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Author Jane Yolen, 87, died peacefully in her home, surrounded by family, in Hatfield MA on June 11, 2026.

Jane Hyatt Yolen was born February 11, 1939 in New York City NY. She graduated Smith College with a BA in 1960, at which time she was already writing poetry and articles, and received a master's in education from the University of Massachusetts in 1978. Between degrees, in 1962, she married …Read More

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The British Fantasy Society, HWS, and Karen Fishwick have revealed preliminary plans for Fantasycon 2027. Fantasycon 2027 will include some aspects of World Fantasy Convention including the World Fantasy Awards. This is alongside all the usual Fantasycon content of panels, readings, books, art and social activities.

Fantasycon 2027 will run September 24-26, 2027 in Birmingham, England. For more information, see the official Facebook event page. …Read More

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The Future Worlds Prize for Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers of Colour has announced its eight-title shortlist for short fiction:

• A Song of Shir'ja , Harps Aujla
• Zonbi , Zarah Elouis-Ro
• Crooked Straits , Olivia Ho
• One Thousand and One Wishes , Rakan Khashman
• The Sun Wells , Aiden Ng
• A Blade Drawn from Envy , Ty Ogunade
• A Corruption of Death …Read More

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The finalists for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award for the best short science fiction story have been announced by the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction.

• Six People to Revise You , J.R. Dawson (Uncanny 1-2/25)
• The Nine Crashes of Flight Lieutenant Hilla Quinn , Louise Hughes (Kaleidotrope 9/25)
• The Shadow on the Nest , Alaya Dawn Johnson (Uncanny 9-10/25)
• Wire Mother , …Read More

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by Rosemary Jones

Read by the author

The first movie tie-in novels date to the rise of silent movies as mass entertainment at the beginning of the 20th century. As with movie tie-in books today, these included both novelizations of screenplays and reissues of published novels illustrated with movie stills.

Newspapers Inspire Early Movie Tie-Ins

The novelization of The Adventures of Kathlyn is one of the earliest movie tie-in novels. This serial began on December 29, 1913, and was shown in movie theaters through 1914. One of the action heroines of silent movies, the film’s star, Kathlyn Williams, was famous for performing with big cats.  The movie took advantage of her talents and first name. Over the course of 13 episodes, the fictional Kathlyn rescues her explorer father and frees the enslaved population of a mythical kingdom. She traverses jungles, battles wild beasts, outwits the insidious Council of Three, and dodges a forced marriage to a foul prince. Each episode ended with a cliffhanger guaranteed to bring the audience back to enjoy the next installment until the story’s happy resolution.

(Bottom) Adventures of Kathlyn (1913) and (top) Perils of Pauline (1914). Photo by Rosemary Jones.

Harold McGrath, who supplied the original story for the screenplay, wrote the novel published by The Bobbs-Merrill Company. The text was illustrated with black-and-white photos from the film. The frontispiece opposite the title page shows Kathlyn clutching the hunter Bruce, who aids her quest to rescue her father and provides a romantic interest.

Newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times also featured stories illustrated with stills from The Adventures of Kathlyn. This was designed to boost sales of the newspapers, the serial, and the book, cashing in on every possible way to keep the public intrigued by Kathlyn’s trials and tribulations. It was all coordinated, with the Chicago Tribune helping to finance the movie production in hopes of boosting their circulation. The Motion Picture News noted film screenings ended with a reminder to read about Kathlyn in the Sunday newspaper, while the newspaper stories urged fans to go to the “picture theater” to watch the next episode.

Photoplays Become Bestsellers

The Adventures of Kathlyn launched the popular format of action serials with cliffhanger endings, most famously The Perils of Pauline (1914). Funded by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst and written by playwright Charles Goddard, the serial put star Pearl White in dangerous situations, including being menaced by a gorilla (a costumed actor as opposed to the real big cats used in The Adventures of Kathlyn). Fifteen black-and-white photos of Pauline’s adventures accompanied Goddard’s novelization, which Hearst’s International Library Co. published. The title page proclaims it is “a motion picture novel.”

Perils of Pauline title page (1914). Photo by Rosemary Jones.

These early novels convinced other publishers that movies made great books. Novelizations of movies and books illustrated with film stills were quickly released. Hundreds of titles were in print by the 1920s.

