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by Josh Heath

Read by the author  

Writing for games is a lot of fun. I’ve written a lot in the tabletop RPG industry, and a little bit on the video game side of things too. One of the less fun things is contracts. Your contract (you have one, right?) is probably the most important piece of paperwork you have. Your contract should lay out a lot of things (such as payment), and it should be very clear about who owns the intellectual property (IP) you are developing. A lot of creators over the years (in comics, TV, games, etc.) have not realized they were Work for Hire or Work Made for Hire and didn’t know what that means. Or they did know and are a little grumpy when they see no residual benefit from their creation years down the line. If you’re looking to work in the games industry, there are some things it’s helpful to know about Work for Hire before you start.

Rights, No Rights, and Things in Between

Most people working in games are contract freelancers, particularly in the TTRPG industry. If you’re one of the few full- or part-time employees working in games, you should also understand if you’re Work for Hire (probably) and how that impacts your ownership (or lack of it) around the things you’re developing. If you write words for someone else, you should always have a contract that details your rights as clearly as possible. This might be included in a standard employee document or it might exist as a separate IP document. 

Work for Hire: Usually No Rights

With a Work for Hire contract, you generally don’t have any rights to the IP you generate. The entity you work for, either an individual or a business, is the one who owns all the rights to the work you’ve developed. Legally speaking, they are the author, not you. There are a lot of nuances when it comes to IP, and I’m not a lawyer, so this is not, and is not intended as, legal advice and is for informational purposes only. My experience here is just from being a writer and a publisher. I’ve been on both sides of the Work for Hire contract.

You might be hired to write 20,000 words about a fantasy town, for example. That town may become super popular with fans. What if a movie or TV show, another game, or toys are made featuring your town? Under a Work for Hire contract, the company you worked for owns that town. It also profits from derivative media, and it can sell those rights in the future.

For a lot of projects, that’s fine. The large majority of games created, particularly in the TTRPG space, never go on to make any meaningful derivative media. When you work for hire, you help create something cool that people get to play in or with, and that gets you credits that often build up into more and more work. Nothing about this is bad. This is how nearly every writer gets their start in the games industry.

What About Rights?

When you create your own work, you own the rights to your creation. Some contracts, even if you work for hire, grant you some rights to your work as well. At minimum, you should always receive the right to credit for your work, even in a Work for Hire situation. Having your name on the product helps you get more work, proves you can work for others, and it’s nice to have your name on the game you helped create. There are some rare instances where ghost writing or non-credit is acceptable, but really, truly, they are so rare that I never recommend them to people. Always get your name on your work.

Contract Clauses to Consider

As a publisher who also works as a contract writer, I try to include a few of these clauses in contracts for my freelancers. You will almost always have to ask for them, but it never hurts to ask. I view these as modifications to a Work for Hire contract; some folks view them as functionally changing the contract into something that isn’t Work for Hire. Either way, it helps you decide if the project is right for you.

• Residual royalties for derivative media: This is often a clause that you can get in a TTRPG project, but much less common in a video game project. Derivative media can mean a lot of things: toys, movies, TV shows, games, cereal—basically anything that uses elements of the IP in a new product. It doesn’t have to be large, but this is a clause I really believe in. Even a 0.5 or 0.1 percent residual on derivative media can net you a lot of money if the project you’re working on hits the big time. I feel like this is a mandatory request, but it certainly isn’t something you’re guaranteed to get. Example clause: “If any derivative media is created using the work of [Writer/You], they will be due a royalty of [X percent] of gross proceeds from that project.” 
• Right to create derivative work: This is somewhat uncommon, but I’ve seen this clause before. It allows you to create additional projects of your own in the world you helped to create. This is particularly useful in TTRPG work, where you may want to develop an adventure, setting book, or support play material that builds on your previous work but doesn’t fit in a product the publisher is producing. Normally, the company who owns the work has the first right to publish it, and they have the right to refuse your publication of any derivative work completely. Example clause: “[Writer] has the right to produce derivative work, like adventures, supplements, and expansions based on their own material created for [Product/Product Line]. [Publisher] has the right to review and deny publication of this material and retains the right to purchase this work from [Writer] at the same or better rate paid for original work and publish said work.”
• Right of return for lack of publication: This is a weirder one, but one I recommend asking for too. In the somewhat rare case that your work never gets used, the right of return for lack of publication allows you to reuse the work you developed. This is particularly valuable if what you wrote is something discrete from the overall project. I did this with the very first TTRPG adventure I wrote. The publisher disappeared months after a successful Kickstarter, and three years later I reclaimed my rights to the adventure and published it. I had to email the publisher to make this request, and per my contract they had a set period to respond. If they had not responded at all, the rights would still have reverted to me. Example clause: “If [Work] is not published within [X Years, X months] then [Writer] may request the right to have their work returned to them without penalty or charge. This request must be made via email to [Address], and if no response is received within [X time] then [Publisher] is assumed to affirm the request. This work may then be published by [Writer] or any other entity, and [Publisher] will have no rights over that work in any form in the future.” There might also be a termination clause that ends the contract in these circumstances.

Hopefully this gives you a solid baseline around understanding your rights under Work for Hire. These sorts of projects are ideal for getting started in game writing. Good luck!

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Josh Heath is a tabletop games designer and the Chief Operations Officer of High Level Games. www.highlevelgames.ca He has worked for a bunch of different companies, including many work-for-hire situations over the years. He also acts as a coach to new tabletop game designers and writers looking to build relationships and experience in the industry.

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by Eowyn Scott

Read by Robert Greenberger

Imagine breaking your arm while backcountry skiing. A hiker finds you, sees your injury, and informs you that skiing is dangerous, so it’s your fault you broke your arm. The hiker might be right, but pointing fingers doesn’t fix your broken arm, and you’ll likely wish they would just go away. Too many people approach climate change conversations like the hiker, focusing on the problem rather than the solution. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Especially not in fiction. 

Audience and Goal

When including climate change in your story, whether as part of worldbuilding or central to the plot, your first step should be to consider your audience and what you want them to take away from your story. Do you want to express your frustration by reminding politicians who’s at fault or do you want to give a climate-anxious reader hope and inspire them to action? 

Yale completed a study on how Americans think about climate change and found that we fall into six categories, going from most aware and most motivated to least aware and least motivated. They call this “Global Warming’s Six Americas.” 

According to Yale’s climate communication website, from 2015 to 2025, “the Disengaged, Doubtful and Dismissive audiences have remained relatively similar in size over the past decade.” And, as of 2025, 69% of Americans fell into the Alarmed, Concerned, and Cautious sections.

Knowing the Disengaged, Doubtful, and Dismissive have remained stable for so long means they likely won’t be changing their mind or reading any climate fiction. So, for our cli-fi audiences, if you are looking to inspire your readers to act, focus on the Alarmed, Concerned, and Cautious because they are the ones who will have the most to gain from your story. Especially because among these groups, many don’t know what to do with their concern.

Less Fear, More Hope

Fear can be a powerful motivator. But as we saw in the Yale study above, more than two-thirds of the country is already afraid. So, consider what it might do to your audience if you lean into hope, rather than piling on more fear.

Don’t avoid showing the impacts of climate change and/or the steps that led to those impacts in your world. Sometimes the pain and struggle must be felt to be believable and have the kind of impact that moves your readers. But the causes should be a smaller percentage of your story. If you focus on the problem rather than the solution, you risk your reader shutting down, or at least shutting your book. If you want readers to feel empowered, give them hope and help them believe they can make a difference.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy is an excellent example of a complex story that paints a very real picture of the devastating impacts of climate change, but the plot centers on a resilient family doing everything they can to survive, protect one another, and care for the island they inhabit. One of the characters says this very poignant quote: “Maybe we will drown or burn or starve one day, but until then we get to choose if we’ll add to that destruction or if we will care for each other.”

Solutions

Not all cli-fi should be utopian, but it can be an opportunity to showcase creativity and ingenuity. Fantastical solutions can inspire readers to create real-world advancements, much as sci-fi has led to many modern technologies (e.g., digital billboards from Blade Runner and smartphones from Star Trek). Enable people to visualize new possibilities, rather than fearing things they often cannot control.

The solarpunk subgenre showcases thriving societies where technology and nature grow in harmony. We don’t have to choose nature or technology. We can choose both. Becky Chambers’s A Psalm for the Wild-Built depicts characters living harmoniously with nature on a moon after Earth was deemed uninhabitable due to climate catastrophe. However, the tone of the book is calm, contemplative, and hopeful.

If you want readers to build a better world, try showing them what that could look like. 

Genre Superpower

A superpower of sci-fi and fantasy is its ability to tackle tough topics in a digestible and entertaining way, as seen in this Climate Fiction Book List. SFF naturally creates a level of distance between the reader and the subject matter, so when you add suspension of disbelief on top of that, readers are more willing to engage with tough topics that might otherwise be triggering or stressful. 

N.K. Jemison’s Broken Earth trilogy is an example of apocalyptic cli-fi full of natural disasters, but follows characters whose magic allows them to manipulate the earth and fight back. By using a secondary world and infusing it with magic and unrelenting resilience, the story is more digestible than a comparable story would have been in contemporary fiction.

Conclusion

Be intentional with your audience and your goal when including climate change in your writing. Consider how you want to accomplish that goal and then use your genre to your advantage. 

For more resources on writing climate fiction, check out the Good Energy: A Playbook for Screenwriting in the Age of Climate Change. The website is geared toward screenwriters, but its resources could benefit any kind of writer.

Remember, don’t be like the hiker. Rather than enumerating where we went wrong, show how we could get it right. Portray resilient characters who have the power to make their worlds better, and maybe your readers will realize they have that power too.

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Eowyn Conain Scott has an MFA in Creative Writing for Young People and was a resident at the Dylan Thomas Summer School in Wales. Her essay “Home Bittersweet Home” was a finalist in a Women on Writing essay contest. Her writing is informed by her BS in psychology, passion for the environment, and background as an educator. Eowyn completed NNOCCI’s five-week Climate Communications Crash Course and taught climate science at a research institute for three years. When she’s not writing or running a mentoring program for teens, she’s out exploring nature with her husband and pup.

The post Taking the Catastrophe Out of Climate Change: Using Fiction to Give Readers Hope appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Will McDermott

Read by Misha Grifka Wander

If you write narrative content for a video, role-playing, or board game—or even write fiction within a game world or for an intellectual property (IP) like Marvel or Star Wars—you will likely be asked to sign a Work for Hire (WFH) contract. These contracts have several major differences from fiction contracts you may have signed when writing your own original fiction. If you’re looking to make the leap from writing original fiction to working within a licensed game or entertainment property, this article will break down some of the differences you can expect to find between writing for yourself versus writing for someone else.

Rights Ownership

Chief among these differences is that you will not own the material you create for that IP. Essentially, you are playing in someone else’s sandbox. WFH contracts almost always stipulate that any materials you deliver under that contract are owned by the license holder upon delivery.

Here is an example taken from such a clause: “Author assigns and transfers all intellectual property rights in the work, and the ownership of and sole rights to the intellectual property rights in the work shall be vested in [COMPANY] from the date of delivery of the work.”

