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Congratulations to all of the Locus Awards top ten finalists! These results are from the February 1 to April 1 voting by readers on an open public ballot.

The Locus Awards winners will be announced May 30, 2026, during the in-person Locus Awards Ceremony, held in the historic Hotel Shattuckin downtown Berkeley, California. Join MCs Sarah Gailey and Maggie Tokuda-Hall, plus guests of honor Tananarive Due,Stephen Graham Jones,andNnedi Okorafor, …Read More

The post 2026 Locus Awards Top Ten Finalists appeared first on Locus Online.

Katrina Kat Templeton has won the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund (TAFF) to travel from Europe to North America to attend MetropolCon, the 2026 Eurocon, defeating Lisa Hertel.

There were 76 votes, 3 of which were submitted with no preference. The fund is currently administered by Sarah Gulde in North America and Mikołaj Kowalewski in Europe. Eurocon 2026 will be held July 2-5, 2026 in Berlin, Germany.

For more information, see the …Read More

The post 2026 TAFF Winner appeared first on Locus Online.

Fantasy illustrator MICHAEL HAGUE, 77, died March 10, 2026 in Colorado Springs CO.

Michael Riley Hague was born September 8, 1948 in Los Angeles CA. He attended the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. He illustrated for numerous books, many of them classics, including L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz (1982), C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (1983), J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (1984), J.M. …Read More

The post Michael Hague (1948-2026) appeared first on Locus Online.

Fantasy author John Flanagan, 81, died February 7 of complications from non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

John Flanagan was born May 22, 1944 in Sydney, Australia. He worked in advertising and wrote TV sitcoms before publishing The Ruins of Gorlan, first in The Ranger's Apprentice series, in 2004. He then wrote The Burning Bridge (2005), The Icebound Land (2005), Oakleaf Bearers (2006), The Sorcerer in the North (2006), The Siege of Macindaw (2007), …Read More

The post John Flanagan (1944–2026) appeared first on Locus Online.

Joyelle McSweeney, author of the poetry collection Death Styles (Nightboat) [amazon / bookshop], is among the recipients announced for the 2026 Donald Windham-Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prize, recognized in the Poetry category.

The Windham-Campbell Prize was established in 2013 to call attention to literary achievement and provide writers with the opportunity to focus on their work independent of financial concerns. The prize is administered by Yale University, with …Read More

Anathema: Spec from the Margins, a speculative fiction magazine by and for queer people of color, has announced that it is relaunching after a four-year hiatus.

We're committed to supporting marginalized writers by paying them a professional rate for their work. To feature up to 4 stories, 4 poems, and 1 nonfiction piece per issue, we plan to pay:

• $0.08/word for fiction up to 6,000 words
• $0.05/word …Read More

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) has announced the recipients of its 2025 Lifetime Achievement Awards: Jonathan Maberry and Lisa Morton. The awards will be presented on June 6, 2026, during the Bram Stoker Awards at StokerCon®2026 in Pittsburgh PA.

The Lifetime Achievement Award is presented periodically to an individual whose work has substantially influenced the horror genre. While this award is often presented to a writer, it may also …Read More

by Jason P. Burnham

Read by Naching T. Kassa

Whoopsie-doodle! Your protagonist has just been written into a world where the infrastructure for antibiotic production no longer exists. Perhaps you’re writing in the near future, and climate change has progressed to the point of the complete collapse of global commerce. Perhaps the aliens from the first Independence Day movie have blown up all the major centers of production around the world. Or maybe the antibiotic production infrastructure has yet to be invented because you’re writing in the past or a pre-technological fantasy world. Wherever you’re creating, no one is making antibiotics. Protagonists living a “life after antibiotics” (or before, as may be the case) is becoming an increasingly relevant theme/scenario for modern speculative fiction. What’s a protagonist (and author looking to write such a setting with believable medical accuracy) to do?

Before we dive into what your main character’s options are for making/acquiring antibiotics, first we must consider the spectrum of conditions for which you might need antibiotics. Some common bacterial infections are those of the urinary tract, lungs (pneumonia), ears, skin and soft tissue, bones, and meninges (meningitis). Add to that diarrheal illness and sexually transmitted infections. If there are no antibiotics, what can your protagonist do for the afflicted? 