In the United States, New York publishers A.L. Burt and Grosset & Dunlap were the most prolific publishers of movie tie-in novels. Both publishers specialized in issuing cheap hardcover reprints of popular fiction and classics. As silent movies adapted these stories to film, publishers found it easy to insert four to eight stills into their versions. Colorful dust jackets trumpeted that the book was the basis for the movie and named popular film stars as prominently as authors. Both publishers used the term photoplays to describe these books illustrated with movie stills. Grosset’s advertisements trumpeted that their books allowed the audience “the secret of enjoying the films over and over again in a comfortable armchair by your own fireside.”

Silent movies were a worldwide phenomenon, as were movie tie-in books. German scriptwriter Thea Von Harbou’s novel Metropolis appeared in multiple languages with illustrations from the 1927 silent movie directed by Fritz Lang. The Readers Library (UK) dust jacket art emphasizes the movie’s Art Deco design and robot. Von Harbou also wrote The Rocket to the Moon, which was the basis for Lang’s 1929 silent movie Frau in Mond (Woman in the Moon). The illustrated movie tie-in edition released by Readers Library used the title The Girl in the Moon.

Metropolis dust jacket, Readers Library edition, photo courtesy of Fantasy Illustrated ABAA. More Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Tie-Ins

Today, silent movie tie-in novels featuring science fiction, fantasy, and horror films attract the most interest from collectors. Some of these are still famous films, like Metropolis. Others are more obscure, like the 1916 version of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Some films are lost, such as the 1922 edition of The Young Diana, inspired by Marie Corelli’s earlier novel. The movie tie-in version is the only way to see how Marion Davies portrayed its heroine, who is rejuvenated by a scientist. But all are testimony to the importance of science fiction and fantasy in the silent era.

A childhood favorite adapted to film early on was Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Grosset published an oversized gift edition with photos from the 1915 silent movie. An account of how the picture was filmed before a live audience at the Savoy Theatre appears at the beginning of the book.

Alice in Wonderland colored frontispiece (1915). Photo by Rosemary Jones.

Douglas Fairbanks’s Thief of Baghdad (1924) was a stunt and special-effects fantasy extravaganza. The novelization was done by Achmed Abudallah, who listed himself as “the writer of many lands and many people.” As was common in the silent era, Abudallah’s biography sounded as romantic as his stories, claiming he was the son of a Persian princess and an exiled noble cousin of the last Russian czar. The A. L. Burt edition featured a wraparound dust jacket art by Willy Pogany with Fairbanks and his princess on the front and the Chinese American actress Anna May Wong in her breakout role as a villainess on the back.

The Thief of Bagdad (1924) with reproduction dust jacket. Photo by Rosemary Jones.

Lon Chaney’s groundbreaking, fantastic make-up in horror films is evident in the movie tie-in version of The Phantom of the Opera (1925). The book features four stills from the movie, two double-page color plates from earlier editions of the novel, and a wraparound dust jacket where the dead body on the grand staircase is cleverly centered on the spine. So, whether face-out or spine-only, this book was sure to attract fans of the Phantom.

Phantom of the Opera (1925) with reproduction dust jacket. Photo by Rosemary Jones. Enduring Connection to Silent Films

While the Jazz Singer and other sound experiments ended the silent movie era by 1930, the movie tie-in novel remained strong. Every decade has brought new movie tie-in novels, novelizations, and spin-offs in ever-increasing numbers.

But these silent movie tie-in books make charming reminders of early science fiction, fantasy, and horror films. Sometimes they are the easiest versions to find. Only fragments of The Adventures of Kathlyn remain in existence (which can be watched on YouTube courtesy of the Eye Filmmuseum), but McGrath’s novel is widely available in the used-book market.

Explore more articles from THE HISTORY FILES

Rosemary Jones collects illustrated fiction, including Photoplays. She has authored seven novels based on games, including two for Forgotten Realms/Wizards of the Coast and five for Arkham Horror/Aconyte. Her latest AH novels, The Nightmare Quest of April May and The Arcane Gamble of Harvey Walters, feature books from her collection tucked on the characters’ bookshelves. More about her writing can be found at rosemaryjones.com. Pictures of her book collection are available at @lost_loves_books on Instagram.

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The Omega Sci-Fi Awards has revealed the winners of its Tomorrow Prize short story competition:

• FIRST PLACE: File: Anna Bishop , Abigail Lee
• SECOND PLACE: The Continuity States of America , Jadyn Manguera Shin
• THIRD PLACE: Bellwethers , Theodore Kinsella

Other finalists include:

• The Drought Code , Hanaa Belkacemi
• Mother , Yedsen Troy Dela Cruz

Honorable mentions were given to the following stories:

…Read More

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The five regional winners of the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize have been announced. Works and authors of genre interest include Mehendi Nights by Sharon Aruparayil. The winning stories have been published online by Granta.

