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Author Dafydd ab Hugh, 65, died in June 2026.

Ab Hugh was born David M. Friedman on October 22, 1960 in Los Angeles CA. He began writing SF/F as early as 1987 with Heroing: or, How He Wound Down the World, first of two books in the fantasy series Jiana. He wrote Arthuriana books Arthur War Lord (1994) and Far Beyond the Wave (1994), as well as several tie-in novels …Read More

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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.

Author R.S. Belcher, 59, died July 11, 2026.

Rod Belcher was born May 2, 1967 in Roanoke VA. He graduated Virginia Commonwealth University, worked on a Masters degree in forensic science at The George Washington University, and worked as a newspaper and magazine editor, a reporter, and a freelance writer. After a Star Trek tie-in novel in 2006, he continued publishing in 2013 with Hollow Moments and The Six-Gun Tarot, …Read More

The post R.S. Belcher (1967-2026) appeared first on Locus.

By Cyril Simsa

Eva Hauserová promoting her non-fiction title Na koštěti se dá i lítat [Broomsticks can also be used for flying], 1995

Of the many contemporary subgenres of sf that can claim they originated as a reaction to the cyberpunk revolution of the 1980s, one of the oldest is certainly “biopunk”, especially if one counts the mini-genre of “ribofunk” – shouted into existence by the American writer Paul Di Filippo (1954-) in 1990, and just as quickly extinguished – as a legitimate precursor (Di Filippo 1990).  Probably only “steampunk”, coined by K.W. Jeter (1950-) in 1987, is older (Nicholls and Langford 2025). 

“Biopunk”, as it is used today, refers to a subgenre of sf that adopts many of the stylistic and narrative tropes of cyberpunk – a focus on stories built around an ensemble cast of petty criminals, (gene) hackers and chancers, urban subcultures, and a “revolt into style” (if the reader will pardon the throwback to the cultural criticism of an earlier era) (Melly 1970) – while sourcing its McGuffins from biotechnology, rather than cybernetics. In this contemporary sense, biopunk has its origins in the American genre writing of the 1990s, with the first documented use (from two different, and almost certainly unconnected sources) in 1992, and the subsequent attempt to identify precursors in earlier genre history.1

Di Filippo takes this as far back as H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896); of more recent antecedents, Greg Bear’s Blood Music (1985) and Bruce Sterling’s Schismatrix (1985) are frequently cited (Di Filippo 1990; Schmeink 2014b, 32).  From these American genre roots, biopunk has spread around the world and into other media, film and TV in particular. The hit TV show, Orphan Black (2013-2017), with its saga of a shadowy organisation trying to direct the future of human evolution through gene hacking and the complications that arise when some of its human clones escape, would be a good example. All of which makes a neat teleological narrative of exactly the kind that, in theory, every self-respecting punk of whatever persuasion is supposed to abhor; and none of which quite holds together when examined in a broader framework. 

Because there is a catch – of course, there is – and in a European context, this neat timeline is disrupted by the Czech writer Eva Hauserová (1954-2023), also known as Eva Hauser, who in 1988 independently came up with a literary intervention she called “biopunk,” and her coinage pre-dates the American one. This sits uncomfortably with the official chronicle, making her something later critics have had to explain away, though there are also those who have simply ignored her. (For the former, see Schmeink, who will be discussed below; for the latter, a simple Google search will reveal any number of biopunk, or biopunk-adjacent websites that have no idea of Eva’s existence.)  

Eva was living behind the Iron Curtain at the time she came up with the notion of “biopunk,” with limited access to American sources and no contact with her American contemporaries. However, like the American writers who later dreamt up their version of biopunk in the 1990s, her ideas were formed in reaction to cyberpunk – or rather, her vague impression of what she imagined cyberpunk to be, in the absence of any direct experience of the foundational texts – but with a change of focus to genetics and biology, rather than information technology and computer programming. (No doubt her educational background as a microbiologist played a role in that.)   There are, then, some parallels between Eva’s initial impulse towards biopunk and that of the writers who later adopted the same term in America, though there are also significant differences. 

