Feed aggregator

TheScience Fiction Research Association (SFRA) has announced the 2026 winners of its annual book awards.

The SFRA Award for Lifetime Contributions to SF Scholarship

• Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.

The SFRA Innovative Research Award

• Growth, Resource, Population: The GRP Triangle in Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction by Female Writers. , Regina Kanyu Wang (SFRA Review Summer '25)

Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service

• Patrick Sharp

…Read More

The post 2026 SFRA Awards appeared first on Locus.

Clive Barker and Joyce Carol Oates have been announced as the recipients of the 2026 World Fantasy Awards for Lifetime Achievement, presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field. The final ballot for the 2026 World Fantasy Awards was previously announced.

The awards will be presented during the 2026 World Fantasy Convention, to be held October 22-25, 2026 in Oakland CA.

For more information, see …Read More

The post 2026 World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Awards appeared first on Locus.

The Mythopoeic Society announced the 2026 Mythopoeic Awards winners during Mythcon 54, held July 24-27, 2026 in Weatherford OK.

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature

• WINNER: Snake-Eater, T. Kingfisher (47North)

• The Charlatan Duology, Holly Black (Tor)
• Audition for the Fox, Martin Cahill (Tachyon)
• The Bright Sword, Lev Grossman (Viking)
• The West Passage, Jared Pechaček (Tordotcom)
• Water Moon, Samantha Sotto Yambao (Del Rey)
• The Incandescent, Emily Tesh (Tor)

…Read More

The post 2026 Mythopoeic Awards Winners appeared first on Locus.

The National Fantasy Fan Federation(N3F) has announced the winners of the2026 National Fantasy Fan Federation Laureate Awards(AKA the Neffy Awards).

Best Novel

• All That We See or Seem, Ken Liu (Saga)

Best Shorter Work or Anthology

• The Dagger in Vichy, Alastair Reynolds (Subterranean)

Best Poem or Collection

• Entropocene, Jean-Paul L. Garnier (Space Cowboy)

Best Editor

• Toni Weisskopf (Baen Books)

…Read More

The post 2026 N3F Awards appeared first on Locus.

The Queensland Writers Centre (QWC) has updated the entry guidelines for the 2026 Aurealis Awards, established to recognize the best in Australian speculative fiction, making changes including expanded terms for entry fees.

The Aurealis Awards were established in 1995 by Chimaera Publications, the team behind the magazine Aurealis. The Awards later partnered with different organizations to administer them. According to the Aurealis Awards web page, these have included Fantastic Queensland, …Read More

The post Aurealis Awards Changes appeared first on Locus.

Dragon Con has announced the ballot for the 2026 Dragon Awards.

Best Science Fiction Novel

• God's Junk Drawer, Peter Clines (Blackstone)
• The Faith of Beasts, James S.A. Corey (Orbit)
• Operation Bounce House, Matt Dinniman (Ace)
• Radiant Star, Ann Leckie (Orbit US)
• Slow Gods, Claire North (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Shattering Peace, John Scalzi (Tor; Tor UK)

Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)

• Twelve Months, Jim Butcher (Ace)

…Read More

The post 2026 Dragon Awards Ballot appeared first on Locus.

Dream Foundry, a non-profit dedicated to bolstering the careers of nascent professionals working with the speculative arts, hasannounced the finalists for its 2026 contests.

Writing Contest

• Ooreoluwa O. Agbede
• Sara Ang
• N.A. Blair
• Tomás Xavier Díaz
• Angela Luo
• Natalie Anai Nowo Lydick
• Fatima Masood
• Femi Salami
• Ashleigh Spencer
• Plamen Ivanov Vasilev

Art Contest

• River Barton
• Ginger Bertoni
• Emelia Feldman
• Javiera Díaz
• Sierra Eston
• Olive Humphrey
• Niko Kristic

…Read More

The post 2026 Dream Foundry Contest Finalists appeared first on Locus.

by James Stegall

Read by Misha Grifka Wander

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

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

Did you forget what you wanted to write?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Getting Started

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

Older Laptops

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

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

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

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

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

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

Off-the-Shelf

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

The Pomera D250US. Photo by James Stegall.

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

DIY

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

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

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

Personal Style

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

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

Explore more articles from Writing by Other Means

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

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

The World Fantasy Awards ballot for works published in 2025 has been announced. The awards will be presented during the 2026 World Fantasy Convention, scheduled for October 22-25, 2026 in Oakland CA.

The World Fantasy Awards finalists are:

Best Novel

• Audition for the Fox, Martin Cahill (Tachyon)
• Once Was Willem, M.R. Carey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
• The Secret Market of the Dead, Giovanni De Feo (Saga)
• The Everlasting, Alix …Read More

  The post 2026 World Fantasy Awards Finalists appeared first on Locus.

