinite present”; defensive and reactive. As patterns of behaviour online can translate into our ways of being offline, the sequence of render and predict can lead us into a world of divided apathy, constructing our own sense of algorithmic determinism or fate.

Inevitablism, Zuboff explains, is the act of relinquishing control in the midst of a manufactured determinism; a concept that “enshrines the apparatus of ubiquity as progress but conceals the realpolitik of surveillance capitalism at work behind the scenes.”[5] So what can be done to combat this, to what she calls the “right to the future tense?” How can we be in control of our timelines, our right to be a process rather than a product?

Enter Zoefuturism, inspired by Zoetology which was coined by Roger Ames. Taking its name from the Greek word Zoe for life (ζωή, zoí), Zoetology explores change as fundamental to nature and provides a world of “boundless becomings.” Inspired by Ancient East Asian philosophy, Ames explains that: “This cosmology is grounded in living (sheng 生 ) as the motive and existential force that enables change, where the ongoing transformation of things is driven by the very nature of life itself to optimize the available conditions for continuing growth.”[6] 

How can this apply to technology?

Yuk Hui (2024) explains that “We have to accept that there are a multiplicity of technological thinkings. The process of modernisation is a form of colonisation. Modernisation implies a homogenisation of knowledge and world views.”[7] As a stark contrast to Zuboff’s inevitablism, the link between technology and homogenisation/colonisation can be severed. Maybe our understanding of technology can exist outside of the binary between utopia/dystopia as showcased in many works of Science Fiction; falling somewhere in between, taking into account the multiplicities of minds and values. Han mentions how the canon of this literature has shaped our ideals about the future: “More and more people are trying to understand our future through science fiction. “I find this really disturbing. I’m a big fan of science fiction, but I find this problematic because it means that we fail to analyse our concrete situation.”[8]

One such space that resists the urge of engagement and the frozen present of the Ludopticon is the Digital Garden. Started decades ago in the era of the early internet, this topological space encourages the integrated and transformative present; each seedling of thought is evergreen as it expands and connects through links of information. Maggie Appleton (2020) explains that:

They’re less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we’re used to seeing. It harkens back to the early days of the web when people had fewer notions of how websites “should be.” It’s an ethos that is both classically old and newly imagined.[9]

Appleton mentions that the first recorded mention of these digital structures was the 1997 essay on hypertext gardens; written during a period where non-linear navigation and hypertext links were being experimented with. Early web adopters and creators were imagining a balance between agency and mystery: people had the freedom to explore but with signposts in case they became overwhelmed.

I argue that these signposts of agency are being eroded in favour of algorithm–driven incentives. If information is curated for you based on your past behaviour, there is no need to actively seek out new creators or topics. When content is increasingly created and curated for the format of the infinite scroll (Tiktok, Youtube shorts, Instagram reels), there is no need to stop the slots rolling. However, either extreme can be detrimental. As Mark Bernstein mentions in the essay “Hypertext Gardens,” “Today’s Web designers are taught to avoid irregularity, but in a hypertext, as in a garden, it is the artful combination of regularity and irregularity that awakens interest and maintains attention.”[10]

Mike Caulfield (2015), considered the founder of the Digital Gardening movement,[11] described the two different modes of interacting online being the “stream” and the “garden.” Cauldfield explains that the garden exists as a topology of space; it doesn’t collapse into one set of meanings or fixed sequences. If you imagine walking in a physical garden, you choose your path through it; each visitor will have their own unique experience and viewpoint. As an example, he highlights the presence of a bridge in this imagined space and how, within the context of the garden, its meaning is created by the visitor and not just the architect:

The bridge is a bridge is a bridge — a defined thing with given boundaries and a stated purpose. But the multi-linear nature of the garden means that there is no one right view of the bridge, no one correct approach. The architect creates the bridge, but it is the visitors to the park who create the bridge’s meaning. A good bridge supports many approaches, many views, many seasons, maybe many uses, and the meaning of that bridge will even evolve for the architect over time.[12]