Some WFH contracts will take this a step further by specifying that the WFH contractor freely assigns all rights to the work to the company even when other laws, contracts, or qualifications may say otherwise. Plus, a WFH contract may stipulate you give up your rights to derivative works based on the content delivered. This means later authors working in the IP can freely use any character, locales, plot points, etc. that you created. You no longer own or control their use.

Lastly, some WFH contracts state that revisions are at the sole discretion of the company. Here is an example: The company may “publish, produce, or market work in whatever form or format it deems fit in its entire discretion.”

WFH writers rarely retain any rights to their work, but I have seen one contract that included specific clauses dictating how the author could reprint their story after first use. This involved seeking permission in writing from the company and following their rules about the use of those elements of the story derived from the IP.

Confidentiality Clauses

The other major addition to most WFH contracts is a section on confidentiality. This is especially prevalent in the game industry due to the intense competition between game companies. They must guard their secrets (game titles, release dates, settings, game mechanics, etc.) for many reasons. For example, they don’t want competitors to get wind of an upcoming product and try to beat them to market. They also don’t want to undercut their marketing efforts until the time is right to begin releasing information.

These companies have a vested interest in ensuring that their contractors keep any proprietary information confidential. Here is an example confidentiality clause: “Contractor shall not provide, leak, disclose, or use Confidential Information acquired in connection with this Agreement to any third party without prior written consent.”

The rest of the confidentiality clause details what information is considered confidential (often covering a very broad swathe), when and how much information the contractor can disclose (usually nothing until after the game has been officially announced), and, most importantly, the ramifications and remediation the company may seek if the contractor leaks confidential information. Most often, the immediate result will be termination, but the company could take legal action as well.

Many WFH contracts also demand the contractor return or destroy all confidential information provided to them once the work has been completed. I have rarely seen these clauses enforced, but it is a good idea to remove this material from your physical and digital files at the end of the contract to avoid any unintentional leaks (say if your laptop gets stolen or your files hacked).

Even when you sign a contract with a section on confidentiality, you may also be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement. NDAs are common practice in the game industry and IP tie-in fiction. This topic is discussed in another article in this series, but it’s important to note that NDAs and confidentiality agreements do not prevent you from discussing the contract with your attorney, or any payments or royalties with your accountant.

Other Differences

Rights and confidentiality are the main differences between original fiction and WFH contracts, but here are a few other items to consider: 

• Royalties and scope: Most WFH contracts pay a flat fee for the work, and there will be no provision for royalties. The scope of the work required (500 trivia questions, 100 quest cards, etc.) will be spelled out in the contract or an addendum, along with deadlines. You will often get paid for milestones and/or final delivery, and that will be the end of it. When writing fiction for a game world, you may or may not get royalties depending on the publisher and your status—some tie-in publishers do pay an advance and/or royalties, but not all. 
• Author credit: Whether your name will appear on the game is heavily dependent on the company. Some game companies do not include any credits in their games and attribute the creation of the game to the entire design studio. Other game companies celebrate all contributors on a credits page in the rulebook. Either way, there may be no clause in the contract that ensures your name will be attached to the product.
• Author copies: Many WFH contracts don’t stipulate that you be provided a copy of the game or published product. Many companies do provide these anyway, but you may need to request that copy once it has been published. The common fiction contract practice of providing author copies (especially when the pay is low) is notably absent from WFH contracts. 

Why Sign a WFH Contract

The reality is that if you want to write for the game industry, you will often have to sign a WFH contract. It’s the way that business is done in this industry. The good news is that many game companies seek external writers because they don’t employ staff writers, so there is a decent amount of work out there for contract writers. Plus, the video, board, and role-playing game industries all run on reputation. You will hear about companies that don’t treat their contract writers well. Ask me. I have tales.

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Will McDermott turned a love of science fiction and games into a writing career. He has published nine novels, 30 short stories, and helped create numerous worlds, characters, and stories for card, board, and video games. His fiction is often set in gaming universes, including Magic: The Gathering, Warhammer 40K, Renegade Legion Universe, and Mage Wars. Will is known for bringing larger-than-life characters alive, including Warhammer’s Kal Jerico and Mad D’onne, Magic’s Balthor the Stout, and Night Stalker’s Carl Kolchak. Check out willmcdermott.com for more.

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by Deanna Richards

Speculative fiction offers YA writers something that realistic fiction cannot: the freedom to craft worlds with fantastic, supernatural, or technologically or scientifically enhanced elements that serve as a protective container for catharsis—allowing young readers to safely explore trauma and experience individual and collective liberation.   

Transmuting Trauma Through Genre 

Before diving in, let’s start with a few definitions. Traumatic events are often described as frightening or dangerous experiences, and can include natural disasters, physical or emotional abuse, neglect, experiencing or witnessing crime, violence, death, or war. An overwhelming emotional and somatic response to a traumatic event, which can oftentimes contribute to long-lasting distress, is defined as trauma. Liberation, in this context, means the act of release—which may result in freedom from physical imprisonment, oppression, or harmful psychological states.

Young readers are bound to encounter challenging topics in books, and while some may be comfortable or even prefer exploring those topics in realistic, contemporary fiction, speculative fiction offers readers the chance to experience difficult content in a way that may feel less directly threatening. It also allows for the inclusion of liberatory outcomes that would not be possible in a non-speculative work.

Tomi Adeyemi is one of many writers who has intentionally used speculative fiction to expose, explore, process, and combat trauma with historical roots, such as colonization, the legacy of slavery, and racism. In the Author’s Note at the close of Children of Blood and Bone (2018), she names her intentional choice to use fantasy as a way of transmuting the sense of helplessness and grief into a liberatory experience:

Although riding giant lionaires and performing sacred rituals might be in the realm of fantasy, all the pain, fear, sorrow and loss in this book is real. Children of Blood and Bone was written during a time where I kept turning on the news and seeing stories of unarmed black men, women, and children being shot by the police. I felt afraid and angry and helpless, but this book was the one thing that made me feel like I could do something about it.   

Authors A. S. King, Tracey Deonn, and Justina Ireland also use speculative fiction as a vehicle to explore trauma within interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships, as well as in systemic structures. King’s Dig (2019) addresses family trauma alongside gender-based violence and employs a supernatural element—the spirit of a murdered girl—to exact justice. Deonn’s Legendborn Cycle (2020–2025) tackles traumatic grief alongside racial trauma and allows characters liberation through the reclamation and harnessing of ancestral magical powers. Ireland’s Ophie’s Ghosts (2021), exposes racial injustices in the aftermath of slavery, and justice and freedom are brought about by an unlikely partnership between the living and the dead. These works are a few examples of texts that successfully create a safe space for readers, transform instead of vicariously traumatize, and turn trauma into triumph. 

Empowerment and Liberation

As SF writers, you are uniquely positioned to provide young readers safe passage during the exploration of trauma and to allow them to experience release in new and creative ways. While YA texts may include realistic representations of extreme violence, loss and suffering, life in poverty and war zones, or impacts of generational trauma, the liberation characters can achieve is confined only by the imagination of the writer. Whether by spells, claws, uncanny physical prowess, or with the aid of deceased ancestors, fairies, or divine entities, you possess endless opportunities to empower your characters, devise innovative strategies to break down oppressive structures and disrupt destructive family patterns, and forge paths toward justice, healing, and catharsis. 

If you want to explore trauma and liberation in your work, consider these questions as you craft your story: 

1. In what ways is your hero empowered? What have they learned to do to survive within their deeply flawed and destructive society and/or family? 
2. Ask this of your hero: What parts of themselves can they embrace to turn the traumatic wound into a source of strength? Into a weapon?  
3. How are SFF elements—the fantastic, the supernatural, the technologically advanced, the magical, the alternative histories, or the secondary world—being used to aid your characters in healing themselves, freeing others, achieving justice, or dismantling oppressive structures and disrupting trauma cycles?

Keeping Your Young Reader Safe 

Although speculative fiction inherently offers a layer of protection by being outside of our reality, the genre alone cannot protect a reader; a made-up world containing traumatic events can still become unsafe. However, you can avoid unintentionally harming the young reader by reflecting on the areas below:  

1. Violence: What is the purpose of violence or cruelty in your work? How does what’s happening shape the character’s psyche?  
2. Pacing: When do your characters have space to breathe, even among the traumatic moments? Where are there moments of lightness? Of joy? Of calm? 
3. Empowerment: Are your characters constantly being acted upon? Are they perpetually disempowered?

By wisely using the tools that speculative fiction offers, you can care for your young reader while grappling with difficult subjects.  

Difficult Worlds, Safe Journeys

All fiction, to some degree, can offer the kind of distance that makes reader engagement with trauma feel safe and empowering. Speculative fiction, however, can push the boundaries of resistance and resilience beyond what is possible in real life (or realistic stories). And for younger readers especially, both those reimagined possibilities and the safety of the fantastic world can provide the chance to safely accompany characters on their complex journeys, experience new ways to challenge oppressive structures and patterns in society, and achieve liberation.

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Deanna Richards is a queer-identified writer and licensed mental health counselor of Jamaican descent. D has participated in several writing workshops, including the Tin House YA Novel Workshop and the Whole Novel Workshop for SFF genre at Highlights Foundation, and graduated in June 2025 from Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, Writing for Young People track.

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by John Ryan

Read by Misha Grifka Wander

If you work in game narrative writing for an extended period, you will eventually be working in someone else’s intellectual property (IP). Whether you write for cultural titans like James Bond or Star Wars or if it’s something smaller (like your friend’s D&D campaign), you’ll be tasked with writing “inside the lines” of their world. This comes with challenges as a writer but also opportunities to bring your own voice to the table.

This article is about game writing, specifically. I can’t speak about what it’s like to write for IPs in other media, but I can talk about my experiences writing for IPs in gaming (Horizon, Guild Wars, Iron Man, Fable, Destiny). 

It’s the Money

Games have always been attracted to big IPs (there have been Star Trek video games since 1971!), but after the 2022 financial downturn, established IPs became the safe bet for game development, whether the games were sequels, reboots, or remasters. The most anticipated game of 2026 is a sequel: Grand Theft Auto 6. And it’s not alone. Check out how many of this year’s games are sequels, ports, expansions, compilations, or somehow connected to an established IP.

For the foreseeable future, well-known IPs are going to loom large in the gaming development space.

Knowing the IP

This is a self-selecting issue during the application process. When you apply for a role (or if you are recruited), you’ll be interviewed and tested on what you know about the IP and if you would be a good fit for writing in the IP’s space. You need to know the difference between Jedi and Sith, between Imperium and Tau, between minotaur and mind flayer. Without having that foundational knowledge, you won’t be taken seriously. The IP’s stakeholders need to know they can trust you with their baby. If you have IP knowledge and the writing chops, you’ll be set up better than a lion’s share of the candidates. 

Mastering the Foundation

One of the biggest mistakes I see from younger game writers is immediately leaping in with their ideas for elaborate missions, epic quest arcs, and complex characters on their first day, even before their first narrative debrief.

In the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi, we meet aspiring chefs under the tutelage of sushi master Jiro Ono who must first be able to properly squeeze a hot towel before they can learn to cut and prepare a fish. After ten years of fish work, they’re allowed to cook eggs, and only after 200 failures did one young chef gain Ono’s approval.

