Genre Grapevine 2024 Wrap-up
Note: This column covers news and info from the last two months of 2024. For more on why my column has been delayed, see the item below on burnout. But the good news is I’m doing much better and going forward my Genre Grapevine will return to its monthly publication schedule.
Protect Yourself from Burnout
In recent months you may have noticed that my Genre Grapevine has been published every other month instead of on its regular monthly schedule. While I still published a number of special reports and essays during this time, not keeping to my monthly schedule ate at me. If readers were irritated by the delay, trust me, I felt far worse about it. I obsessed over the delay. I couldn’t stop focusing on it.
I write the Grapevine because I want to share useful and timely news with the genre community, with an emphasis on the word timely. When I couldn’t meet my monthly schedule, I began to doubt my ability to keep the column going. I told myself I was a failure. I tried to force myself to write the column. When that failed, this seemed to confirm my belief in failure.
It took me a long time to realize I was suffering from burnout.
Burnout is very different from writer’s block. With writer’s block, the words simply don’t come. The story or article you’re trying to write says, “nope, not today.” Burnout, however, is “when you can write but you don’t want to. You have too many ideas in your head. You’ve written for so long without a break, and now you’re tired of writing. You’re tired of thinking. You’re stressed. And when you do sit down to write, you don’t feel joy or creative motivation.”
In a must-read essay on the topic, author Erin Fulmer calls burnout a "quiet epidemic" among writers, artists, and others who do creative work, noting that “When burnout came for me, it didn’t come without warning. I felt it in my bones like a change in the weather.” You’re exhausted and feel dread at the prospect of writing. You’ve lost the desire to write.
That’s how I felt until recently.
I initially thought I felt this way because I caught a bad case of covid in late June. But as more time passed along with my inability to write my column and other works, I realized I was suffering from burnout. A lot had hit me in the last two years, including getting divorced, dealing with personal health issues besides covid, living in a world with never-ending political problems and societal horrors, and much more.
As I read up on burnout, I realized for too long I’d been trying to a large degree to "control the uncontrollable,” a phrase author Natali Simmonds wrote while describing her own burnout.
To improve, I told myself it was okay to take a break. I reread novels and stories I’d loved decades before while also seeking out works by new authors. I engaged in major steps to improve my health. I took walks in nature and embraced the people and aspects of life that brought me happiness. I scheduled specific times to write, but if I didn’t feel like writing I also refused to mentally punish myself.
I realized I’d turned a corner when I began eagerly writing my essay “Your Stories and Art Matter Even When the World Turns Bad,” The essay emerged because I took the time to watch the anime Look Back directed by Kiyotaka Oshiyama. If I’d been trying to force myself to write instead of watching that anime, my essay would never have been written. I then followed up with returning to work on my own fiction and stories, along with writing this column and my recent report on generative AI.
Based on how I am today, going forward my Genre Grapevine should now return to its monthly schedule.
I’m writing these words because it’s hard for writers and other people doing creative work to admit when they suffer from burnout. There’s a stigma in creative circles against burnout, a belief that burnout results of your own failings. That a true writer or artist would push through the burnout, striving forward on the embers of their own inner fire.
That is, of course, bullshit.
It sometimes seems like our world is perfectly engineered to burn us up. We work endless hours with little control over our lives, desperate to maintain what we have and to support ourselves and our families. We’re subjected to continual news cycles of horror and death, with disinformation and lies spreading unchecked. The rich and powerful consume more of the world each day, including the very political systems that should represent and help us all. And the social media platforms that once offered so much promise to our lives instead promote outrage and anger simply because it drives engagement, nevermind how that affects our mental health.
Such a world wants you to burnout, because when that happens you no longer care what happens around you.
But as I wrote in my essay about why our stories and art matter, even when the world turns bad, there are still paths forward. We can still make a difference. The stories and art we create can change the world, as can the lives we live. The relationships we build and our service to others will always be a path toward a better world.