The garden, then, can be seen as an example of this Zoefuturist mindset; a fluidity and multiplicity in the act of becoming, allowing cross networks of growth. Repositories of information that resist the extractive structures of platform monopolies are curated in platforms such as TiddlyWiki, Obsidian, and Roam Research. The stream, however, is described as a force that collapses all context into a narrow timeline of events. He explains that:

In other words, the Stream replaces topology with serialization. Rather than imagine a timeless world of connection and multiple paths, the Stream presents us with a single, time ordered path with our experience (and only our experience) at the center.[13]

Caulfield refers to Mikhail Bahktin’s concept of the utterance when tracing the origin and narrative of the stream; in order to understand a statement in the stream, you have to turn to the chain of events that led to this result. Not only must you consider what was said but who is saying it; but in the world of the Ludopticon where people exist and perform as brand, where emotional engagement and outrage can be converted into an attention based currency, we can see how things can quickly go awry.

However, Caulfield is not calling for us to abandon the stream entirely, stating:  “I can’t stress this enough. I’m not here to bury the Stream, I love the Stream. But it’s an incomplete experience, and it’s time we fixed that.”[14] The solution may be then, to spend time cultivating as well as conversing; creating iterative content as well as material to be disposed of or reacted to.

Interestingly enough, it could be the choice between choosing and not choosing in the moment; the multiplicity of the online experience and becomings that may be the formula to reclaim our autonomy in the digital world. The balance between active and passive, between talking and listening should be paramount for community growth and, with a multiplicity of online tools at our disposal, maybe we can find the form that allows the organic flourishing of many voices and minds.

Digital gardens would, of course, be only one such example. Other avenues to access might range from peer-owned server co-ops, communities that own and govern their own internet infrastructure, to federated platforms like Mastodon, a decentralised social network that distributes control across multiple servers. If we consider these forms as viable alternatives, then these can be the soil from which organic structures can grow with less dependence on Big Tech. As Voltaire said in Candide, “we must cultivate our garden.”

Works Cited

Ames, Roger T. Living Chinese Philosophy: Zoetology as First Philosophy. State University of New York Press, 2025.

Appleton, Maggie. “A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden.” Maggie Appleton, 2020, https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history. Accessed 26 July 2025.

Bernstein, Mark. “Hypertext Gardens.” Hypertext Gardens: Virtue of Irregularity, 1998, https://www.eastgate.com/garden/Virtue_of_Irregularity.html. Accessed 26 July 2025.

Caulfield, Mike. “The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral.” The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral, 2015, https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/. Accessed 24 07 2025.

Han, Byung-Chul. Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power.    Verso Books, 2017.

Hui, Yuk. “Yuk Hui: “We are living in a gigantic technological system.”” CCCB LAB, Interview by Victor G. García Castañeda, 16 April 2024, https://lab.cccb.org/en/yuk-hui-we-are-living-in-a-gigantic-technological-system/. Accessed 26 July 2025.

Varoufakis, Yannis. Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Vintage, 2024.

Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Profile Books, 2019.

[1] Yannis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Vintage, 2024), chap.3, Kobo.  

[2] Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (Profile Books, 2019), 339.

[3] Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power (Verso Books, 2017), 56.

[4] Zuboff, 336.

[5] Zuboff, 226.

[6] Roger T. Ames, Living Chinese Philosophy: Zoetology as First Philosophy (State University of New York Press, 2025), 4.

[7] Yuk Hui, “Yuk Hui: “We are living in a gigantic technological system.”” CCCB LAB, Interview by Victor G. García Castañeda, 16 April 2024, https://lab.cccb.org/en/yuk-hui-we-are-living-in-a-gigantic-technological-system/.

[8] Hui.