In the 1980s, there was a common consensus in Czechoslovak fandom that cyberpunk was not really a viable literary genre in the conditions of latter-day Communism. As the Czech writer Ondřej Neff (1945-) argued in a classic lecture at Parcon, the Czechoslovak national sf convention, in June 1987: “It’s difficult to develop cyberpunk in a country, where one can’t even find a working telephone box.” (Neff 1987, cited from Hauser 1993, 15) 

In devising her concept of biopunk, Eva took this insight one step further, arguing that the differences between East and West in relation to cyberpunk were not just a question of technology, but also of social conditioning: 

The heroes of cyberpunk, in spite of all the novelty and colour of cyberpunk narrative, are at heart the same, familiar American boys – optimistic, active, greedy for money and longing for success. The heroes of biopunk, similarly to the people that I saw each day in my surroundings, couldn’t be nearly so straightforward.

When the disintegration and paralysis of society reaches a certain level, people lose their motivation to do anything at all. This is what we experienced in Czechoslovakia in the 1980s: people became extremely sceptical and passive as they realised, time and time again, that no matter what they tried, they couldn’t bring about any results, that no revolt, no expression of anger was capable of changing anything… (Hauser 1993, 15) 

Worse, in Eva’s view, people living under totalitarianism become so accustomed to the limitations imposed on them that they come to consider them normal: 

For example, the heroes of my stories often consider their situation to be marvellous and pleasant, even though by any rational analysis it is in actual fact frightening or utterly repulsive: this reflects totalitarian society with its grotesque voluntarism, its newspapers which continually declared that we, the people, were extremely happy, that we were living in a highly developed society, and that if we still had a few problems, they weren’t really so serious… (Hauser 1993, 15)2

Biopunk, then, was a literary device that allowed Eva to express the inner deformations of life under totalitarianism by externalising them into speculative biological traits. Her societies become the playground of “mutants, genetic diseases and deformations, chimaeric organisms,” (Hauser 1993, 15), and her protagonists are unable to imagine another state of being. Under the pressures of totalitarianism, her protagonists literally become monsters. 

Eva Hauserová: Self-portrait (2020)

American biopunk clearly comes from a very different impulse: the exploration of how biotechnology is going to impact society in the framework of a more-or-less corporate future. Its extrapolated biotechnology is based on real science, not metaphor.3 Its social assumptions are those of capitalism, not the sunset years of Soviet-style Communism and the collapsing economy of a failed experiment in centrally-planned socialism, based on nineteenth-century notions of industrial development and twentieth-century surveillance technology.

There is no question that the “biopunk” of contemporary film and fiction is not the same animal as Eva’s, and that her coinage of an earlier Central-East European homonym is an inconvenience to the people who take the contemporary, “Western” variant seriously. It therefore makes perfect sense that they should seek to sideline Eva’s rogue intervention, though the ways they do so are sometimes quite problematic. 

The most detailed attempt I have found to date is that of Lars Schmeink (1975-) in his article “Biopunk 101,” which was published in two slightly different versions in 2014 (Schmeink 2014a; Schmeink 2014b).  Schmeink is today a respected independent scholar, based in Hamburg, with an impressive CV and a long publications list, but in 2014 he was just finishing his Ph.D. at Humboldt University Berlin , which two years later yielded his monograph Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction, published by Liverpool University Press (Schmeink 2016).  The monograph itself makes no mention of Eva or her Czech biopunk – justifiably so, as it has no relevance to his argument – but one assumes that one of the reasons for his earlier essay was to tidy away this awkward forerunner, so as to avoid cluttering up his later book. 

As far as I have been able to reconstruct the publishing history, the two versions of “Biopunk 101” appeared within a couple of months of each other. The first, longer version appeared on Schmeink’s personal blog in May 2014 and is now accessible only on the Wayback Machine; the second, more formal (and shorter) variant appeared as an essay in SFRA Review in Summer 2014 (Schmeink 2014a; Schmeink 2014b).  The discussion of Eva’s work in both versions is based on a mini-feature about biopunk, which appeared in the BSFA’s critical journal Vector in 1993, and which was curated by the present author. 

This comprised of three items: 

1. A slightly edited and polished version of Eva’s English-language essay, “Biopunk: A New Literary Movement for Post-Totalitarian Regimes”, first published under a slightly variant title in her personal fanzine, Wild Sharkaah, in 1990 (Hauser 1990; Hauser 1993). 

