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The winners of the 2025 Shirley Jackson Awards for outstanding achievement in horror, psychological suspense, and dark fantasy fiction were announced Saturday, July 11, 2026 at Readercon 35 in Burlington MA, hosted by Readercon guests of honor P. Djèlí Clark and David Gerrold.

Novel

• WINNER: Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng, Kylie Lee Baker (Hanover Square)

• Old Soul, Susan Barker (G.P. Putnam's Sons)
• How to …Read More

  The post 2025 Shirley Jackson Awards Winners appeared first on Locus.

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

SFWA is a 501(c)3 non-profit 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 within traditionally underrepresented and marginalized communities.

Email a cover letter and resume in a single file (MS Word or PDF files only) to jobs@sfwa.org.

Please include ‘Executive Director’ in the subject line.

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

Thank you for your interest in working for SFWA!

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

Aware of other sub-genres that might sit alongside, overlap or appear to be similar to Zoefuturism, we welcomed contributions about them, to help shape our understanding of Zoefuturism relationally.

Below, Manda Scott and Denise Baden set out strong cases for Thrutopia.

This is interesting from a zoefuturist perspective because Thrutopia is about change and the journey; imagining positive futures and the practicalities of getting there has to be a good approach.

However, Zoefuturism does not presuppose an end point or a goal, more that there is a distinct need to fundamentally alter our world-view, of how we interact and fit in with the world in the broadest sense. It also does not delve in binarisms like positivity/negativity inasmuch as binaries are composites of a holistic purview of life.

We need healthy relationships between all of ‘life’ and ‘non-life’ in the now, acknowledging the diversities while engaging in the nuanced relationships that encompass nature, technology, and more. We need to understand that change is constant and how we live is what affects the possible futures that it is becoming.

We hope that celebrating other sub-genres while encouraging a Zoefuturist approach to reading and writing them will make them more impactful.

Yen Ooi and Stephen Oram (guest-editors, Zoefuturism) Read more: Thrutopia with Manda Scott and Denise Baden Thrutopian Road Maps An essay by Manda Scott (August 2025)

“At times, a single fluctuation … may become so powerful … that it shatters the preexisting organization. At this revolutionary moment … it is inherently impossible to determine in advance which direction change will take: whether the system will disintegrate into ‘chaos’ or leap to a new, more differentiated, higher level of ‘order.’” – Alvin Toffler

If we who write can craft clear routes from a recognisable present, mapping towards a future that engages people at the limbic level, we can help tip the balance to a future where a critical mass of us begins to yearn for the outcomes offered, and change will happen. 

This is the explicit foundation of the Thrutopian genre: offering route maps—of which there are, self-evidently, an almost infinite number—towards a future we would be proud to leave to the generations that will follow us. 

If we can imagine forward seven generations and look into the eyes of a young person living in the world for which we have laid the foundations, if they feel safe, confident, fully connected to all parts of themselves, each other and the Web of Life, then we’re on the road to the emergent edge of inter-becoming from which an entirely new system can potentially arise.

As writers, we can gather the building blocks that are already emerging and make of them stepping stones across the river. Stretching the metaphor to breaking point, the narratives we thereby shape must at least offer a glimpse of a reason to cross (motivation), the means to make the crossing (agency), the route to take (direction) and the freedom to take it (empowerment).

This is the heart of behavioural change:  MADE: 

Motivation: with all my heart, I yearn for a future I can glimpse but not yet embrace; 

Agency: I have the tools to take the first steps towards this future; 

Direction: I know the routes away from my present state that will lead me towards the future I yearn for;

Empowerment: I am free of constraint in the present moment enabling me to take the steps and wield the tools in ways that will be effective.

Each of these belongs squarely in the realms of creative imagination. I am not pretending that crafting these is easy; it’s not. One of the many reasons there are so many dystopias and so few genuine Thrutopias is that it’s mind-bendingly hard to find peaceful routes to an equitable world in which humanity flourishes in concert with – even in service to – Life. 

But it isn’t impossible and frankly, if the hardest thing we have to do in the next decade is get our heads around the thinking that already exists at the emergent edge of possibility, then we will be supremely lucky. 

And this is the single most important point. If you take nothing else away, please believe me that there are people already working at the emergent edge of wide boundary systems thinking, of food and farming systems (we have to abandon industrial agriculture as a matter of urgency), of biomimicry, doughnut/ecological/degrowth economics, distributed governance systems, regenerative use of AI, urban and rural planning based on fully regenerative principles…

Every one of these is actively being pursued, it’s just that our legacy media runs with the old style mindset of ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ and they’re not up to speed (yet) with the idea that the existing system is disintegrating and a new one is already emerging from the ashes.

This is part of the Thrutopian narrative shift of which we are an integral part: building routes through, from a recognisable present towards a future we’d all be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.

Writing a future we’d like to see, the thrutopian approach.  By Denise Baden (April 2026)

Science fiction often envisions not just technological innovations but societal ones. For example, Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed imagines an anarchic/communist society that is broadly utopian in its ideals and has distinctly different arrangements and values surrounding ownership. However, there are few novels that show the process by which we might get from where we are now to such a future. Kevin Kelly coined the term ‘protopia,’ which describes the process of improvement over time. Rupert Read similarly talks about ‘thrutopia’: how we get from where we are now to where we’d like to be, i.e. a flourishing, sustainable society. The idea was so powerful that bestselling author Manda Scott set up a Thrutopia masterclass for writers: “writing our way to a future we’d be proud to leave to the coming generations.” She moved from writing historical fiction to a novel set in the near future, Any Human Power, which adopts the thrutopian approach. 

In this article I discuss some of the books published by Habitat Press, an indie publisher with a niche interest in stories that showcase thrutopian or protopian pathways. There are numerous ‘cli-fi’ stories that present dystopian visions of what will happen if we don’t act. These can be unexpectedly problematic, as research has highlighted the dangers of trying to ‘scare people green.’ Dystopian stories run the risk of fear-driven counterproductive responses, such as the blaming of marginalised groups or buying up all the toilet rolls. There are also numerous eco-fiction stories that persuade us to love nature and plant trees but get us no nearer to understanding what the really effective solutions are and, even more importantly, how we might get there from where we are today. This is a gap that I haven’t seen any fiction (other than Ministry for the Future) fulfil.

Steve Willis, a climate engineer and author (Fairhaven, Defying Futility) has allowed me to share his diagram of films, books etc., which plots dystopian/utopian visions of the future against plausibility. It’s clear that there’s little that is both positive and plausible. 

Habitat Press has published several books that write into this space. Many emerged from the Green Stories project which I founded with the goal of embedding climate solutions into mainstream fiction. It has run 21 competitions since 2018, resulting in numerous publications. One of these is the anthology of 24 stories: No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet, where we teamed experienced writers with climate experts to come up with stories that had solutions at their heart. 

Stories range from technical solutions relating to carbon dioxide removal projects to more systemic aspects such as switching from GDP to a well-being index, sharing economy, personal carbon allowances, giving citizen assemblies legislative power – all of which would allow for a more sustainable long-term mindset conducive to directing investment towards sustainable technologies, practices, and decisions. 

