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

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

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

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

While you are here, please

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

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

The committee “has ...Read More

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

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

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

by Jeremy Zentner

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The American Library Association (ALA) has announced the shortlists for the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence for “the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the U.S. in the previous year” with three fiction and three non-fiction titles.

The fiction shortlist includes James by occasional SF writer Percival Everett (Knopf). The non-fiction list includes Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of ...Read More

James by Percival Everett (Knopf) is the winner of the Barnes and Noble Book of the Year 2024, and fantasy novel Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell (Random House Children’s Books) is the winner for Children’s Book of the Year.

Shortlisted titles are nominated by Barnes and Noble booksellers. The winner was announced on November 15, 2024.

For more, see the Barnes and Noble website.

While you are here, please take ...Read More

MILESTONES

ROY GRAHAM, K ARSE­NAULT RIVERA, and SASCHA STRONACH are now represent­ed by Arley Sorg of kt literary.

LAURA BLACKWELL is now represented by Jake Lovell of Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

AWARDS

JOHN HORNOR JACOBS received the Heasley Prize for Fiction, presented October 22, 2024 at his alma mater, Lyon College in AR.

BOOKS SOLD

TIM LEBBON sold folk horror novel Secret Lives of the Dead to Cath Trechman ...Read More

Author, actor, critic, and filmmaker Tim Sullivan, 76, died November 10, 2024 in hospice care in Newport News VA.

Timothy Robert Sullivan was born June 9, 1948 in Bangor ME. He studied literature and got his degree at Florida Atlantic University, and spent time in Philadelphia, Washington DC, and Southern California.

He began publishing SF with “Tachyon Rage” in 1977 (as Timothy Robert Sullivan). “Zeke” (1981) was a Nebula Awards ...Read More

Time magazine has released a list of 100 Must-Read Books of 2024. Works of genre interest include:

• Ghostroots, ’Pemi Aguda (Norton)
• The Book Censor’s Library, Bothayna Al-Essa (Restless)
• Beautyland, Marie-Helene Bertino (Farrar, Straus, Giroux)
• Your Utopia, Bora Chung (Algonquin)
• You Glow in the Dark, Liliana Colanzi (New Directions)
• A Sunny Place for Shady People, Mariana Enríquez (Hogarth)
• James, Percival Everett (Doubleday)
• The Bright

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Author Bruce Boston, 81, died November 11, 2024. He was best known as a poet, but was also a prolific prose writer. He was the recipient of the first Grand Master award presented by the Science Fiction Poetry Association (SFPA) in 1999.

Bruce David Boston was born July 16, 1943 in Chicago IL and grew up in Southern California. He moved to the Bay Area in 1961 and attended UC ...Read More

The winners of the second Fishing Fortress Science Fiction Awards, honoring the best in Chinese SF writing, were announced on November 9, 2024.

Sci-Fi Master Achievement

• Han Song

Sci-Fi Promoter Achievement

• San Feng

Sci-Fi Educator Achievement

• Li Guangyi

Sci-Fi Publisher Achievement

• Yang Feng

Sci-Fi Translator Achievement

• Li Keqin

Sci-Fi Academy Award

• Yan Feng

Marco Polo Award

• Francesco Verso

Best Novel

• Once Upon a Time in Nanjing, Tianrui Shuofu

Best

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BizarroCon has announced the winners for the 2024 Wonderland Book Awards for Excellence in Bizarro Fiction.

Best Novel

• WINNER: Edenville, Sam Rebelein (William Morrow)

• The Last Night to Kill Nazis, David Agranoff (CLASH)
• Elogona, Samantha Kolesnik (WeirdPunk )
• Glass Children, Carlton Mellick III (Eraserhead)
• Soft Targets, Carson Winter (Tenebrous)

Best Collection

• WINNER: All I Want is to Take Shrooms and Listen to the Color of

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The 2024 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF), which “will send a European fan to the 2025 Worldcon in Seattle,” is open for nominations until December 20, 2024.

TAFF “was created in 1953 for the purpose of providing funds to bring well-known and popular [science fiction] fans familiar to those on both sides of the ocean across the Atlantic. Since that time TAFF has regularly brought North American fans to European conventions ...Read More

Clarion West has announced that their next six-week workshop will be held virtually instead of in-person, and will run June 22-August 2, 2025. The new format is “designed to give students more time to write, additional lecture time with instructors, and more experimentation with workshopping models.” The instructors will be Maurice Broaddus, Malka Older, Diana Pho, and Martha Wells. Applications open on December 1, 2024 and close February 15, 2025. ...Read More

Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape; Grove Atlantic US) is the winner of the 2024 Man Booker Prize. It depicts the lives of astronauts, and is “the first Booker Prize-winning book set in space.”

This year’s shortlist also included James by Percival Everett (Mantle;Doubleday US).

The £50,000 prize is “open to works by writers of any nationality, written in English and published in the UK or Ireland.” This year’s judges

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ActuSF has announced the winners for the 2024 Prix de l’Uchronie. The prize is awarded to works of alternate history, written or translated into French and published between September 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023.

Prix Littéraire

• WINNER: Noblesse oblige, Maiwenn Alix (Slalom)

• L’Affaire Crystal Singer [Singer Distance], Ethan Chatagnier, translated by Michelle Charrier (Albin Michel Imaginaire)
• Le Huitième Registre 1. Le Silène assassiné, Alain Bergeron (Alire)
• Protectorats, Ray

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Winners for the 2024 Premio Italia Awards have been announced, honoring accomplishments in the field of Italian fantasy and science fiction.

