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SFWA Contracts Committee Advisory on No-advance Contracts

Recently, SFWA’s Contracts Committee was made aware of a situation in which a well-liked publisher canceled the publication of a number of books it had contracted to publish. The publisher said the decision was made because of “unexpected changes” at the company.  The Committee has reviewed the contract in use, which lacked a provision for […]

Odyssey Writing Workshops Online Courses

News from The Odyssey Writing Workshops Charitable Trust: Odyssey has been a pioneer and innovator in holding live online classes since 2010.  Live class meetings allow a virtual “physical college classroom” experience, in which students can participate in discussions, ask questions, and learn from an instructor who is responsive, in the moment, to students’ concerns, confusions, […]

The Other Final Frontier: Writing Ocean Settings

by Victoria Zelvin

Space is often called the final frontier for humanity, but we have explored more of space than we have our own oceans. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, more than eighty percent of the ocean is unmapped, unobserved, and unexplored.

The Art of Story as Worldbuilding

by Nathan Nance,

So you’re writing SFF, and you’ve got spaceships to design. Engine systems to map. A haunted forest to populate. A talking badger to draw. If you’re not a rocket scientist writing hard sci-fi, how are you supposed to make your version of James S.A. Corey’s Rocinante, you know, fly?

In Memoriam: John A. Pitts

SFWA member John A. Pitts died on October 3 from amyoidosis.  Pitts began publishing short fiction in 2006 with “There Once Was a Girl from Nantucket (A Fortean Love Story),” co-written with Ken Scholes.  He went on to write several short stories on his own and in 2010 began publishing novels under the name J.A. Pitts with […]

Star Trek Will Save the World!

by Filip Wiltgren

Climate crisis, economic imparity, obesity, totalitarianism, re-nuclearization. The list is long, but there is a solution right around the corner.

It’s called the Holodeck.

Writing to the Shadows

by Paul Jessup

Let’s talk about that early stage of the story, when you have that bright gleaming idea in your head, burning brightly. It wants to be born, it wants to come to life. You spend days, weeks, months doing research, laying down pages and pages and pages of notes. Enough to be a small novel in itself. And then you start writing.