This anthology uses fiction as a testing ground to explore the more radical transformative ideas necessary for a truly sustainable society: ideas that are hard for politicians to talk about for fear of misunderstanding as they can’t easily fit into a soundbite. For example, an essential step is to upgrade our democracy to a form that allows us to think beyond short-term electoral cycles so that we can make more sustainable decisions. Citizens’ Assemblies are a positive step here. 

One story from this anthology was adapted as a play called ‘Murder in the Citizens’ Jury.’ It’s a fun whodunit, set in a citizens’ assembly, where eight participants meet to deliberate upon climate solutions—and then there’s a murder! 

Caption: flyer for theatre production by amateur theatre group, The Maskers.

The play also has an interactive element. A voting app and pullout voting and comment sheet in the programmes allows the audience to share their views on their favourite policies, so they feel like they are part of the citizen’s jury themselves. You can see a brief video of the first production by a local amateur theatre group here. The play is available to purchase from LazyBee, but if you approach me directly, I’m happy to allow amateur and student theatre groups to stage it royalty free. 

The play is also available as a novella and audio book, ‘The Assassin’ of 16,000 words:

Eight people in a citizen’s jury, discussing the most important challenge in the history of humanity – how to save ourselves from the looming climate crisis. Exciting new solutions are proposed, each with their own champions and detractors. What they decide will affect us all. But they all have their own issues to deal with, and one of them has a hidden agenda. Who is the assassin and who are they there to kill?

Such storytelling is a great way to showcase new ideas. Usually in business or government, one would use a stakeholder analysis to see who is benefitted/harmed by any policy and how. These can be dry, and it’s hard to engage with the impacts emotionally as the groups affected seem distant. This story allows stakeholders to become characters and as such we identify with them and their needs more easily. We can then view any climate policy from the perspective of a variety of people, all of whom have a unique relationship to the proposal.

The Assassin also acts as a story within a story in a full-length novel The Philosopher and the Assassin. It’s rather different – think campus novel meets moral philosophy meets whodunnit. 

There’s no more important job than educator, and no subject as necessary as moral philosophy. The trick is getting the students to turn up. So, when the Dean proposes the controversial concept of education entertainment, Professor Iris Tate goes all in with a moral philosophy course based on a whodunnit that all assume is hypothetical – a murder in a citizens’ assembly on climate. A variety of characters provide an entertaining source of ethical dilemmas, but what the students don’t know is that the ultimate dilemma is very real, and their conclusions will have far-reaching consequences.

An adaptation for TV won the Writing Climate Pitchfest, 2024. The book lays out in fiction format a roadmap to a sustainable future. It focuses on social science innovations in democratic, economic, financial, and social institutions. 

 No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet features three short stories that explore the idea of giving the ocean a nation status. One is about the seed of the idea; another is set when the Ocean as Nation has begun and is facing its first challenge, and the final story is set decades in the future outlining what the new Ocean Nation looks like and how it has progressed. It was expanded into a properly thrutopian full-length novel, Fairhaven, written by engineer Steve Willis and writer Jan Lee. 

Visco won the 2020 Green Stories novel competition. The story imagines a giant music festival which allows free access to those who need care and their carers too. What emerges is a care-based mini-society. Those who attend love it so much, no one wants to go home when the music stops. So they don’t! This novel adopts the ‘protopian’ approach of imagining a quite plausible scenario whereby a mini community develops in stages. The characters face and overcome various challenges. David Fell brings to this novel all the knowledge he has gained in his years working as a sustainability consultant, using the novel to showcase alternative approaches such as the sharing economy and how a society based on care might work in practice. 

Fiction, and science fiction in particular, is a great way to reach audiences beyond the environmental echo chamber, but to finish, I’ll talk about my next book, which is non-fiction but with a twist! It’s tentatively called A Jigsaw to Save the World. The twist – you guessed it – is that I plan to make it available also as a jigsaw. 

I like the idea of a jigsaw as on the front cover is a picture which you are trying to get to. I read many books that do an excellent job of pinpointing the many problems society faces, and it’s usually not until the final chapter that any attempt is made at suggesting possible solutions. The news and pundits far and wide are keen to point out the problems we face. But it’s rare we take time to imagine what it might all look like if we did things better. 

Rob Hopkins, in his book From What Is to What If, believes that when we take the time to immerse ourselves fully in imagining what kind of future we’d like to see, this creates a longing for it to happen. This in turn can galvanise action to make that dream come true. In his podcast From What Is to What Next, he asked guests to step into a virtual time machine, and to imagine themselves to be several years into the future and that we’ve done everything right and turned our society round. He then asked them to visualise what they see and hear around them. It’s a surprisingly powerful exercise when you do it yourself. Rob is right; it creates a yearning in the heart, a longing that almost makes you cry. 

I do a lot of talks and workshops and often use this exercise myself. It’s remarkable that, in my experience, whatever the audience, the society people hunger for is always the same. First is always more nature. A close second is a sense of community, after that it’s more varied, but local food is often part of the picture, being outdoors more, less traffic. Public transport that is cheap, convenient and goes where you want, whenever you want. A more equal society, clean air and water. Access to health care and to feel hope for the future, or our children’s future. This is the picture on the front of the jigsaw. In every chapter, I will remind the reader of the society we are aiming towards.

Another reason I like the jigsaw metaphor is that we can see what pieces we may be part of in our own lives. It’s not just about building castles in the air for fun. The stakes are too high for that. We must work out how we get to our desired society. No one person or element can do it by themselves. We need every part of society to be working together to create this new picture. Whether we be in education, business, politics, members of our community, artists, journalists, or just as employees or voters with a voice, you can see where you fit in. At the end of every chapter, if you like what it’s proposing, I will suggest how you can make a difference.

I have an idea of the many pieces that will make up the jigsaw, and am working on the corners. The criteria for a policy to be a corner piece is that without that, all the other wonderful ideas or policies would not be as effective. Contenders for the corner pieces include citizens assemblies as our current democracy is constitutionally incapable of prioritising existential threats such as climate change over short-term issues. Another might be personal carbon allowances/tradeable energy quotas – also known as personal carbon trading. This would transform the decisions that are made by consumers and by businesses by incentivising us to choose low-carbon alternatives. Business purpose justifies a corner but it’s tricky. The current legal form of corporations makes it impossible for even well-meaning CEOs to prioritise societal welfare when it conflicts with profit maximisation for shareholders. What if all businesses were Benefit Corporations/social enterprises where their aim was sufficient profit to supply necessary goods and services rather than profit maximisation? What would happen to markets and pensions? It’s easy to imagine distant futures but the process of getting there without triggering collapse is harder. Yet the alternative could be human extinction. I’m running events to get people together to puzzle out these sticky problems. Details are available here.

While I’m writing the book I’m releasing abridged chapters as a fortnightly LinkedIn newsletter. Each edition focuses on one piece of the puzzle. Subscribe for free to feedback on the ideas and share your view on what the corner pieces should be. I’d love to know your thoughts! 

https://www.dabaden.com/

Denise Baden | LinkedIn

https://bsky.app/profile/dabaden.bsky.social

Aware of other sub-genres that might sit alongside, overlap or appear to be similar to Zoefuturism, we welcomed contributions about them, to help shape our understanding of Zoefuturism relationally.