2. An English translation of “A Few Notes About Biopunk”, by Miroslav Fišer (1965-), first published in Czech in 1991, to illustrate how Eva’s biopunk had been received in Czech critical circles (Fišer 1993). 

3. An introduction by myself to set the context (Simsa 1993).  

Given the relatively late date of these publications (1991 for the first Czech appearance of Fišer, 1993 for Vector), both Fišer and I make the point that biopunk – which Eva herself declared to be a response to the experience of living under totalitarianism (see above) – was no longer a going concern by the time Vector appeared, because the fall of Communism had done away with the conditions that gave rise to it. This in turn leads Schmeink, whose account of Eva’s biopunk seems mostly intended to demonstrate its discontinuity from his own research, to base his discussion almost entirely on Fišer’s essay. We thus have the paradoxical situation, where Schmeink talks about biopunk as if it was some kind of impersonal movement from Eastern Europe, with Fišer as its spokesman, rather than the personal project of one individual (Eva Hauserová), supported by a couple of her acolytes (Simsa, Fišer), who essentially contributed nothing, except as a kind of all-singing, all-dancing team of bespoke fanboy cheer leaders. 

Eva is cited by Schmeink only in support of Fišer’s arguments: “Eva Hauser, another writer of Czech biopunk, in a manifest[o] from 1990 […]  translated into English in Vector, underlines some of Fišer’s statements and adds to the definition” (Schmeink 2014a, a passage that is found only in the web version of the article; it has been deleted from the abridged version published as Schmeink 2014b).  In the longer version of the essay on his blog, Schmeink does at least quote a few words from Eva herself, but in the shorter (and more official) version in SFRA Review, he quotes only Fišer and myself. Eva is named, but not allowed to speak, and one can only conclude that Schmeink has completely misunderstood the distribution of roles between Eva, Fišer and the present author; and in particular, the fact that biopunk was Eva’s invention, not ours. 

The original fanzine publication of “Biopunk: A New Literary Movement Specific for Post-Totalitarian Regimes”.  Wild Sharkaaah, No.2, December 1990. 

In fairness to Schmeink, Eva’s Wild Sharkaah was not available online at the time he was writing (it was not posted on efanzines.com till 2018), and paper copies would have been hard to find in 2014. It is therefore likely he had had no opportunity to verify the provenance of Eva’s article for himself, which might have helped clarify the pivotal nature of Eva’s contribution. The handwritten heading, the hand-drawn illustrations, and the way the article is integrated into the free-flowing text of Eva’s personal fanzine can leave little doubt about how individual this project was for her. Certainly, anyone who has read the original fanzine version of “Biopunk: A New Literary Movement for Post-Totalitarian Regimes” would find it hard to claim that “it remains unclear who originally coined the term,” as Schmeink does in both versions of his text (Schmeink 2014a; Schmeink 2014b, 33).  That being said, I did include details of the article’s earlier publication in the bibliographic notes in Vector and a simple comparison of Eva’s author bio to Fišer’s should have been enough to show which of the two was the more significant writer. (By the time the Vector feature appeared, Eva had professionally published one novel and a short story collection, had been working as a professional editor for three years and her bio listed multiple publication credits. Fišer had gafiated. This is stated explicitly. Simsa 1993, 18.)  One, therefore, cannot help wondering whether gender bias may also have played a role. 

Another factor may have been how much time had elapsed since Eva first published her biopunk manifesto. In the early 1990s, immediately after the fall of Communism, the world was swept by a wave of interest in the post-Communist societies that had newly reopened to direct contacts with “the West,” and this was no less true of sf and sf fandom than it was of the rest of society. Eva was a known quantity in English-speaking fandom in the 1990s: she had worked as a professional editor at Ikárie magazine in Prague, which was newly publishing so many British and American writers, and had contributed stories and articles to a range of English-language publications, including a previous issue of Vector (Hauser 1992b). (Other English-language genre publications in which she appeared around this time included Matrix, BBR, Shards of Babel and Science-Fiction Studies: see Hauser 1991a, Hauser 1992a, Hauser 1992d, and Hauser 1994.)  She was also publishing her own English-language fanzine; attending multiple international conventions, including the Chicago Worldcon in 1991, and Syncon 92 in Australia as the official European GUFF delegate, the first fan from post-Communist Central Europe to be selected for one of the major international fan funds (convention reports available in Hauser 1991b for Chicago and Hauser 1992c for Australia); and she had become one of the regular ports of call for Western writers visiting Prague, including Bruce Sterling, who wrote about her in a travelogue for Wired (Sterling 1995, 155-156 plus photo on 103). 