In game writing, you won’t have the luxury of 200 tries to get a scene right, but the fundamentals apply: After you’re hired to work on an IP, you’ll always need to show you can write in the IP’s voice. The good news is, IPs will usually have reference materials (for example, story bibles, pronunciation guides for VO performers, timelines) to read if you have questions about the spelling of a name, how a character might sound when they talk, and when certain events happen. 

This is a crucial point where you talk to other writers, stakeholders, and anyone else who has ties to the game’s narrative. Don’t assume you are the expert. I learned a lot more about how a studio approaches an IP’s narrative from conversations than reading internal wikis. Your goal here is twofold: learning how the studio works, and becoming a subject matter expert on the IP and everything set in place before you showed up.

Only once you can prove you have a mastery over what came before will you be trusted to add your own voice and ideas into the mix. 

Yes, You Have a Voice

Once you get the IP down and you have gained the IP stakeholder’s trust, you’ll be able to bring your voice and ideas to the table. This can take the form of pitching original quests, creating new characters or fleshing out existing ones, and contributing to the lore of the IP. Typically, you need to deliver a brief for your new contributions to your narrative lead (the person on the team who is in charge of the game’s narrative vision) on what you want to add, but this is the point where your hard work starts to pay off and you’re trusted to put your stamp on things.

The most important thing you need to do at this stage is keep communicating with your narrative lead to make sure you are on the right path with your idea because…

Everything Is in Service, Everything Is Experience

Remember that everything you create and add to the game is in service to the IP. Your work is yours, but it takes place in someone else’s sandbox. In game development, you will work with anywhere from 2 to 2,000 other developers in various disciplines (hopefully) rowing in the same direction. Everyone works toward a unified vision but still gets to add their own insights and imagination into what they make. 

Lastly, writing for someone else’s IP can help you with your own writing. It gives you experience with pacing, voice, and lore, just as some creatives got their start writing fanfic or coding game mods to develop the chops and confidence to work on their own stuff while understanding what it takes to make and release a game. Being able to show voice mastery across different genres and franchises will prove you’re versatile to work anywhere. 

Writing for someone else’s IP comes down to trust and competency. Once you get your foot in the door, it’s on you to show your professionalism and attention to detail for the assignment.

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John Ryan is a veteran game writer/narrative designer who has worked on franchises including Fable, Horizon, Marvel’s Iron Man, Guild Wars, Destiny, Forza, and Lily’s Garden. He’s brought stories to life across multiple genres and platforms, including VR and XR. He is currently working on unannounced projects but is always looking for the next adventure. He currently lives near Seattle with his wife, their cat, and a growing backlog of games on his Steam account. You can read more about him and his work at his site: johnryanwrites.com.

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SFWA Names Nancy Kress as 43rd Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master

For Immediate Release

During a Fireside Chat on Friday, August 28 at this year’s Worldcon in Los Angeles (LAcon V), the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) was proud to announce the latest recipient of its Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award: Nancy Kress. SFWA President Kate Ristau and Operations Director Russell Davis were on-scene to celebrate Kress’s extensive contributions to the genre in community.

The SFWA Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award recognizes “lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.” It is named after author Damon Knight, SFWA’s founder and the organization’s 13th Grand Master. Initially, the Grand Master wasn’t given out every year, but from 1975 to 2026 much has changed in our field, including the consistency with which we award this prestigious post. The Grand Master is a title usually conferred well in advance of SFWA’s next Nebula Awards Conference, and its announcement creates more opportunities to inspire excellence in the field, on the road to the Nebula Ballot and Finalist section.

SFWA’s 43rd Grand Master joins a group of powerful writers, including N.K. Jemisin, Nicola Griffith, Peter S. Beagle, Connie Willis, Nalo Hopkinson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Anne McCaffrey, Robin McKinley, Joe Haldeman, among other legends of genre fiction.

Nancy Kress is the author of thirty novels, four story collections, and three books on
writing fiction. Her work has won six Nebulas, two Hugos, a Sturgeon, and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her most recent novel, Observer, co-written with Dr. Robert Lanza, concerns the nature of consciousness, reality, and love. Her forthcoming novel set in the court of Henry VIII, The Queen’s Witch, marks a return to her roots in fantasy. Nancy’s work has been translated into nearly two dozen languages, none of which she can read. She has taught writing at various venues in the United States and abroad, including both Clarions, fifteen years co-teaching with Walter Jon Williams at the intense workshop Taos Toolbox, workshops in Beijing, and a semester as Picador Guest Lecturer at the University of Leipzig. Nancy lives in Seattle with her husband, writer Jack Skillingstead, and Pippin, the world’s most stubborn Chihuahua.

SFWA President Kate Ristau reflects on the timeliness of this selection:

When we choose a SFWA Grand Master, the discussion begins with the Past Presidents. Year after year, Nancy’s name has come up as an author who is long overdue for this award. She has made an incredible impact on our industry not only with her work, but also with her teaching at both Clarions and Taos Toolbox, as well as workshops in Beijing and Leipzig.

She has spent decades writing at the cutting edge of genetics, biotechnology, and human transformation, asking what happens when science changes not only our world, but our understanding of what it means to be human.

There could not be a more prescient time to honor Nancy’s contributions. As we confront the impact of AI on our work and on our livelihoods, Nancy reminds us what it means to be human: to question, to imagine, to connect. Not only that, but to recognize that our humanity cannot be separated from the choices we make about our future.

Former SFWA Presidents further attest to the strength of Kress’s work and contributes to her community:

I met Nancy when we were both teaching at Taos Toolbox. She was as smart, gracious, and generous as everyone in the industry says. I’m tremendously pleased to see her join the ranks of SFWA’s Grand Masters and I know she’ll continue to contribute to the new generations of writers following in her illustrious footsteps.

Jeffe Kennedy (SFWA President, 2021-2024)

Nancy Kress is a master of realistic science fiction that draws you in and keeps you there with her inventive stories and her memorable characters. Her writing is what Hugo Gernsback had in mind when he helped invent the genre.

Paul Levinson (SFWA President, 1998-2001)

“Good writing + good science = an extraordinary talent.”

Barbara Hambly (SFWA President, 1994-1996)

SFWA’s next Nebula Awards Conference will be held in Seattle, June 3-7, 2027, where the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award will be formally bestowed upon Nancy Kress.

The program theme is INTO THE UNKNOWN, and preliminary programming announcements will emerge in September 2026. Conference tickets are on sale for $275 until December 31, 2026, and SFWA is looking forward to an event that will cultivate strong conversations around the state of genre. It is this organization’s privilege to start that conversation by celebrating Grand Master Nancy Kress‘s tremendous accomplishments across science fiction, fantasy, and related genres.

The post Press Release August 28, 2026 appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Monica Cross

Read by Liz J. Bradley

In 2018, I sat in a bar in Ybor City, Florida, and watched a Martian priestess draw tarot cards. Each card corresponded to a video entry from the archive that she had come to Earth to steal. The video entries were that of the first Mars colony mission. As each card was drawn, the priestess embodied one of the original crew members in her search for answers to what happened to Earth’s ecosystem. Her goal was to understand why similar things occurred  on the terraformed Mars. 

L. Nicol Cabe in The Sybil of Mars at Tucson Fringe 2017. Photo by JJ Snyder Photography.

The Sibyl of Mars was performed by its author, L. Nicol Cabe, who stood alone on stage, wearing a flight suit. She had nothing but a chair, a tablet, and her tarot deck. At the end of the show, the sibyl used the tarot cards drawn throughout the hour-long performance to produce a reading that was a call to arms for the audience about how to save our own planet from ecological collapse. Seven years later, I still think about the simplicity of the staging, the complexity of the writing, and the immediacy of the performance. This sort of science fiction and fantasy frequently graces the stages of fringe festivals across the world.

What Is Fringe?

Fringe festivals started over 70 years ago with the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and celebrate original and often experimental performances. A fringe festival does not produce shows, but it provides a framework for artists to present their own work. Writers who want their work done at fringe are either going to produce it themselves or need to find a producer to take on the project.

Most fringe festivals are open to improv, stand-up, dramatic work, musicals, puppets, you name it, and these festivals are often uncensored and unjuried. So while each fringe has its own organizer, culture, and process, there are some common things you can expect at most festivals. For instance, many use a lottery system: Artists apply and names are drawn until there are no slots left.

Jenny Aldrich Walker as Roxanne and Donald Walker as Cyrano in Cyrano on the Moon written and directed by Monica Cross at the Tampa International Fringe Festival in 2017.

There are some fringe festivals that are curated. They select participants in order to maintain a specific feel across their entire event. Whether they are curated or unjuried, there is an expectation among fringe festivals that the shows will be fresh and innovative work.

World Fringe maintains a list of fringe festivals across the globe. Check out their website for more information and to find a fringe near you.

SFF at Fringe

It’s not only the unjuried nature of most fringe festivals that makes them an ideal setting for new science fiction and fantasy plays; it is also the culture of experimentation. Between the relative scarcity of SFF in theater and SFF plays’ tendency toward pushing theatrical limitations, SFF is ideal for the fringe environment. There is a buzz that surrounds fringe festivals, and they attract a very loyal following among a certain type of theatergoer. Most fringe attendees are eager to see something that they can’t get in a mainstream theater. Often, the weirder a show is, the more attention it will receive.

J. Merrill Motz as Chewy in Paper Soul’s 2018 MN Fringe Production of SOFT by J. Merrill Motz.

During my times at fringe festivals, I have found plays of a speculative nature to be well attended and well received. I have seen everything at fringe from an interactive space-adventure play for children (Remy Raygun of the Space Brigade: A Build-Your-Own Space Opera written by Jacob Gulliver and Kyle Dekker) to a dystopian one-man show (Soft written by J. Merrill Motz) about a “nice guy” who is willing to literally torture himself in order to match on an experimental dating app. And I saw them both the same weekend at the Minnesota Fringe Festival.

Why Fringe?

Some playwrights create with the fringe as the final destination for their work. These are the audiences and this is the community that their work is made for. Some of these writers are local to a large fringe that they write and produce for regularly, while others travel around from one festival to another, touring the same show, sometimes for years. The network of festivals to which artists tour a show  is often called “the fringe circuit.” Typically, touring shows are done by solo artists or small groups that write or devise their own material and then also perform it. 

Alex Kingsley and J.R. Steel in Unplanned Obsolescence by Alex Kingsley at Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2023. Photo by Isaiah White.

Other playwrights create shows with the idea of fringe as a starting place for their work. The fringe production becomes “proof of concept” for other theater companies that might be interested in the script. Writers with this in mind might focus on inviting reviewers to their fringe show and getting high-quality photos.

SFF Fringe Success

My most successful play, Cyrano on the Moon, started as a show that I took to the Tampa International Fringe Festival in 2017.

Unplanned Obsolescence, which fellow SFWA member Alex Kingsley wrote for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in 2023, was so popular that it was standing room only by the final performance of that run. Unplanned Obsolescence was later produced by Gender Fucked Productions as a staged reading at Trans Scribe: A New World Festival (Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago).

Manuel Solis-Bauza, Charis Watler, and Isla Llorens in The Vast of Darkness by Bethany Dickens Assaf at Orlando Fringe 2024. Directed by Joe Llorens. Photo by Gontran Durocher.