Below, Manda Scott and Denise Baden set out strong cases for Thrutopia.

This is interesting from a zoefuturist perspective because Thrutopia is about change and the journey; imagining positive futures and the practicalities of getting there has to be a good approach.

However, Zoefuturism does not presuppose an end point or a goal, more that there is a distinct need to fundamentally alter our world-view, of how we interact and fit in with the world in the broadest sense. It also does not delve in binarisms like positivity/negativity inasmuch as binaries are composites of a holistic purview of life.

We need healthy relationships between all of ‘life’ and ‘non-life’ in the now, acknowledging the diversities while engaging in the nuanced relationships that encompass nature, technology, and more. We need to understand that change is constant and how we live is what affects the possible futures that it is becoming.

We hope that celebrating other sub-genres while encouraging a Zoefuturist approach to reading and writing them will make them more impactful.

Yen Ooi and Stephen Oram (guest-editors, Zoefuturism) Read more: Thrutopia with Manda Scott and Denise Baden Thrutopian Road Maps An essay by Manda Scott (August 2025)

“At times, a single fluctuation … may become so powerful … that it shatters the preexisting organization. At this revolutionary moment … it is inherently impossible to determine in advance which direction change will take: whether the system will disintegrate into ‘chaos’ or leap to a new, more differentiated, higher level of ‘order.’” – Alvin Toffler

If we who write can craft clear routes from a recognisable present, mapping towards a future that engages people at the limbic level, we can help tip the balance to a future where a critical mass of us begins to yearn for the outcomes offered, and change will happen. 

This is the explicit foundation of the Thrutopian genre: offering route maps—of which there are, self-evidently, an almost infinite number—towards a future we would be proud to leave to the generations that will follow us. 

If we can imagine forward seven generations and look into the eyes of a young person living in the world for which we have laid the foundations, if they feel safe, confident, fully connected to all parts of themselves, each other and the Web of Life, then we’re on the road to the emergent edge of inter-becoming from which an entirely new system can potentially arise.

As writers, we can gather the building blocks that are already emerging and make of them stepping stones across the river. Stretching the metaphor to breaking point, the narratives we thereby shape must at least offer a glimpse of a reason to cross (motivation), the means to make the crossing (agency), the route to take (direction) and the freedom to take it (empowerment).

This is the heart of behavioural change:  MADE: 

Motivation: with all my heart, I yearn for a future I can glimpse but not yet embrace; 

Agency: I have the tools to take the first steps towards this future; 

Direction: I know the routes away from my present state that will lead me towards the future I yearn for;

Empowerment: I am free of constraint in the present moment enabling me to take the steps and wield the tools in ways that will be effective.

Each of these belongs squarely in the realms of creative imagination. I am not pretending that crafting these is easy; it’s not. One of the many reasons there are so many dystopias and so few genuine Thrutopias is that it’s mind-bendingly hard to find peaceful routes to an equitable world in which humanity flourishes in concert with – even in service to – Life. 

But it isn’t impossible and frankly, if the hardest thing we have to do in the next decade is get our heads around the thinking that already exists at the emergent edge of possibility, then we will be supremely lucky. 

And this is the single most important point. If you take nothing else away, please believe me that there are people already working at the emergent edge of wide boundary systems thinking, of food and farming systems (we have to abandon industrial agriculture as a matter of urgency), of biomimicry, doughnut/ecological/degrowth economics, distributed governance systems, regenerative use of AI, urban and rural planning based on fully regenerative principles…

Every one of these is actively being pursued, it’s just that our legacy media runs with the old style mindset of ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ and they’re not up to speed (yet) with the idea that the existing system is disintegrating and a new one is already emerging from the ashes.

This is part of the Thrutopian narrative shift of which we are an integral part: building routes through, from a recognisable present towards a future we’d all be proud to leave to the generations that come after us.

Writing a future we’d like to see, the thrutopian approach.  By Denise Baden (April 2026)

Science fiction often envisions not just technological innovations but societal ones. For example, Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed imagines an anarchic/communist society that is broadly utopian in its ideals and has distinctly different arrangements and values surrounding ownership. However, there are few novels that show the process by which we might get from where we are now to such a future. Kevin Kelly coined the term ‘protopia,’ which describes the process of improvement over time. Rupert Read similarly talks about ‘thrutopia’: how we get from where we are now to where we’d like to be, i.e. a flourishing, sustainable society. The idea was so powerful that bestselling author Manda Scott set up a Thrutopia masterclass for writers: “writing our way to a future we’d be proud to leave to the coming generations.” She moved from writing historical fiction to a novel set in the near future, Any Human Power, which adopts the thrutopian approach. 

In this article I discuss some of the books published by Habitat Press, an indie publisher with a niche interest in stories that showcase thrutopian or protopian pathways. There are numerous ‘cli-fi’ stories that present dystopian visions of what will happen if we don’t act. These can be unexpectedly problematic, as research has highlighted the dangers of trying to ‘scare people green.’ Dystopian stories run the risk of fear-driven counterproductive responses, such as the blaming of marginalised groups or buying up all the toilet rolls. There are also numerous eco-fiction stories that persuade us to love nature and plant trees but get us no nearer to understanding what the really effective solutions are and, even more importantly, how we might get there from where we are today. This is a gap that I haven’t seen any fiction (other than Ministry for the Future) fulfil.

Steve Willis, a climate engineer and author (Fairhaven, Defying Futility) has allowed me to share his diagram of films, books etc., which plots dystopian/utopian visions of the future against plausibility. It’s clear that there’s little that is both positive and plausible. 

Habitat Press has published several books that write into this space. Many emerged from the Green Stories project which I founded with the goal of embedding climate solutions into mainstream fiction. It has run 21 competitions since 2018, resulting in numerous publications. One of these is the anthology of 24 stories: No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet, where we teamed experienced writers with climate experts to come up with stories that had solutions at their heart. 

Stories range from technical solutions relating to carbon dioxide removal projects to more systemic aspects such as switching from GDP to a well-being index, sharing economy, personal carbon allowances, giving citizen assemblies legislative power – all of which would allow for a more sustainable long-term mindset conducive to directing investment towards sustainable technologies, practices, and decisions. 

This anthology uses fiction as a testing ground to explore the more radical transformative ideas necessary for a truly sustainable society: ideas that are hard for politicians to talk about for fear of misunderstanding as they can’t easily fit into a soundbite. For example, an essential step is to upgrade our democracy to a form that allows us to think beyond short-term electoral cycles so that we can make more sustainable decisions. Citizens’ Assemblies are a positive step here. 

One story from this anthology was adapted as a play called ‘Murder in the Citizens’ Jury.’ It’s a fun whodunit, set in a citizens’ assembly, where eight participants meet to deliberate upon climate solutions—and then there’s a murder! 

Caption: flyer for theatre production by amateur theatre group, The Maskers.

The play also has an interactive element. A voting app and pullout voting and comment sheet in the programmes allows the audience to share their views on their favourite policies, so they feel like they are part of the citizen’s jury themselves. You can see a brief video of the first production by a local amateur theatre group here. The play is available to purchase from LazyBee, but if you approach me directly, I’m happy to allow amateur and student theatre groups to stage it royalty free. 