Note: We won’t cover antivirals or antifungals here. For unchecked fungus, see The Last of Us, the empty pool scene from the movie Annihilation, or various National Geographic documentaries. The immune system tends to take care of viral infections without antivirals, though some people would die without supportive care in a hospital. Unchecked HIV without an antiviral infrastructure should be its own Planetside article, but you could also just read up on what happened in the 1980s (see And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts).

Managing Infections Without Antibiotics

Control of a bacterial infection’s source is paramount, and for some infections, this can be done surgically in a way that doesn’t necessarily require any antibiotics (think of draining a boil). Unfortunately, if there aren’t any antibiotics at your protagonist’s disposal, there probably aren’t any anesthetics either (ouch!). So, if you’re the unlucky protagonist (or patient/family member/love interest of the protagonist) who has toe gangrene in this story, break out the mouth guard, the whiskey, and the sleeping incantation, as the most readily available chopping/cutting instrument is sharpened in preparation for gangrenous appendage removal. Make sure the post-operative wound is cleaned and bandaged appropriately, keeping it free of water and dirt. 

These methods (cutting instead of finding an antibiotic) could also be applied to conditions/procedures like the lancing of boils and draining of other purulent collections from festering wounds that are close enough to the skin’s surface to be reached easily with whatever tools of the trade are available in Protagonist World. Note: You’ll want to consider how people with amputated parts are going to be received by others (is this an inclusive world or an ableist dystopia?) and what assistive devices might be fashioned/DIY-ed to make sure they have a chance of outrunning the zombies or rogue AIs or plutocrats.

But what about infections where “chopping it off” isn’t an option or “draining pus” just won’t fly? After all, you can’t cut out the urinary system if it burns when you pee (though your protagonist may think that preferable given their symptoms), nor can you cut out the meninges (yes, I see you autocracy who empties skulls to implant the next-gen brain/spine implant for mind-controlled super soldiers—meninges explant is not allowed!). So, what can the protagonist do? For a urinary tract infection, the best strategy may be an ounce of prevention. Something as simple as having your protagonist drink extra water will reduce the risk of getting a urinary tract infection. “But clean water is limited.” Touché. Perhaps your protagonist has access to cranberry juice or the extracts of urine of pregnant mares to reduce UTIs. But eventually, a character (perhaps even a main one) is going to get an infection that cannot have been prevented and can’t be cut or drained away. What then?

Ancient Recipes

In the last decade, scientists have recreated a 10th-century Anglo-Saxon recipe for an anti-infective salve used for eye infections. Known as Bald’s Eyesalve, this remedy was rediscovered in Bald’s Leechbook (archived in the British Library) by a team of microbiologists and experts in Old English. The concoction involves onions, garlic, wine, and a cow’s bile salts combined in a brass vessel (talk about a witch’s brew). When applied in a lab to Staphylococcus aureus (a bacterium that causes more than a million deaths per year globally), the concoction showed excellent killing activity. The Dark Ages aren’t sounding so dark now, huh? 

Bald’s Eyesalve is just one example—perhaps your protagonist has access to other forgotten or dismissed remedies. An ancient text, only recently discovered. An Indigenous remedy known only through oral tradition, in danger of being phased out of history by colonial violence. Lost scrolls from antiquity stumbled upon in a cave, desert, or island that are previously unread, but provide crucial insights into antibiotic properties and preparations from commonly available plants, fungi, insects, or other plot/world-convenient source. It is entirely plausible! One of the first-line drugs against malaria was discovered by a Chinese researcher in the 1970s, who went through thousands of ancient texts and folk manuals to identify potential anti-malarials! Consider also that wounded Confederate soldiers from the first American Civil War were treated with Native American remedies derived from plants ranging from white oak to devil’s walking stick to tulip trees. The sources of nature-derived antibiotics are myriad in real life and can be in your fiction too.

So, where does this leave our protagonist? If the infection can plausibly be cut out/off, this may be the route to go. If an infection can be prevented, this will save much grief. For those infections that can’t be cut or prevented, an herbal/plant concoction from a plausibly arcane tome/text/scroll may just save the day (and limb)! If you want your story to be a commentary on loss, maybe the concoctions have great promise and the ancient text swears they work, but despite your protagonist’s best efforts, the loved one still dies. But if you’re going for hope, these ancient remedies are going to do just the trick!

