How Neuroscience Reveals the Alien Mind
by C. L. Kagmi. Neuroscience can give authors tools to imagine alien minds. Here’s how the biology of senses and emotions can help you create believable nonhuman experiences for your own worlds and stories.
world building
Post-Apocalyptic Antibiotics
by Jason P. Burnham. Worldbuilding insights for crafting life after antibiotics. Learn about surgical fixes, ancient remedies, and unusual cures that can shape compelling characters and gripping plots in speculative fiction settings.
Artifacts of Alt-History: Mining Museum Objects for SFF Inspiration
by Sarah Karwisch. Historical artifacts can bring inspiration to speculative fiction. Here’s how you can use museum objects to drive plot turns in your stories, spark conflict, and shape your worldbuilding.
Beyond the Beauty: A Research Guide for Responsible SFF Worldbuilding
by Kemi Cole. Discover Lake Bunyonyi’s hidden past and learn practical methods for SFF worldbuilding grounded in cultural respect and meaningful engagement with the communities that could shape speculative worlds.
Verisimilitude in Speculative International Relations with Game Theory
by J. D. Harlock. Explore how game theory can fuel speculative fiction to craft tense standoffs, believable diplomacy, and political intrigue. A practical guide for creators building high-stakes worlds with strategic depth and realism.
Avoiding “Arab Land” Stereotypes when Depicting the Premodern Arab World
by J. D. Harlock. Find out how speculative fiction sometimes misrepresents the premodern Arab world, and learn how accurate historical ranks, regional dialects, and naming conventions can help build more culturally grounded fictional settings.
Information Center, The SFWA Blog
Making It Different – Pushing Genre Boundaries in Fantasy
by Martin Jenkins
One of the pleasures of genre is that it lets us identify a type of writing that we know we like. We’d feel short-changed if a crime novel didn’t feature a crime, after all, or if a romance didn’t put the travails of a relationship front and center. What we don’t want to see, however, is a mere repetition of genre tropes and clichés – it’s what is fresh and different in a work of fiction that keeps us turning the page while still being identifiably a genre work.
Information Center, The SFWA Blog
Tools of the Trade: Stellarium
When a character swims across the Arctic Ocean, in a story set a thousand years in the future, what stars might she use to guide her passage westward?
The SFWA Blog
How to Kill Your Imaginary Friends: Tools for the Toolbox: Going Viral
“Tools for the Toolbox” is a series of posts that describe disease types and organ systems. Eventually I hope to include enough information that a writer might be able to do some creative mixing and matching to produce the symptoms they want to give a character. Because it’s really frustrating to throw darts in the dark and hope something lands near the bull’s-eye. Hope it helps!
The SFWA Blog
How to Kill Your Imaginary Friends: How To Talk Doctor! Lesson 1
Dr. Grasshopper explains how to construct believable doctor language for your invented diseases.
The SFWA Blog
How to Kill Your Imaginary Friends: Superballs, Pockets, and Fun With Awesome Molecules
Dr. Grasshopper answers mail about toxins which can rob the blood’s ability to transport oxygen. Learn about how the blood carry’s oxygen and the things that can go wrong.
The SFWA Blog
How to Kill Your Imaginary Friends: When Your Audience Might Know More Than You Do
Using real-world diseases in a work of fiction has a large number of potential pitfalls. Here are a few tips about how to make your pestilential plot point a little more plausible.