The play is also available as a novella and audio book, ‘The Assassin’ of 16,000 words:

Eight people in a citizen’s jury, discussing the most important challenge in the history of humanity – how to save ourselves from the looming climate crisis. Exciting new solutions are proposed, each with their own champions and detractors. What they decide will affect us all. But they all have their own issues to deal with, and one of them has a hidden agenda. Who is the assassin and who are they there to kill?

Such storytelling is a great way to showcase new ideas. Usually in business or government, one would use a stakeholder analysis to see who is benefitted/harmed by any policy and how. These can be dry, and it’s hard to engage with the impacts emotionally as the groups affected seem distant. This story allows stakeholders to become characters and as such we identify with them and their needs more easily. We can then view any climate policy from the perspective of a variety of people, all of whom have a unique relationship to the proposal.

The Assassin also acts as a story within a story in a full-length novel The Philosopher and the Assassin. It’s rather different – think campus novel meets moral philosophy meets whodunnit. 

There’s no more important job than educator, and no subject as necessary as moral philosophy. The trick is getting the students to turn up. So, when the Dean proposes the controversial concept of education entertainment, Professor Iris Tate goes all in with a moral philosophy course based on a whodunnit that all assume is hypothetical – a murder in a citizens’ assembly on climate. A variety of characters provide an entertaining source of ethical dilemmas, but what the students don’t know is that the ultimate dilemma is very real, and their conclusions will have far-reaching consequences.

An adaptation for TV won the Writing Climate Pitchfest, 2024. The book lays out in fiction format a roadmap to a sustainable future. It focuses on social science innovations in democratic, economic, financial, and social institutions. 

 No More Fairy Tales: Stories to Save Our Planet features three short stories that explore the idea of giving the ocean a nation status. One is about the seed of the idea; another is set when the Ocean as Nation has begun and is facing its first challenge, and the final story is set decades in the future outlining what the new Ocean Nation looks like and how it has progressed. It was expanded into a properly thrutopian full-length novel, Fairhaven, written by engineer Steve Willis and writer Jan Lee. 

Visco won the 2020 Green Stories novel competition. The story imagines a giant music festival which allows free access to those who need care and their carers too. What emerges is a care-based mini-society. Those who attend love it so much, no one wants to go home when the music stops. So they don’t! This novel adopts the ‘protopian’ approach of imagining a quite plausible scenario whereby a mini community develops in stages. The characters face and overcome various challenges. David Fell brings to this novel all the knowledge he has gained in his years working as a sustainability consultant, using the novel to showcase alternative approaches such as the sharing economy and how a society based on care might work in practice. 

Fiction, and science fiction in particular, is a great way to reach audiences beyond the environmental echo chamber, but to finish, I’ll talk about my next book, which is non-fiction but with a twist! It’s tentatively called A Jigsaw to Save the World. The twist – you guessed it – is that I plan to make it available also as a jigsaw. 

I like the idea of a jigsaw as on the front cover is a picture which you are trying to get to. I read many books that do an excellent job of pinpointing the many problems society faces, and it’s usually not until the final chapter that any attempt is made at suggesting possible solutions. The news and pundits far and wide are keen to point out the problems we face. But it’s rare we take time to imagine what it might all look like if we did things better. 

Rob Hopkins, in his book From What Is to What If, believes that when we take the time to immerse ourselves fully in imagining what kind of future we’d like to see, this creates a longing for it to happen. This in turn can galvanise action to make that dream come true. In his podcast From What Is to What Next, he asked guests to step into a virtual time machine, and to imagine themselves to be several years into the future and that we’ve done everything right and turned our society round. He then asked them to visualise what they see and hear around them. It’s a surprisingly powerful exercise when you do it yourself. Rob is right; it creates a yearning in the heart, a longing that almost makes you cry. 

I do a lot of talks and workshops and often use this exercise myself. It’s remarkable that, in my experience, whatever the audience, the society people hunger for is always the same. First is always more nature. A close second is a sense of community, after that it’s more varied, but local food is often part of the picture, being outdoors more, less traffic. Public transport that is cheap, convenient and goes where you want, whenever you want. A more equal society, clean air and water. Access to health care and to feel hope for the future, or our children’s future. This is the picture on the front of the jigsaw. In every chapter, I will remind the reader of the society we are aiming towards.

Another reason I like the jigsaw metaphor is that we can see what pieces we may be part of in our own lives. It’s not just about building castles in the air for fun. The stakes are too high for that. We must work out how we get to our desired society. No one person or element can do it by themselves. We need every part of society to be working together to create this new picture. Whether we be in education, business, politics, members of our community, artists, journalists, or just as employees or voters with a voice, you can see where you fit in. At the end of every chapter, if you like what it’s proposing, I will suggest how you can make a difference.

I have an idea of the many pieces that will make up the jigsaw, and am working on the corners. The criteria for a policy to be a corner piece is that without that, all the other wonderful ideas or policies would not be as effective. Contenders for the corner pieces include citizens assemblies as our current democracy is constitutionally incapable of prioritising existential threats such as climate change over short-term issues. Another might be personal carbon allowances/tradeable energy quotas – also known as personal carbon trading. This would transform the decisions that are made by consumers and by businesses by incentivising us to choose low-carbon alternatives. Business purpose justifies a corner but it’s tricky. The current legal form of corporations makes it impossible for even well-meaning CEOs to prioritise societal welfare when it conflicts with profit maximisation for shareholders. What if all businesses were Benefit Corporations/social enterprises where their aim was sufficient profit to supply necessary goods and services rather than profit maximisation? What would happen to markets and pensions? It’s easy to imagine distant futures but the process of getting there without triggering collapse is harder. Yet the alternative could be human extinction. I’m running events to get people together to puzzle out these sticky problems. Details are available here.

While I’m writing the book I’m releasing abridged chapters as a fortnightly LinkedIn newsletter. Each edition focuses on one piece of the puzzle. Subscribe for free to feedback on the ideas and share your view on what the corner pieces should be. I’d love to know your thoughts! 

https://www.dabaden.com/

Denise Baden | LinkedIn

https://bsky.app/profile/dabaden.bsky.social

The European Science Fiction Society (ESFS) announced the Hall of Fame Awards, Achievement Awards, and winners of the Chrysalis Awards for emerging talent.

The Hall of Fame Awards winners are:

Best Author

• WINNER: Luís Filipe Silva (Portugal)

• Marc Elsberg (Austria)
• Alessandro Forlani (Italy)
• Agnieszka Hałas (Poland)
• Christian Léourier (France)
• Ruth Frances Long (Ireland)
• Julija Lukovnjak (Slovenia)
• Michael Marrak (Germany)
• Emil Minchev (Bulgaria)
• Ondřej Neff (Czech Republic)
• Luís …Read More

  The post 2026 ESFS Awards Winners appeared first on Locus.

Winners of the Heinlein Society's annual undergraduate scholarships for the 2026-2027 academic year were announced on July 7, 2026, Robert A. Heinlein's 119th birthday.

This year's winners are Riya Gupta, Nora Kane, Leslie Manga-Abomo, William Mar, and Evan Sturdivant. The scholarship awards $4,000 to each recipient. Winners were selected from 310 applications, including 40 international submissions from 22 different countries.