[9] Maggie Appleton, “A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden.” Maggie Appleton, 2020, https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history

[10] Mark Bernstein, “Hypertext Gardens.” Hypertext Gardens: Virtue of Irregularity, 1998, https://www.eastgate.com/garden/Virtue_of_Irregularity.html

[11] Mike Caulfield, “The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral.” The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral, 2015, https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/

[12] Caulfield.

[13] Caulfield.

[14] Caulfield.

By Suzie Gray

As digital spaces increasingly mediate the way in which we interact with ourselves and each other, I argue that this dynamic flow of human becoming within digital spaces crystallises as events or spectacles. Attention quickly shifts from one topic or individual to the next; quickly observed, reacted to, and circulated. Content creators are encouraged to perform in a way that perpetuates this cycle with appeals to emotion and rapidly following trends. This is by design, enabled by practices of the online attention economy.

In this article, I’d like to highlight an alternative way of engaging in online spaces as a Zoefuturist practice: the act of creating and maintaining Digital Gardens. These online environments are sites that eschew homogeneity of design or corporate branding, showcasing the personal touches of their creators. Visitors are allowed to carve their own paths (within reason) through these lightly curated spaces that share knowledge and information.

Digital gardening is an act rather than a platform. Examples of these include repositories made on Obsidian, Quartz 4, and sites made on Neocities. The latter can be seen as a nod to website creators on Geocities during the early 2000s; as some might call a different time before the monetisation of online platforms. So how did we get here?

Yanis Varoufakis (2024) makes a distinction between what he calls Internet One and Internet Two; the former he describes as a “capitalism-free zone… a centrally designed, state-owned, non-commercial network.”[1] Emerging from the research project ARPANET (The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, now DARPA) in 1969, this early internet relied on global co-operation by using common/open protocols that were freely available to all participants. What Varoufakis terms as Internet One was a distributed network that was maintained by academic collaboration and public institutions.

However, while the protocol layer remained open, firms within this ecosystem needed sustainable revenue models. With the dotcom bubble in the early 2000s, the digital world had suffered a boom/bust and needed a way to maintain itself. Surviving firms had to prove durable profitability over hype to investors.  A pertinent example of this is Google, which over time managed to stay afloat with a model that would change the way we would experience digital and physical spaces. This marked the start of an economic structure focused on the commodification of behavioural prediction: Surveillance Capitalism.

Shoshana Zuboff (2019) states that this was both unprecedented and unbelievably powerful; under the guises of gamification and “free” onboard services, the rendition of our digital behaviour is cloaked in a veil of secrecy. Every click, scroll, and hover becomes the grammar to what she labels the “shadow text” of our characters, producing patterns of user behaviour to sell products back to these generated profiles. These structures, now normalised, begin to take on a more dramatic turn:

Surveillance capitalists’ interests have shifted from using automated machine processes to know about your behaviour to using machine processes to shape your behaviour according to their interests. In other words, this decade-and-a-half trajectory has taken us from automatic information flows about you to automating you.[2]

I theorize that the Ludopticon, a surveillance structure that I have coined as a portmanteau of Ludo, Latin for “I play” and Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon; a physical structure that would enforce strict social behaviour by means of its design. A central watchtower would be erected to make sure its inhabitants always felt that they were being surveilled; they, in turn, would self correct. Byung-Chul Han (2017) explains that unlike the physical panopticon, digital surveillance is aperspectival; lacking the blindspots from analogue optical systems.[3] Secret wishes, thoughts, and desires can be rendered from our subconscious scrollings, harvested from apps whose sole design is to keep you engaged and present. I argue that the Ludopticon has given us a share in compensation in the forms of public platforms and financial opportunities, as long as we keep feeding the machine. Our feelings, behaviours, and thoughts become converted into instrumental values; emotional hooks to drive engagement and value to shareholders.

The increased relevance of social metrics and its conversion to currency created a whole new market; a digital village square where we willingly opt-in to sell our personal selves for a public one. Not only do we play the casino of constant offerings, but we create the panels in the slot machine. This digital performance that thrives on consistency (not only of the act of posting but the topics involved) can reflect our daily lives on and offline. Similar to how a digital audio workstation (or DAW) can quantise raw notes to fit a digital tempo, our behaviours become more easily managed and predicted.