In recent years, a science fiction play won an award at one of the largest fringe festivals in North America: The Vast of Darkness by Bethany Dickens Assaf won the Critics’ Choice Award for Best Play-Drama at Orlando Fringe in 2024, and it was remounted at Orlando’s mini-fringe, FESTN4, the next year. Orlando is the longest-running fringe festival in the United States, making that a significant recognition among fringe artists.

Go Forth and Fringe!

If you are writing an SFF play, I want to encourage you to consider fringe as an avenue for producing the play. I suggest starting by going to fringe yourself and checking out the work. Talk to artists whose work you like. Fringe artists frequently attend as many other shows as they can, and there are places where artists and audience members can congregate to discuss shows. If you are looking for a producer, reach out to groups that seem to work with playwrights and see if you can pitch them a show idea. If you are interested in self-producing, put a team together and start working on it.

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Monica Cross is a neurodivergent (ADHD/Dyslexic) playwright and dramaturg in Wisconsin. Her work has been produced at Silk Moth Stage, Whiskey Theatre Factory, MadLab, Otherworld Theatre Company, Theatre Odyssey, and the Hippodrome Theatre, as well as various fringe festivals and universities. She has been a finalist for Wisconsin Wrights, semifinalist for Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries and The O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. She was awarded the John Ringling Towers Individual Artist Award for Performing Arts, 2018, and she was a Fellow at the Hermitage Artist Retreat, 2019. She is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.

The post Fringe Festivals: Where New SFF Theater Is Born appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Gabrielle Kirouac Byrne

Read by the author

The Victorians got at least one thing right. In the wake of new technologies and Darwin’s trip on the HMS Beagle, citizen science flourished. The wealth of new discoveries (and people’s access to information about them) stirred hearts and grew in scope and ferocity. All anyone needed to make a potentially valuable contribution was curiosity, a way to take notes, and their own eyes. That spirit of citizen discovery continues today. Whether it’s through binoculars, satellites, or the naked eye, there’s always more to understand and investigate—and we can all take the case.

Victorians loved scientific exploration, but many also loved to combine scientific exploration with fantasy, as in this illustration of a “boa” or “hydra” depicted in Curious creatures in zoology by John Ashton, 1890 (p. 290). Ashton claimed these were found in Italy.
Source: Biodiversity Heritage Library. Applying Familiar Patterns to Fantasy Particulars

Human brains are built for pattern recognition, and we’re a curious bunch. Throughout our lives, we examine the world and collect data to make patterns. On top of that, writers tend to be amazing observers and good at asking questions. We can use these truths to our very great advantage when we create our speculative worlds by building on patterns we know exist in nature.  

A kitten eats and must find food. A bear eats and must find food. I eat and must find food. Therefore, I can imagine that a dragon must also eat and find food. Connecting a fantastical element (dragons) to an observable, obvious pattern (creatures need to eat) can enrich our stories. Multiplied across a world, these simple, familiar connections also help readers inherently connect to that fictional place, even when it’s different in all the particulars.

While the scale and amount of detail we share depends on our word count and our audience, this worldbuilding approach works for readers of any age. We are all in relationship with our world no matter how old we are. All fictional universes combine the strange with the familiar to get reader buy-in, whether it’s an epic adult saga or a middle grade stand-alone. Nature questions help integrate and explore the strange through the familiar. Younger readers may be especially receptive to these patterns of connections because they are still in the process of actively building these observations to understand their own place and power in this world.

Victorians thought the Monster of Lake Fagua lived in Chile.
Via Wikimedia Commons. Basic Needs Are the Building Blocks

Start by applying questions about the basic needs of living beings to your worldbuilding. I’ve included a list of sample questions below. Begin with one creature/animal—ideally one you expect to be at least tangentially relevant to your story—but you can also consider the same questions for related creatures that come up. Most, if not all, of these questions are also relevant to humans/humanoids, and it can be elucidating to use them with your human characters. It’s deceptively simple, but you may be surprised by the trove of information you glean.

Keep in mind that, particularly when writing for kids, even small details can fuel fantastic scenes. Pick your poison (perhaps literally) and these moments of human-animal interaction can be funny, poignant, or pivotal to plot and character development. Whether it’s baby moose snot or the toxins of a colorful frog, ask yourself: What would a kid think was cool/gross/extra/sweet about this fictional creature? What would they do if they came across it? What would you have done at that age? For a young adult, ask whether the interaction could be formative to who they are—or who they’re becoming. Could it provide a deeper understanding or metaphor for something they’re going through?

Be Curious: Nature-based Questions for Your Worldbuilding

●  Is your animal primarily a predator, prey, working animal, or companion?

●  What is this animal called? Start with its common name (e.g., squirrel, dragon, bear-cat, greater bipple-hound). For fun, try exploring a scientific name. For example, a gray squirrel is Sciurus carolinensas. Sciurus comes from the words shadow and tail (in Greek) and the Carolinas were where people documented the beasties.

●  What does your animal eat? If your creature is a companion or working animal, consider what it would eat in its natural environment.

●  Where is your animal’s food found, and what does it have to do to get it? Do other creatures also eat this same food? Does the food have a way to protect itself? What does your animal’s food eat?

●  How has your animal adapted to where it lives? For example, if it lives in a cold place, does it have a fur coat or layer of blubber? If it lives in the dark, does it have a strong sense of smell or good night vision? If it needs to hide in trees, does it have long claws to cling to the bark?

●  What can hurt or kill your animal?

●  When in danger, is your animal more likely to fight or to hide? How is it adapted to do this?

●  Does your animal migrate? If so, why, and when, and how, and to where/how far?

●  How does your animal reproduce? Does it have lots of babies, or is it rare to have children, or is it something in-between? Is your animal born alive, or does it hatch, or clone itself, or something else? How long do babies stay with their parents (or don’t they)?

●  How long does your animal live?

●  Does your animal have a death ritual (e.g., elephants, who often have family graveyards)?

●  What does the landscape look like where your animal lives (mountains, desert, ocean, air, jungle, savannah, urban/sub-urban, other)?

●  What stories would humans share about these animals (scary, funny, irritated, loving, reverent)? Try telling one of these stories.

●  Does this animal (or perhaps one of its related resources or habitats) impact a human system (think economic resources, power structures, social hierarchies, spiritual belief systems—or some/all of the above)? How?

From a single creature, you’ll be building a landscape. For each landscape, you can go on to consider additional questions about things like storms, the seasons, the weather, the light, and more.

Using questions about nature like these, writers can enhance existing fantasy worlds or reverse engineer rich, expansive landscapes from scratch—worlds that impact our characters and touch our readers no matter how old they may be. You don’t need a science degree. Just the directive of Victorian citizen scientists: have fun and be curious.

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Gabrielle Kirouac Byrne lives in the tangled wilds of the Pacific Northwest, where she writes fantasy for both kids and grown-ups. Gabby also works as an editor and book coach for fantasy writers, has degrees in literature and in environmental studies and spent more than 15 years working in communications and non-formal science education on topics related to marine organisms and habitat, conservation, policy, and human health. She is the author of Rise of the Dragon Moon and The Edge of Strange Hollow. Learn more at www.gkbyrnebooks.com.

The post Using Nature to Build Speculative Worlds for Readers of Any Age appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Joyce Reynolds-Ward

Read by Robert Greenberger

Editor’s note: THE INDIE FILES was first launched to provide a space for authors with distinct publishing pathways to talk about their strategies and tools. This conversation is as diverse as the indie SFF universe, and Planetside looks forward to once again elevating a range of voices from SFWA’s Independent Authors Committee. If you’d like to be part of that conversation, please review our archives and reach out to the committee to see what’s already on the roster!

I set up a Patreon recently as part of migrating my catalog from Draft2Digital distribution and discovered that, besides being an established monetization platform, it also helped to organize my writing life!

This wasn’t something I anticipated. I decided to use Patreon in the first place to have a permanent home for short stories without leaving them vulnerable to scraping by AI tools. At the same time, I wanted to work on several projects without burning myself out. Additionally, I thought that using Patreon posts as proof of non-AI-guided human creation for projects in development would be a good idea. And if I made a few dollars a month in the process, well, that’s a steady income.

What I didn’t expect was the sense of relief that washed over me once I took that Patreon live. Even without initial subscribers, I suddenly switched from struggling to work on any of those three projects to doing a little bit of work on each one regularly, without stress.

Using Patreon as an Organizing Tool

One of my most productive periods was when I was regularly serializing several projects on Kindle Vella and Substack. Unfortunately, Vella went away. Substack’s platform is newer and still in development. Plus, Vella and Substack serialization seem to require more intensive posting schedules for visibility, which Patreon doesn’t necessarily.

How does using Patreon as an organizing tool actually work?

1.  It allows an author to break each project into segments with identifiable deadlines. Instead of jamming them all together on one site or creating separate versions, I could give each project its own section, pricing, and schedule, with greater flexibility than Substack allows.
2. Past experience with serialization on Kindle Vella and Substack taught me that trackable deadlines on a spreadsheet are crucial for maintaining multiple projects. The Patreon Library setup provides an easy view of what has been uploaded to create a workable spreadsheet. 
3. Most crucially, Patreon’s organization and layout allows writers to visualize how to  organize these separate sections in a simple manner. My experience managing ADHD remedial structures as a former middle-school special-education teacher has shown me that a tech interface that works well with the individual user is HUGE—and what works differs with each person, whether neurotypical or neurodivergent.

How I Organized Myself Using Patreon

I had four separate sections in mind, which eventually became six payment tiers.

1. A monthly release of my previously published short stories for $2, many of which are no longer available elsewhere. I’m also selling individual stories. I didn’t want to bother with the process of listing them as separate stories through distributors, but I wanted them to be available.
2. An every-other-week release of chapters from the second novel in a fantasy trilogy, in rough draft form, for $4.
3. A neo-Western multiverse time-travel novel that is still in the “where is my story” phase of character development and worldbuilding. I decided to share bits and pieces from that worldbuilding every other week, for $3.
4. A memoir about horses in my life that doesn’t require linear drafting, also posted every other week, also for $3.
5. Free weekly updates on my writing progress with an optional $1 monetization tier.
6. A final tier for $7 gives the reader EVERYTHING.

It sounds like a lot, but the twice-a-month staggered scheduling meant I had space to work on each project without courting burnout, which happened with the Vella/Substack combination. It also provided a simpler interface for people to follow me for specific interests without needing to subscribe to every tier.

I used Patreon’s tier structure to separate the different projects and determine which tier would load in which weeks. I chose Sunday as a universal release date for consistency’s sake and to make it easier on my brain. Then I created headers and determined pricing for each tier.

The Magical Spreadsheet That Keeps It All Together

Spreadsheets. I love using spreadsheets for tracking and organizing purposes. They work well with my cognitive processes.

First, I listed the various postings as columns: weekly updates, short stories, novel, novel-in-development, and horse memoir. Then I set up separate rows for upload dates and live dates. Patreon’s post scheduling method works very well for planning purposes, so I put specific upload and live dates under each posting column, as seen below.

Excel spreadsheet by Joyce Reynolds-Ward

Short stories were listed by month in a separate section with title, upload yes/no, and graphics yes/no (I made a graphic for each story).