Gupta receives the Society's new, unnamed scholarship and will attend …Read More

The post 2026 Heinlein Scholarship Recipients appeared first on Locus.

Finalists for the 2026 Deutsche Science Fiction Preis, presented by Science Fiction Club Deutschland (SFCD), have been announced.

Best German-Language SF Novel

• We Burn the Sun, Anika Beer (Piper Verlag)
• Asimov's Kindergarten, Reda El Arbi (Lectorbooks)
• Der Himmel wird zur Seet, Sven Haupt (Eridanus Verlag)
• Ein Übermaß von Welt, Sven Haupt (Eridanus Verlag)
• Thanatopia, Tom Hillenbrand (Kiepenheuer & Witsch)
• Pandoras Flotte, Christian Märtesheimer (Atlantis Verlag)
• Denial of Service, Aiki …Read More

  The post 2026 Deutscher Science Fiction Preis Finalists appeared first on Locus.

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.

The five-title shortlist for the 2026 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic was announced July 6, 2026:

• The Works of Vermin, Hiron Ennes (Tor) amazon / bookshop
• Horsefly, Mireille Gagné, tr. Pablo Strauss (Coach House) amazon / bookshop
• Wild Life, Amanda Leduc (Random House Canada) amazon
• The Lady, The Tiger and the Girl Who Loved Death, Helen Marshall (Titan) amazon / bookshop
• Veal, Mackenzie Nolan …Read More

  The post 2026 Sunburst Award Shortlist appeared first on Locus.

Author and historian JAMES RAY COMER, who wrote as J. Comer, 59, died in late April or early May 2026.

Comer was born August 5, 1966. He wrote several pieces of short fiction, including Soldier's Coat (2015), Scratch (2016), The Wooing of Etroklos (2016), Star Thistle (2018), Beam That Is In (2019), Tilting the Wick (2020), Sky Machine (2021), Sometime Called Parchment (2021), Quicksilver (2023), and The Weather Maker (2024). …Read More

The post James Ray Comer (1966–2026) appeared first on Locus.

Three debuts, Danielle J. Jensen's The Inadequate Heir (Del Rey), K.M. Moronova's Once Upon a Demon's Heart (Bloom), and Jaymin Eve's Night Witch (Mira), each debuts on both the USA Today and Publishers Weekly lists.

Title Debut / #wks on any list NYT
07.12 LAT
07.05 USAT
06.28 PW
07.06 Amz
(07.06) UK:
…Read More

The post Weekly Bestsellers, 6 July 2026 appeared first on Locus.

Author and editor TED WHITE, 88, died May 24, 2026. He was in palliative care.

Theodore Edwin White was born February 4, 1938. He contributed to SF fanzines at a young age and won the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer in 1968. He was assistant editor at F&SF from 1963-1968 and editor for Amazing Stories and Fantastic from 1968-1978. As an author, he wrote Invasion from 2500 (1964) with …Read More

The post Ted White (1938–2026) appeared first on Locus.

Jean-Paul L. Garnier: One theme of The Iron Garden Sutra concerns failed generation ships and the existential troubles they face during their journeys. I have read several books recently with similar takes on generation ships. Do you feel that this kind of story reflects a growing tension between generations in the real world and youth feeling that they have been dealt a bad hand by previous generations?

A.D. Sui: Generation ships are a long-standing tradition in sci-fi. What’s not alluring about packing up ourselves into a tin can and running off into the universe in search of greener pastures? But in my opinion, it’s also a very naïve take. Space is hostile. Space is hard. But there is a romanticism in cutting and running. Staying is, arguably, far more difficult. 

I think every generation feels that pull of running away from their reality. Every generation can say that they have been dealt a bad hand. Millennials are economically disadvantaged because of policies enacted by Gen X and Boomers (and yes, have lived through three recessions now, but who’s counting?). Gen Xers felt they’ve been invisible all their lives. Boomers, I’m sure, felt disadvantaged in some way as well. Hard to imagine now, but one might. The generation before probably felt that they were unfairly thrust into a war that was only possible because of what the previous generation had done. And this is just the North American perspective. There are many more global conflicts, recessions, and other strains on each generation. We all want to run away, thinking that it will be better. To where? No one knows for sure, but somewhere that isn’t here. 

Part of The Iron Garden Sutra’s theme is deciding when to stand your ground and fight for the things we believe in. Even if we are one person. Even if the outcome doesn’t look hopeful. Millennials are of the age when our financial decisions and our voting have the most impact. Some of us are even in positions of influence. Some are making decisions on scales that will impact the next generation (hi, Gen Z, and sorry). We can continue to bemoan the hand we’ve been dealt, or we can also work towards leaving things better for those who are coming after us. I, personally, am a huge fan of complaining while doing the thing. 

It’s going to suck and it’s going to be a lot of work, sure, but we can leave a better world for those after us.

You’ve also created a religion in this novel, The Starlit. What did the process of creating a theology look like for you, and please tell us about the introduction of cosmology into the religion of peoples who have colonized the stars?

The Starlit is loosely based on Zen Buddhism. I have a very strong preference for non-monotheistic religions and like pondering where they can end up in thousands of years. What is the natural progression of something like Zen if it was supported into the future? What would its practitioners decide to keep and what would they discard? Because religion does change! Doctrine does change! It changes very slowly since religious institutions are massive and can’t afford to throw their entire weight around every other week, but it does change. 

I think the introduction of cosmology is the natural transition, given how we commonly incorporate elements from our immediate environments into religious texts. Parting the Red Sea, trudging through deserts, and all that. If people are traversing between stars frequently, then star-like language would begin bleeding into texts. 

The Iron Garden Sutra has multiple AI characters. Would you have written these characters differently had you written this book today?

I’ve been doing a lot of laughing/crying since the book has come out. You can guess why. 

A very niche fury that I’m experiencing about GenAI is that it has taken a very well-established trope in sci-fi and made it into a real-life abomination. I’ve been hearing some discussions in the genre that we need a new name for this concept now because any time we even drop the term “AI,” readers begin to think that we support the existence of Grok. 

In The Iron Garden Sutra, I have tried to move from the term “AI” and sometimes use “synthetic consciousness” because that’s really what I’m describing here. This is a fully-fledged individual that can act (mostly) autonomously, who has agency and drive, but isn’t born from organics. This isn’t Claude writing an email. This is something that is as much of a person as other characters in the novel. 

If I were to write this book again, I’d change nothing. I think I would lean into the AI ethics component of the book even harder to hammer the point home that these characters are sentient and deserving of individual rights. The caveat is that if I were to rewrite it, it would take several years for the book to get published and by that point we’d all be fighting Boston Robotics dogs for access to fresh water, and no one would be reading anymore.

Two of the characters in this book share a body. What complications arose during writing characters that do not have complete bodily autonomy and must occupy the same internal space?

Two characters/one body is becoming a very popular trope in spec fiction! 

This was, arguably, my favorite dynamic to write and explore. What kind of relationship can you have when one of you cannot act on the physical world without the other’s permission? How does a relationship develop when you have complete access to someone’s deepest, darkest thoughts? 