As the use of AI agents becomes more commonplace (bots that can predict our behaviours and make actions on our behalf), what is the end goal to this slow erosion of agency?

Zuboff explains that the goal could be the “right to the future tense” that is being taken from us. It is uncertainty that is incompatible with this model of capitalism:

Uncertainty is not chaos but rather the necessary habitat of the present tense. We choose the fallibility of shared promises and problem solving over the certain tyranny imposed by a dominant power or plan because this is the price we pay for the freedom to will, which founds our right to the future tense. In the absence of this freedom, the freedom collapses into an infinite present of mere behaviour, in which there can be no subjects and no projects: only objects.[4]

In many cases, certainty has its benefits in terms of safety and security; but this is in exchange for our freedoms to the benefit of the market. Surveillance capitalism creates a profile of its user through behavioural surplus who, by means of the Ludopticon, is optimized to be consistent in order to be favoured by the platform’s algorithm. The Ludopticon is therefore at odds with a person’s growth or becoming. They remain frozen within Zuboff’s “infinite present”; defensive and reactive. As patterns of behaviour online can translate into our ways of being offline, the sequence of render and predict can lead us into a world of divided apathy, constructing our own sense of algorithmic determinism or fate.

Inevitablism, Zuboff explains, is the act of relinquishing control in the midst of a manufactured determinism; a concept that “enshrines the apparatus of ubiquity as progress but conceals the realpolitik of surveillance capitalism at work behind the scenes.”[5] So what can be done to combat this, to what she calls the “right to the future tense?” How can we be in control of our timelines, our right to be a process rather than a product?

Enter Zoefuturism, inspired by Zoetology which was coined by Roger Ames. Taking its name from the Greek word Zoe for life (ζωή, zoí), Zoetology explores change as fundamental to nature and provides a world of “boundless becomings.” Inspired by Ancient East Asian philosophy, Ames explains that: “This cosmology is grounded in living (sheng 生 ) as the motive and existential force that enables change, where the ongoing transformation of things is driven by the very nature of life itself to optimize the available conditions for continuing growth.”[6] 

How can this apply to technology?

Yuk Hui (2024) explains that “We have to accept that there are a multiplicity of technological thinkings. The process of modernisation is a form of colonisation. Modernisation implies a homogenisation of knowledge and world views.”[7] As a stark contrast to Zuboff’s inevitablism, the link between technology and homogenisation/colonisation can be severed. Maybe our understanding of technology can exist outside of the binary between utopia/dystopia as showcased in many works of Science Fiction; falling somewhere in between, taking into account the multiplicities of minds and values. Han mentions how the canon of this literature has shaped our ideals about the future: “More and more people are trying to understand our future through science fiction. “I find this really disturbing. I’m a big fan of science fiction, but I find this problematic because it means that we fail to analyse our concrete situation.”[8]

One such space that resists the urge of engagement and the frozen present of the Ludopticon is the Digital Garden. Started decades ago in the era of the early internet, this topological space encourages the integrated and transformative present; each seedling of thought is evergreen as it expands and connects through links of information. Maggie Appleton (2020) explains that:

They’re less rigid, less performative, and less perfect than the personal websites we’re used to seeing. It harkens back to the early days of the web when people had fewer notions of how websites “should be.” It’s an ethos that is both classically old and newly imagined.[9]

Appleton mentions that the first recorded mention of these digital structures was the 1997 essay on hypertext gardens; written during a period where non-linear navigation and hypertext links were being experimented with. Early web adopters and creators were imagining a balance between agency and mystery: people had the freedom to explore but with signposts in case they became overwhelmed.