After a final round of judging, the overall winner will be announced in an online ceremony June 30, 2026. The winner receives £5,000, while the regional winners each receive £2,500.

The Prize has recently been the …Read More

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The Ignyte Awards Committee has announced the finalists for the 2026 Ignyte Awards, which seek to celebrate the vibrancy and diversity of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.

Outstanding Novel: Adult

• A Song of Legends Lost, M.H. Ayinde (Saga) amazon/bookshop
• Cursed Daughters, Oyinkan Braithwaite (Doubleday) amazon / bookshop
• Motheater, …Read More

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After a long career of publishing gorgeous limited editions, collections, art books, and novellas, publisher Bill Schafer has shared the news that Subterranean Press will be permanently closing in the coming years. Subterranean intends to continue publishing work through the end of 2027, which may bleed into 2028 as we wrap things up. Schafer says,

We want to handle this in a structured, orderly fashion, which will include communicating with …Read More

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The shortlist for the 39th annual Arthur C. Clarke Award, celebrating the best science fiction novel published in the UK, has been announced.

• Dungeon Crawler Carl, Matt Dinniman (Dandy House US; Michael Joseph UK) amazon / bookshop
• The Dream Hotel, Laila Lalami (Pantheon US; Bloomsbury Circus UK) amazon / bookshop
• Luminous, Silvia Park (Simon & Schuster US; Magpie UK) amazon / bookshop
• There Is No Antimemetics Division, QNTM …Read More

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The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the winners of the 2025 Bram Stoker Awards at an awards banquet during StokerCon 2026, held June 4-7, 2026 in Pittsburgh PA and streamed virtually.

Superior Achievement in a Novel

• WINNER:The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga) amazon / bookshop

• Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix (Berkley) amazon / bookshop
• King Sorrow, Joe Hill (William Morrow) amazon / bookshop

…Read More

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The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has released the winners of the 2025 Nebula Awards.

Novel

• WINNER:The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; Titan UK) amazon / bookshop

• When We Were Real, Daryl Gregory (Saga) amazon / bookshop
• Katabasis, R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager US; Harper Voyager UK) amazon / bookshop
• Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow; Gollancz) amazon / bookshop
• The Incandescent, Emily …Read More

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Introducing SFWA’s 61st Annual Nebula Award Winners

San Francisco, CA  – Saturday, June 6, 2026

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is proud to announce its latest Nebula Award winners for works published in 2025, as first presented during the Nebula Awards Ceremony on Saturday, June 6, at the organization’s 61st Annual Nebula Awards Conference at the Crowne Plaza Chicago O’Hare Hotel and Conference Center in Chicago, Illinois.

The Nebula Awards are voted on by SFWA Members in good standing, and they represent the views of professional SFF writers on the state of their industry and recent excellence within it.

Since 1965, SFWA has advocated for writers of science fiction, fantasy, and related genres. From that very first year, the Nebula Awards process has been one of SFWA’s foundational pathways to improving literary community for SFF writers.

This year, SFWA celebrated two inaugural awards: one for Poem, and one for Comic. Like the Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation and the Nebula Award for Best Game Writing, these new awards celebrate writers at the heart of productions that also involve editors, artists, publishers, producers, and a wealth of other team members who make the magic happen. When voting opens later this year for work published in 2026, the second of these awards will be listed as Comics Writing.

The Nebula Awards Ceremony also celebrates excellence in science fiction, fantasy, and related genres through the issuance of special awards. This year, under the care and guiding words of Toastmaster Tananarive Due, the organization honored its 42nd Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, N. K. Jemisin, the seasoned author of the Inheritance Trilogy, the Broken Earth Trilogy, and the Great Cities Duology, among others. SFWA also celebrated the excellent curatorial and community-building work of Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award Recipient David Langford, the tremendous genre commitment of Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Recipient Gay Haldeman, and the outstanding legacy of Infinity Award Recipient Roger Zelazny.

SFWA is delighted to announce that its next Nebula Awards Conference and Ceremony will be held in Seattle in June 2027. There is much to do to prepare for Nebula 62, but it all starts and ends with the power and purpose of good writing. Thank you to everyone who votes, writes, reads, and otherwise contributes to the betterment of this genre in all its brilliant forms.