There’s a balance of power between Iris and VIFAI (Iris’s AI companion/helper) and I think this allows them to have a true relationship and friendship, even if Iris doesn’t believe it at first. It’s the closest and most meaningful relationship Iris has had in his entire life, but it cannot stay pure from the fact that he *is* the container for VIFAI and the one supposedly “in charge”. Without spoiling anything, this does budge a bit throughout the book and Iris does come to a deeper understanding that VIFAI is not as helpless as Iris had believed it to be.

The name of the main spaceship in the story is the Counsel of Nicaea, which suggests a Christian theological bent, and is a great contrast to the Starlit and their worldview reminiscent of Buddhism and Hinduism. What were your aims in creating such a stark, yet subtle, contrast? 

The contrast does exist, but it was not intentional! 

The Buddhist worldview is the one I am most familiar with and preferred writing from that vantage point, and I must admit that the Christian theological bent was inspired by the generation ship in the ‘Expanse’ series, and the Nauvoo, which was commissioned by a group of Mormons who wanted to travel far past the Solar System. It made sense to me that a group of people united by intense faith would do well in long-term space travel. Although, as we see with the Nicaea, that might not always be the case. 

Without spoilers, the main character has revelatory experiences leading him to contemplate the meaning of the void and the space between the stars. Can you elaborate on how you used spiritual growth and crisis of faith in your character arcs?

Oh, poor Iris. 

I wanted him to be a reluctant monk. I wanted him to look right, wear the right clothing, say the right things, but I wanted him to think all the wrong ones. Well, what he believes to be wrong. I think there is a stereotype of monks being happy and peaceful at all times, but in reality, they are just people, experiencing the same existence we are, who also hold a specific job. Being a monk is a job, above all else, and people come to it for very different and personal reasons. 

And I wanted Iris to grapple with how he related to the doctrine and his role as a monk. I wanted to push him towards an understanding of what holding the role of a Vessel meant to him. There is a term in Buddhism called a koan. It’s kind of like a riddle used to impart a teaching of some sort and it’s often posed by a teacher to their pupil. The goal is for the pupil to have a revelation, to “get” the koan. There is no single answer to a koan, but rather a feeling that comes when one understands it. It’s like that feeling you get when you’re learning to ride a bike and after stumbling and falling, and trying over and over again, suddenly, you catch your balance. Hard to describe, but once you have it, you have it.  

The entire experience aboard the Nicaea is a koan for Iris, a question of his relationship with faith that only he can answer, and only towards the end. 

There’s a sequel coming, The Starlight Samsara.. Can you tell us about when and what we can expect from the continued adventure?

The sequel should be coming sometime near the summer of 2027! You can expect some new faces in the cast, but also some favorites returning. While The Iron Garden Sutra touched on the notion of AI ethics, The Starlight Samsara takes a deeper dive into the topic. And finally, things do get better for Iris, but not before they get significantly worse. 

A.D. SUI is a Ukrainian-born, internationally raised speculative writer, Nebula winner, and Aurora, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist. They are the author of The Dragonfly Gambit (2024), The Iron Garden Sutra (2026), and more than two dozen short stories. A failed academic and retired fencer, they spend most days wrangling their two dogs and tending to their myriads of tropical plants.
You can find them on most social media platforms as @thesuiway and https://thesuiway.ca/

Jean-Paul L. Garnier is the owner of Space Cowboy Books bookstore and publishing house, producer of Simultaneous Times Podcast (2023/25 Laureate Award Winner, 2024 BSFA, Ignyte, and British Fantasy Award Finalist), and was the editor of the SFPA’s Star*Line magazine from 2021-2025. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Brain magazine. In 2024 he won the Laureate Award for Best Editor. He has written many books of poetry and science fiction.  https://spacecowboybooks.com/  

Jean-Paul L. Garnier: One theme of The Iron Garden Sutra concerns failed generation ships and the existential troubles they face during their journeys. I have read several books recently with similar takes on generation ships. Do you feel that this kind of story reflects a growing tension between generations in the real world and youth feeling that they have been dealt a bad hand by previous generations?

A.D. Sui: Generation ships are a long-standing tradition in sci-fi. What’s not alluring about packing up ourselves into a tin can and running off into the universe in search of greener pastures? But in my opinion, it’s also a very naïve take. Space is hostile. Space is hard. But there is a romanticism in cutting and running. Staying is, arguably, far more difficult. 

I think every generation feels that pull of running away from their reality. Every generation can say that they have been dealt a bad hand. Millennials are economically disadvantaged because of policies enacted by Gen X and Boomers (and yes, have lived through three recessions now, but who’s counting?). Gen Xers felt they’ve been invisible all their lives. Boomers, I’m sure, felt disadvantaged in some way as well. Hard to imagine now, but one might. The generation before probably felt that they were unfairly thrust into a war that was only possible because of what the previous generation had done. And this is just the North American perspective. There are many more global conflicts, recessions, and other strains on each generation. We all want to run away, thinking that it will be better. To where? No one knows for sure, but somewhere that isn’t here. 

Part of The Iron Garden Sutra’s theme is deciding when to stand your ground and fight for the things we believe in. Even if we are one person. Even if the outcome doesn’t look hopeful. Millennials are of the age when our financial decisions and our voting have the most impact. Some of us are even in positions of influence. Some are making decisions on scales that will impact the next generation (hi, Gen Z, and sorry). We can continue to bemoan the hand we’ve been dealt, or we can also work towards leaving things better for those who are coming after us. I, personally, am a huge fan of complaining while doing the thing. 

It’s going to suck and it’s going to be a lot of work, sure, but we can leave a better world for those after us.

You’ve also created a religion in this novel, The Starlit. What did the process of creating a theology look like for you, and please tell us about the introduction of cosmology into the religion of peoples who have colonized the stars?

The Starlit is loosely based on Zen Buddhism. I have a very strong preference for non-monotheistic religions and like pondering where they can end up in thousands of years. What is the natural progression of something like Zen if it was supported into the future? What would its practitioners decide to keep and what would they discard? Because religion does change! Doctrine does change! It changes very slowly since religious institutions are massive and can’t afford to throw their entire weight around every other week, but it does change. 

I think the introduction of cosmology is the natural transition, given how we commonly incorporate elements from our immediate environments into religious texts. Parting the Red Sea, trudging through deserts, and all that. If people are traversing between stars frequently, then star-like language would begin bleeding into texts. 

The Iron Garden Sutra has multiple AI characters. Would you have written these characters differently had you written this book today?

I’ve been doing a lot of laughing/crying since the book has come out. You can guess why. 

A very niche fury that I’m experiencing about GenAI is that it has taken a very well-established trope in sci-fi and made it into a real-life abomination. I’ve been hearing some discussions in the genre that we need a new name for this concept now because any time we even drop the term “AI,” readers begin to think that we support the existence of Grok. 

In The Iron Garden Sutra, I have tried to move from the term “AI” and sometimes use “synthetic consciousness” because that’s really what I’m describing here. This is a fully-fledged individual that can act (mostly) autonomously, who has agency and drive, but isn’t born from organics. This isn’t Claude writing an email. This is something that is as much of a person as other characters in the novel. 

If I were to write this book again, I’d change nothing. I think I would lean into the AI ethics component of the book even harder to hammer the point home that these characters are sentient and deserving of individual rights. The caveat is that if I were to rewrite it, it would take several years for the book to get published and by that point we’d all be fighting Boston Robotics dogs for access to fresh water, and no one would be reading anymore.