Excel spreadsheet by Joyce Reynolds-Ward

This lets me see where I am at a glance, all in one place. As I work, I can upload the drafts to Patreon, then check what else needs to be prepared for the weeks ahead. Instead of floundering around wondering just where I am on each project, I can look at the spreadsheet, then check my Patreon library to see what I’ve done so far.

Doing a Lot While Staying Sane

Patreon’s organizational tools provide a sense of structure, especially since I have many other things going on that aren’t writing-related. I find it easy to pick up where I left off on a particular project, and I no longer feel pressured to get each project done as fast as possible because otherwise I’ll lose visibility. I’m making progress at a sane pace, I’m documenting my creative process, I’m reissuing my short stories, and…I have breathing room to go through the editing and production process with each book because they are at different stages.

I’d never thought that Patreon would be the tool where all of this comes together, but that appears to be the case for me. It’s well worth checking out to see if it could also work for you.

Explore more articles from THE INDIE FILES

Joyce Reynolds-Ward has been called “the best writer I’ve never heard of” by one reviewer. She has published over 32 books that include themes of high-stakes family, corporate, and political conflict, digital sapience, personal agency, realistic strong women, and (whenever possible) horses, frequently in Pacific Northwest settings. She is a Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off semifinalist, a Writers of the Future semifinalist, and an Anthology Builder finalist. She is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, co-chair of SFWA’s Independent Author Committee, and a member of Soroptimists International. Her website is at https://www.joycereynolds-ward.com.

The post How Patreon Can Structure Your Writing Life appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by James Stegall

Read by Misha Grifka Wander

How often do you escape doomscrolling, capture the spark of an idea, then find time to write only to open your laptop to a buzz of distractions?

Restart to update Word. Here’s a tool tip. Please rate our app. Copilot can rewrite that for you! 

Did you forget what you wanted to write?

Sure, handwriting is an option, but you need to maximize available time. It would be nice to write on a device that doesn’t actively get in the way.

You’re not alone. In response to this swarm of digital mosquitoes, writers and tinkerers have started building their own devices they call writer decks.

A well-used Alphasmart Neo2. Photo by James Stegall.

The goals of a writer deck are simple: get to the cursor as fast as possible, long battery life, usable screen, and the ability to easily save and move files. Portability, ergonomics, keyboard quality, and personal style also play big roles. A writer deck is for enabling flow state, not editing.

The name writer deck evolved from building cyberdecks, a hobby paying homage to the history of computing, while imagining alternate timelines of industrial design.While cyberdecks can be more for art than utility, writer decks are designed for productivity. They can be purpose-built or be a repurposed old laptop with reduced connectivity, or a commercial device made for instant-on word processing.

On reddit.com/r/WriterDeck, newcomers ask “Why?” so often that it’s become an inside joke. Why not just use your laptop? Why not just turn off the Wi-Fi? Why not tap into your endless reserve of discipline to crank out words when the whole world wants to get inside your head?  The answer can be frustration, the hunt for better tools, accessibility, a desire to express yourself through your devices, or reduce carbon footprint by using an older device as long as possible. It could also be reclaiming headspace in an increasingly hostile software environment or a desire to protect your work from a future where platforms lock it behind a subscription or incompatible file types.

Getting Started

Many newcomers start with devices in their drawers and closets. The most basic writer deck can be an old phone in airplane mode running Word or Google Docs on an adjustable stand, paired with a Bluetooth keyboard. The upside of this setup is keyboard customization, ergonomics, and simply getting started. Breaking out of the standard shape of a PC to write with a keyboard on your desk and the screen at eye-height can be a game changer for accessibility.

Older Laptops

Any older laptop with a USB port can make a great writer deck. The oldest don’t even have Wi-Fi, which is ideal.

The Achilles’ heel of most laptops is the battery. Remove it completely, making the device lighter, and use a 100-watt portable battery designed for laptops, with a USB-C to DC power jack adapter available at many retailers.Your laptop probably still has Microsoft Word. Or other word processors can be found on archive.org. Don’t let tinkering with the laptop get in the way of using it as a writing device though. Notepad will do the job and save to a USB stick.

A ThinkPad X61, 12-inch laptop. Photo by James Stegall.

A warning: Remember that older devices don’t autosave. Get in the habit of pressing CTL-S on PC or CMD-S on a Mac every few minutes. Save everything to a USB stick for easy transfer. If you’re feeling adventurous, replace the old spinning hard drive with an inexpensive SATA SSD to really speed things up. 

It can be fun to repurpose a cool older laptop with early 2000s design language and hand-friendly curves. While some keyboards are unequivocally terrible, others can be much nicer than the standard chiclet keyboard on today’s machines. And without all the cloud bloat in modern operating systems, an older CPU with limited RAM is often snappier than expected. 

If you don’t have an older laptop, a user on /r/WriterDeck has developed an OS on a USB stick that boots to a simplified desktop for distraction-free writing. Another option is MicroJournal for PC. 

Off-the-Shelf

Ready-made writer decks probably started with the AlphaSmart, but now companies like Astrohaus serve the niche. Their Smart Typewriter, Traveler, and Alpha devices offer e-ink screens, cloud syncing, and long battery life. The boutique nature of these products are reflected in the prices though. 

The Pomera D250US. Photo by James Stegall.

As AlphaSmart devices disappear from secondary markets, more commercial products are available every day. Kickstarter has enabled devices such as the Zerowriter, BYOK (Bring Your Own Keyboard), and Pomera D250 with US Keyboard. E-ink tablets are also growing more popular and offer long battery life and screens free of blinking distractions.

DIY

The popularity of the Raspberry Pi single board computer has greatly lowered the barrier to entry on building your own writer deck. Most projects are open source with build guides on GitHub. YouTube, Hackaday Reddit, and WriterDeck.org also have resources to get started. Members of the writer deck community love to see builds in progress and enjoy offering thoughts on case design, hinge operation, power management, and whatever else makes the device work. 

The BYOK with a Bluetooth keyboard. Photo by James Stegall.

The key behind a great build is to think of the drafting device as a tool that serves you, and mod it any way you like. Clamshell cases, chunky typewriter styles, ultra portable or alternate materials like wood, leather, or metal are all fair game. 

Personal Style

Whether you decide on an older laptop or build your own, the best feature of writer decks is personality. Writers love to decorate their decks with stickers, paint, fuzzy fabrics, or custom keyboards to make them a joy to work on. The goal is to create a device that inspires you and doesn’t get in the way of creation.

Sounds like fun? Time to check the closets for old tech and get some work done.

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James Stegall is a member of SFWA. Writing as James S. Aaron, he is the author of the Aeon 14: Sentience Wars and Galactic Law series. His novel Retreat Hell is coming in 2026 from Aethon Books. He lives in Oregon and likes doing dad things, tinkering, digging in the yard, riding bikes and reading. Learn more at jamesaaron.net.

The post Reclaiming Your Focus with a Writer Deck appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Julie Le Blanc

Read by the author

All you need to get back to writing is one sentence a night.

Let me explain.

When my baby arrived, I wish I could say I had a stash of stories ready for that first round of edits once I’d emerged, moth-like and ethereal, from my maternity cocoon.

Instead, it felt like stepping out of a nuclear bunker.

In between toys, the craft box, and snack time, parents can find time to write again. Photo by Julie Le Blanc.

What is this random page?

What does this note mean?

Never mind fear of the white page. I couldn’t even get near a laptop. Setting up my laptop felt too difficult when I didn’t have enough hands. Also, who was that person who wrote before? They didn’t feel like who I was now.

But what I did have—playing soft, dreamy music in the darkness of my baby’s room—was my smartphone.

The Parent Toolkit

I’ve tried all of these at one point or another postpartum. Some of them I use all the time, and others I pick up and set down as needed. Please feel inspired to do the same. That’s the first piece of advice.

Tell yourself, I am allowed to try. 

And unlike what Yoda says, I can promise you that if you try, you will succeed. One sentence at a time.

1. The One Sentence Wonder

Open the notes app on your phone. Find a good spot to nestle near enough to hear your child breathing but not so close that light would wake them.

The best time for me ended up being just after I breastfed, but before I jumped into a quick cup of tea and/or chores. Alone with them sleeping sweetly next to me in the dark, I’d write one sentence.

That’s it. That’s literally the only step.

The magic of this approach is that you will always write at least one sentence.

I say “always,” but you know what I mean. It’s hard to think you can’t write just one sentence. Even if it’s just:

“Really?” she asked.

The magic comes right after that. You’ve jump-started your brain into thinking about the scene. 

Sometimes, I’d do my one sentence and call it a day.

But often, I’d write more than one sentence.

You will forget what happened sometimes, and you might benefit from a quick reread before you write. But you’re a writer. Reading’s pretty fun too.

With just one sentence a night, what do you have to lose?

2. Voice Memos

Maybe typing takes too long, so if the baba is eating or playing and something comes to mind re: your writing, it’s easy enough to (secure the child with duct tape and a safety harness and) leave yourself a quick voice memo. 

This is especially good for those who are breastfeeding and might have only one hand available, or those with monster work commutes. Call yourself. Leave a message at the tone. Because that idea will most likely have disappeared by the time you get home.

3. The Art Supply Thief

Raise your hand if you are the crafting parent. 

That doesn’t mean you have to be good with crafts, only that you have access to colored paper, wax crayons, and the key to the safe that contains the scissors. And the sticky tape, for some reason.

I find investing in a small notebook, a good cardigan with enormous pockets, and whatever colorful marker your toddler last tried to use as a teething ring works wonders to ensure you have the bare minimum to take some notes for yourself.

None of the elements in this toolkit are meant to be silver bullets. It’s more about how you can get out of your own way, while still giving yourself the dynamic, amorphous time-eating space you need to parent your new human. And having 24/7 access to a pen and paper? Priceless.

4. Sleep Brainstorm when the Baby’s Sleeping

Ah, that sage little walnut. Sleep while the baby’s sleeping.

You know what I like more than sleep?

Writing my first draft.

It must be said that some babies might not sleep well at night, and that makes every aspect of parenting harder, never mind finding a moment to be creative. So please, be kind to yourself if the best way to refuel your writing tank is to follow that age-old advice. Get what sleep you can and consider coming back to this advice once your little one enters a period of more regular sleep.

If you’re too tired but also incredibly stubborn, the next best thing is to lie down beside them and brainstorm. If your fantasy world really does use live snakes as currency, what would that mean for other aspects of their world? If you have a pen and paper or a tablet around, you could even write down your ideas for later.

You might drift off, which is no bad thing; you might also get a bit of worldbuilding sorted out. Win-win.

5. Doe-a-Deer Mnemonics

Listen, Ms. Rachel’s songs will be stuck in your head anyway: Let’s take the reins here and use them to help us remember things when all other methods have failed us.

Perhaps today you don’t have any pockets. And you forgot to plug in your phone. And the baby skipped their nap.

Kids love music, and mine loves it when we make up songs together. This piece of advice is more for parents of toddlers than babies, but if that’s you, tell your kid you’re gonna sing a song about a mermaid, mentally bring up the backstory of your character, and start trying to rhyme on the fly. They’ll think it’s hilarious, and they don’t need to know that it’s from your sea-shanty-themed WIP. And if you both collapse into giggles, it’ll just stick in your mind even easier.

A Final Note

In the end, I promise you, you’ll have something. 

But please be kind: Know that any inevitable imperfections don’t mean your work is garbage. Heck, the first draft is always the hardest. 