So please take the time to protect yourself from burnout. Remind yourself about what sparks your creativity and indulge in it. Take breaks and take care of your health. Don’t punish yourself for not meeting arbitrary deadlines or the expectations of others. Make a point to relax and enjoy the joys that exist all around us. Embrace those you love, whether they be your family, friends, or anyone else who supports and nurtures you.
The ways to avoid burnout vary from person to person, but perhaps the most important thing to do is recognize when it happens. Our world may make it easy to burn out, but there are always ways to douse the flames.
Bluesky Sees Massive Growth After Election
Since the presidential election in the United States, Bluesky has seen a surge of new users, with the social media platform now having nearly 27 million users. This followed Elon Musk’s embrace of Donald Trump during and after the election, with Musk turning the platform formerly known as Twitter into what NBC News called “an echo chamber amplifying right-leaning causes.”
In a previous column from late summer, I noted how people in the SF/F genre were already fleeing X-Twitter in droves, with the Meta owned platform Threads seeing many new users. However, the election appears to have been a tipping point, with many writers and fans in the genre community embracing Bluesky’s system that allows you to easily see posts from people you follow, whereas the algorithms behind Threads don’t easily allow this. This growth was supercharged by Bluesky’s use of “starter packs,” allowing people to quickly follow groups of people. Among the popular starter packs that caught my eyes were Publishing News and Views created by Jane Friedman, two separate packs of Speculative Fiction Publications created by Maria Haskins, Viable Paradise created by Valerie Kemp, Non Cis Male Fantasy Artists created by Jameela Wahlgren, and SpecFic Short Story Writers created by Alex Harford.
As an example of this growth, John Scalzi’s 232K followers are more than the nearly 200K he had right before leaving X-Twitter. Other genre authors on Bluesky have seen similar surges, with many of them equaling or exceeding what they had on X-Twitter.
But Bluesky isn’t merely a numbers game, with people there also seeing far more engagement than experienced on X-Twitter since Musk changed the platform’s rules and algorithms. It appears that even Musk has noticed this surge in lost usage, announcing that X-Twitter pushes “too much negativity” and that the algorithm will soon be changed to “promote more informational/entertaining content” in order to “maximize unregretted user-seconds.”
But for many people in the SF/F genre, it appears that possible change is far too little and too late.
Increased Online Impersonations of Authors
There has been a surge of impersonations of famous authors, less-well-known writers, and literary agents in recent months. Many of these take place on different social media platforms and appear to be possibly driven by the usage of bots and generative AI. The end goal of this impersonation is to convince people to sign up for various writing and agenting scams.
Among the authors who experienced impersonators were Colson Whitehead and Tamsyn Muir. One of the fake-Muir’s posts said “Hello! Yep, it’s really me genuine Tamsyn Muir here. I’m not the most active on socials, but I do keep an eye on things when I can. Thanks for noticing, and I’m glad to be following you! Let’s hope this clears up any doubts.”
It should be noted the real Tamsyn Muir isn’t active on any public social media platforms.
Another example of a fake Bluesky account impersonated Jamie Lee Curtis. The impersonator posted that Curtis had a "distant family member who wants to become a fictional horror writer. DM me your scariest ideas and I'll have them look through my DMs for inspiration."
Gabino Iglesias took a screenshot of the fake Curtis message before the account was deleted.
Editor Mark Peters shared a screenshot of the types of initial DMs these fake accounts send over Bluesky, in his case from someone impersonating Kim Harrison. The screenshot shows the fake Harrison messaging Peters and talking about “meeting other writers,” obviously a lead-up to some type of scam.
Ellen Mellor also shared screenshots of messages, this time from a fake Annie Proulx account. Within minutes of being followed, the fake Proulx messaged Mellor and said "I hope this isn't too forward, but I sent you a follow request because it looks like we have something in common, we're both authors! I'd love to connect and learn from your journey. I hope that doesn't come across as too rude. Looking forward to hearing from you!”