In other words, at the time the Vector feature was published, anyone with at least a passing interest in European sf would have had an idea of who Eva was, and the editors did not see any need to emphasise this; but twenty years later, when Schmeink came to write his piece, this was evidently no longer the case and his discussion misses the context. 

In his focus on contemporary forms of biopunk, Schmeink does his best to locate Eva’s Central-East European biopunk in the past, to contain it in a bubble of late-totalitarian DIY punk subculture that has long ceased to be of anything but historical interest. In essence, he tries to present it as something like a dead language, leaving her mutants and chimaeric organisms to wander the margins of the post-Communist genre landscape, like hopeful monsters – another species of the weird zombies of Communism that are still endemic to the culture over here… 

The problem with all this is that contemporary genre scholarship is not the only possible frame of reference for studying Eva’s oeuvre, and if one takes a step back to look at her work in the framework of Gender Studies or Slavic Studies, she is still considered an appropriate topic of research. Indeed, there has been a marked upswing of interest in her work in recent years. University theses have been written about her sf of the 1980s and her involvement in fandom (Praženková 2007; Czechaczek 2015); essays have been published about the overlap between her science fiction and her involvement in the Czech women’s movement of the 1990s (Blažková 2025); at least one conference paper has been devoted specifically to her version of biopunk (Czechaczek 2018); and the Polish Scholar Joanna Czaplińska has drawn heavily on Eva’s stories in her recent study of gender aspects of Czech science fiction (Czaplińska 2022).  The donation of Eva’s literary archive to the Czech Literature Museum (Muzeum literatury–Památník národního písemnictví), after her untimely death in 2023, has also opened up new opportunities for study, as detailed by her son in an upcoming essay for the journal, Literární archiv (Hauser J. 2026). 

In short, Eva’s work is not going away and there are fields of scholarship in which it is her version of biopunk that is seen as the genuine article and the global version is the distraction. In fact, to be slightly provocative about this, from a Central European perspective, the globalised biopunk that has dominated cultural discourse for the last thirty-odd years looks increasingly like the vision of a dying corporate Utopia – a “localized referent” for a historically specific, culturally limited moment, to paraphrase Schmeink (Schmeink 2014b, 33) – while it is Eva’s biopunk and its raw engagement with the structures of totalitarianism that is once again becoming alarmingly relevant in the face of the new, post-democratic social order that seems to be sweeping our way from Airstrip Two, on the far side of the water. 

“Dystopia is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”

~

FULL DISCLOSURE: Eva Hauserová was my partner. We lived together from 1994 until her death in 2023. We were not yet partners in 1991, at the time I prepared the biopunk feature that was eventually published in Vector. 

Eva Hauserová (1954-2023)

Eva Hauserová was born in Prague and originally planned to become a research scientist, receiving a Master’s degree in microbiology in 1978 and later starting an unfinished doctorate.  However, in parallel to her scientific activities, she had always had an interest in creative writing and in the 1980s this began to dominate. 

She discovered fandom in 1985 and rapidly began to produce the stories that became the basis of her idea of biopunk and her first short story collection, Hostina mutagenů [A Feast of Mutagens, 1992].  In 1988, she also won the prestigious Karel Čapek Award for her story “U nás v Agónii” [“Here, in Agony”, where Agony is the name of a planet].  

She narrowly missed becoming one of the founding editors of the premier Czech sf magazine, Ikárie, in 1990, joining the editorial staff from the second issue.  She went on to work as an editor for a range of Prague publishers, as well as a freelance translator, eventually producing somewhere in the region of a hundred book-length translations from English (she herself lost count), starting with The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas in 1993.  Her other translations included genre-adjacent work by Fay Weldon, Ruth Ozeki and Eve Ensler, and a host of Harlequin romances under various pseudonyms.  Her last translation, Clive King’s classic children’s fantasy, Stig of the Dump, is being published in 2026.  

