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The lives of science fiction writers from around the world were turned upside down by the pandemic. As Chinese New Year approaches, they shared their hopes and wishes for 2021.
For Alix E. Harrow, whose Do Not Look Back, My Lion earned her a nomination for best short story at the 2020 Hugo Awards, the biggest change was the same one that affected most of the world last year. “But if I shove COVID-19 aside, the biggest change in my creative life was reading romance for the first time and taking it seriously as a genre. It's kept me sane, and taught me a lot about writing convincing emotional arcs, she said.
Harrow joked that her goal for this year was to meet her deadlines. But, more seriously, to get my family through a pandemic and a chaotic transition of power with their sanity and safety mostly intact.
Caroline M. Yoachim, a two-time Hugo and four-time Nebula Award finalist, said the biggest change for her in 2020 was working from home with the rest of her family there with her. I also definitely miss traveling — most years I manage to go to a few sci-fi conventions.
For the new year, she pressed herself: Writing-wise my focus remains on short fiction, and I'm hoping to ramp up my output in 2021. I was not as productive as I'd hoped in 2020, and I have high hopes that this will be a better year.
A.T. Greenblatt, whose Give the Family My Love won the Nebula Award for best short story in 2020, said that the biggest changes to her life last year involved working from home as an engineer job and shifting from in-person conferences to virtual ones for writing. “Fortunately, I have a good network of friends online through the writing community from before the pandemic started, so some parts of my social life have stayed the same.
She continued: This year, I would love to finish revising a few stories that I have been struggling with for ages. That's my top goal right now. That, and have a better exercise routine.
The pandemic has completely upended Alex Shvartsman’s work routine: In addition to the stress induced by these global events — which I think all of us are experiencing equally — I've had a hard time keeping up with creative endeavors in 2020. It's more difficult to write when my family is always home, and we're all trying to work, study and relax in the confines of a relatively small space.
Because of this, the writer tried to focus much more on translation rather than writing his own fiction. Top of Shvartsman’s to-do list for 2021 is finishing his third novel.
As a writer, anthologist, and translator, he has published over 120 short stories in a variety of magazines and anthologies including Nature, Analog, Strange Horizons, and Galaxy's Edge. He also won the WSFA Small Press Award for Short Fiction in 2014 and was a finalist for the Canopus Award for Excellence in Interstellar Fiction in 2015, and again, in 2017.
Shvartsman is one of 13 well-known writers from four continents participating in the sixth Science Fiction New Year Gala writing project for 2021. The Future Affairs Administration, a company that produces and promotes sci-fi works and supports new sci-fi writers in China, is publishing short sci-fi stories related to the Chinese Lunar New Year from Feb. 7, which will be available on its official channels and platforms including Weibo, Bilibili, Douban, Toutiao and Zhihu. The international cohort of writers include Chinese writers Han Song, Fang Zeyu, Luo Lingzuo and Su Xuejun; South Korean writer Kim Ju-young; Australian writer Samantha Murray; Japanese writer Taiyo Fujii; Nigerian writer Innocent Chizaram Ilo; and American Shvartsman.
Previous sci-fi writers to participate in the gala writing project include domestic heavyweights Liu Cixin, Han Song, Hao Jingfang and internationally renowned writers like Ken Liu, Shvartsman and Ian Watson. Over the past five years, more than 60 writers from eight different countries and regions have taken part, earning over 100 million reads. This year's Science Fiction New Year Gala will also feature a new podcast.