Ursula K. Le Guin's longtime residence at 3321 NW Thurman St. in Portland, Oregon has been added to the National Register of Historic Places in recognition of its significance to American literature and women's history.

During the 58 years she spent in the distinctive Queen Anne-style home until her death in 2018, Le Guin wrote many of the novels that have since been canonized among the most celebrated classics …Read More

The post Ursula K. Le Guin’s Home Recognized as National Historic Landmark, to host Writers’ Residency appeared first on Locus.

By Kiti McGlashan

As meaning-seeking beings, we live in alternating cycles of embracing or fearing the natural world. Literature offers a good framework for observing this ancient and ongoing ‘battle’ for the human spirit between the manifestation of our reverence and stewardship of nature and our fear of something that could so easily kill us.  As industrialisation moved us further away from nature, and humans started living almost completely dis-attached from the natural world, we saw a resurgence of the need to find belonging in the greater order. The last two hundred years have presented a shift in our attitudes towards our surroundings and an influx of philosophies and literature that try to reconnect humans with nature.

Environmentalism has clearly entered the focus of modern worries, but it often presents shortsighted forms that ignore the bigger picture. By focusing on the more immediate and visible concerns, environmental campaigns often prioritise narrow objectives while overlooking the negative structural downside of some of the green politics (e.g. “green colonialism). The climate crisis and the development of the Anthropocene as a theoretical background for our concerns are lacking in a holistic outlook of reality and often showcase similar dangers as our previous attitudes towards the natural world. While there is a rising concern about the land, it is through an anthropocentric point of view. As long as we keep seeing ourselves as separate to the non-human lifeworld, we will live incomplete existences, and our solutions will be forever lacking. What is needed is “a futurism of connectedness, engagement, and relationality, a futurism of ‘life-becomings’” (Ooi, n.d.). And this reflection on the need for interconnectedness has recently been championed by new subgenres of science fiction.

Storytelling has always been a mirror to the soul of humanity. It focuses the collective emotions and concerns in a metaphorical and philosophical format that offers more than simple escapism. Up until now, science fiction in particular has offered the best platform where the concerns of our present and future are laid out in the format of cautionary tales of how our environmental damage leads to post-apocalyptic scenarios. There are countless examples of stories focused on ecological collapse such as The First and Last Men by Olaf Stapledon that explores humanity’s eventual extinction, the dystopian future of Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky where humanity is almost extinct and earth ravaged by radiation, The Road by Cormac McCarthy that is set in a post-apocalyptic setting following a cataclysmic event, the grimdark world of the Warhammer 40K universe where after the AI wars mankind is plummeted into a dark universe of chaos and death. These are just some examples out of a very vast body of literature which express the climate anxiety our society feels.

It is distressing to see that today we have a medically recognised definition for our dis-connection from nature. Solastagia “is the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment” (Albrecht, et al, 2007). The powerlessness to prevent environmental change and the crisis of being cut out from nature is leading to a whole generation of young people thinking they won’t survive to old age. People are refusing to have children because they think they wouldn’t survive the impending environmental catastrophe (Carrington, 2020). This is reflected in most of the existing science fiction literature which provides a very gloomy outlook for humanity’s future, diminishing hope and increasing ‘dis-ease’. While the devastation inflicted on Earth is almost catastrophic, it isn’t irreparable as long as we take steps in the right direction. 

However, there is a shift in the current science fiction scene and the philosophical aspects surrounding it that reflect a discontent with the present pessimism by advocating for hope and optimism. Many genres have emerged that claim to break the connection of science fiction’s prevalent dystopian pessimism by advocating for a sustainable future where man and nature are connected. Solarpunk, Hopepunk, and other subgenres offer an outlook of how humanity can achieve a utopic existence connected to nature. Ursula Le Guin’s Always Coming Home, the Star Trek universe, the worlds of Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky and Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, all present a better future: one in which environmental crisis isn’t inevitable. 

The main criticism of these genres is the fact that they generally still tend to be human-centric, and in a way they are another expression of post-apocalyptic literature. The change that rekindles our interconnectedness to nature cannot be achieved by placing man at the centre of reality, be it fictive or real. Even if European culture is acknowledging its spiritual and environmental challenges, the damage done by over two millennia of our thinking being moulded by Socratic, Platonic, and Christian philosophy has shaped our mindset in a way that is hard to come back from.