In her own writing, she published an sf novel, Cvokyně [The Madwoman] in 1992, and continued to write genre-inflected stories throughout her career, such as those collected in Když se sudičky spletou [When the Fates Make a Mistake, 2000].  However, her later novels moved into the mainstream.  She also wrote several volumes of non-fiction, initially in relation to her voluntary work at the Prague Gender Studies Center, perhaps most notably Na koštěti se dá i lítát aneb Nemožné ženy dokažou i nemožné [Broomsticks can also be Used for Flying, or Impossible Women can Achieve the Impossible, 1995], one of the very first attempts to provide an overview of what would today be called second-wave feminism for Czech readers.  The book was an unexpected hit. 

It was also around this time that she was most active internationally, attending multiple sf conventions, contributing to English-language publications (both within the genre and in Gender Studies), and publishing her own fanzine.  Much of her English-language work from this period is signed Eva Hauser. 

Later in life, her focus shifted to environmental issues.  She was chair of the Czech Permaculture Association for several years and her last major publication was the gigantic three-volume Encyklopedie soběstačnosti pro 21. století [Encylopedia of Self-sufficiency for the 21st Century, 2016-2022], which she edited and co-wrote.  

She died in 2023.  Her final, posthumous novel, based on her experiences in the environmental movement, is forthcoming. 

Cyril Simsa

Cyril Simsa is an Anglo-Czech writer (born in London to Czech parents, but now living in Prague), with stories and articles in a range of genre publications. His short story collection is Lost Cartographies: Tales of Another Europe (Invocations Press, 2014). A second collection, Starspawn and Other Stories, is forthcoming.

~

SOURCES

Blažková, Hana. 2025. “Pozapomenutá sci-fi tradice českého feminismu. Emancipace Evy Hauserové a Caroly Biedermannové v 80. a 90. letech 20. století”. Gender a výzkum/Gender and Research online: https://doi.org/10.13060/gav.2025.004 [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. 

Czaplińska, Joanna. 2022. “Does Czech Science Fiction Have a (Feminine) Gender?” Revista Hélice, 8 (1), whole no. 32, 9-20. Translated by Carleton Bulkin. Online at https://w ww.revistahelice.com/en/book/helice-32-2/ [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. Previously published in Czech in 2015. 

Czechaczek, Jan. 2015. “Cena Karla Čapka ve fanzinech.” Master’s thesis, Masaryk University, Brno.

Czechaczek, Jan. 2018. “Biopunk Evy Hauserové.” Paper presented at the conference Fantasy and Myth in the Anthropocene/Fantastika a mýtus v antropocénu, Masaryk University, Brno, October 5, 2018. One-page abstract available at: https://ceska-literatura.phil.muni.cz/fantastika/en/fantasy-and-myth-in-the-anthropocene/conference-program [accessed 29 Mar 2026]

Di Filippo, Paul. 1990. “Ribofunk.” Boing-Boing, Winter 1990, 24. Republished online as “Ribofunk: the Manifesto”, currently at https://www.streettech.com/bcp/BCPtext/Manifestos/Ribofunk.html [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. Print version not seen. 

Fišer, Miroslav. 1993. “A Few Notes about Biopunk.” Vector, 174, 17-18. Translated by Cyril Simsa. Online at https://fanac.org/fanzines/Vector/Vector174.pdf [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. Previously published in Czech in 1991. 

Hauser, Eva. 1990. “Biopunk: A New Literary Movement Specific for Post-Totalitarian Regimes.” Wild Sharkaaah, 2, 1-2. Online at https://efanzines.com/WildSharkaah/WildSharkaah-02.pdf [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. The spelling of the fanzine title is inconsistent. 

Hauser Eva. 1991a. “The Changing Face of Europe.” Matrix, 94, 23-24. Online at: https://www.fanac.org/fanzines/Matrix/Matrix94.pdf [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. 