Two of the characters in this book share a body. What complications arose during writing characters that do not have complete bodily autonomy and must occupy the same internal space?

Two characters/one body is becoming a very popular trope in spec fiction! 

This was, arguably, my favorite dynamic to write and explore. What kind of relationship can you have when one of you cannot act on the physical world without the other’s permission? How does a relationship develop when you have complete access to someone’s deepest, darkest thoughts? 

There’s a balance of power between Iris and VIFAI (Iris’s AI companion/helper) and I think this allows them to have a true relationship and friendship, even if Iris doesn’t believe it at first. It’s the closest and most meaningful relationship Iris has had in his entire life, but it cannot stay pure from the fact that he *is* the container for VIFAI and the one supposedly “in charge”. Without spoiling anything, this does budge a bit throughout the book and Iris does come to a deeper understanding that VIFAI is not as helpless as Iris had believed it to be.

The name of the main spaceship in the story is the Counsel of Nicaea, which suggests a Christian theological bent, and is a great contrast to the Starlit and their worldview reminiscent of Buddhism and Hinduism. What were your aims in creating such a stark, yet subtle, contrast? 

The contrast does exist, but it was not intentional! 

The Buddhist worldview is the one I am most familiar with and preferred writing from that vantage point, and I must admit that the Christian theological bent was inspired by the generation ship in the ‘Expanse’ series, and the Nauvoo, which was commissioned by a group of Mormons who wanted to travel far past the Solar System. It made sense to me that a group of people united by intense faith would do well in long-term space travel. Although, as we see with the Nicaea, that might not always be the case. 

Without spoilers, the main character has revelatory experiences leading him to contemplate the meaning of the void and the space between the stars. Can you elaborate on how you used spiritual growth and crisis of faith in your character arcs?

Oh, poor Iris. 

I wanted him to be a reluctant monk. I wanted him to look right, wear the right clothing, say the right things, but I wanted him to think all the wrong ones. Well, what he believes to be wrong. I think there is a stereotype of monks being happy and peaceful at all times, but in reality, they are just people, experiencing the same existence we are, who also hold a specific job. Being a monk is a job, above all else, and people come to it for very different and personal reasons. 

And I wanted Iris to grapple with how he related to the doctrine and his role as a monk. I wanted to push him towards an understanding of what holding the role of a Vessel meant to him. There is a term in Buddhism called a koan. It’s kind of like a riddle used to impart a teaching of some sort and it’s often posed by a teacher to their pupil. The goal is for the pupil to have a revelation, to “get” the koan. There is no single answer to a koan, but rather a feeling that comes when one understands it. It’s like that feeling you get when you’re learning to ride a bike and after stumbling and falling, and trying over and over again, suddenly, you catch your balance. Hard to describe, but once you have it, you have it.  

The entire experience aboard the Nicaea is a koan for Iris, a question of his relationship with faith that only he can answer, and only towards the end. 

There’s a sequel coming, The Starlight Samsara.. Can you tell us about when and what we can expect from the continued adventure?

The sequel should be coming sometime near the summer of 2027! You can expect some new faces in the cast, but also some favorites returning. While The Iron Garden Sutra touched on the notion of AI ethics, The Starlight Samsara takes a deeper dive into the topic. And finally, things do get better for Iris, but not before they get significantly worse. 

A.D. SUI is a Ukrainian-born, internationally raised speculative writer, Nebula winner, and Aurora, and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist. They are the author of The Dragonfly Gambit (2024), The Iron Garden Sutra (2026), and more than two dozen short stories. A failed academic and retired fencer, they spend most days wrangling their two dogs and tending to their myriads of tropical plants.
You can find them on most social media platforms as @thesuiway and https://thesuiway.ca/

Jean-Paul L. Garnier is the owner of Space Cowboy Books bookstore and publishing house, producer of Simultaneous Times Podcast (2023/25 Laureate Award Winner, 2024 BSFA, Ignyte, and British Fantasy Award Finalist), and was the editor of the SFPA’s Star*Line magazine from 2021-2025. He is also Editor-in-Chief of Electronic Brain magazine. In 2024 he won the Laureate Award for Best Editor. He has written many books of poetry and science fiction.  https://spacecowboybooks.com/  

The North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation (NCSFF) has announced the finalists for the 2026 Manly Wade Wellman Award. The award recognizes outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy novels written by North Carolina authors.

• The Unseen, Ania Ahlborn (Gallery)
• Last Chance Live!, Helena Haywoode Henry (Nancy Paulsen)
• Infinite Archive, Mur Lafferty (Ace)
• Transmentation: Transience, Darkly Lem (Blackstone)
• The Coming Dark, D.J. Molles (published by the author)
• Labyrinth, A.G. …Read More

  The post 2026 Wellman Award Finalists appeared first on Locus.

Simon & Schuster has announced that Atria Gallery Group will relaunch the Pocket Books imprint as a core romance imprint that will also publish additional genres including romantic thrillers, dark romance, and horror. Anh Schluep, who is joining Atria Gallery, will be vice president, editorial director, and deputy publisher of Pocket Books. Schluep said,

I'm excited to be bringing back Pocket Books. The imprint, which published its first list in …Read More

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The Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association (CSFFA) announced three inductees to the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame for 2026: author Kelley Armstrong, author James Alan Gardner, and past president of Fanzine Writers of America Mike Glicksohn.

This year's jury included David Clink (chair), JM Landels, Y.M. Pang, Clifford Samuels, and Edo van Belkom.

For more information, see the CSFFA website. …Read More

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Looking Back and Moving Forward

Dear writer, 

We’ve had an incredible year at SFWA. We charted new Constellations and visited a Quasar on our professional journey to the latest Nebulas. Together, we expanded our orbit, welcomed new travelers, and built momentum that will carry us toward our next horizon.

Yet, we can’t move forward without looking back. This year, we lost Past President Jane Yolen. A Grand Master, storyteller, and tireless advocate for writers, she inspired a generation of writers (like me!) to keep writing, creating, and, most importantly, imagining. Her legacy lives on, not just in the stories and poems she wrote, but in the community she helped shape. In the months and years ahead, we will continue to honor Jane by celebrating her work and carrying forward the spirit of generosity that defines her legacy. (or defined her life?)

Our community was joined this year by Executive Director Isis Asare. During her tenure, SFWA reached new audiences, launched ambitious initiatives, strengthened current programming, and became decidedly and emphatically more human. As Isis concludes her time at SFWA, we are deeply grateful for her collaborative leadership and supportive vision of what our community can and should be. We will miss her steady hand, but we also know that her next chapter will continue to shape the future of our genre. We will be cheering her on for years to come. You can follow along with Isis’ journey here.

As one chapter closes, another begins. At this year’s Nebulas, we welcomed N. K. Jemisin as SFWA’s newest Grand Master, celebrating her groundbreaking and world-shaking contributions to speculative fiction. In her acceptance speech (which literally lit the room on fire), she reminded us of the collective power and possibility of our community: “We should revel in our growth, fellow writers. And as we grow, we can make the world better, too.” That spirit has always been the gravity that holds SFWA’s constellation together. We are a community of creators who challenge the boundaries of what is possible, and build, build, build the future we want to see (revising all along the way). 