The Nebula Award for Novel

When We Were Real, by Daryl Gregory (Saga)
★ The Buffalo Hunter Hunter, by Stephen Graham Jones (Saga; Titan UK) ★ 
Katabasis, by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager US; Harper Voyager UK)
Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow; Gollancz)
The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh (Tor; Orbit UK)
Sour Cherry, by Natalia Theodoridou (Tin House; Wildfire)
Wearing the Lion, by John Wiswell (DAW; Arcadia)

The Nebula Award for Novella

Disgraced Return of the Kap’s Needle, by Renan Bernardo (Dark Matter INK)
★  The River Has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia) ★ 
The Death of Mountains, by Jordan Kurella (Lethe)
Automatic Noodle, by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
But Not Too Bold, by Hache Pueyo (Tordotcom)
“Descent”, by Wole Talabi (Clarkesworld 5/25)

The Nebula Award for Novelette

“Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh”, by Marie Croke (Beneath Ceaseless Skies 1/9/25)
★ “Uncertain Sons”, by Thomas Ha (Uncertain Sons and Other Stories, Undertow Publications) ★
“We Begin Where Infinity Ends”, by Somto Ihezue (Clarkesworld 2/25)
The Name Ziya, by Wen-Yi Lee (Reactor; Tor Books)
“Never Eaten Vegetables”, by H.H. Pak (Clarkesworld 1/25)
“The Life and Times of Alavira the Great as Written by Titos Pavlou and Reviewed by Two Lifelong Friends”, by Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 3-4/25)

The Nebula Award for Short Story

“Through the Machine”, by P.A. Cornell (Lightspeed 5/25)
“Six People to Revise You”, by J.R. Dawson (Uncanny 1-2/25)
“In My Country”, by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 4/25)
“The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead”, by E.M. Linden (PodCastle 2/18/25)
“Because I Held His Name Like a Key”, by Aimee Ogden (Strange Horizons 6/16/25)
★ “Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything”, by Effie Seiberg (Diabolical Plots 5/25) ★

The Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction

The Tower, by David Anaxagoras (Recorded Books)
Gemini Rising, by Jonathan Brazee (Semper Fi Press)
Wishing Well, Wishing Well, by Jubilee Cho (Atthis Arts)
Sunrise on the Reaping, by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic)
★ Into the Wild Magic, by Michelle Knudsen (Candlewick) ★
Goblin Girl, by K.A. Mielke (self-published)

The Nebula Award for Game Writing

Spire, Surge, and Sea, by Stewart C. Baker (Choice of Games)
★ Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, by Guillaume Broche & Jennifer Svedberg-Yen (Kepler Interactive), Developer: Sandfall Interactive, Sandfall S.A.S. ★
Hollow Knight: Silksong, by Ari Gibson & William Pellen (Team Cherry)*
Dispatch, by Mayanna Berrin, Ashley Jeffalone, Suzee Matson, Chris Rebbert, Chad Rhiness, & Pierre Shorette (AdHoc Studio)
Hades II, by Greg Kasavin (Supergiant Games)
Blue Prince, by Tonda Ros (Raw Fury, Developer: Dogubomb)

The Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

KPop Demon Hunters, by Danya Jimenez, Maggie Kang, & Hannah McMechan (Netflix)*
Sinners, by Ryan Coogler (Warner Bros Pictures)*
Severance: “Chikhai Bardo”, by Dan Erickson & Mark Friedman (Apple TV+)*
Pluribus: Season One, by Vince Gilligan (Apple TV+)*
Superman, by James Gunn (Warner Bros Pictures)*
★ Murderbot: Season One, by Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz (Apple TV+) ★

The Nebula Award for Comic

Second Shift, by Kit Anderson (Avery Hill)
Carmilla Volume 3: The Eternal, by Amy Chu (Berger)
Helen of Wyndhorn, by Bilquis Evely and Tom King (Dark Horse)
Fishflies, by Jeff Lemire (Image)
★ Mary Shelley’s School for Monsters: The Killing Stone, by Jessica Maison (Wicked Tree) ★
Strange Bedfellows, by Ariel Slamet Ries (HarperAlley)
The Flip Side, by Jason Walz (Rocky Pond)
The Stoneshore Register, by G. Willow Wilson (Berger)

The Nebula Award for Poem

“Though You Always Are”, by Linda D. Addison & Jamal Hodge (Everything Endless, Raw Dog Screaming Press)
“They Said Robots Are”, by Casey Aimer (Penumbric 6/25)
★ “The World To Come”, by Jennifer Hudak (Strange Horizons 12/22/25) ★
“The Mourning Robot”, by Angela Liu (Uncanny 9-10/25)
“Care for Lightning”, by Mari Ness (Uncanny 1-2/25)
“To Be the Change”, by Nico Martinez Nocito (Strange Horizons 3/10/25)

*No statement on LLM-use received from finalist during final ballot.