The Aftermath

One final note: In a world without antibiotics, disabilities will arise in survivors—limb loss, deafness (meningitis is a common culprit), blindness, gait problems, and debility, among others. Accommodations for and coping among the infirm and the recovered can be powerful points in your story (if you so choose). Happy apocalypse writing!

Explore more articles from Writing from Science

Jason P. Burnham (he/him) loves to spend time with his wife and children. He dearly misses his dog. He is an infectious diseases physician and researcher.

The post Post-Apocalyptic Antibiotics appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

SF writer and television producer ROB GRANT, 70, died February 25, 2026.

Robert Grant was born September 25, 1955 in Lancashire, England. He attended Liverpool University and wrote for BBC radio. He co-wrote with Doug Naylor the TV series Red Dwarf and several tie-in works of fiction, including Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (1989), Better Than Life (1990), and script collection Primordial Soup (1993), under the name Grant Naylor. He wrote …Read More

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Welcome to Our 61st Annual Nebula Awards Programming!

San Francisco, CA – April 6, 2026

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is proud to launch its preliminary program for its 61st Annual Nebula Awards Conference, running from June 3-7 in Chicago, Illinois.

The Nebulas are an opportunity to celebrate SFWA’s latest finalists and their works in Chicago this June 3-7, along with SFWA’s 42nd Grand Master N. K. Jemisin, latest Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award recipient David Langford, and current Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award recipient Gay Haldeman.

The Nebula Awards Conference is also an excellent opportunity to network with fellow writers, expand industry horizons, and pursue professional development goals in science fiction, fantasy, and related genres.

This year’s conference is packed with in-person and virtual offerings and strongly celebrates our theme of Worldbuilding & Worldbreaking. You can check out our preliminary schedule at our new programming station on SFWA.org. Full panelist complements and final modifications will be added soon.

New Merch Alert!

You can also celebrate this year’s Nebula conference theme with new items at the SFWA Store, where $25 USD from every purchase of these specialty goods goes to our Finalist Scholarship Fund.

Many of this year’s Nebula Finalists would love to celebrate their achievement in community this June in Chicago, and you can help us get them there – while snagging a great new t-shirt or notebook for longterm use. Direct donations to the fund are always welcome.

Spread the Joy in Community

A ticket to the online Nebula Conference also gets you online attendance to the 10th Annual StokerCon – completely free! At StokerCon, which runs from June 4 to 7, you can celebrate Linda D. Addison, one of this year’s inaugural Nebula Award Finalists for Best Poem, and a Guest of Honor at the 10th-anniversary event run by the Horror Writers Association.

Congratulations to our peer organization, the Horror Writers Association, on its decade of conference craft for genre writers!

Details will be sent to registrants. Enjoy two cons for the price of one!

Get to Know Some of Our Headlining Presenters!

Toastmaster Tananarive Due is not only guiding our Nebula Awards Ceremony on Saturday, June 6, but also presenting a Crash Course in Speculative Screenwriting on Saturday, with accomplished husband and creative partner Steven Barnes. This creative duo has made significant contributions to the world of speculative horror, with a focus on Black histories within the genre and the role of genre in general for the heady work of resistance and renewal.

Are you ready to deepen your thematic storytelling in multimedia forms? Join us for this enriching conversation in June!

Gay Haldeman is receiving this year’s Service Award for a career of building out SFF culture in support of her husband’s writing, including through her work with SFWA. On Thursday, June 4, we’ll be hearing from SFWA Grand Master Joe Haldeman himself, in an insightful panel titled “Historical Perspective: The Evolving World of SFF”. This conversation is a critical part of this year’s conference theme, because writers are forever building upon layers of lore that are easily lost in the shifting landscape of our industry.

Where are we reinventing the wheel? What has consistently preoccupied us in genre, and where are we forging new ground? What is uncannily similar and wildly different about the way writers have built their creative lives and careers over the decades – and where might all these historical signs be pointing us next?

Join us for an excellent panel discussion with a star writer who has embodied dedication to his ever-changing community for decades.