As Mellor snarked in response, “So, multi-award winning author E. Annie Proulx wants to learn from sold-barely-into-double-digits-books Ellen Mellor to learn from me? You'll forgive me if that sounds implausible.”
As Juliet E McKenna pointed out about all these fake Bluesky accounts, "Generic repeated replies are an instant giveaway. Multiple identical requests to start a conversation via direct message are a scam artist. Verify anyone claiming to represent an author too."
It appears this wave of impersonations on Bluesky resulted in part from the platform’s massive growth in recent months. In response, Bluesky has "introduced a new system to detect impersonation." But impersonations are still happening, with reporter Stephanie Nolen dealing with a fake account in recent days.
It should also be noted not all of these impersonators are operating on Bluesky. Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware detailed in a lengthy report how someone impersonated her by spoofing her email address to scam a new writer out of $1000. In this case the fake Strauss offered to “provide ‘guidance’ to authors to protect them against scams and help them ‘connect with well-known traditional publishing houses.’”
And Silvia Moreno-Garcia experienced someone impersonating her on Facebook, also with the aim of scamming people. She raised the issue on her various social media accounts, stating “I never DM fans & don't conduct any business via social media. All business is done via my agents. You can find all by social media channels via my website.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t likely to stop anytime soon, especially since AI generation programs and bots make this an increasingly easy way for scammers to reach potential targets.
As Moreno-Garcia messaged me about this, "I think in this era of AI generated images and content we are going to see a lot more people trying to impersonate others even if the rewards are minimal."
One Allegation Against Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki Proven Incorrect, Cairns Stands Behind Rest of Her Report
As previously reported, allegations of "unethical conduct” were raised by Erin Cairns against Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, namely that Ekpeki submitted a story written by her under his name alone, submitted the story to a Black voices magazine when as a white author Cairns felt she didn’t qualify, and didn’t give her credit for editing his work. Ekpeki, however, denied the allegations and said all of this resulted from "miscommunication and misunderstandings and assumptions on both sides from two people in not great situations."
A follow-up report goes into more detail, including how Ekpeki was removed from the board of directors of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association after the SFWA board heard evidence related to "multiple ethics complaints" against him.
Since then, Mike Glyer published a report on File770 claiming that two of Cairns’ allegations had been disproven, namely that an “anonymous source in a position to have direct knowledge has verified that when Ekpeki submitted the story (1) his cover letter identified Erin Cairns as the co-author, and (2) the manuscript had both authors’ named on the title page.”
After the File770 report came out, Cairns told me she spoke by phone with the editor of the magazine "to figure out what had happened with both of us.” According to Cairns, the editor confirmed her name had been on the byline, so the anonymous source who shared that information with File770 was correct and Cairns’ byline claim was wrong.
The File770 report also discussed how the Black voices magazine under question had previously published a white author, so having Cairns as a co-author would not have been prohibited. However, I’m not certain this allegation was disproved. Yes, the magazine in question told File770 they would have accepted the story even though Cairns is a white author. But if you look at the email that Cairns originally sent the magazine’s editor, which is listed in full in her report, you will see that this is exactly the information she was trying to determine.
As Cairns’ email to the editor said:
“I did not understand that Market 2 was a primarily, if not entirely, black voice magazine. I am a white South African, and if I had known, I would first have asked through this portal if a contribution from me would have been welcome. From what I understand, the story was accepted mid-December, but you did not know I was attached until early February. This leaves me a little unsure about whether my name will make it to the byline, or even if you still want to publish this story. If not, I completely understand, and I would immediately withdraw the story with sincere apologies.”
As Cairns’ stated in her report, she panicked when she learned the story had been accepted at the magazine, so she wanted to determine if it could still be published there. Based on that, I’m not sure how this allegation is disproven when Cairns said she was trying to understand what was going on with this magazine, having not known beforehand that Ekepki would submit it there.