I’ve managed to complete the first draft of a short story this way. It took me about two months, and it’s now ruminating quietly in a drawer for me to return to it and start the process again.

Is this strategy perfect?

Would I rather be able to sit down and do hours of creative work at a time, in the flow-state, on a sunny afternoon with zero commitments?

Well, sure. But I wouldn’t trade that for being a parent in a million years. 

So I do what parents have done for millennia. I adapt. I drink my tea lukewarm-to-cold. And I find new ways to catch that creative spark.

I know you can do this too.

You’re a writer, after all.

Explore more articles from Writing by Other Means

Julie Le Blanc is a speculative fiction writer living in the west of Ireland. Her stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Diabolical Plots, and Cast of Wonders. Her nonfiction about Old Irish literature and mythology has been published by Wiley-Blackwell and Brepols. She also once wrote a PhD about the Irish war-goddess, the Morrígain, and got away with it. You can find her drinking lukewarm tea and crocheting while the baba sleeps at www.julieleblancwrites.com.

The post Writing Tips and Tricks for Time-Poor Parents appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

Now Hiring:
Events Coordinator and Web Contractor

Our team is growing!

SFWA is excited to announce two new positions as part of our continued commitment to creating meaningful opportunities and resources for writers. If you missed the open call in Singularity for the position of Executive Director, please refer back to last week’s statement for more details.

From Kate Ristau, SFWA President:

“The Events Coordinator will support our engaging and accessible programming for writers, and our Web Contractor will help ensure that our digital resources remain secure, useful, and easy to navigate. Together, these roles will allow us to expand professional development opportunities for writers, from building worlds to navigating the business of writing, while strengthening SFWA’s ability to serve our community into the future.”

Organization Overview

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization for published writers and industry professionals in the field of science fiction, fantasy, and related genres. Founded in 1965, SFWA runs the annual Nebula Conference, the Nebula Awards, and a number of programs to assist authors worldwide.

Events Coordinator

UPDATE: This position has been filled. The post remains up for archival purposes.

Compensation: $30,000-$35,000 annual salary, commensurate with experience, with benefits.

Status: Part-time, salaried, benefits-eligible W-2 position. This position averages approximately 20 hours per week over the course of the year. Due to the annual Nebula Conference, workload will increase during the months leading up to the event and decrease during other periods.

Location: Remote, with required travel to the annual Nebula Conference.

Position Overview

The Events Coordinator is responsible for the planning, coordination, and administration of SFWA’s major events, including the annual Nebula Conference and the quarterly Constellation professional development series. Working closely with the Executive Director, staff, volunteers, key committees, and the Board of Directors, the Events Coordinator oversees event logistics, supports volunteer teams, maintains event documentation, and helps ensure successful execution of SFWA’s programming.

The Events Coordinator reports directly to the Executive Director and collaborates with staff on planning, budgeting, communications, and production needs.

Key Job Responsibilities Event Management: Coordinate SFWA’s major events from planning through execution.

● Oversee planning and administration of the annual Nebula Conference and quarterly Constellation events.

● Attend the Nebula Conference and Awards Ceremony in person, supporting staff and volunteers and troubleshooting issues as they arise.

● Attend other sanctioned events as directed by SFWA, with additional event attendance based on organizational needs and work schedule.

● Coordinate planning timelines, deliverables, and communication among staff, volunteers, and board members.

● Assist with correspondence and follow-up on event-related tasks to ensure deadlines are met.

Volunteer Coordination: Build and support volunteer teams that make SFWA events successful.

● Recruit, onboard, and supervise volunteers supporting the Nebula Conference and Constellation series.

● Coordinate with SFWA’s Volunteer Team to facilitate volunteer assignments.

● Schedule and facilitate core team meetings, volunteer meetings, and all-hands calls related to ongoing events.

● Work closely with the Core Nebula Team and volunteers to identify responsibilities and ensure successful completion of assigned tasks.

Documentation and Administration: Maintain organizational knowledge and support continuous improvement.

● Maintain and update the Nebula Playbook to document event procedures and best practices.

● Develop and maintain a Constellation Playbook in collaboration with volunteers, staff, and the Board of Directors.

● Serve as the primary administrator for the Nebula Conference Team.

● Monitor and respond to inquiries received through the events@sfwa.org email account, serving as a resource for event information and institutional knowledge.

Communication and Reporting: Ensure effective communication across the organization.

● Provide monthly status reports to the Executive Director.

● Prepare conference status updates for the Executive Director and Board of Directors upon request.

● Coordinate with staff to support planning, budget tracking, communications, and printing needs.

● Foster clear communication between staff, volunteers, board members, and conference teams throughout the planning process.

Community Outreach: Support SFWA’s visibility within the speculative fiction community.

● Identify conventions and events that provide outreach opportunities for SFWA.

● Encourage participation by members, volunteers, and Board members at community events that align with SFWA’s mission.

Skills and Qualifications

● Experience coordinating conferences, conventions, nonprofit events, or comparable large-scale projects.

● Strong organizational and project management skills with exceptional attention to detail.

● Experience coordinating volunteers or leading collaborative teams.

● Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

● Ability to manage multiple projects and deadlines simultaneously.

● Comfort working independently in a remote environment while collaborating with distributed teams.

● Proficiency with common online collaboration and project management tools.

● Ability to travel to and attend the annual Nebula Conference.

Web Contractor

Compensation: Hourly, with a monthly cap.

Status: This is an hourly, contract position, which is not benefits eligible. Candidates must be US-based and eligible for legal employment.

Location: Remote

Position Overview

The Web Contractor will provide website maintenance, technical support, and development services for SFWA’s website and related web systems. This position requires experience with WordPress and the ability to become familiar with SFWA’s custom web platform built on PHP and JavaScript. The ideal candidate will have an understanding of website security, web hosting, and systems refinement, with experience in WooCommerce and MemberPress. Technical writing/documentation considered a plus.

SFWA’s website supports more than 2,000 members and includes a wide range of functionality, including membership applications, online forms, member databases, and regularly updated information about the organization’s many online and in-person programs and events. The Web Contractor will collaborate with SFWA staff and the volunteer InfoSys Team to maintain, troubleshoot, and improve the organization’s website and related systems on an as-needed basis.

Key Contract Details

Website Management: Provide technical support for the maintenance, improvement, and troubleshooting of SFWA’s website.

● Collaborate with staff and the InfoSys Team to update, refine, and repair website features and functionality.

● Maintain and troubleshoot WordPress and custom PHP/JavaScript components.

● Identify and resolve website issues related to performance, usability, security, and hosting.

● Implement approved website enhancements and technical improvements as requested.

Technical Collaboration: Coordinate with SFWA’s technology volunteers and staff on ongoing technical initiatives.

● Attend the bi-weekly InfoSys Team Zoom meetings to discuss current projects, priorities, and technical issues.

● Coordinate with volunteers working on website development, Google Workspace administration, online forms, and other technology initiatives.

● Provide technical documentation related to completed work when appropriate.

Skills and Qualifications

● Bachelor’s degree or relevant certifications preferred.

● Minimum 5 years of demonstrated experience in website design and development.

● Experience with WordPress required.

● Working knowledge of PHP, JavaScript, website security, and web hosting environments.

● Experience with WooCommerce, Memberpress, and technical writing/documentation is a plus.

● Ability to work independently while collaborating effectively with a remote team.

● Strong problem-solving, communication, and organizational skills.

Deadline for Applications

Until filled.

How to Apply

SFWA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, gender identity, religion, color, sexual orientation, sex, marital/family status, national origin, age, physical ability, or income. We strongly encourage applicants from traditionally underrepresented and marginalized communities.

For Events Coordinator:

Email a cover letter and resume in a single file (MS Word or PDF only) to jobs@sfwa.org. Please include “Events Coordinator” in the subject line.

Please note that all job applications will be reviewed by members of SFWA staff and the Board of Directors. No AI will be used in the assessment of applicants. Additionally, the selected candidate will be required not to engage generative AI in the performance of their duties.

For Web Contractor:

Email a cover letter, resume, and links to 3–5 sample websites in a single file (MS Word or PDF only) to jobs@sfwa.org. Please include “Web Contractor” in the subject line.

Thank you for your interest in working for SFWA!

The post Now Hiring: Events Coordinator and Web Contractor appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Marlee Baldridge

Read by the author

Readers don’t always care about the finer details of orbital mechanics in deep space mining or the geophysics of a climate dystopia story, but they do care about richly textured worlds that feel real and present. Fact-checking is an opportunity to build a complex world where the reader truly feels like a member of a mining crew or a resident of a frigid snowball planet.

While Google Scholar can do a lot of heavy-lifting, it doesn’t always answer the specific question that can trouble a narrative. What kind of outer shielding is needed for a ship to break orbit? Why are octopus eyes like that?

Maybe you don’t need a chemistry consultant. Maybe you only have one or two items you’d like   cleared up, and Google Scholar is getting you nowhere.

For specific questions, it’s often best to go straight to the source: the scientists. In this article, I spoke with two scientists who work directly with the public.

Getting Inspiration

This might mean consulting trade publications or following interesting persons on social media. Professional conferences are another great resource. For example, the American Geophysical Union’s session notes are a treasure trove of both good story ideas and scientists who have made a point of doing outreach.

There are also public meetings for city and county-level decision-making that involve scientists such as Margaret Garcia, PhD. Dr. Garcia is an associate professor at Arizona State University and serves on a local board involved with water and wastewater management. “So you can listen in on what the conversation is about: water resources, planning, considerations on different investments…”

Dr. Garcia added that while climate tipping points are a popular idea in media (and important), “there are social and government tipping points as well. And those can be interrelated.” At this point in the interview, the lights in her office turned off. Garcia backed up from our Zoom call, arms wide, to trigger the motion sensors and turn the office lights on again. “Sorry, we have a very energy-efficient building!”

Small, familiar elements of everyday life can find their way into a fantastic story. How would a hyper-energy-efficient building affect a Zoom call between protagonists trying to decide the fate of the planet?

How to Find Scientists

Scientists are professionals who are in love with hyper-specific topics they are rarely asked about. Don’t be afraid to!

“Most people are super open about it and would love to be contacted, but writers actually do not do it that often,” Helena Hartmann, PhD, said in an email. She is a postdoc at the University Hospital Essen and works in Psychology with a focus in Biological and Clinical Psychology.

“It’s within the scope of our role as professors to work with community members around the science or scholarly work that we do,” said Dr. Garcia, who works within the School for Sustainable Engineering and Built Environment at ASU. A professor at a local university, especially a public university, will be much more likely to help than perhaps a researcher in an industry that might have proprietary or management concerns.

Scientists can usually be found on social media, via the email listed on their published papers (that’s why it’s listed, so they can be contacted by interested parties), or through their departmental email if they’re with a university. Try this before a phone call—not everyone has a voicemail set up.

How to Ask for Their Help

Like any professional email, start with expectations and deadlines. Even giving a scientist a deadline a month or two in the future helps demonstrate a respect for their time. Don’t include the questions upfront—that might read as taking their time for granted—but do include the specific subject matter you’re interested in.

“I generally like this kind of informal outreach, but it should still stay professional,” Dr. Hartmann said. “I sometimes get very generic emails with a few questions and the deadline of tomorrow for an article—that is not very nice or considerate of people’s time.”