Hauser, Eva. 1991b. “A Czech Fan in America: Chicago WorldCon Impressions.” Shards of Babel, 34, 6-7. Online at https://fanac.org/fanzines/Shards_of_Babel/Shards_of_Babel34-06.html [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. 

Hauser, Eva. 1992a. “Will People in Czechoslovakia Read SF in the Future?” Shards of Babel, 35, 7. Online at https://fanac.org/fanzines/Shards_of_Babel/Shards_of_Babel35-07.html [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. 

Hauser, Eva. 1992b. “The View from Olympus.” Vector, 166, 14-16. Translated by Cyril Simsa. Online at: https://fanac.org/fanzines/Vector/Vector166.pdf [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. Previously published in Czech in 1991. 

Hauser, Eva. 1992c. “My Australian Diary: Syncon ’92 – and Something More.” Wild Shaarkah, 8, 1-12 [whole issue]. Online at https://efanzines.com/WildSharkaah/WildSharkaah-08.pdf [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. Reprinted with corrections in GUFF: The Incomplete Chronicles, edited by David Langford. Ansible Editions, 2025. Online at https://taff.org.uk/ebooks.php?x=guffanth [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. The spelling of the fanzine title is inconsistent. 

Hauser, Eva. 1992d. “A Toothsome Smile, an Artificial Death.” Back Brain Recluse, 21, 21-23. Translated by Cyril Simsa. Online at: https://archive.org/details/back-brain-recluse-no.-21-1992 [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. Previously published in Czech in 1991. 

Hauser, Eva,  1993. “Biopunk: A New Literary Movement for Post-Totalitarian Regimes.” Vector, 174, 15-16. Online at https://fanac.org/fanzines/Vector/Vector174.pdf [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. Slightly revised version of Hauser 1990. 

Hauser, Eva. 1994. “Science Fiction in the Czech Republic and the Former Czechoslovakia: The Pleasures and the Disappointments of the New Cosmopolitanism.” Science-Fiction Studies 21 (2), whole no. 63, 133-140. https://doi.org/10.1525/sfs.21.2.0133 

Hauser, Jakub. [2026]. “‘Svůj ženský úděl ponesu mužně.’ Zpráva o literární pozůstalosti Evy Hauserové (1954–2023) v Literárním archivu PNP.” Literární archiv, 58, 2026 [in press].  

McHale, Brian. 1992. Constructing Postmodernism. Routledge. Cited from Schmeink 2014b. Original not seen. 

Melly, George. 1970. Revolt into Style: the Pop Arts in Britain. Allen Lane. Cited from the Kindle edition: Faber, 2012. 

Neff, Ondřej. 1987. “Nová vlná v SF a kyberpunk.” Lecture delivered at Parcon, the Czechoslovak national sf convention, June 13, 1987. Noted in the convention programme in Interkom, 6/1987 [online at https://interkom.vecnost.cz/1987/19870654.htm; accessed 29 Mar 2026], and commonly referenced by other writers of the period, but I have not been able to find a published text of the lecture itself. 

Nicholls, Peter, and David Langford. [2025]. “Steampunk.” In The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. 4th edn., edited by John Clute, David Langford et al. https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/steampunk [accessed 4 Apr 2026]. Entry last updated 7 Apr 2025. 

Orwell, George. 1949. Nineteen Eighty-Four. Secker & Warburg. Cited from pdf e-book at https://www.fadedpage.com/showbook.php?pid=20120511 [accessed 4 Apr 2026]. 

Praženková, Monika. 2007. “Světy feministické fikce v díle Evy Hauserové.” Bachelor thesis, Masaryk University, Brno.

Prucher, Jeff, ed.  2007. Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction. Oxford University Press. 

Schmeink, Lars. 2014a. “Biopunk 101” [blog post], May 1, 2014, http://larsschmeink.de/?p=2548 [accessed 10 Nov 2016]. No longer available at this address but cached at https://web.archive.org/web/20150214054235/http:/larsschmeink.de/?p=2548 [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. 

Schmeink, Lars. 2014b. “Biopunk 101”, SFRA Review, 309, 31-36. Web version not accessible as of 29 Mar 2026. 