The most positive and holistic framework present today is seen in a recent philosophy that echoes the spirit of old nature belief systems like Animism or the modern philosophical outlooks that merges biology with a nature-oriented philosophy like the Biophilia Hypothesis (Keller, S. R., & Wilson, E. O.,1993). By offering an exploration in a way of thinking that is holistic and drives our intrinsic curiosity as a species towards a new frontier of interconnectedness, Zoefuturism, an outlook proposed by writer and researcher Yen Ooi which “explores the reality of human nature as human ‘becomings’ (instead of ‘beings’) where constant change rooted in all nature is acknowledged as fundamental to living”. Inspired by East Asian philosophy, “Zoefuturism doesn’t belong within one culture or philosophy.” In a way, it is the link between European Animism and ancient Chinese philosophy, as well as Japanese Shintoism. Zoefuturism presents a great framework for observing the similarities between different cultures. We all get lost in the elaboration of our faiths and philosophies but if you take away the embellishments underneath there is a shared connectivity between all of humanity.

At the core of the philosophy of the Chinese Book of Changes, also known as I Ching or Yijing, is constant change. Life is defined by its impermanence, and this concept is of key importance in Eastern spiritual traditions. By addressing human finitude, our difficulty of making sense of our surroundings without a set of symbols, the Book of Changes “aims to alleviate our self-inflicted anxiety and agony” (n.a., 2020) by reminding us of our limited ability to know our surroundings and offering a system of symbols to navigate the unknowable nature of our world.” Zoefuturism echoes the philosophy of harmony of the Book of Changes, which advocates the need for self-realisation and accepting one’s position within the flow of change of birth, life, and death. In these philosophies humans become part of nature rather than apart from it. Only by aligning ourselves with the natural order can we find peace.

This way of thinking is also the core of Shintoism which recognises “the destructive aspect of nature, deeming it necessary to keep the balance and control over its growth on earth.” The origin myths of societies all over the globe reflect the dual aspect of awe and fear that nature inspires. Disasters are accepted as part of reality. Volcanoes make the soil more fertile by imbuing it with minerals and metals. Aokigahara, the legendary forest at the base of Mt. Fuji, is a “lush and mysterious landscape [that] emerged following the last major eruption of the volcano in the 9th century” (Staughton 2023). Floods replenish the groundwater, enrich the soil, and create new habitats. Nothing in nature is black and white. Only by adopting a better understanding of the interconnectedness of reality—which the West has mostly forgotten but that is still alive in East Asian thinking — can we hope to achieve a living version of utopia.

As Ooi argues, “we are made through all the interactions we have with our world, conscious and unconscious, purposefully and not, intangible and tangible. These interactions constantly shape us and our world through changes and ‘life-becomings.” If we acknowledge our place in the natural world, our disenchantment will end. 

Even the most idyllic science fiction needs to rethink how it envisions our future. We need to break away from the centrality of humans in our thinking. Without finding balance between us and nature, without breaking from the human-centric mindset, even the most optimistic visions of imagined futures risk falling in the same pitfall of imbalance which has distanced and isolated us from nature. 

Our dreams should be the trailblazer to a future where we break our isolation from the natural world.

Sources

Albrecht, G., Sartore, G.-M., Connor, L., Higginbotham, N., Freeman, S., Kelly, B., Stain, H., Tonna, A., & Pollard, G. (2007). Solastalgia: The distress caused by environmental change. Australasian Psychiatry: Bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, 15 Suppl 1, S95-98. https://doi.org/10.1080/10398560701701288

Abraham, D. (2017). The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. Vintage Book.

Armstrong, K. (2014). Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence. Vintage.

Carrington, D., & editor, D. C. E. (2020, November 27). Climate ‘apocalypse’ fears stopping people having children – study. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/27/climate-apocalypse-fears-stopping-people-having-children-study

Climate Anxiety | Harvard Medicine Magazine. (n.d.). Retrieved 30 July 2025, from https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/climate-anxiety

Harvard University Education. Gaia Hypothesis. https://courses.seas.harvard.edu/climate/eli/Courses/EPS281r/Sources/Gaia/Gaia-hypothesis-wikipedia.pdf

Hon, T.-K. (2024). Chinese Philosophy of Change (Yijing). In E. N. Zalta & U. Nodelman (Eds), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2024). Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2024/entries/chinese-change/

n.a. (2020). How Shinto Philosophy can Bring us Closer to Nature. The Orbital. https://theorbital.co.uk/how-shinto-philosophy-can-bring-us-closer-to-nature/

Kang Wolter, H. (n.d.). Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli, and the ‘Environmental Message’. The Cambridge Language Collective. Retrieved 30 July 2025, from https://www.thecambridgelanguagecollective.com/asia/hayao-miyazaki-studio-ghibli-and-the-environmental-message

Keller, S. R., & Wilson, E. O. (1993). The Biophilia Hypothesis (1st ed.). Island Press.