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The longlist for the 2026 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic was announced May 25, 2026:

• The Drowned Man's Daughter, C.J. Lavigne (NeWest) amazon / bookshop
• The Works of Vermin, Hiron Ennes (Tor) amazon / bookshop
• Horsefly, Mireille Gagné, tr. Pablo Strauss (Coach House) amazon / bookshop
• Wild Life, Amanda Leduc (Random House Canada)
• The Hunger We Pass Down, Jen Sookfong Lee (McClelland & Stewart) …Read More

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Hellcon, the 64th Japan Science Fiction Convention, has announced the winners of the 2026 Seiun Awards (the Japanese equivalent of the Hugo Awards), honoring the best original and translated works published last year in Japan.

Best Translated Novel

• WINNER: Eversion, Alastair Reynolds, tr. Naoya Nakahara (Tokyo Sogensha)
• WINNER:Babel, R.F. Kuang, tr. Yoshimichi Furusawa (Tokyo Sogensha)

• The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands, Sarah Brooks, tr. Yasuko Kawano …Read More

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The winners have been announced for the 2026 Prix Imaginales, honoring the best works of fantasy published in France.

French Novel

• WINNER: Festin de larmes, Morgane Caussarieu & Vincent Tassy (ActuSF)

• La Nuit ravagée, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo (Gallimard)
• Aatea, Anouck Faure (Argyll)
• Le Solstice des ombres, Sœurs de haine, tome 1, Benjamin Lupu (Mnémos)
• La Fille du feu, Aurélie Wellenstein (Outre Fleuve)

Foreign Novel Translated …Read More

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by J.D. Henning

Read by the author

Look at your keyboard. If you’re on a phone, pull it up for a sec. You’re probably looking at a QWERTY layout. Even with the unlimited theoretical possibilities of a touchscreen, this is what the vast majority of English users see. 

But it’s crap. And we’ve known it’s crap for more than a century.

This all became painfully personal to me in the winter of 2021 when my hands went on strike. As a film editor and screenwriter, my life revolves around my computer. Samurai had their swords, and I have my keyboard. But my hands burned like fire, and my most trusted tool turned out to be the culprit. Repetitive stress injuries are no fun at all. And the horrible part is that a QWERTY keyboard is essentially made to encourage RSIs.

How We Got Here

At their advent in the 1870s, keyboards were ingeniously designed boxes of buttons and levers with actual physical bits of metal slamming against actual physical paper, imprinting ink every time a writer (for the sake of this example, you) hit a key. Problem was, if you really got on a roll—your Dracula/Moby-Dick mashup started to get really juicy—you might jam the typewriter. One lever would interrupt another, and Dracula could not look deeply into the White Whale’s eyes until your machine was serviced. 

Unacceptable.

The industrious designers at Remington & Sons—yes, the rootin’ tootin’ gunmakers—rearranged the keyboard to lessen the likelihood of a jam. This also slowed down your typing speed. So, they intentionally put letters in spots bad for you and good for the machine, because slowly sucking the blood of a whale is better than not sucking it at all. Mr. Remington’s keyboard layout quickly became the standard. And, because we, as humans, don’t like to learn new things, the QWERTY layout stayed in use even when all the mechanical reasons for the QWERTY format disappeared. Hence, your iPhone defaults to it even now, despite making no ergonomic sense at all. We have, by the way, known of its fatiguing nature since the 1910s.

I needed something else for my writing. Something that was made to give priority to the human doing the typing rather than the factory making the tool. Something that wouldn’t make my hands feel like burning charcoal briquettes. Enter stenography.

A specialized keyboard used by stenographers for shorthand. The stenotype keyboard has far fewer keys than a conventional alphanumeric keyboard. Image courtesy of Wikipedia. Stenotype Fights Back

The stenotype machine came about not long after the typewriter, and was, itself, an evolution of shorthand. Heard of Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, or George Bernard Shaw? They all used shorthand. The invention of a machine further standardized the shorthand system, and the advent of electronic stenotype simplified the process even further. Hobbyists have since come along and created free programs to allow anyone to stenotype on their computers.

So, why doesn’t everyone use it?

Remember how I threw shade at the whole human race for not wanting to learn new things? Several paragraphs later, that’s still true. And it goes in spades for stenography.