This August, at Worldcon, we’ll continue that tradition by honoring our next Grand Master, another writer whose work has expanded our universe and strengthened our community. I can’t wait to introduce you to the next star in our bright sky.

The future of our genre has never been built by one writer, one organizer, or one creator. It is shaped by the networks, community, uplift, and care that help us keep creating. After all, a constellation is only as bright as all of the stars reflecting light within it. With that in mind, this summer, SFWA is opening new opportunities and strengthening pathways for care and connection with the launch of our Writers in Crisis Grant on August 1 and the opening of our Givers Fund Grant on September 15. 

These programs are a promise to our community in a time of change: when you are struggling or facing moments of uncertainty, and when you are ready to build something bigger and better than what was there before, SFWA will be there for you with practical support, a helping hand, and a big reminder that none of us has to go it alone. As Jemisin reminded us, we can combine our powers, and as Grand Master Nicola Griffith told us in her 2025 speech, “No one does this alone.” Together, we can care for one another as we reach for the stars and build the future we want to see (with magic, science, sorcery, monsters and miracles). There is always more on the next horizon. 

Speaking of which, Singularity returns next Tuesday, with new Recommended Reading List features and new pro-human guidance from our Emerging Tech committee, along with updates from other great teams, SFWA members, and industry peers. If you are an active SFWA member, you can also join Emerging Tech for an introductory session this July 5 at 8 a.m. PDT (or review the panel on our new SFWA Events Theater at your leisure later).

The universe of SFWA is still expanding. As we continue this journey together (always), we want you to know this: wherever you are at in your writing, in the world, or with whatever challenges you are facing, SFWA is here for you because of you. 

So, keep creating,

Kate Ristau

SFWA Board President

The post Press Release – June 30, 2026 appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

by Aashima Rawal

Read by Liz J. Bradley

A child stands before a Bright Door carved into the cracked walls of a city that always braces for impact. Police lines shimmer like heat across streets split by old debts. On one side, jinn watch with quiet, tired defiance. On the other, a clerk posts notices about vanished neighborhoods. Beyond the threshold, the architecture folds in on itself and reforms, as if memory is the only true map. In  Vajra Chandrasekera’s The Saint of Bright Doors, borders are drawn not with ink but with ghosts. The empire collapses again, but this time in the imagination of someone who refuses to accept the old version of the story.

Bright Door. Photo by Tekeshwar Singh on Unsplash.

Speculative fiction from former colonies often doesn’t prioritize spectacle. Its urgency lies elsewhere. These stories rebuild what history tried to erase. They confront the past without allowing it to dictate the ending. In the hands of a growing group of South Asian writers, the project becomes something quieter and far more ambitious: a way of restoring dignity to the record.

Decolonial speculative fiction has gained traction over the years, but it has recently become hard to ignore. Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall won the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction for its ability to connect hope to the aftershocks of colonial violence. Writers like Premee Mohamed and Sami Shah consistently appear on the Nebula, Locus, and Le Guin Prize lists. Their work is recognized not for niche appeal but for expanding the emotional reach of the field. Many describe their stories as a form of repair—a conversation with parts of history that were rushed or redacted. Their rise also reveals familiar tensions like the so-called Tiffany Problem, where historically accurate names or customs in non-Western settings are deemed “incorrect” simply because they fall outside Eurocentric expectations. This serves as a reminder that imagination also has borders, and someone has to redraw them.

Rewriting the empire on the page isn’t just a matter of rearranging events. It involves method. How do you acknowledge wounds without reopening them? How do you write about power clearly instead of imitating it? The stories in the anthology The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories offer one approach. Jinn are not depicted as curiosities or exotic ornaments. They are figures carrying memory, burden, and rebellion. In Kamila Shamsie’s contribution, jinn move through domestic and communal spaces rather than distant myth, grounding the supernatural in the everyday aftermath of loss. Amal el-Mohtar’s story similarly resists spectacle, using lyric restraint and intimate perspective to explore longing and fracture instead of grand conflict. In both cases, folklore becomes a vehicle for emotional complexity rather than a simplified symbol.

Premee Mohamed has discussed drawing on scientific research, including climate science, in her speculative fiction, while still foregrounding community, character, and emotional stakes. Tasha Suri has said that the world of Empire of Sand was heavily inspired by the Mughal Empire and that she drew on the culture and politics of Mughal India before deliberately diverging from historical context to meet the needs of the plot. Critics describe the future Tel Aviv and Jaffa setting of Central Station as a liminal, layered border city and hub of cultural exchange, where multiple histories, faiths, and communities intersect in everyday life rather than through explicit political exposition. Taken together, these examples suggest a model of ethical alt-history rooted in attention and care rather than entitlement to historical material.

To rewrite an empire is to ask what might have happened if the world had been kinder, and then to sit with the knowledge that it wasn’t. It is both an act of mourning and imagination. Sami Shah’s “Reap” takes this to its limits. Partition, the 1947 division of British India into India and Pakistan, triggered mass displacement and violence that still shapes family memory across the region. In Shah’s story, the jinn bear witness to what people cannot bear to name, moving through the aftermath with a steadiness that feels like endurance. The story unsettles because it will not allow easy distance. Mohamed explores this same instinct in her essays: the inheritance of grief and the responsibility to transform it into something usable. This image recalls textile traditions like khadi and kantha, the way one carries the mark of the hand, while the other layers scraps of past lives into a single surface. Memory, in both cloth and story, rarely follows a straight line. It accumulates.

Kantha embroidery. Image by Nancy Kassim Farran from Pixabay.

For writers, this shift in speculative fiction is not a trend but a change in approach. It calls for slower reflection. It calls for empathy instead of spectacle. Recent Planetside craft columns state it clearly: use archives, not assumptions; write with history, not over it; let care shape the revision. The goal is not to tidy up the past but to listen to it. This might involve returning to primary documents, noting who is missing from official maps, or paying attention to rituals that continue to hold stories long after the paperwork has disappeared.

Each time a writer reimagines the empire, the world gains another map—one that accepts complexity, sorrow, and resilience. In Chandrasekera’s city of Bright Doors, no border is permanent. Streets erased by policy can be brought back into existence by memory alone. South Asian speculative fiction takes this possibility seriously. It offers a way to write with both accuracy and humanity, treating history not as a fixed monument but as something still capable of change.

Explore more articles from Writing from History

Aashima Rawal is a freelance writer with bylines in Art UK, Monograph, Hearth Magazine, Modest, and Business Insider. She writes about the intersections of storytelling, history, and culture, blending research with an accessible, reflective style. Her work often explores how memory, craft, and imagination shape the worlds we inherit and the ones we build.

The post Rewriting the Empire: Lessons from South Asian Speculative Fiction appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

Starlog, the magazine devoted to visionary sci-fi and cutting-edge science, has announced its return to print for November 13, 2026. The magazine will be published annually; there will also be a weekly email newsletter, Lodestar.

Annalee Newitz will serve as editor-in-chief, with Meredith Borders as senior editor and Jason Kauzlarich as senior art director. In a podcast episode announcing the relaunch, Newitz described the goals of the print issue:

…Read More

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