Schmidt, C. (n.d.). Climate Anxiety | Harvard Medicine Magazine. Retrieved 30 July 2025, from https://magazine.hms.harvard.edu/articles/climate-anxiety

Staughton, J. (2019). Why Is Volcanic Soil So Fertile? ScienceABC. https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/why-is-volcanic-soil-so-fertile.html

Park, S.-H., & Mattson, R. H. (2009). Ornamental indoor plants in hospital rooms enhanced health outcomes of patients recovering from surgery. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (New York, N.Y.), 15(9), 975–980. https://doi.org/10.1089/acm.2009.0075

Ooi, Y. (n.d.). Zoefuturism. Retrieved 31 July 2025, from https://www.yenooi.com/zoefuturism

Tuppan, L. (2022, June 27). Animism. The Rune-Gild Europe. https://rune-gild-europe.org/magic/animism/

Wilson, O. R. (1993). The Biophilia Hypothesis. Island Press.

The 13-title longlist for the 2026 Booker Prize has been announced, with works and writers of genre interest including:

The End of Everything, M. John Harrison (Serpent's Tail)

The Renovation, Kenan Orhan(Hamish Hamilton)

The Vivisectors, Missouri Williams(4th Estate)

Helen of Nowhere, Makenna Goodman (Coffee House)

Switzy, Emma Cline (Random House)

The Disappearers, Marlon James (Riverhead)

The shortlist will be announced September 22, 2026. Shortlisted authors receive £2,500. The winner will …Read More

The post 2026 Booker Prize Longlist appeared first on Locus.

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

• WINNER: Transmentation: Transience, Darkly Lem (Blackstone)

• The Unseen, Ania Ahlborn (Gallery)
• Last Chance Live!, Helena Haywoode Henry (Nancy Paulsen)
• Infinite Archive, Mur Lafferty (Ace)
• The Coming Dark, D.J. Molles (Self-published)
• Labyrinth, A.G. …Read More

by Julie Le Blanc

Read by the author

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

Let me explain.

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

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

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

What is this random page?

What does this note mean?

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

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

The Parent Toolkit

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

Tell yourself, I am allowed to try. 

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

1. The One Sentence Wonder

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

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

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

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

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

“Really?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

2. Voice Memos

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

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

3. The Art Supply Thief

Raise your hand if you are the crafting parent. 

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

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

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

4. Sleep Brainstorm when the Baby’s Sleeping

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

You know what I like more than sleep?

Writing my first draft.

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

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

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

5. Doe-a-Deer Mnemonics

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

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

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

A Final Note

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

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

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

Is this strategy perfect?

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

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

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

I know you can do this too.

You’re a writer, after all.

Explore more articles from Writing by Other Means

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

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

Winners for the2026 Imadjinn Awardshave been announced. Winners were selected by jury and announced at theImaginarium Convention, held July 17-19, 2026 at the Holiday Inn Louisville East in Louisville KY.

Best Science Fiction Novel

• WINNER: Dead to Rights: A Car Warriors Autoduel Novel, Jay Barnson (Three Ravens)

• Frozen Echoes, Ed Downes (Undertaker)
• Bifrost Down, Jon R. Osborne (Seventh Seal)

Best Fantasy Novel

• WINNER: Rise From …Read More

Fan and organizer Robin Johnson, 89, died July 6, 2026 in Ballarat, Australia of underlying causes after a fall.

Johnson was born March 9, 1937 and lived variously in Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart, and Ballarat, as well as in England. He chaired the first Australian Worldcon in 1975 as well as Thylacons 1-3. He was awarded the Ditmar Awards Special Award in 1974 and in 1983, and he received the Big …Read More

CfP Vector 304 – Play  The Three-Body Problem (Netflix, 2024)

Enfolding world-building, community-making, and problem solving, the act of play is itself a powerful act of speculation. It can offer entertainment or education. It encourages, or sometimes sidesteps, empathy. It draws attention to the ways that stories are constructed and how we experience them. 

In the context of video games, the recent announcement by Sony that it will halt production of physical game discs by 2028—and the attendant backlash from the gaming community—encourages us to think about physical vs. digital media and legacy access, and how economics factors into how we play, and for how long. Some games, like That Dragon, Cancer and The Final Exam, may barely be said to be ‘played’ at all: more experienced, and learned from. Play can inspire joy, flow states, immersion—or desolation. 

This special issue of Vector invites contributors to engage with the act of ‘play’ in its most expansive definition, including but not limited to: 

• Tabletop RPGs 
• Collectibles 
• Video games 
• VR/AR 
• Physical media 
• AI and game creation (backlash, adopters) 
• Educational games
• Citizen science games
• Gamification of labour
• Games in speculative fiction
• Games as forms of art or activism
• Affect 
• Materialist/new historicist readings  

Please submit your proposal by September 30th to vector.submissions@gmail.com, including:

• a 150-500 word proposal, including estimated length;
• something about yourself, either a 50-100 word bio or a CV.