Another issue raised by Cairns was that she didn’t receive promised credit for editing some of Ekpeki’s stories. In particular, one story she edited was published in what was labeled Anthology D in Cairns’ report, but was later revealed to be the anthology Dominion, co-edited by Zelda Knight and Ekpeki.
In November Knight wrote a number of posts on Bluesky questioning Cairns on all this, saying the report makes it sound like Cairns was an editor of the anthology, which Knight said absolutely wasn’t true. Knight and Cairns then discussed the issue and Cairns sent a clarifying note to Knight, confirming she hadn’t edited the anthology. Knight included the note in this thread, and closed the thread by stating:
“It is not beside the point false statements were made in an ethics report. It would have been more than sufficient to say credit was offered and not received to establish a pattern. That was not the case and I won’t be gaslit into thinking this is a minor issue with the report.”
It appears there might possibly be some misunderstanding in all this. In Cairns’ report, she never stated she edited the anthology. Instead, she wrote:
“When (Ekpeki) told me a story I’d worked on was going to be in the anthology, I questioned him about what I’d been doing. He told me that for my help and work, my name would be in the acknowledgments of the book.”
In a later comment on Bluesky, Cairns repeated she didn’t edit the anthology but that not being acknowledged for editing his story “is relevant to my report as it's the first time he promised credit and did not deliver.”
In response to this, Ekpeki posted in November on X-Twitter and said Cairns gave a “full apology for misrepresenting facts.” But the Bluesky post he linked to, which linked to the start of Knight’s thread along with an attached skeet from Cairns, is not a full apology. Instead Cairns apologized to Knight for the misunderstanding and repeated that she didn’t edit the anthology.
Yes, all of this is a mess and there are indeed many misunderstandings. But while one of the issues Cairns raised was wrong, she stands by her other allegations. And none of this addresses the other people who raised concerns and problems in their own interactions with Ekpeki (as covered in this column).
While SFWA hasn’t released any new statements after removing Ekpeki from their board for “multiple ethics complaints,” the African Speculative Fiction Society (ASFS) took a different approach, saying "Further revelations in the specific allegations of appropriation and non-disclosure against Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki have been investigated by a third party and no longer stand and a public retraction has been made." The ASFS also announced that, as a result of all this, they have published a new member code of conduct.
Ekpeki stands by his original statements that none of this happened as Cairns described and instead resulted from "miscommunication and misunderstandings and assumptions.”
Cairns, when discussing with me why all this happened if her byline was indeed on the submitted story, said “I think all of this, all of the gaslighting etc, was so I wouldn't realize he hadn't made any changes to the manuscript?"
Worldcon News
Lots of Worldcon-related news:
As I mentioned in my coverage of the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon, one of the convention’s less positive aspects was hosting the business meeting in a location that was a ten minute walk from the rest of Worldcon. Having the business meeting at such an inaccessible location definitely limited participation. So major props to the Seattle Worldcon 2025, which will not only host their business meeting virtually but also schedule these sessions prior to the convention. This means Worldcon members can not only easily access a meeting where a number of important issues related to the future of Worldcon will be voted on, but they also don’t have to miss taking part in Worldcon to do so.
The Worldcon virtual business meeting will take place on July 4, July 13, July 19, and July 25. The minutes of the last business meeting are also now available, as is the list of items that were approved at the Glasgow Worldcon and must be ratified this year to go into effect. Items up for ratification include new monitoring of the Worldcon site selection process, changes to the administration of the Hugo Awards, changes to the Hugo artist categories, and getting rid of the Retro Hugo Awards.
On December 7, the Montréal 2027 Worldcon organizers launched their official bid to host the convention in 2027. They also launched their website.
On the same day, the organizers behind the Tel Aviv 2027 Worldcon bid announced they were suspending their attempt. Guy Kovel, who is the bid’s chair, said “Regrettably, due to the situation in Israel, we would have to push our bid to a later year, we have not yet made an announcement as we are still in internal discussions as to what year we would be able to bid for.”
