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What Makes the Monstrous
by Paul Jessup
Monsters and genre fiction go hand in hand. Or rather, claw in claw, if we’re being cheeky about it. From the mad science creations and aliens of science fiction, to the supernatural and mythic of fantasy and horror,…
SFWA Market Report For August
Welcome to the August SFWA Market report.
Worldbuilding with the Medieval Industrial Revolution, Part Two
by Kevin L. O’Brien Welcome to Part Two of a series that examines technology and medieval machines that can be used in worldbuilding. In the first post of this series, I described how a quasi-medieval society could smelt all the…
Developing Humanity’s Competitive Advantage for the Future Workplace: Empathy Through Fiction
by Katherine Quevedo
A lot of discourse these days builds up the case for why the world needs more empathy. It’s not a hard case to make. When placed against the backdrop of artificial intelligence (AI) and the possible technological singularity,…
Worldbuilding with the Medieval Industrial Revolution
by Kevin L. O’Brien
Welcome to Part One of a series that discusses technology and medieval machines that can be used for worldbuilding.
Many fantasy stories gloss over technological details that would be vital in a real-world setting. For example: how would…
Market Report For July
Welcome to the July edition of the SFWA Market Report. Please note: Inclusion of any market in the report below does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA.
Teaching Stuff: Increasing the Inclusion
by Richard J. Chwedyk
Theodore Sturgeon once wrote this, emphatically, honestly, and truly: “One should write fiction carefully and consciously to someone, as one writes a letter; and the selection of that someone is the single most important skill that a…
Novelist as Poet or Philosopher
by Sally Wiener Grotta
I write to understand. My characters and plots are formed in a subconscious that churns with confusion or concern about how the world functions (or fails to function). As I write the story my characters tell me,…
Life Plus 70
by Ethan Ellenberg
Now we are in a whole new world. There are different ways to be published and author incomes are coming from a far wider range of sources. The standard book agreement that routinely grants the mainstream book publisher…
SFWA Market Report For June
Welcome to the June edition of the SFWA Market Report. Please note: Inclusion of any market in the report below does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA.
Neukom Institute Announces Winners of Speculative Fiction Awards
News from the Neukom Institute: The Neukom Institute for Computational Science at Dartmouth College has awarded the inaugural 2018 Neukom Institute Literary Arts Awards in Speculative Fiction. The awards go to three works of fiction that demonstrate that the future…
SFWA Market Report For May
Welcome to the May edition of the SFWA Market Report.
Massive Sci-Fi SFWA Space Bundle Launches
For a limited time, the largest storybundle SFWA has ever curated is now available.
The ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop to Offer a Limited Number of Sponsored Seats for Writers of Color
The ArmadilloCon Writing Workshop will take place at the Omni Southpark on Friday, August 3, 2018. This full-day workshop is presented in conjunction with ArmadilloCon 40, Austin’s literary science fiction and fantasy convention. The Workshop is ideal for new and emerging writers…
Contracts Committee Alert – “All Derivative Rights” Clauses
SFWA’s Contracts Committee has recently been seeing a proliferation of contracts from small magazines, and a very few established markets, that license all derivative rights in perpetuity. This is a red flag for a number of reasons, even if these…
Humble Bundle: Classic Sci Fi & Fantasy & Audiobooks
Check out Humble Bundle’s new bundle of goodness: “Classic Sci Fi & Fantasy & Audiobooks.”
Supporting Disability Amongst Writers
by Nick Wood
There are costs to illness and disability. This is not an uncommon scenario amongst writers–see my list of blogs below on writing through various disabilities.
SFWA Market Report for April
Welcome to the April edition of the SFWA Market Report. Please note: Inclusion of any market in the report below does not indicate an official endorsement by SFWA.
Finding Your Tribe
by Paul Jessup
I don’t think I could exist without a group of like-minded writers meeting and discussing things constantly online. Whether it’s the ad-hoc social networks cobbled together in various Twitter feeds and Facebook walls, or if it’s random secret…
Atomic Resonance at the SFWA Nebula Conference
by R J Theodore
I was unprepared for the wall of celebration, creativity, and acceptance I felt when I walked into the midst of a crowd of storytellers at my first SFWA Nebula Conference in 2017.
Workshop Scholarship Opportunity for SFWA Members
One member of SFWA will be awarded a full scholarship to “The Dark Side: A Fiction Workshop” taught by Elizabeth Hand.
The Egregious Practice of Charging Reading Fees
by John Walters
I am a hybrid author, which means that I self-publish books and also publish short stories in traditional venues. Last night I was engaged in what I call marketing. Several of my stories had come back unsold from…
What I’ve Learned about Convention Accessibility
by Kate Heartfield In early 2016, I contacted my local speculative-fiction convention and somewhat nervously offered my services as a volunteer coordinator for accessibility. Like many in the SFF community, I was angry and disheartened at the lack of accessibility…
Neal Stephenson to Receive the Robert A. Heinlein Award
Neal Stephenson, science fiction and futurist author, is the 2018 winner of the Robert A. Heinlein Award. The award is bestowed for outstanding published works in science fiction and technical writings that inspire the human exploration of space. This award…