Articles should be between 1,000 and 8,000 words. Please let us know your estimated word count. We seek articles that are carefully grounded in scholarly research, while also being clear, engaging, and suitable for a broad audience (including non-academics). Articles will be due by November 30th

Please also feel free to make queries about other formats, e.g. reviews, interviews, curated reading lists, roundtable discussions, unusual / innovative formats. 

Dark Carnival, the second oldest science fiction bookstore in the US, will be celebrating its 50th anniversary on Saturday, August 1, 2026 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at its longtime location on Claremont Avenue in Berkeley, CA.

The sprawling establishment, which specializes in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and mystery books-as well as comics through its next-door sister store, Escapist Comics-first opened its doors in 1976, resiliently weathering challenges including …Read More

Dr. Patrick Anthony Barbosa Brock
CoFutures

What do we do when we talk about Zoefuturism? This essay argues that Zoefuturism and CoFuturisms are not merely aesthetic or speculative categories, but infrastructural practices of collective world-making. I propose a framework for understanding how these movements intervene in social imaginaries through genre formation, manifestos, and boundary-making practices, while also examining their material implications for the communities and infrastructures from which they emerge. To that end, I draw on my previous theorization of the role genre mechanics play in the formation of collectivities.

Although they are envisioned here as operationally connected, speculative fiction, CoFuturisms, and Zoefuturism should not be treated as interchangeable categories. Speculative fiction is a broad narrative mode oriented toward hypothetical worlds, alternative temporalities, and estrangement from consensus reality. CoFuturisms, by contrast, designate culturally situated interventions that mobilize speculative methods to contest dominant imaginaries and produce alternative social horizons. Zoefuturism differs from both in that its central organizing principle is relationality itself: an ontological emphasis on “interconnected becoming” across human, nonhuman, ecological, and material forms of life. Where speculative fiction often asks what futures might exist, and CoFuturisms ask who gets to imagine and inhabit those futures, Zoefuturism asks how forms of life become entangled in the production of futurity.

CoFuturisms as a conceptual umbrella emerged with the publication of the Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms and its survey of speculative works from the world’s periphery, many of which blur the boundaries between art and activism. Like the imaginaries from which they emerge, CoFuturisms are collective constructions shaped by forces operating at both macro and micro levels. As digital media theorist, poet, and software designer Jason Edward Lewis writes, they “create a field of ‘future facts,’ a fully realized reality that exists somewhere down the timeline, waiting for us to catch up to it” (11). More broadly, CoFuturisms often emerge through science fiction (SF) and speculative practices, commonly appropriating their methods, to critique dominant imaginaries and intervene micropolitically in the present. As science fiction scholar Taryne Jade Taylor observes, “CoFuturisms is a movement that is found both within science fiction and fantasy and also reaches past the boundaries of speculative fiction” (2023).

In conversation with the editors of this special issue, I was provided with the following conceptualization of Zoefuturism: “Zoefuturism as a genre is founded upon the understanding that all things are relational—where descriptors, characteristics, or even a sense of ‘being’ depend upon everything around them—and that everything is constantly becoming, much like our DNA. As such, Zoefuturism is not political.”

I interpret Zoefuturism as an attempt to articulate a relational understanding of the world that moves beyond binary frameworks by foregrounding becoming, interdependence, and ecological entanglement. Unlike many futurisms organized around identity, technological acceleration, or emancipatory struggle, Zoefuturism situates relationality itself as the condition of futurity. Its emphasis falls less on representing marginalized futures than on rethinking the ontological assumptions through which futures are imagined in the first place. Yet Zoefuturism cannot escape political implications simply by rejecting explicit political identification. Like CoFuturisms, it shapes how reality is narratively and institutionally organized through language, cultural production, archives, and the social imaginaries that orient collective life. Its politics emerge less through ideological declaration than through interventions into the conceptual and affective infrastructures governing how relations between life forms are understood.

These interventions occur through genre itself. Genres are not merely aesthetic containers but social formations circulating among texts, communities, markets, and institutions. Because genres organize recognition, expectation, and participation, they function as technologies of collective becoming. Speculative fiction provides many of the formal tools that make such interventions narratively intelligible, while CoFuturisms mobilize those tools toward situated cultural and political projects. Zoefuturism, in turn, redirects speculative practice toward relational ontologies that destabilize distinctions between nature and culture, subject and environment, and human and nonhuman life. 

Manifesting Worlds

CoFuturisms are intersectional movements that combine narrative, ethical reflection, and speculative world-building across diverse epistemological traditions. If SF is commonly described as a genre that imagines the future, CoFuturisms seek instead to reshape the present. They assemble heterogeneous archives, practices, and modes of creation into new frameworks for collective life. Unlike speculative fiction broadly conceived, CoFuturisms are defined less by narrative conventions than by situated interventions into historical asymmetries of power, visibility, and futurity.