I argue that these signposts of agency are being eroded in favour of algorithm–driven incentives. If information is curated for you based on your past behaviour, there is no need to actively seek out new creators or topics. When content is increasingly created and curated for the format of the infinite scroll (Tiktok, Youtube shorts, Instagram reels), there is no need to stop the slots rolling. However, either extreme can be detrimental. As Mark Bernstein mentions in the essay “Hypertext Gardens,” “Today’s Web designers are taught to avoid irregularity, but in a hypertext, as in a garden, it is the artful combination of regularity and irregularity that awakens interest and maintains attention.”[10]

Mike Caulfield (2015), considered the founder of the Digital Gardening movement,[11] described the two different modes of interacting online being the “stream” and the “garden.” Cauldfield explains that the garden exists as a topology of space; it doesn’t collapse into one set of meanings or fixed sequences. If you imagine walking in a physical garden, you choose your path through it; each visitor will have their own unique experience and viewpoint. As an example, he highlights the presence of a bridge in this imagined space and how, within the context of the garden, its meaning is created by the visitor and not just the architect:

The bridge is a bridge is a bridge — a defined thing with given boundaries and a stated purpose. But the multi-linear nature of the garden means that there is no one right view of the bridge, no one correct approach. The architect creates the bridge, but it is the visitors to the park who create the bridge’s meaning. A good bridge supports many approaches, many views, many seasons, maybe many uses, and the meaning of that bridge will even evolve for the architect over time.[12]

The garden, then, can be seen as an example of this Zoefuturist mindset; a fluidity and multiplicity in the act of becoming, allowing cross networks of growth. Repositories of information that resist the extractive structures of platform monopolies are curated in platforms such as TiddlyWiki, Obsidian, and Roam Research. The stream, however, is described as a force that collapses all context into a narrow timeline of events. He explains that:

In other words, the Stream replaces topology with serialization. Rather than imagine a timeless world of connection and multiple paths, the Stream presents us with a single, time ordered path with our experience (and only our experience) at the center.[13]

Caulfield refers to Mikhail Bahktin’s concept of the utterance when tracing the origin and narrative of the stream; in order to understand a statement in the stream, you have to turn to the chain of events that led to this result. Not only must you consider what was said but who is saying it; but in the world of the Ludopticon where people exist and perform as brand, where emotional engagement and outrage can be converted into an attention based currency, we can see how things can quickly go awry.

However, Caulfield is not calling for us to abandon the stream entirely, stating:  “I can’t stress this enough. I’m not here to bury the Stream, I love the Stream. But it’s an incomplete experience, and it’s time we fixed that.”[14] The solution may be then, to spend time cultivating as well as conversing; creating iterative content as well as material to be disposed of or reacted to.

Interestingly enough, it could be the choice between choosing and not choosing in the moment; the multiplicity of the online experience and becomings that may be the formula to reclaim our autonomy in the digital world. The balance between active and passive, between talking and listening should be paramount for community growth and, with a multiplicity of online tools at our disposal, maybe we can find the form that allows the organic flourishing of many voices and minds.

Digital gardens would, of course, be only one such example. Other avenues to access might range from peer-owned server co-ops, communities that own and govern their own internet infrastructure, to federated platforms like Mastodon, a decentralised social network that distributes control across multiple servers. If we consider these forms as viable alternatives, then these can be the soil from which organic structures can grow with less dependence on Big Tech. As Voltaire said in Candide, “we must cultivate our garden.”

Works Cited

Ames, Roger T. Living Chinese Philosophy: Zoetology as First Philosophy. State University of New York Press, 2025.

Appleton, Maggie. “A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden.” Maggie Appleton, 2020, https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history. Accessed 26 July 2025.

Bernstein, Mark. “Hypertext Gardens.” Hypertext Gardens: Virtue of Irregularity, 1998, https://www.eastgate.com/garden/Virtue_of_Irregularity.html. Accessed 26 July 2025.

Caulfield, Mike. “The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral.” The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral, 2015, https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/. Accessed 24 07 2025.

Han, Byung-Chul. Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power.    Verso Books, 2017.

