Planetside Full Archives

by Rachel A. Rosen It’s a good time to be Weird. There’s a plethora of new titles and an explosion of microgenres targeted to specific tastes. Looking for post-capitalist solarpunk utopias? Poetic meditations on fungi? They’re out there. And the…

by the SFWA Safety Committee Many sites, subscriptions, and tools require a login to function, and in most cases (we’ll get to that later), those logins require a password. So, in the shifting landscape of online security, what’s the best…

by Juliet Kemp As writers, we all have our own strengths – and our own shortcomings. At the start of your writing career, you’re working on everything all the time; as you improve, you can identify your strengths and lean…

by May Haddad Fantastic noir is a subgenre that blends film noir or its literary inspiration and counterpart, hardboiled fiction and roman noir (respectively), with the more outlandish elements of speculative fiction. It crops up here and there in films…

by J. Scott Coatsworth In the middle of 2022, I broke my arm. And not just a simple fracture—my orthopedic surgeon said it looked like it had exploded. Thus began a difficult (and still in progress) recovery. I won’t go…

by J.D. Harlock The “belly dancer” is one of the most prevalent tropes western media has of Middle Easterners, and it’s often used as a cheap source of fan service in Middle Eastern and Arabesque settings. However, not only is…

by Emma Johanna Puranen It seems like everyone’s listening to things these days. Between the larger podcast boom and the rise of the audiobook, it can be easy to overlook the small but thriving world of science fiction audio drama. …

by A.J. Cunder As an editor, I’m tempted to say there’s a certain magic when it comes to submissions that catch my eye in the slush pile: an ethereal feeling when the story just clicks, an almost intangible quality to…

by Anthony W. Eichenlaub Your time has value. That’s it. That’s the lesson. If you’re looking to save a few minutes, you can skip the rest of this article and just keep that one thought in mind. Your minutes have…

by the SFWA Safety Committee Numerous user-friendly options exist for authors to set up and manage their own websites, from single, static pages to actively updated blogs. They can be built with templates or custom designed, self-hosted, or placed on…

by M.K. Hutchins Soft magic has been with us since humans had stories: it’s in our fairytales, our folklore, and continues to be popular today, appearing in everything from Studio Ghibli films to the writings of Terry Pratchett, to Axie…

By J. D. Harlock For a world to feel lived in, characters should receive the same attention as the lore, with characterization and worldbuilding intertwining, each influencing the other. This is as true for main characters as it is for…

by Colin Alexander Almost by definition, writers love to write. We also tend to fall in love with our words. What we put on the page paints the exact picture of the idea we have in our minds, and all…

by Jason P. Burnham Climate change is the top public health emergency of the twenty-first century. Naturally, you may be inclined to write a story somewhere on the dystopia-to-solarpunk spectrum that mitigates your burgeoning existential climate dread. Perhaps one of…

By Cat Rambo You have been told, like so many writers before you, that you must have a social media presence. That nowadays, agents and publishing houses look to see how many Twitter followers you have before opening your manuscript….

by Kelly McClymer Do you dream of seeing your indie book in your local library catalog? You are not alone. Many a traditionally published author shares your dream. Here are a few hard facts: Libraries generally purchase hardback library editions…

By Kamiab Ghorbanpour For many years in Iran, and Persian pop culture in general, science-fiction books, movies, and TV shows were often ridiculed as “testicles-fiction” (تخمی “testicles” and تخیلی “fiction” have a similar stress). This wasn’t always the case, though….

by Gideon P. Smith Getting the science right in SF can make the difference between writing cute stories and great science fiction. If you are a non-scientist writing SF and want to know how to do that, then this blog…

By Jay O’Connell In the blink of an eye, AI-generated art has evolved from a disturbing oddity into stunningly crafted images mimicking every art medium. But is this content good enough for commercial use by publishers and indie authors? And…

by Scott King ‘Tis the season for selling. No matter your holiday affiliations, now is the time to be selling books, so let’s recap what you can do to help boost sales this holiday season. Start with your cover. It…

by Andrew K Hoe In our previous post, we examined how battling robots and aliens utilize armaments. Today, we’ll detail human arsenals further to illustrate the options for how imaginary warriors could fight. And since sci-fi armaments like lightsabers are…

by Jendia Gammon Worldbuilding takes many forms in genre fiction. Whether a story takes place on another planet, in a mystical land, or in a hellscape of horror, adding touches of realism enhances the world for its inhabitants. Using ecology…

by Anthony W. Eichenlaub Whether it’s the one-two punch of a duology or the sprawling epic of multiple loosely connected trilogies, there is no doubt that science fiction and fantasy readers love series. For an author, series can be amazing….

by Katherine Garcia Ley We’ve all seen them: the thirty pages of interview questions you should ask your characters. The analytical texts on astrological signs. The “ultimate of ultimate” tools offering twenty-some Enneagrams for character development. All these resources are…