Observing how SF practitioners in Northeast Brazil sought to intervene in the genre as an emancipatory act, and how similar processes appeared elsewhere, I termed this phenomenon genre genesis (Brock 2022). Genre genesis describes how creators reshape the symbolic foundations of a genre to construct new collectivities and modes of belonging. Writers from Brazil’s Northeast, for instance, responded to their inferiorized position within the national imagination by coining sertãopunk, a form of science fiction rooted in the region’s ecological and political realities.

Comparable acts of conceptual creation appear across multiple CoFuturist contexts. Examples include Nnedi Okorafor’s Africanfuturism, the Afropantheology developed by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki and Joshua Uchenna Omenga, Scott Russel Duncan’s Xicanxfuturism, and forms of Andean Futurism developed by Peruvian SF writers. These practices do more than produce new literary categories; they reshape the infrastructures through which speculative thinking circulates and acquires legitimacy. Zoefuturism operates through similar mechanisms, though with a distinctive emphasis on relationality as both method and ontology rather than primarily identity, territory, or historical exclusion. Fundamentally, they are creations that beget further creations, becoming self-replicating or generative through the interplay of individual agency and collective effort.

Furthermore, I believe that three interconnected processes help explain how these movements function: the pedagogical qualities of SF and speculative thinking; the interventionist tradition of manifestos; the mobilizing role of genres as boundary objects.

a) The pedagogical qualities of SF and speculative thinking

Speculative thinking includes counterfactual reasoning, prefactual thinking, the processing of spatial and temporal asymmetries, and the ability to distinguish between perceived reality and hypothetical scenarios (Lun et al. 2021). These capacities help individuals and communities to imagine alternative pasts and futures, and innovative solutions to problems. Emerging research suggests that speculative behaviors may also appear in nonhuman animals, including forms of play and curiosity observed among bees and zebrafish (Galpayage Dona et al. 2022; Franks et al. 2023).

SF amplifies speculative thinking by distributing it socially through narrative and mass culture. The genre combines recognizable conventions with remarkable flexibility, enabling continual reinvention (Wolfe 2011). Darko Suvin’s concept of the novum, for instance, describes the transformative innovation that estranges readers from familiar reality while opening new perspectives on it. SF thus enables writers to explore time, history, science, and social organization through speculative scenarios that cultivate both wonder and critical reflection.

As Seo-Young Chu argues, SF does not abandon realism but intensifies it through heightened complexity (2010). Because it is highly imaginative, SF often constructs worlds capable of revealing otherwise invisible structures of reality. Increasingly, SF also shapes political discourse rather than remaining confined to escapist entertainment (Taskale 2026). This helps explain why SF aligns so naturally with CoFuturisms and Zoefuturism alike. Speculative fiction supplies the formal and cognitive conditions through which alternative worlds become imaginable. CoFuturisms appropriate those capacities to intervene in disputes over culture, identity, historical memory, and futurity. Zoefuturism mobilizes them differently: not primarily to recover excluded identities or produce counter-histories, but to foreground relational interdependence as the basis for imagining collective existence across ecological and ontological scales.

b) Manifestos

If speculative fiction provides the imaginative conditions for collective world-building, manifestos provide its declarative form. Reading the call for papers for this special issue, I was struck by how closely it resembled a manifesto:  “Zoefuturism takes its name from the Greek word for life, zoe (ζωή, zoí). It is a futurism of connectedness, engagement, and relationality, a futurism of ‘life-becomings.’” This statement situates Zoefuturism philosophically, identifies representative works, and proposes a framework through which they should be interpreted. It also intervenes by reorganizing a field of meaning around a new conceptual category.

Manifestos have historically functioned as instruments of political and cultural intervention. Originally associated with declarations of sovereign authority in the fifteenth century, they gradually evolved into vehicles for public participation. Earlier examples include the manifestos of the Levellers and Diggers in seventeenth-century England, which sought to establish new forms of public speech and political participation (Lamb 2022).

The manifesto form became especially influential within twentieth-century artistic movements. Although Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto carried deeply reactionary politics, its methodological influence in Latin America proved substantial (Schnapp and Rocha 1996; Sartor 2012; Aguirre et al. 2017). Writers and intellectuals appropriated the form to redefine national cultures and articulate alternative aesthetic programs. Brazilian and Peruvian modernists, for example, used manifestos to intervene directly in debates over cultural modernity (Montenegro 2017).