How Stenography Works

Stenotype is fundamentally different from a typical keyboard. At its root, it’s phonetic. The 23 keys roughly correspond to the sounds in our English language. A word like ‘though’ only needs the phonetic sounds TH and the long O sound. Thus, “though” becomes “THOE.” Add in that these letters are all pressed at the same time and are ergonomically clustered together, and suddenly, my hands have stopped talking about unionizing.

Of course, the complexity of stenotype rises quickly, as there are plenty of homophones and other weird quirks of the English language. This is where another critical element of machine stenography comes in. It’s basically an enormous list of shortcuts, called outlines. The phonetic base exists for many words, but for all the many, many exceptions to these rules, you have outlines. 

Outlines work for phrases as well as words. If, for example, there is a phrase that comes up all the time in your current project, such as “Alucrad gazed at the white whale, trembling with delight,” you could add an outline for the whole thing. Maybe A*GD. If your hands are as finicky as mine, the ergonomic benefits pile up quite quickly: You’re hitting four rather than 56 keys, and the ones you are pressing don’t require your hands to contort to press them. It’s also much faster, both for this phrase and as a whole.

How fast? It varies based on experience, but to qualify as a stenotype court reporter, you need to get to 225 words per minute. And just think: Court reporters do this all day, every day. If ever there was a job serious about ergonomics, it would be this one.

A modern hobbyist level machine. Image courtesy of StenoKeyboards, maker of this and many other fine stenography machines. Is Stenography for You?

The process of learning steno is probably closest to learning to play a musical instrument. This is another way of saying that it is difficult, though how difficult will depend on the person. Is it worth it for the average writer? Probably not, especially if a good old QWERTY keyboard is working fine for you. Learning to stenotype would be like deciding to learn the guitar if you want to master music composition. Will it be helpful? Probably. Is it strictly necessary? No. 

It can, though, be a lifesaver for someone with RSI or other hand mobility issues.

The basics of learning stenography are the same as most skills: practice, persistence, and patience. I followed a free guide (available here) and worked my way through it over two years. That’s a long time, but my wife and I also had two children during that time. Unless you plan on popping out progeny at the same rate, your timeframe will likely differ from mine.

I can now steno quickly enough for day-to-day work (I’m stenotyping right now). For my next big writing project, I plan to mostly stenotype. I’m still slower at this than QWERTY, but I want to write for a lifetime. And an ergonomic, sustainable writing method is, like that great white whale, a goal certainly worth pursuing.

Editor’s note: To learn more about stenography, see How Steno Works At 200 WPM.

Explore more articles from Writing by Other Means

J.D. Henning is a writer and filmmaker. Best known for writing and executive producing Portal Runner, a New York Times recommended sci-fi film, J.D. also recently took home the prize at the 2025 Worldcon film festival for his short film Superior Subject. J.D. can’t escape an incessant need to write in genre, whether it be spies, spaceships, or zombies. He’s the father of two young children. He, his wife, kids, and cat can be found cross-country skiing in his home state of Montana (well…maybe not the cat). You can learn more about his work at henningworks.com.

The post A 23-Button Stenography Keyboard: All Gain, Zero Pain appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

The Nuremberg 2028 Worldcon bid has announced its withdrawal from the race after a decision by a crew-committee assembly.

This decision comes from a mix of personal, organisational and timing reasons. Since our introduction at Smofcon in November, we have received wonderful support from volunteers, artists, experienced conrunners and communities across Central Europe. We are deeply grateful for that.

But as site selection begins, we have to be honest: we …Read More

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The Locus Science Fiction Foundation announced the winners in each category of the 2026 Locus Awards on May 30, 2026, during the Bay Area Book Festival. Tananarive Due, Stephen Graham Jones, and Nnedi Okoraforwere Guests of Honor, withFeatured Local Artist Alyssa Winans. Additional weekend events included readings, panels with leading authors, and a catered reception.

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

• WINNER:Death of the Author, Nnedi Okorafor (Morrow; Gollancz)amazon/bookshop

…Read More

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The 2025 Shirley Jackson Awards nominees for outstanding achievement in horror, psychological suspense, and dark fantasy fiction have been announced.

Novel

• Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, Kylie Lee Baker (Hanover Square)
• Old Soul, Susan Barker (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
• How to Fake a Haunting, Christa Carmen (Thomas & Mercer)
• Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, Grady Hendrix (Berkley)
• Moonflow, Bitter Karella (Run For It)
• The Lamb, Lucy Rose (HarperCollins)

…Read More

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