Updates were shared on the ConKigali 2028 Worldcon bid in a December report on File770. The bid would host the convention in Kigali, Rwanda in 2028. During the recent SMOFcon 41 convention, a Q &A session and other information about ConKigali was shared, with these files linked to from the File770 report. ConKigali also has an official website.
The committee to bring Worldcon to Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 2030 has also announced their bid and launched their website.
2023 Hugo Awards Statues Still Not Received, Admins Behind Censorship Possibly Attempting Comeback
With 2025 starting, it’s worth noting that a number of winners of the 2023 Hugo Awards still haven’t received their award statues nearly a year and three months after the Hugo ceremony.
As previously reported (see third item at this link), an estimated 29 Hugo statues for winners from the Chengdu Worldcon were shipped to the USA and received in January 2024 by the Hugo administrators here. Unfortunately, many of these awards were damaged during shipping, resulting in Dave McCarty announcing that the Hugo admins were working to repair the statues and delivered them to the winners.
Since then, some of the repaired statues were distributed in August to various Hugo winners. However, others such as Chris M. Barkley, who won the 2023 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer, still haven’t received their statues.
On November 9, the following email was sent to the people who hadn’t received their award:
Dear Hugo winner waiting on a replacement award,
Our production run in China took much longer than expected to complete but it is preparing to ship to me now. Given the performance of the last shipment I am expecting the awards to arrive at my home approximately the first week of December. With docks and customs, there is a bit of variability that makes it hard to predict the exact date of arrival.
All materials for assembly and shipping needed here are already prepared so it should only take a couple days to get everything out.
You’ll be contacted again with your tracking number when your award ships.
This current shipment from China includes some emergency holographic spares….so if something happens in shipment, a replacement should be immediately available. If there’s damage in transit, please email me photos and we’ll discuss what the best method to handle the situation is.
Thank you.
--
Dave McCarty – Hugo Administrator
Chengdu Worldcon
Since that email, there has been no information shared on the status of the replacement awards.
When Chris Barkley and I were working on last year’s report about censorship and exclusion at the 2023 Hugo Awards, which showed strong evidence that Dave McCarty and other Hugo admins helped censor the awards, I joked that our report might result in Barkley never receiving his Hugo statue.
That joke no longer seems quite as funny.
One reason I mention all this is that McCarty and Ben Yalow, two of the Chengdu Hugo admins, appear to be attempting to return to the genre’s good graces.
McCarty and Yalow attended SMOFcon 41 in early December, which is an annual gathering of convention organizers from across the genre. After someone expressed shock on Facebook at seeing the pair at SMOFcon, a well-known genre fan posted the following comment:
“I, for one, think it is time to forgive Ben and Dave for their actions as Worldcon co-chair and Hugo co-administrator. … My view is that Ben and Dave demonstrated a love for and dedication to this community through their actions--navigating the always underestimated (if not entirely discounted) difficulty of the cultural differences and divide to serve WSFS and the Worldcon community through two years of challenging work--that eclipses the dedication of easily 90% of their detractors. I say this, again, while regretting decisions that were made during the administration of the Hugo Awards. However, I would rather be part of a community where people step up to serve and make sacrifices on the level of what Ben, Dave, and a very small number of other community members demonstrated their willingness to perform, than be part of a group that denies its roots as a community and family gathering of science fiction fans to engage in this kind of shaming and shunning behavior. This kind of shaming and shunning is far more dysfunctional for a family or for a community--and is something I am far more loath to associate myself with--than any of the difficult, complex, and in my view regrettable decisions made by the Hugo Award administration committee in 2023.”
It’s worth noting that forgiveness doesn’t always mean the people you forgive must first apologize or make amends, which would be fortunate for McCarty and Yalow because they have yet to make any public apology for the censorship that took place. In fact, since Barkley and I released our report, they've made no public comment at all, not even to say mistakes were made. It’s as if McCarty and Yalow believe their actions were correct and that history will eventually vindicate them.