Manifestos therefore operate not simply as declarations but as interventions into public discourse. Entire literary works may function manifesto-like by reorganizing perception and political imagination. In the case of Zoefuturism, the intervention emerges through editorial framing itself: the decision to foreground Zoefuturism as a category for organizing a constellation of related works and ideas. Unlike many earlier futurist manifestos centered on rupture, acceleration, or technological conquest, Zoefuturism emphasizes interdependence, permeability, and becoming. 

c) Boundary Objects and Genre Infrastructure

If manifestos provide interventionist declarations, genres provide the infrastructures through which those interventions circulate and become socially durable. Humans are deeply oriented toward cooperation and cumulative cultural learning. Through language, ritual, performance, and material artifacts, societies transmit vast bodies of non-genetic information across generations (Henrich and Muthukrishna 2018).

Drawing on science and technology studies, John Rieder adopts the concept of boundary objects to explain the cultural power of SF (2017). In this framework, SF encompasses not only literary texts but also the broader network of social, commercial, and institutional relations through which meanings circulate. Genres function as boundary objects because they remain flexible enough to accommodate multiple interpretations while stable enough to sustain collective participation.

My concepts of genre genesis and genre infrastructure extend this framework (Brock 2022; 2024). Genre genesis refers to the reshaping of symbolic foundations through collective cultural intervention. Genre infrastructure describes the institutional systems through which these interventions are sustained: publishing networks, reading communities, archives, digital platforms, markets, and criticism.

Creators engaged in these processes demonstrate a sophisticated awareness of what Frelik calls “boundary discourse” (2011): the socially negotiated construction of meaning through genre conventions. Genres are therefore not merely aesthetic categories but cultural and economic systems. By proposing new genre labels or redefining existing ones, creators intervene directly in the symbolic economy of literature and cultural production.

This is why CoFuturisms and Zoefuturism possess unavoidable political dimensions. Yet they do so differently. CoFuturisms tend to organize around highly situated struggles over representation, historical memory, and cultural agency. Zoefuturism instead foregrounds the relational conditions through which forms of life become mutually constituted. If CoFuturisms frequently ask who is excluded from dominant futures, Zoefuturism asks how futurity itself might be reorganized through interdependence rather than separation. Genres thus function not only as aesthetic categories but as infrastructures for negotiating different ontologies of collective existence. 

Another Future, If You Can Keep It

The political significance of Zoefuturism and other CoFuturisms emerges not only from their explicit themes but from the infrastructures they construct and transform. By intervening in genres, archives, and systems of cultural circulation, these movements reshape the conditions under which futures become imaginable. Their micropolitics operate through negotiation, coalition-building, and symbolic intervention rather than singular revolutionary rupture.

Critics have argued that CoFuturisms risk absorption into the same capitalist systems they seek to challenge (Boyden 2024). Yet this tension does not invalidate their political significance. On the contrary, it reveals how struggles over futurity increasingly unfold through culture, narrative, and infrastructure. Across the political spectrum, movements are turning toward myth-making and storytelling as mechanisms for shaping public consciousness and social possibility.

CoFuturisms therefore should not be understood simply as expressions of modernity’s obsession with the future. Rather, they attempt to reconfigure that obsession by constructing alternative boundary objects through which communities negotiate meaning differently. Zoefuturism participates in this broader movement, but does so by emphasizing relational ontologies rather than primarily identity-based or civilizational alternatives. Its intervention lies in reframing futurity itself as an emergent property of entangled forms of life.

To recognize that CoFuturisms are constructing new archives is also to recognize that they intervene in the infrastructures through which ideas become realities. The movement from imagination to institutionalization unfolds unevenly across law, politics, economics, and culture. Some ideas remain marginal for decades; others become rapidly assimilated into dominant systems. Yet communities continue to act within this uncertain terrain, contesting the forces that seek to define the future on their behalf.

As anthropologist, anarchist, and social and political activist David Graeber observed, “the ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently” (2024). While the process is rarely easy, CoFuturisms and Zoefuturism emerge from this recognition that we can start changing the present through the exquisite pathways described here, starting by just talking about them.

Works cited

Abrahamsen, Rita, Jean-François Drolet, Michael C. Williams, Srdjan Vucetic, Karin Narita, and Alexandra Gheciu. 2024. “The Gramscian Right, or Turning Gramsci on His Head.” In World of the Right: Radical Conservatism and Global Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: pp.  34–66.

Aguirre, Mariana, Rosa Sarabia, Renée M. Silverman, and Ricardo Vasconcelos, ed. 2017. “Futurism in Latin America.” Special Issue, International Yearbook of Futurism Studies, Volume 7, De Gruyter.

Boyden, Michael. 2025. “Heterotemporality and Posthumanism in Alternative Futurisms.” Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies 50.1 (2024): 69-87. Airiti Library. Web. 1 Aug.