Schmeink, Lars. 2016. Biopunk Dystopias: Genetic Engineering, Society and Science Fiction. (Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies.)  Liverpool University Press. Online at https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781781383766 [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. 

Simsa, Cyril. 1993. “Two Short Articles about Biopunk.” Vector, 174, 12-14, 18. Online at https://fanac.org/fanzines/Vector/Vector174.pdf [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. 

Sterling, Bruce. 1995. “Triumph of the Plastic People”. Wired, 3.01, 100-107, 154-158. Plain text (minus photos) archived at https://www.wired.com/1995/01/prague/ [partially pay-walled] [accessed 29 Mar 2026]. 

1. Prucher 2007, 16, attributes the first appearance to a Usenet post relating to the role-playing game GURPS on 17 May 1992; Schmeink 2014b, 33, cites the literary theorist Brian McHale (1952-2025), who uses the term in his monograph, Constructing Postmodernism (McHale 1992), 255. The two sources appeared in rapid succession, and the chances of them being related seem close to zero. ︎
2. Cf. Winston Smith’s declaration at the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four: “[T]he struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother”. Orwell 1949, 361. ︎
3. Cf. Di Filippo 1990: “Ribofunk is speculative fiction which acknowledges, is informed by and illustrates the tenet that the next revolution – the only one that really matters – will be in the field of biology.” ︎

Author and editor Mark J. McGarry, 68, died in May 2026 in Paris, France.

McGarry was born February 6, 1958 in Albany NY. He wrote Sun Dogs (1981) and Blank Slate (1984) as well as several genre works of short fiction published in magazines including Asimov's, Analog, Stellar, Amazing Stories, and F&SF, including Nebula Award nominee The Mercy Gate (1998). He was the original editor of SF magazine Empire and …Read More

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MILESTONES

ELEANNA CASTROIANNI is now represented by Arley Sorg of kt literary.

ERIN LATIMER, CORAL ALEJANDRA MOORE, and J.C. SNOW are now represented by JABberwocky Literary Agency.

ROBERT J. SAWYER will be writer-in-residence at Calgary's Alexandria Writers' Centre Society from September 1 to November 30.

 

AWARDS

Whatever Kills the Pain by C.W. BLACKWELL won Best Long Story, Blind Pig by MICHAEL BRACKEN won Best Short Story, and The …Read More

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The prize formerly known as the International Booker Prize has announced a partnership with Bukhman Philanthropies, which has made a generous commitment to fund the next 10 years of the International Booker Prize. The funding will double the prize awarded to the winning title from £50,000 to £100,000, split between the author and translator.

The Buhkman International Booker Prize celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short …Read More

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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.

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Stephen King's 1982 collection Different Seasons (Warner) is the most recent book banned from all public schools in Utah after being removed in four school districts. Utah state law requires a book to be removed state-wide if a sufficient number of districts identify it as objective sensitive material, which is defined in state code as instructional material that constitutes pornographic or indecent material. The Davis School District website comments …Read More

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The Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) announced the 2026 inductees to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame: Lois McMaster Bujold and Tim Burton were honored as creators. Metropolis and the X-Men franchise were also recognized as exceptional creations in genre media. Inductees are added to the SF&F Hall of Fame display in the museum.

The Science Fiction Hall of Fame was founded in 1996 and then relocated from …Read More

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The Libertarian Futurist Society (LFS) has announcedA Kiss for Damocles by J. Kenton Pierce (Raconteur) [amazon / bookshop] as the winner of the Prometheus Award in the Best Novel category, honoring pro-freedom works published in 2025. Other nominees were:

• Storm-Dragon, Dave Freer (Raconteur) amazon / bookshop
• War By Other Means, Karl K. Gallagher (Kelt Haven) amazon
• No Man's Land Volumes 1-3, Sarah A. Hoyt (Goldport) amazon / bookshop
• Powerless, …Read More

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SF poet and author Suzette Haden Elgin is the winner of the 2026 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, intended to bring attention to lesser-known SF and fantasy authors. Her first story publication, For the Sake of Grace , was in F&SF in 1969. She wrote several SF series leaning into her background in linguistics and was the founder of the SFPA, now the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association.

The award …Read More

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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

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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.