International Novel

• WINNER: Le navi d’ossa [The Bone Ships], R.J. Barker (Meridiano Zero – Elara)

• L’archivio dei finali alternativi [The Archive of Alternate Endings], Lindsey Drager (Zona42)
• The Kaiju Preservation Society, John Scalzi (Fanucci Editore)
• Fattore Rh, Charles Stross (Mondadori)
• Project Hail

...Read More

by Carrie Finch

Editor’s note: This piece is part of an occasional series titled Writing by Other Means, in which authors share personal experiences and industry intel around different production contexts and writing tools.

Painters have brush and canvas. Dancers have mirrors and marley floors. Musicians have their instruments and the loving maintenance they require. Artists and craftspeople have beautiful tools with storied pasts that ground them in their history. There’s an easy access to the romance of the craft, a tantalizing indulgence that can feed the love and lift the passion when the grind of the work makes energy wane.

Writers type. A lot. It’s tough to be a writer in this era and not spend the bulk of our time typing. In the recent SFWA Blog article (Temporarily) Computer-Free Writing, N. R. M. Roshak wrote about alternative methods of getting our words onto the page, mentioning first the historic standard of pen on paper. Personally, I’ve found a lot of joy in writing by hand, especially using fountain pens. There’s a quiet pleasure in putting pen to paper, a sort of reaching back through time, thinking of the writers who–with similar tools–were able to create my favorite stories.

Why Use Fountain Pens

As writers, we’re cautioned against being too attached to any part of how we do our work. At every turn, we’re told “kill your darlings,” not just in prose but in process as well. And there is wisdom in this. There is a fine line between being particular and being precious. Don’t get too attached to your seat at the library, lest you find someone else sitting in it. Don’t get too attached to your corner café, lest it close, and suddenly you’re incapable of working at the pace you once could. Flexibility allows us to get our work done, even when the conditions aren’t right.

But there is something to be said for indulgence. There is something to be said for a routine that allows your mind to turn away from worries about the real world, the house that needs cleaning, the family that needs caring for, the boss that emails after hours, and turn toward the work of writing. Making that cup of tea. Turning on that specific playlist (or sometimes, that single song on repeat for hours). Adjusting the lamp to have the light just so.

Fountain pens can be part of that indulgence. The weight of the pen in your hand, the drag of it across a sheet of paper, can be such a satisfying tactile experience. Depending on your preferences, some pens will make noise as they scratch along the page. Others glide smoothly and silently. It can be such a delight to discover your preferred set of tools and to have that delight carry into your next writing session when you bring them out.

There are also practical reasons to use fountain pens. Earlier this year, R.J. Huneke wrote in his article Writing SFF With Paper and Pen Spurs Memory and Creativity about the benefits of using pen and paper, the way it can change our cognitive processes, allowing us to be creative in ways that typing might not. If you were inspired to try writing by hand, I highly recommend fountain pens. Unlike most pens, they require absolutely no pressure to deposit ink onto the paper, other than the weight of the pen itself. You no longer have to grip the pen or press down on the page, which can prevent fatigue and even injury.

Recently, I went to the San Francisco International Pen Show, three days dedicated to the world of fountain pens. And if there’s one thing I’ve seen to be consistent among fountain pen fans, it’s how excited we are to talk to anyone about pens. Show us the slightest bit of curiosity, and we’ll happily talk your ear off, offering our opinions on the ideal starter pen on the way.

Where to Start

And what is the ideal starter pen? The popular recommendations are the Lamy Safari and the Pilot Metropolitan, and whichever you pick I recommend starting with a fine nib. They come with ink cartridges, so all you have to do is click one into place and wait for the ink to start flowing. But if you want to use bottled ink, most pens will also come with a converter, a device that draws up ink into the pen. There’s a slight learning curve with a fountain pen, as the angle with which you hold the pen does matter. Prepare to play around with this a little bit until you find what’s comfortable for you.

Perhaps you’re asking: What about left-handed writers? The richly flowing ink can take a moment to dry, and most lefties will say this is just long enough for it to smear across the page and stain the side of their hand. But there are solutions available. Faster-drying inks, more absorptive paper, and finer nibs can all help avoid some common issues encountered by those who write left-handed.

There’s a wide world of pens, each settling in the hand differently. There’s also a wide world of nib styles. Not just the flexion in the metal, but also the grind of the nib, which can be fine-tuned for your hand by a professional. There are a multitude of inks available, and each one will feel slightly different as you write with it. 

And don’t forget the paper, each with a different texture, thickness, and rate of absorption, each giving a different writing experience. You don’t have to start anywhere special; your run-of-the-mill spiral notebook is just fine. But once you decide to explore further, there are plenty of videos and blog posts demonstrating how various papers soak up ink and whether they bleed or ghost (differing ways in which the ink is visible on the other side of the page). There are also paper sample packs available, so you can work with several papers before you commit to one. Some people prefer a smooth glide, others enjoy coarse feedback. Some people are fine with a bit of ghosting, others are repulsed by the thought. Just like with pens, you get to discover your own personal fit here.

I hope this inspires you to consider starting your own fountain pen journey or perhaps reignites an old hobby. Whatever you’re looking for in your handwriting experience, there’s a combination of tools that will feel just right for you. And like all things in life, the journey is part of the experience. Happy writing!

Carrie Finch is a writer in San Francisco, California. Her published fiction includes fantasy, science fiction, and horror. She goes by “geardrops” on every social media imaginable and would love to talk to you about fountain pens. carriefinch.com

The post Only as Good as Our Tools: Drafting by Hand and Fountain Pens appeared first on SFWA.