Brock, Patrick A. B. 2022. “Futurism and genre genesis in Brazilian science fiction.” Zanzalá-Revista Brasileira de Estudos sobre Gêneros Cinematográficos e Audiovisuais, número 8.1: 8-18.

Brock, Patrick A. B. 2023. “Brazilian Afrofuturism, Heuristic Function, and the Mass Cultural Genre System.” SFRA Review 53.3, Summer, pp. 18-27. 

Brock, Patrick A. B. 2024. “Genre Infrastructure as Speculative Method in Latin America.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 34.3: pp. 277-303.

Chu, Seo-Young. 2010. Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation. Harvard University Press.

Finchelstein, Federico. 2022. Fascist Mythologies: The History and Politics of Unreason in Borges, Freud, and Schmitt. Columbia University Press, 2022. https://doi.org/10.7312/finc18320

Franks, Becca, Leigh P. Gaffney, Courtney Graham and Daniel M. Weary.  2023. Curiosity in zebrafish (Danio rerio)? Behavioral responses to 30 novel objects. Front. Vet. Sci. 9:1062420. doi: 10.3389/fvets.2022.1062420

Frelik, Paweł. 2011. “Of Slipstream and Others: SF and Genre Boundary Discourses.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 38, no. 1: pp. 20–45. 

Galpayage Dona, Hiruni Samadi, Cwyn Solvi, Amelia Kowalewska, Kaarle Mäkelä, HaDi MaBouDi and Lars Chittka. 2022. “Do bumble bees play?” Animal Behaviour, Volume 194, Pages 239-251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2022.08.013.

Ginway, M. Elizabeth, and J. Andrew Brown, editors. 2012. Latin American Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan US.

Graeber, David. 2024. The Ultimate Hidden Truth of the World. Penguin Books, 2024.

Henrich, Joseph and Michael Muthukrishna. 2021. “The Origins and Psychology of Human Cooperation.” Annual Review of Psychology 72:1: 207–240.

Jade Taylor, Taryne. 2023. “Introduction to CoFuturisms.” The Routledge Handbook of Cofuturisms. Taylor, T.J., Lavender III, I., Dillon, G.L., & Chattopadhyay, B. (Eds.) Routledge. 

Komporozos-Athanasiou, Aris. 2023. Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World. University of Chicago Press, 2023.

Lamb, Matthew. 2022. “So You Want to Write a Manifesto? (Part 1 of 2).” Public Things Newsletter, Substack, 3 April. publicthings.substack.com/p/so-you-want-to-write-a-manifesto. 

Lewis, Jason Edward. 2023. “The Future Imaginary.” The Routledge Handbook of CoFuturisms. Edited By Taryne Jade Taylor, Isiah Lavender III, Grace L. Dillon, Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay. Routledge: pp. 11-22.

Lun, Huang, Xie Yibo and Chen Xiaolin. 2021. “A Review of Functions of Speculative Thinking.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12: pp. 728946. 

Montenegro, Giovanna. 2017. “Indigenismo and Futurism in Latin America: José Carlos Mariátegui and the Peruvian Avant-Garde.” International Yearbook of Futurism Studies. Special Issue: Futurism in Latin America. Volume 7, De Gruyter: pp. 29-59. 

Rieder, John. 2017. Science Fiction and the Mass Cultural Genre System. Wesleyan University Press.

Sartor, Mario. 2012. “Italian Futurism and Its Latin American Echoes.” Seminário Internacional de Conservação de Escultura Moderna. MAC USP, 2012. Available in: http://www.mac.usp.br/mac/conteudo/academico/publicacoes/anais/modernidade/pdfs/MARIO_ESP.pdf.

Schnapp, J. T. and João Cezar de Castro Rocha. 1996. “Brazilian Velocities: On Marinetti’s 1926 Trip to South America.” South Central Review, 13(2/3): pp. 105–156.

Suvin, Darko. 2010. “Chapter 3: Science Fiction and the Novum (1977).” Defined by a Hollow: Essays on Utopia, Science Fiction and Political Epistemology. Ralahine Utopian Studies, v. 6:  pp.  67-92.

Taskale, Ali Riza. 2026. “Materialized Science Fiction: The Tech Oligarchy’s Blueprint for a New Global Order.” Global Studies Quarterly, Volume 6, Issue 1, January 2026.

Wolfe, Gary K. 2011. Evaporating Genres: Essays on Fantastic Literature. Wesleyan University Press.

Russell Kirkpatrick, 65, died June 26, 2026 in Canberra Hospital. He was diagnosed with aggressive melanoma.

Kirkpatrick was born April 11, 1961 in Christchurch, New Zealand. He received a PhD in geography from the University of Canterbury and was at separate times a lecturer at the University of Waikato and the University of Canberra. He wrote the Fire of Heaven series and the Husk series, the latter known as Broken …Read More