And on Friday? Well, that’s when Grand Master N. K. Jemisin will offer a special presentation, a Crash Course in Worldbuilding and Worldbreaking. Learn more from the master herself about how many ways our worldly expectations – of a world, a city, a culture, or a shared reality – can be spun up in readers’ heads and then brought crashing down, only to be remade in more interesting forms.

This spotlight event will lift you up and invigorate the writer in you before we head into our very special evening of star-studded celebrations. After our Nebula Finalist Reception, our Nebula Finalists and VIP Autographing event will be open to the public, and a terrific opportunity to mingle and get to know some of the brightest lights in our “Nebula” this year.

RSVP today to be added to a giveaway draw, too – so tell all your friends in Chicago and its vicinity to bring their books for signing!

Remember: Nebula Banquet Tickets Are in Limited Supply! Purchase Yours Today! WRITERS!
GET YOUR HEADSHOTS AT THE NEBULAS

We are honored this year at the Nebula Awards Conference by the repeat appearance of photographer Kaitrin Acuna, who last year made our 60th anniversary shine, and left smiles on the faces of authors who secured appointments for headshots. (Check out last year’s gallery yourself!)

This year, Kaitrin is back, and with an incredibly generous offer to help SFWA support the general SFF community. When you book an author headshot appointment with Kaitrin for a window during our conference in Chicago, 15% of the fee will go to our Givers Fund, a SFWA-driven outreach program that distributes micro-grants to SFF projects every year.

Thank you – and Kaitrin – for supporting the future of SFF at the Nebulas! Lock in your Nebula Conference Tickets today!

The post Press Release – April 6, 2026 appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

The winners of the 2025 British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) Awards have been announced.

BestNovel

• WINNER: When There Are Wolves Again, E.J. Swift (Arcadia) amazon / bookshop

• A Granite Silence, Nina Allan (Riverrun) amazon
• Project Hanuman, Stewart Hotston (Angry Robot) amazon / bookshop
• Edge of Oblivion, Kirk Weddell (Troubador)
• The Salt Oracle, Lorraine Wilson (Solaris)

Best Shorter Fiction (for novelettes and novellas)

• WINNER: …Read More

Outlaw Planet by M.R. Carey (Orbit UK; Orbit US) [amazon / bookshop] was announced as the winner of the 2026 Philip K. Dick Award on April 3, 2026 at Norwescon 48. In addition, Uncertain Sons and Other Stories by Thomas Ha (Undertow) [amazon / bookshop] received a special citation. Other nominees for the award included:

• Sunward, William Alexander (Saga) amazon / bookshop
• Casual, Koji A. Dae (Tenebrous) amazon / …Read More

The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) has announced the winners for the 2025 NBCC awards for books published in English (including translations) in the United States. Titles and authors of genre interest among the winners include We Do Not Part by Han Kang, tr. Paige Aniyah Morris & e. yaewon (Hogarth).

Committee chair Heather Scott Partington said the novel presents

a work of blinding melancholy, bleak weather, and murmuring syntax. …Read More

The shortlist for the 2026 Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, honoring the best SF/F work published in France in 2025, has been announced.

French Novel

• Festin de larmes, Morgane Caussarieu & Vincent Tassy (ActuSF)
• Aatea, Anouck Faure (Argyll)
• Tovaangar, Céline Minard (Rivages)
• Sintonia, Audrey Pleynet (Le Bélial')
• Une vie de saint, Christophie Siébert (Au Diable Vauvert)

Foreign Novel

• Le Chant des noms [The Naming Song], Jedediah Berry, tr. …Read More

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association has named its 13th Grand Master, the multi-talented Ruth Berman.

Ruth Berman's speculative poetry has appeared in Asimov's, Amazing Stories, Analog, Aliens and Lovers, Burning With A Vision, Fungi, Tales of the Unanticipated, Weird Tales, Worlds of Fantasy and Horror, Star*Line, and other magazines and anthologies. As a translator from French, she has placed work in Space & Time, Tales of the …Read More

SF writerJOSEPH L. GREEN, 95, died February 20, 2026 in Florida.

Joseph Lee Green was born January 14, 1931 in Compass Lake FL. He earned a BA from the University of Alabama. He worked in the American space program for 37 years, retiring from NASA as Deputy Chief of the Education Office at Kennedy Space Center.

