Industry News Home

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

The post Dafydd ab Hugh (1960-2026) appeared first on Locus.

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.

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

The post Mark J. McGarry (1958-2026) appeared first on Locus.

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

The post People & Publishing Roundup, July 2026 appeared first on Locus.

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

The post Buhkman International Booker Prize Judges Announced appeared first on Locus.

by Sam Macdonald

Read by Maggie Ayala

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

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

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

Barnes and Noble 1963 edition. Via ISFDB.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Explore more articles from THE HISTORY FILES

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

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

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

The post Utah Bans Stephen King Collection from Public Schools appeared first on Locus.

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

The post 2026 SF&F Hall of Fame Inductees appeared first on Locus.

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

  The post 2026 Prometheus Awards Winners appeared first on Locus.

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

The post Elgin Wins Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award appeared first on Locus.

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

Novel

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

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

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

Now Hiring: SFWA Executive Director Organization Overview

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

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

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

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

Position Overview

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

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

Key Job Responsibilities

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

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

Deadline for Applications

Until filled.

How to Apply

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

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

Please include ‘Executive Director’ in the subject line.

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

Thank you for your interest in working for SFWA!

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

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

The Hall of Fame Awards winners are:

Best Author

• WINNER: Luís Filipe Silva (Portugal)

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

  The post 2026 ESFS Awards Winners appeared first on Locus.

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

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

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

The post 2026 Heinlein Scholarship Recipients appeared first on Locus.

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

Best German-Language SF Novel

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

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

by Randall Hayes, PhD

Read by Robert Greenberger

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

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

Where to Start

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

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

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

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

How to Find a Review

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

Evaluating the Search Results

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

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

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

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

Explore more articles from Writing from Science

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

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

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

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

  The post 2026 Sunburst Award Shortlist appeared first on Locus.

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

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

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

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

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

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