Asking about availability for the next month, however, is much more approachable.

What to Ask

Once expectations are set, now you can get into the nitty-gritty of your question:

●   Start with the basics. What is the specific goal of this mechanism you have questions about? “In this scene, the protagonist is in deep space, surrounded by fog after a weird space event. I want to build an atmosphere of suspense and mystery.”

●   What part of the mechanism are you having trouble with? “Space is a vacuum, though, right? So can there be fog in a vacuum? Isn’t it supposed to be really cold?”

The purpose of this is to be as concise as possible while also giving the scientist enough material to suggest changes. They might say, “The phase-change for water would have happened much earlier at 2.7K, so it would probably be ice-crystals forming over the protagonist’s visor. Alternatively, it might not be water. Helium or hydrogen remain gaseous at extremely low temperatures. There’s also lots of dust in space, could the fog be dust?”

Suddenly the protagonist is floating through the debris of a destroyed moon, not just water vapor. Doesn’t that make the scene all the more ominous?

How to Credit a Scientist

These scientists aren’t being paid for helping you, and this should factor into asking for assistance. For academics, there is what’s called a “service burden” that especially applies to women and people of color. For industry professionals, they may be sacrificing important crunch time in research to help clear up a few world-building problems.

Crediting the scientist in the acknowledgements of your book is an obvious first step. An author can also credit them on social media in any promotion that happens from a published book.

And One Last Thing

Scientists aren’t always in consensus. One example is the Anthropocene. Everyone is pretty sure it started immediately after the Industrial Revolution. However, there’s also a group of paleoclimatologists that argue it started closer to the 1500s, shortly after the mass-genocide of Indigenous people of the Americas, when previously agrarian land became reforested and (though this is unlikely) influenced the Little Ice Age.

Another important note is that this advice isn’t one hundred percent accurate either. Scientists are people, and people have different opinions on how to be solicited for help. So when in doubt, just ask!

Explore more articles from Wring from Science

Marlee Baldridge is a science communicator based in the Midwest. She’s written for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, an NSF grant, and Ames National Laboratory. Learn more at marleebaldridge.com. 

The post How to Fact-Check Your Science and Gain Inspiration Along the Way appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

Our Heads Are Better Than AI: Working Together on Challenges in Industry

Dear writer,

Right now, the SFF online conversation is potent and proactive (read: FIERY). The topic? AI scammers, the increasing complexity of their scams, and the challenges they pose as they infiltrate one publication, then use that credit to break into more.

To catch you up, I’ll share some resources at the end of this letter. Not everyone is as keyed in on the daily blow-by-blow of social media or reading at the speed of the Internet (I don’t know how you all are even writing creatively these days). For those of you who are online all the time, skim freely. 

We want to provide useful guidance for a discussion that airs out the challenges many publishers and writers face in this age of LLM tools. It is so easy to feel shame, frustration, and anger after any scam, but we can’t let that keep us from growing as a community. When we all know what’s going on, we can work toward the changes we want to see.

Thanks to the work of many thoughtful creators on the frontlines, our genre community is now engaging with big questions, like how do we keep our trust networks strong? How do we expand the genre and extend the platform to new and global writers when verification is much harder? And how do we do all of this with the small human teams who run so many of our great publications?

In recent days, the community has come together, through data and compassion, to help answer these questions and to let fellow editors and writers know that they are not alone. 

SFWA was hit, too, when Planetside: The Online Magazine of SFWA encountered scammers savvy enough to get past other major publications first. The old model of trusting in legitimate writing credits needs adjustment in our new era. But thanks to our responsive community, we were able to flag the work, take it down, and work on next steps.

Not Everyone Is Taking The Same Next Steps

Some teams, like Planetside, are changing processes for author verification and transforming editorial training. Others are using AI detection tools with final human oversight to reduce the load for their frontline volunteers. We all want our humans to keep working with humans. 

But how each team evaluates their own next steps is a complex decision, wrapped up in nuanced discussions of detection workload and data privacy. 

Sometimes I’m longwinded, so let me be clear: 

1. Blacklisting by geographical region degrades and diminishes our community; and 
2. AI cannot save us from AI. We want, and need, humans making these decisions.
   

We know that a stronger publishing industry is built on openness, diversity, and trust. Equitable practice has to create inclusive on-ramps while balancing the work of fraud detection and account moderation. The protection of contributors’ rights and work must be at the center of every community practice we adopt in response to the latest threat. 

New Battles in an Old Arena

This new era can seem daunting, but these are not all new challenges.

Victoria Strauss from Writer Beware® has written about online scams for us for years, while SFWA’s Advocacy Team, including our Legal and Contracts Committees, are always following key case law for opportunities to push back. 

SFWA’s mission is to serve writers coming from many backgrounds, and we do not approach creating any blanket policies or procedures lightly. Detangling the current crisis in publishing will require patience and cooperation. 

But we will not back down from our unwavering desire to see HUMANS typing on keyboards, writing in notebooks, and scrawling stats for RPG playtests. 

That’s where we need your help, writer. We need YOU in the conversation.

The main thing I’ve learned as SFWA President: we create our best solutions together. 

In that vein, this summer and fall, we are inviting you deeper into the conversation, with the ultimate goal of making sure we are all better prepared for the future ahead as we fight for the one we want: wildly human, creatively vibrant, and written by us. 

Join Us to Learn More, Get Engaged

Building on a groundswell of excellent member and community feedback last December, our Emerging Tech Committee has been crafting resources to help writers, readers, educators, and students. This weekend’s Emerging Tech conversation is the first in a series of opportunities to bypass the hype and make informed, pro-human decisions for ourselves and our writing tools.

If you can’t attend “Understanding AI: A Hype-Free Overview” this Saturday, July 18 at 1PM PDT, please submit questions and other feedback on our preliminary resource page. Your questions will be answered by panelists on Saturday, and that page will grow this summer to provide more tools to sharpen our understanding together of key terms and industry products. 

This event is open to the public, as part of our Givers Fund Fundraising Kickoff weekend. You can donate to the Givers Fund, which supports human creators growing the SFF community, when you RSVP for access to all our weekend’s kickoff events.

Also this summer, our Short Fiction Matrix Project will be launching Phase One of another community-driven resource page, which will support writers and publishers in a market where professionalism, transparency, and a commitment to writers’ rights are requirements to be part of the genre conversation. We are here for that! Help push for the changes you want to see by working with their team, just as you have done for years by sending sample contracts to our Contracts Committee. Your questions and contributions help us all.

If you are with a partner organization or magazine, or are an industry pro, touch base with me personally. We have resources behind the scenes to get you further connected and supported.

It’s going to be a good weekend. I can’t wait to continue the conversation with you. I’ll bring along questions of my own. We’ll work through them together.

Keep creating,

Kate Ristau
SFWA President

Resources for Further Reading

Apex Books & Zine. “Facebook Visual Post Rescinding Publication.” July 10, 2026.

Bona Books. The Machines Are Coming for Your Masthead: Small Press Publishing in the Age of AI. July 2026

Cast of Wonders. “Bluesky Post Thread Rescinding Publication.” July 7, 2026.

—. “The Many Faces of Charity Ogechi.” July 7, 2026.

Clarke, Neil. “AI and Short Fiction #1 – some recommendations for readers” and “AI and Short Fiction #2 – some recommendations for editors.” July 14-15, 2026.

DeLuca, Michael J., Reckoning Press. “AI: A Press Statement.” July 6, 2026.

Strauss, Victoria. “The First Clue to an Email Scam May Be the Address,” Writer Beware® , June 30, 2026.

The post Press Release – July 16, 2026 appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Sam Macdonald

Read by Maggie Ayala

Speculative fiction has always borrowed from the sciences, but one discipline shows up more often—and in more unexpected ways—than readers might realize. Mathematics, usually seen as the realm of formulas and proofs, has a long history of being used as a versatile narrative tool for authors trying to make sense of political systems, technological anxiety, and the strangeness of modern life. Across more than a century of genre writing, math has worked quietly in the background as one of the most reliable sources of metaphor in speculative fiction.

Comedy and Critique Puffin’s 1946 edition. Cover art by John Tenniel. Via ISFDB.

Though mathematics has a reputation for being treated as dry, abstract, and apolitical, one of its oldest uses in fiction is satire. Mathematician and logician Charles Dodgson (more widely known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll) peppered Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) with commentary on perceived dangers of the new directions mathematics was taking in the mid-19th century. Nonsense riddles and impossible implications serve as critiques of symbolic algebra, imaginary numbers, and the increasingly abstract turn of (then) contemporary mathematics. Interested readers are strongly encouraged to peruse Melanie Bayley’s wonderful article “Alice’s Adventures in Algebra: Wonderland Solved.”

Barnes and Noble 1963 edition. Via ISFDB.

Yet perhaps the quintessential early example of mathematics as metaphor appears in Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), the tale of a square (A. Square, to be precise) struggling to imagine dimensions beyond his own. The story captures something fundamental about both mathematics and speculative fiction: the pleasure of taking a simple set of assumptions and following them wherever they lead. In Flatland, those assumptions produce a society of line segments and polygons arranged in a rigid caste hierarchy, where imagining a third dimension is both a mathematical puzzle and social heresy. With its pointed satire of Victorian norms, including female characters that are literally one-dimensional, Abbott delivers a satirical gem that’s as weird as it is revealing.

Although Flatland helped launch a long tradition of “dimensional fiction”—stories that try to imagine fourth and higher dimensions—the heart of Abbott’s project goes deeper. As Alex Kasman notes in his comprehensive catalogue of mathematically themed fiction, Abbott’s narrative uses mathematics as a vehicle for examining the boundaries of knowledge itself. In doing so, Abbott connects mathematical metaphor to broader questions about culture, spirituality, and imagining realities outside human (or polygonal) experience.

From Humor to Horror First printing of The Call of Cthulhu in 1928. Cover art by C. C. Senf. Via ISFDB.

The idea of impossible geometries as stand-ins for the limits of human understanding took on a far darker tone in the early 20th century, most notably through the eldritch creations of H. P. Lovecraft. Confronted with the challenge of describing that which, by its very definition, exists beyond human comprehension, Lovecraft turned to the language of non-Euclidean geometry. In stories such as “The Call of Cthulhu” (1928) and “The Dreams in the Witch House” (1933), architecture twists into impossible angles, ordinary rooms open onto other dimensions, and straight lines warp in ways that defy intuition. Geometry, usually one of the most concrete and visual branches of mathematics, crumbles before our eyes as we glimpse the true structure of the universe. (This author makes no claim that such metaphors were poignant, successful, or even coherent—only that an attempt was made.)

E. P. Dutton 1959 English translation. Cover art by Seymour Chwast. Via ISFDB.

In addition to the unknowable, mathematics shows its versatility through its history as a metaphor for systems of control. One of the seminal examples is in We (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin, a foundational dystopian novel that would shape later classic 1984. Set in a glass-walled city where privacy is deemed irrational, We depicts a society in which citizens are named through algebraic identifiers (such as our protagonist, D-503) and state doctrine is framed as a series of axioms and proofs, elevating mathematical “perfection” as the highest civic virtue. Frequent maxims of the populace include such timeless classics as “We are perfect because we are mathematical,” and “The ideal state is a perfectly balanced equation.” 