The entire SF/F genre is still dealing with the fallout from what McCarty, Yalow, and the others admins did during the 2023 Hugo Awards. At the Glasgow Worldcon business meeting, an investigation committee was established to examine all that happened during the 2023 Worldcon and Hugo Awards, with this investigation currently taking place. In addition, the SF/F genre has also been debating how Worldcon and the Hugos should be run in the future with an eye to preventing this from ever happening again.
With so much still up in the air, it’s not the time to be debating forgiveness. Instead, the genre should be deciding how to fix the mess created by McCarty and Yalow.
And one part of that mess is for someone to finally admit what’s up with the missing Hugo statues!
Awards
The 2025 Hugo Awards will open for nominations in a few weeks, with the awards being run by the Seattle 2025 Worldcon. The Seattle Worldcon will also host a special Hugo Award for Best Poem this year. Nominations for this special Hugo will be open to any “poem within the speculative, science fiction, and fantasy genres, published in 2024, that is at least three lines.”
The Nebula Awards are accepting nominations through February 28, 2025. Must be a member of Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) to nominate.
SFWA announced new Poetry and Comics categories for the Nebula Awards. Award eligibility begins in January 2025, with people being able to nominate works in these categories in 2026.
The Dragon Awards are open for nominations through July 19.
The Kitschies Prize has ended after 15 years with the announcement of the award’s final shortlist.
"A Shrine by The Sea" by Syed Zain Haroon won the 2024 Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction.
The Horror Writers Association announced their 2024 scholarship and grant recipients.
Other News and Info
On December 9th, Google announced the creation of Willow, its latest and supposedly greatest quantum computing chip, which evidently takes five minutes to compute things that current supercomputers “need 10 septillion years” to do. According to Google Quantum AI founder Hartmut Neven, the chip is so fast that it must have borrowed computational power from other universes, possibly proving parallel universes exist and that "we live in a multiverse." However, a number of scientists have questioned Google’s findings and both the chip’s performance and what that performance might mean. Quantum Insider has a good look at the pros and cons in the debate.
If Google’s claims turn out to be true, their quantum chip might eventually be a problem for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, allowing people to “break existing cryptography.” Of course, quantum chips might also be used to update those cryptographic algorithms, so it’s not all doom and gloom.
On December 20, the board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) released a statement on “writers in crisis.” Noting that SFWA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and, as such, “restricted from political campaign intervention in particular forms,” the board said that despite that “we must not look away as our colleagues and readers—present and future—are killed, injured, or driven from their homes. With that in mind, SFWA will continue to actively support speculative fiction writers under threat and in crisis.” The statement added that as part of this SFWA will ”continue to provide Emergency Medical Fund and Legal Fund support to all qualifying authors, including those impacted authors in conflict zones” along with “free Virtual Nebula access for any author impacted by war or conflict” and “will waive membership fees for authors living in or displaced from areas impacted by war or conflict.” However, an open letter organized by E.D.E. Bell criticized SFWA for not releasing a “statement and plan to support Palestinian writers,” which the letter said the writers in crisis statement “does not address.” The open letter was signed by more than 100 current and former SFWA members.
Daniel Kibblesmith received a notice from his literary agent about one of his children’s books, stating that HarperCollins, the book’s publisher “was offering $2,500 (non-negotiable) for the right to use the book in an AI training deal that they’d signed with an anonymous ‘large tech company.’” Kibblesmith declined to allow this in no uncertain terms and shared the notice in a series of screenshots on Bluesky.
Clarion West has received a grant to fund their first full-time development director, which will be a hybrid position based in Seattle. They are currently accepting applications for the position. The organization is also trying to establish a “community center serving Pacific Northwest organizations who specialize in supporting writers, literacy, and publishing of underrepresented and marginalized groups.” To do this, Clarion West wants to purchase or renovate a facility “that provides free and reduced rate spaces for speculative fiction artists, writers, and those that love their work.”