Hui, Yuk. “Yuk Hui: “We are living in a gigantic technological system.”” CCCB LAB, Interview by Victor G. García Castañeda, 16 April 2024, https://lab.cccb.org/en/yuk-hui-we-are-living-in-a-gigantic-technological-system/. Accessed 26 July 2025.

Varoufakis, Yannis. Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. Vintage, 2024.

Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Profile Books, 2019.

[1] Yannis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (Vintage, 2024), chap.3, Kobo.  

[2] Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (Profile Books, 2019), 339.

[3] Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and New Technologies of Power (Verso Books, 2017), 56.

[4] Zuboff, 336.

[5] Zuboff, 226.

[6] Roger T. Ames, Living Chinese Philosophy: Zoetology as First Philosophy (State University of New York Press, 2025), 4.

[7] Yuk Hui, “Yuk Hui: “We are living in a gigantic technological system.”” CCCB LAB, Interview by Victor G. García Castañeda, 16 April 2024, https://lab.cccb.org/en/yuk-hui-we-are-living-in-a-gigantic-technological-system/.

[8] Hui.

[9] Maggie Appleton, “A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden.” Maggie Appleton, 2020, https://maggieappleton.com/garden-history

[10] Mark Bernstein, “Hypertext Gardens.” Hypertext Gardens: Virtue of Irregularity, 1998, https://www.eastgate.com/garden/Virtue_of_Irregularity.html

[11] Mike Caulfield, “The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral.” The Garden and the Stream: A Technopastoral, 2015, https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/

[12] Caulfield.

[13] Caulfield.

[14] Caulfield.

The shortlist for the 2026 Branford Boase Award for children's books has been announced. Titles and authors of genre interest includeGloam by Jack Mackay (Viking Books for Young Readers US; Rock the Boat UK) [amazon / bookshop] and Augmented by Kenechi Udogu (Faber & Faber Children's) [amazon / bookshop].

The Boase award is given annually to the author of an outstanding debut novel for children. The author and editor of …Read More

The post 2026 Branford Boase Award Shortlist appeared first on Locus.

Winners of the Tolkien Society Awards 2026 were announced on April 27, 2026. The awards recognize excellence in the fields of Tolkien scholarship and fandom, highlighting our long-standing charitable objective to 'seek to educate the public in, and promote research into, the life and works of' J.R.R. Tolkien. The society's trustees choose the shortlist, with winners chosen by the membership.

Best Book

• WINNER:The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien's …Read More

  The post The Tolkien Society Awards 2026 appeared first on Locus Online.

We are so pleased to have the talented Alyssa Winans as Featured Local Artist at the Locus Awards Weekendon May 30, 2026 in Berkeley, California! Her work is vibrant and inventive, and we can't wait to see it at the event. Winans joins a lineup of amazing local creators, as well as Guests of Honor Nnedi Okorafor, Tananarive Due, and Stephen Graham Jones, for an unforgettable celebration.

ALYSSA WINANS …Read More

The post Locus Awards Announces Featured Local Artist Alyssa Winans appeared first on Locus Online.

Clarion West (CW) has announced a collaborative partnership with artist-led nonprofit Common AREA Maintenance (CAM) in Seattle to advance development and long-term usage of the El Rey Building - a previously abandoned 30,000 square foot building in Seattle's Belltown neighborhood. The ADA-accessible building will be the new site of the Clarion West Six-Week Workshop and will support multiple artists and writers year-round.

CAM purchased the building for $20 in …Read More

The post Clarion West Announces Partnership for Residency Program appeared first on Locus Online.

by Michael Capobianco

Read by Robert Greenberger

Giving democratically chosen awards for writing isn’t easy. When the authors themselves are designing the process, there is additional pressure to make the process “fair.” It was even tougher before the Internet, when nominations and updates had to be mailed. In what was then called Science Fiction Writers of America, a small group of dedicated volunteers carried most of that burden. They were the Nebula Awards Report (NAR) Editors. 

