I say this all the time, but you wouldn’t believe how much work there is to do in the SFT space. It’s way too much for just a few people. An army of SFT enthusiasts would start to put a dent in this treasure chest.
Speaking of “treasure,” calling SFT a “hidden treasure” is like calling the Cullinan Diamond a “pretty little gem.” There’s so much to catalog, categorize, discuss, explore. I literally started a magazine so that this process could get going a little bit faster, because I’m an impatient person. But I’m just the latest in a long chain of SFT promoters: Frederik Pohl, Harry Harrison, Brian Aldiss, Cheryl Morgan, Lavie Tidhar, Francesco Verso, Alex Shvartsman…so many people have brought SFT to the genre world’s attention. And yet, SFT remains on the margins, either because translation is seen as too esoteric a topic or the publishing industry in the Anglophone world doesn’t want to share attention with literature from other countries. And yet, I like to look at the bright side, too: the BSFA Awards and Locus Awards are the first two major prizes to include a translation category. That is worthy of celebration.
Though many might think that SFT is a very marginal, niche group of texts, I find that, each year, the number of works of SFT is surprisingly high. This year (2026) is on track to have around 70 long-form works and likely 40 short stories. Last year, the numbers were 95 and 39, respectively. So far, I’ve catalogued a total of 1,238 novels, 4,288 short stories, 283 collections, and 138 anthologies, and believe me, there is so very much more out there. Just the other day, I was pointed to an excellent spreadsheet just of French SFT, and in looking through the list, imagine my surprise when I realized that I only recognized about half of these. I started this site over ten years ago. I would have thought that one of the most well-established source languages like French in the SFF space would have been catalogued thoroughly long ago. Well, I was wrong.
Then, just a month or so ago, bookseller Mark Funke released the Donald A. Wollheim Collection of International Science Fiction for auction on the world. I wanted so badly to drop everything and dig into this collection, write something about the fascinating diversity of texts that Wollheim had collected, and discuss its place in the history of SFT. Would I love to do this? Yes. Do I have the time? No. Do I wish someone with the time would do this? YES. If you do, submit it to Small Planet!
There’s also the history of SFT in the Anglophone world that needs discussing- the World SF Newsletter is a goldmine, Cheryl Morgan’s SFFTA website and awards are a goldmine, Lavie Tidhar’s eight volumes of SFT anthologies are a goldmine.
And that magazine I mentioned: I am literally booking articles out deep into next year (issues appear 4 times per year) because there’s so much to discuss that I quickly run out of room in each issue line-up. Each issue, if it were feasible, could be a small book, that’s how much needs to be discussed in the world of SFT.
And don’t get me started on bridging the gap between translation studies and SFF studies. I fell into a rabbit hole of translation theory and practice a couple of weeks ago and am still there (I’m writing this from inside that rabbit hole). Now, I’m focused on ethical review practices and how to spread this approach further in the genre world. Many good reviewers already respect translators in their reviews without thinking about it, but many others do not (usually not deliberately). Maybe we can shift the conversation to, as Lawrence Venuti and many others have pointed out, bring the translators out of the shadows in our reviews and give them the credit that they deserve, since translations do not appear out of nowhere. A translator makes a translation happen, and their work deserves to be seen.
I hope this essay didn’t read like a long whine but rather like a joyful exclamation of “isn’t this so great that this is a rich topic that will enhance our reading and cultural lives?!” That’s what I meant. So when I mope around, wishing that I had 48-hour days with which to read, learn, and write, I remind myself that I’d drop from exhaustion and be worthless. So I try to pace myself and split the time I have to work between doing my SFT thing and reading about other people doing their SFF or SFT or translation thing. I am glad I’ll be busy into my 100s with SFT.