Alianza Editorial’s 1997 edition including “La lotería en Babilonia.” Cover art by Hieronymus Bosch. Via ISFDB.

Though Zamyatin uses mathematics to symbolize an excess of order, mathematical metaphor in dystopian fiction isn’t confined to rigid equations. Enter Jorge Luis Borges. In his short story “The Lottery in Babylon” (1941), a society governed by pure probability becomes authoritarian not through order but through randomness—a system so arbitrary and impersonal it feels omnipotent.

Satire and Sincerity Seabury Press 1974 edition. Cover art by Daniel Mróz. Translated by Michael Kandel. Via ISFDB.

As mathematical dystopias evolved, authors increasingly questioned not just authoritarian order or arbitrary chance, but the very premise that logic could govern society. Stanisław Lem’s The Cyberiad (1965) blends the threads of satire and autocracy into a series of exuberant mathematical fables: machines that follow flawless rules but cause chaos, proofs that function as weapons, entire societies run on algorithmic decree. It’s satire aimed squarely at technocratic fantasies of control, designed to dismantle pretensions of perfect rationality masquerading as political wisdom.

Not all mathematical metaphors are dystopian or absurd. Many authors employ mathematical ideas—especially higher dimensions, topology, and infinity—as symbols of liberation, spiritual insight, or imaginative possibility. A classic example is Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (1962). Mrs. Whatsit’s demonstration of “folding” space offers both a physical explanation for hyperspace travel and an emotional metaphor: love, empathy, and moral courage allow one to bypass oppressive structures as easily as one might bypass distance in spacetime. Here, mathematics is transformed into the language of wonder.

Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy’s first edition (1962). Cover art by Ellen Raskin. Via ISFDB. Mathematics and Metaphor

Across these works, mathematics becomes more than a system of symbols or language of logic. It becomes a flexible metaphorical vocabulary capable of expressing fundamental aspects of the human experience—what speculative fiction is all about. Because mathematics is so deeply associated with truth, objectivity, and the structure of reality, bending or reinterpreting it in fiction allows authors to question what’s real at all. Whether it is Abbott opening doors to higher perception, Zamyatin warning about the dangers of perfect rationality, or L’Engle using geometry as a vehicle for hope, mathematics equips our fiction with a unique set of tools for exploring both the known and the unknowable. Mathematics is, after all, its own form of speculation.

Explore more articles from THE HISTORY FILES

Sam Macdonald is a graduate student pursuing his PhD in mathematics in Lincoln, Nebraska. He has publications in speculative fiction magazines, mathematics journals, and humor websites, and hopes to one day write something strange enough to be publishable in all three. In his free time he enjoys rock climbing, strategic hammock placement, and the axiom of choice.

The post An Abridged History of Mathematical Metaphor in Speculative Fiction appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

Now Hiring: SFWA Executive Director Organization Overview

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization for published writers and industry professionals in the field of science fiction, fantasy, and related genres. Founded in 1965, SFWA runs the annual Nebula Conference, the Nebula Awards, and has a number of programs to assist authors worldwide.

Compensation: $77,000 – 85,000/year with benefits.

Status: This is a full time, salaried position. Candidates must be US-based and eligible for legal employment.

Location: Hybrid remote/on-site (annual conference location)

Position Overview

The Executive Director is the key management leader for SFWA. The Executive Director will provide strategic direction and overall leadership for the organization, ensuring its mission to support science fiction and fantasy writers around the world. The Executive Director is responsible for overseeing the administration, programs, and strategic plan of the organization.

Other key duties include fundraising, marketing, and community outreach. The Executive Director will report directly to the Board of Directors and lead a fully remote team of employees, contractors, and volunteers.

Key Job Responsibilities

Strategic Leadership: Work with the board and volunteers to ensure good governance and strategic direction.

● Develop, implement, and maintain a strategic plan to guide SFWA’s growth, sustainability, and mission.
● Identify, evaluate, and pursue innovative opportunities to improve SFWA’s impact globally.
Financial Stewardship: Ensure the financial health of the organization while maintaining fiscally responsible spending.
● With the help of the Chief Financial Officer and Finance Team, oversee creation of the annual budget and monitor financial performance to ensure organizational stability.
● Develop and lead the execution of fundraising strategies, including grants and individual donations. Manage fundraising and development volunteer teams.
● Cultivate relationships with current donors, foundations, and partners.
● Ensure financial transparency in fundraising efforts.
Program Management: Actively manage SFWA volunteers, staff and programming.
● Oversee the design and implementation of programming designed to help science fiction and fantasy authors around the world, including industry oversight, legacy estates projects, educational publications, and grants.
● Cultivate and manage strategic partnerships with allied writers organizations.
● Oversee the administration of the annual Nebula Conference and the Nebula Awards.
● Directly manage and build volunteer teams supporting programming efforts.
Communications: Oversee internal and external communications and marketing.
● Oversee the Communications and Marketing Manager, who manages communication with 2500+ members and internal online communities through the support of social media and discord teams.
● Support SFWA marketing and public relations efforts.
● Actively engage with board, staff, and stakeholders to ensure open lines of communication.
Oversee Advocacy & Membership Efforts: Lead community outreach and advocacy efforts.
● Ensure that SFWA continues to improve its reach to underserved populations and communities around the world.
● Monitor and evaluate advocacy efforts and report on SFWA’s impact.
● Support membership recruitment and community outreach.
Skills and Qualifications
● Bachelor’s degree required. Advanced degree preferred in nonprofit management, education, or a field related to publishing.
● Minimum 5 years in senior management of a nonprofit organization or in a related field.
● Experience in fundraising and donor cultivation. Expectation of familiarity with Customer Relation Management systems.
● Strong financial management and budgeting background, including in-depth understanding of financial reporting.
● Strong management skills focused on creating and supporting a collaborative and cooperative team environment.
● Dedicated commitment to advocacy for the arts in general and science fiction and fantasy in particular.
● Proficiency leveraging technology for remote work and project management.
● Ability to work remotely with a worldwide team.
● The ability to travel to the annual Nebula Award Conference.

Deadline for Applications

Until filled.

How to Apply

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Please include ‘Executive Director’ in the subject line.

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The post Now Hiring: SFWA’s Next Executive Director appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Randall Hayes, PhD

Read by Robert Greenberger

In these early days of artificial intelligence, when hallucinated facts and completely fabricated reference sources are disturbingly common, there is substantial value for fiction writers in being able to navigate structured databases of primary and secondary scientific research, usually in the form of articles in academic journals. For the uninitiated, primary articles are written by the people who performed the experiments and peer-reviewed by other objective scientists. Secondary review articles are written by scholars, who may or may not be experimentalists themselves, who compare, integrate, and evaluate results from multiple primary articles. Tertiary sources are journalistic articles written by non-specialists, such as this one. 

Some academic disciplines maintain their own idiosyncratic databases, such as ArXiv, but we’ll focus on the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed, which now requires that any new article based on research funded by the federal government be uploaded to its servers as a free and publicly accessible full-text version, or at least linked to an equally available free version at the publisher’s website. This policy applies only to recent work; older articles may be immediately available only in abstract form. An abstract is a summary meant to give the reader some insight as to whether it’s worth the effort to track down the full paper.

Where to Start

For authors who may be specialists in their own fields but not others, or who may be self-taught generalists, starting higher up in the stack is advisable. Journalists will provide some interpretation and context based on their own previous research, and some will provide links to reference papers for further research. Even when they don’t, they will name their sources, and those names can be plugged into PubMed as an author search. For instance, either “Randall Hayes” or “Hayes Randall” will pull up a single Cerebral Cortex paper from 2006, based on my dissertation research with stroke patients. This is a primary journal article. It includes an introduction section intended to provide some context before presenting the results of my specific experiments, and a discussion that tries to interpret those new results. However, those sections are largely lists of references to other papers. Most career scientists read these things in light of their long experience, and much remains unsaid. 

For getting up to speed on what professionals think of a field or even a specific research question within a field—what the controversies are, where there are holes ripe to be speculated on in a story—the secondary reviews are the place for SF authors to focus. Reviews will provide more context, more cognitive scaffolding in the form of commentary and conceptual diagrams. Often, these will take the form of flow charts or causal models, which are wonderful for sparking thought experiments. Such as:

• What if this arrow were missing/broken, and what could plausibly break it in my story? 
• What if we could bypass this other element? How might we do that?

Sometimes these static diagrams can be animated for further insight, using simple tools like Nicky Case’s LOOPY.

How to Find a Review

The easiest way is simply to ask for one by typing in a search query. For instance, a query inspired by my paper above could be “visual deficits in temporal lobe stroke review.” The current version of PubMed will break down the search terms and map them to its standard controlled vocabulary of MeSH. This step is typically hidden unless you click the plus icon to the right of the “View Search Details” banner beneath the search bar. This query yields 13 results, which is manageable, but limiting it to reviews is as simple as clicking the “Reviews” box in the filter sidebar on the left-hand side of the page.

Evaluating the Search Results

The first article, “Disorders of facial expression and comprehension,” from 2021, could drive a narrative. It turns out that this particular paper is actually a chapter in a book called Handbook of Clinical Neurology. There is an abstract but no full-text on PubMed. The publisher adds some snippets and the references, but not the full paper. This might seem like a dead end, but depending on your purpose, it may not be. For example, if all you want is the general idea that people with right-hemisphere lesions have difficulty reading faces but not experiencing emotions themselves, that might be enough to generate a story on its own.

But let’s say you were struck by the phrase, “The participants with right- or left-hemispheric strokes attempted to determine if two different actors were displaying the same or different emotions,” from the abstract. That specific test could be the basis for a scene in your story. How was the experiment done? This is somewhat more difficult, as most of the references at the publisher’s website are older. Plugging them back into another PubMed search does not reveal full-text versions, whose “Methods” sections would describe in some detail the data-collection protocol. The author, Kenneth Heilman, would have had a personal lab webpage at the University of Florida, where he might have maintained web-accessible copies of his own papers, but Dr. Heilman died in 2024. Putting his name into Google Scholar reveals 50 of his papers publicly accessible, but not that one. This situation will likely require the assistance of a librarian. Best to move on for now.

The second search result, however, “Cerebral Embolism as a Result of Facial Filler Injections,” from the Aesthetic Surgery Journal in 2022, has a full-text version in PubMed, with a list of individual cases and pictures! Perhaps the testing scene could be replaced with a surgery scene detailing what caused the stroke in the first place. Then the discovery narrative might be less about the detailed neurological consequences of the embolism and more about how to hold the surgeon accountable.

Combining thoughts from multiple papers into a sort of Venn diagram of narrative possibilities is the essence of how I work with scientific literature. I only drill down for details when I need them to enhance the reader’s experience. I also encourage serendipity, as in the workflow above.

Explore more articles from Writing from Science

Randall Hayes, “your friendly neighborhood neuroscientist,” has been publishing science fact articles online for about 10 years, starting at the Intergalactic Medicine Show and, since its closure, branching out to other venues such as Utopia Science Fiction and Trollbreath Magazine. A currently incomplete list of his work is at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. His personal newsletter, Doctor Eclectic, is at randallhayes.substack.com.

The post Searching the Medical Literature for Yourself appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.