Green began publishing SF professionally as early as 1962 in short form. He produced …Read More

On March 16, 2026, a New York district judge ruled that Tracy Wolff is not guilty of plagiarizing Crave, a bestselling YA vampire romance series published by Entangled, on account of no substantial similarity, ending a several-years-long lawsuit.

The original lawsuit was initiated by writer Lynne Freeman, who shared a literary agent with Wolff and alleged that the agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, misled and defrauded her into revising her unpublished …Read More

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has announced David Langford is the recipient of the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award for distinguished contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community.

The Solstice Award, created in 2008 and given at the discretion of the SFWA president with the majority approval of the Board of Directors, is for individuals, living or dead, who have had significant contributions to the community …Read More

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Celebrating David Langford, SFWA’s Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award Recipient for the 61st Annual Nebula Awards

San Francisco, CA – March 31, 2026

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association is pleased to announce that the Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award will be presented this year to David Langford at the 61st Annual SFWA Nebula Awards® ceremony on June 6, 2026.

The Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award is bestowed by SFWA upon a person who has made significant contributions to the community sustaining science fiction, fantasy, and related genres. The award was created in 2008, with Wilhelm named as one of the three original recipients, and it was renamed in her honor in 2016. Our latest recipient joins a storied list of winners, including Greg Bear, Ben Bova, Octavia Butler, Neil Clarke, Gardner Dozois, Joanna Russ, Stanley Schmidt, Nisi Shawl, Arley Sorg, and Sheila Williams, among many others.

How does one do justice to the work of a science-fiction creator whose wide-ranging pursuits, publications, and accolades include the long-standing and ongoing curation of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (SFE) itself?

As SFWA President Kate Ristau notes, “With his work on The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Langford has not only built, supported, and challenged the field of SFF; he has literally helped to define it. His decades of work have made science fiction a richer and more inclusive field. We are more than happy to present him with the Solstice Award in recognition of his career filled with positive, focused, and uplifting contributions.”

A Pillar of Service to Community

Those decades of service to our genre have taken many forms, all necessary for a thriving ecosystem in SFF publishing. Published authors of science fiction and fantasy are made possible by avid readers, equally avid commentators, fans dedicated to the cultivation of spaces to share and discuss great work, historians and archivists marking down events in genre of note, non-fiction writers offering supplement and story-seed to all our fantastic prose, editors sharpening one and the same, and publishers painstakingly building homes for all of the above.

Langford has been all of these, and more. He has handily merited his record-holding 29 Hugo wins out of 55 nominations, among a wealth of other honors in genre. Nor has his service to our ever-expanding community reached an end; along with SFE, Langford continues to sustain Ansible, a UK newszine covering SFF events and happenstance.

Langford’s dedication isn’t just known through titles, either, but also in his tonal range. Here is a commentator who would make readers laugh on one genre outing, then inspire serious reflection with the next. For decades, Langford’s editorial work took care where care was needed with the living history of our medium. His fan-community work brought joy where joy was needed in SFF, too.

“I am delighted to celebrate David Langford as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Association 2026 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award recipient,” says SFWA Executive Director Isis Asare. “His witty sense of humor and encylopedic knowledge of speculative literature has fostered an international discourse on science fiction. The measure of Langford’s impact cannot be overstated.”

The Celebration Continues

Please join SFWA in celebrating the achievements of David Langford, and all our other special guests and Nebula finalists, this June 3-7 at our 61st Annual Nebula Awards Conference in Chicago, Illinois. Conference prices for in-person tickets rise May 1, and Banquet tickets for the acclaimed Nebula Awards Ceremony on June 6 are in limited supply.

Be part of our ongoing history, in a genre that dedicated community-builders like David Langford have curated for us for so long, and so well.

The post 2026 Solstice Award appeared first on SFWA - The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association.

The six-title shortlist for the 2026 International Booker Prize has been announced, with works of genre interest includingThe Director by Daniel Kehlmann, tr. Ross Benjamin (Summit US; riverrun UK) [amazon / bookshop] andThe Witch by Marie NDiaye, tr. Jordan Stump (Vintage US; Charco UK) [amazon / bookshop].

The £50,000 prize celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the UK …Read More