Creation of the Nebula Awards was suggested by SFWA’s first Secretary-Treasurer, Lloyd Biggle, Jr., as a way to collect the contents of an annual award anthology that would help fund the nascent organization as well as promote the best science fiction. Founder and then-SFWA President Damon Knight ran with the idea, and the Nebula Awards were born. Modeling them from various sources, including the decade-old Hugo Awards, the awards would be voted on by the Active and Associate Members of SFWA. The first vote would be for works published in 1965 and there would be a Nebula Awards Banquet in Spring 1966.  From the very beginning, the process involved the publication of nominees submitted by members. The first set of Nebula rules was published in the September 1965SFWA Bulletin and included:

“6. All SFWA members in good standing, whether active or associate, may nominate and vote on stories and novels. Stories and novels may also be nominated, but not voted on, by the editors and publishers who originally published them. Such nominations will be accepted from one representative of each publishing firm.”

“7. Nominations will be published, and ballots distributed to members, in the November 1965 issue of the Bulletin. If three or fewer nominations are received for any story or novel, the names of those making the nominations will be listed in the Bulletin.”

A 1965 nomination ballot for short story, “novelet,” and novella was mailed with the November 1965 SFWA Bulletin. Nominations for novel would continue until December 30. These ballots were to be returned to a law firm for unbiased counting. Time was tight. Final votes would happen in February 1966 and the Nebula Awards Banquet was scheduled for March 11. (Read more about the inaugural ceremony in “A Brief History of SFWA: The First Nebula Awards” by Michael Capobianco.)  

Page 1 of Nebula Awards Report Volume 3, Number 5, Copyright (c) 1975 SFWA.

The January issue contained the first recommendations for 1966 along with a request from President Damon Knight:

“Members are asked to drop the Bulletin a postcard whenever they read an outstanding science fiction story or novel. If this procedure is confirmed when we vote on it in March, it will become part of the SFWA Awards nominating system; even if not, I think it will be a valuable service to members.”

Knight primed the pump with the first nominations for 1966, for “Apology to Inky” by Robert M. Green, Jr. (F&SF) and “An Ornament to His Profession” by Charles L. Harness (Analog). 

The winners for 1965 were announced in the April 1966 issue (which included coverage and photos from the New York and Los Angeles Nebula Banquets) and, importantly, the first list of new Nebula nominations for the year 1966. It included nine recommendations from four members: six by James H. Schmitz, two by James Blish, and one each by Greg Benford and John Brunner. The June 1966 issue contained six recommendations; August’s had 20 nominations, several with more than one nominator; September’s had 11 and November’s 11. At this time, SFWA had approximately 200 members.

For whatever reason, the Final Ballot for 1966 was underpopulated, with only three candidates each for novel, novella, and short story. Knight’s two recommendations made the final ballot but didn’t win. James H. Schmitz’s nominee for best novel, The Last Castle by Jack Vance, made the ballot and won. (For more on the Nebulas’ physical look, read “Planets and Plastic: A History of the SFWA Trophies and Awards” by Michael Armstrong.)

From this distance, if the process was supposed to let members know of worthy prospects, it looks pretty shaky. No listings for the 1967 Nebulas were published until the August 1967 Bulletin, which included a more formal listing of nominees by category and had 20 entries. October had 30, and December another 18. Nominating was catching on. In 1968, the rules were revised and regularized, with, significantly, the addition of Rule 4.(c):  

“Any title receiving a total of three (3) or more nominations will be considered to qualify for placement on the Ballot in its appropriate category. Any title with fewer than three (3) nominations will be disqualified.”

Now a single recommendation wasn’t enough, and so recommendation counting became a group pastime.

Page 2 of Nebula Awards Report Volume 3, Number 5, Copyright (c) 1975 SFWA.

The last full list of Nebula recommendations in the SFWA Bulletin appeared in issue 41/42 in July 1972. It was accompanied by a note saying that Vonda N. McIntyre was now assisting Hal Clement in preparing the list. 