The Gen Con Writers Symposium announced that Maurice Broaddus will lead the 2025 symposium. Broaddus has served on the board of the Writers Symposium for the last three years and was heavily involved in bringing in a number of high profile guests such as Mikki Kendall, John Jennings, and Sheree Renée Thomas. The contract of the previous leader of the Writers Symposium, E.D.E. Bell, was not renewed by Gen Con in September. Bell attributed this decision to trying to make the symposium more inclusive and inviting guests of honor such as Linda D. Addison and Mikki Kendall. However, Erik Scott de Bie disputed Bell's account, instead saying that Bell was not retained due to “poor communication, acting unilaterally, and not consulting” Gen Con on decisions.
In the dealers’ room at the 2024 Glasgow Worldcon, I saw a ton of beautiful hardcover books for sale with fancy patterns along their page edges and multiple, lavish illustrations inside and out. Dealers were also selling a ton of these books. Now The New York Times has an article out saying such deluxe editions are the hottest trend in the romance and fantasy genres. In particular, the article notes that one of these fancy editions of the novel Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros was released “with a bold metallic cover and black sprayed edges featuring dragons” and sold out of all 115,000 copies within a week.
Darian Bianco is the new managing editor for Apex Book Company and will oversee the production, marketing, and distribution of the publisher’s titles along with acquisitions and catalog management.
Apex Magazine released their 2024 annual report, including demographics of the authors published over the year and the magazine’s staff. The report also states that the magazine received 9,182 total submissions in 2024, of which 187 were held for consideration by Lesley Conner with 21 acceptances and an average response time of 36.5 days. Finally, Apex Magazine appeared to average 700 paid subscribers across the year along with just under 600 Patreon supporters, who also receive access to new issues. In addition, 521 backers pledged $22,919 to fund the magazine’s Kickstarter campaign for 2025.
The best science fiction show I’ve seen in recent years is Scavengers Reign, originally streamed on HBO in late 2023 and then on Netflix in 2024. Unfortunately, neither company renewed the show for season 2, which is a damn shame. However, the creators of Scavengers Reign have still released a teaser trailer for a possible season 2 in the hopes of gaining interest in the continuation of their story. Check it out.
Classic literature as side hustle: People are downloading public-domain manuscripts through Project Gutenberg and creating new covers using Canva and AI before uploading the titles to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing. One guy doing this, Dan Pye, is quoted in this Slate article saying “that popular titles like Sun Tzu’s The Art of War could earn him over $10,000 per month. Pye claims his titles make over $100,000 every year with minimal effort, generating what he calls ‘truly passive income.’” Of course, Pye and the others doing this also publish tons of videos online to teach others how to imitate their hustle, making this very similar to the people using AI programs to flood the entire internet with slop.
Lincoln Michel offers a good examination of how to flip from "TV brain" to "prose brain" when writing fiction.
Enshittification, which was coined by Cory Doctorow, is Macquarie Dictionary’s word of the year.
WIth the death of former President Jimmy Carter at age 100, a reminder that his presidency saw the launch of the two Voyager spacecraft, which have already reached interstellar space and are racing ever onward. Included with each spacecraft is a golden record that contains data and sounds from Earth, including these poignant words from Carter: "This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe."
Opportunities
Submissions for the 2025 Lambda Literary Awards, which celebrate outstanding LGBTQ+ storytelling, are open through March 21. Submissions must have been originally published during 2024. Details>>
The Speculative Literature Foundation is seeking original artwork combining fantasy and science fiction themes to be featured as the foundation’s “Illustration of the Year.” The winner receives $750. Deadline is January 15. Details>>
Podcastle is seeking fantasy submissions for their upcoming Disability Pride and Magic event, to be run during Disability Pride Month. Deadline is March 31. Details>>
Flame Tree Fiction is seeking submissions for the anthology Witch Craft: A New Collection of Folk Tales & Horror Stories. Deadline is January 19. Details>>
SFWA seeks to hire a project manager for the upcoming Nebula Awards Conference. Payment will be “$15,000 for the scope of the project, paid in milestone installments.” Details>>