Then the crystal ball grows hazy. SFWA has a complete run of Bulletins, but it’s missing some issues of its other publications from this time. The next time we encounter the NAR is the September 1974 issue of the SFWA Forum. Vonda N. McIntyre is the editor and nominations go to her. She has created a distinctive heading and the contents are well-organized. This basic format (see photos) will persist right to the end of the NAR in 2008. 

This stand-alone NAR is among the most ephemeral of SFWA’s publications. None of the original paper copies have survived in SFWA’s archives. Frank Catalano, who edited the NAR in the early ’80s, tells what it was like to edit and mail it.

“What I remember the most was the physical challenge of actually getting the report out the door. I will qualify this by stating my memory of the details of the process, 40+ years ago, may be flawed. But I recollect that Nebula recommendations would come in on postcard, mostly, some by letter. They’d be tallied and organized, and then printed on multiple sheets of letter-sized paper, folded in half, stapled, labelled, stamped and mailed. Among those who’d show up for these mailing parties at my apartment were Vonda N. McIntyre and, I think, Greg Bear. (…) What I remember the most was just the camaraderie and conversation. The need to get it right. And all of the damp sponges required to attach the stamps.”

Seven SFWA volunteers have been given the Kevin. O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award because of their work on the NAR: Chuq Von Rospach (NAR Editor 1989–1996), Brook and Julia West (NAR Editors 1989–2008), and Vonda N. McIntyre (NAR Editor 1972–1976). Other members who have taken a turn: C. L. Grant, George W. Proctor, Frank Catalano, Elizabeth Waters, Orson Scott Card, and Mark Van Name.

So, why did the NAR end? Rule changes made the Nebula more and more cumbersome to administer, and the awards were no longer tied to a specific year. Former SFWA President and current SFWA Operations Manager Russell Davis offers this summary: “The Nebula Award rules when I took office in 2008 were extraordinarily convoluted.” In 2009, the nomination process  changed to the simpler one still in place in 2026.

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Michael Capobianco is co-author, with William Barton, of the SF books Iris, Alpha Centauri, Fellow Traveler, and White Light. He has published two solo science fiction novels, Burster and Purlieu as well as short fiction. Capobianco was President of SFWA from 1996 to 1998 and again in 2007–2008. He currently serves as SFWA’s Authors Coalition Commissioner, Chair of SFWA’s Contracts Committee, Co-chair of SFWA’s Legal Affairs and Estates-Legacy Committees, and is a member of SFWA’s History Committee.

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John H. Guidry, 81, died March 9, 2026.

John Henry Guidry was born December 15, 1944 in New Orleans LA and attended William Carey College. He created the Edgar Rice Burroughs Amateur Press Association and co-published Forgotten Tales of Love and Murder (2001). In 1988, he was the chair of Nolacon II, the 46th World Science Fiction Convention. He is survived by his sister and his nieces and nephews. …Read More

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The Los Angeles Times has announced the winners of their 46th annual Book Prizes.

Winners of genre interest, and other titles and authors of genre interest in those categories, include:

Science Fiction/Fantasy

• WINNER:Luminous, Silvia Park (Simon & Schuster)

• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga)
• The Death of Mountains, Jordan Kurella (Lethe)
• Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow)
• Esperance, Adam Oyebanji (DAW)

Fiction …Read More

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The preliminary ballot for the 2026 Ditmar Awards for Australian SF has been announced.

Best Novel

• Veil, Jeff Clulow (Third Eye) amazon / bookshop
• Honeyeater, Kathleen Jennings (Tordotcom) amazon / bookshop
• When Dark Waters Burn, Zena Shapter (Midnight Sun) amazon
• The Crimson Road, A.G. Slatter (Titan) amazon / bookshop
• Upon a Starlit Tide, Kell Woods (HarperCollins) amazon / bookshop

Best Novella or Novelette

• Cinder House, Freya Marske …Read More

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