 | Sarah Newton is a writer of science-fiction and fantasy roleplaying games and fiction, co-owner of Mindjammer Press. Her work is known for its inventive and original world-building, a thought-provoking use of philosophical and technological concepts, and strong character-driven narratives.
She’s known for her far future transhuman science-fiction novel Mindjammer and roleplaying game of the same name, both of which have met with critical acclaim. The Mindjammer roleplaying game (1st edition) won a Judges Spotlight Award at the 2009 GenCon ENnie Awards, the leading awards for the RPG industry, and the 2nd edition (2014) was a nominee for Best Rules and Product of the Year at the 2015 ENnie Awards, and won a Griffie Award for Best RPG at the Conpulsion convention in Edinburgh in 2014. In addition to The Chronicles of Future Earth, she has run two successfully funded Kickstarters - MINDJAMMER THE ROLEPLAYING GAME in 2015 and CAPHARNAUM - THE TALES OF THE DRAGON-MARKED in 2017.
Her other RPG works include: the ENnie Award-winning Achtung! Cthulhu: Zero Point campaign; the “old school fantasy, new school play” roleplaying game Monsters & Magic; the Legends of Anglerre fantasy RPG; the Burn Shift post-apocalyptic setting for the Fate Core RPG; and more. All are characterised by deep content and detailed research, coupled with fascinating yet realistic world-building and exciting character-based stories. Her short fiction has appeared since 2012 to increasing acclaim, in anthologies such as Frostgrave (Osprey Books); The Book of the Dead (Jurassic London); The Lion and the Aardvark (Stone Skin Press); Have Blaster, Will Travel (Galileo Press); The Lost (Galileo Press); World War Cthulhu (Cubicle 7 Fiction); The British Fantasy Society Journal; and the World SF Blog. In 2017 she published her novel The Worm Within, the first of the Chronicles of Future Earth, set in the world of the roleplaying game. Her conceptualisation of the “Mindscape” was the subject of an article by neuroscientist and science writer Rita Carter in BBC Focus Magazine in April 2013.
Sarah has been described as a “renaissance woman”. She has a masters from Cambridge University in Russian and German literature, language, history, and thought; she spent many years in Japan working as a Japanese interpreter and media coordinator, and later in London as a television researcher and production manager. In the late 1990s she was part of the dot-com boom, working as a web developer and later product manager in London’s “square mile” financial district, the City. She’s fascinated by language, history, psychology, and the transformative power of words, media, social structures, and technology. Since 2005 she has been living in rural France, writing, managing a rock band, and generally failing to practise self sufficiency. You can find her online at http://sarahnewtonwriter.com, on Facebook as ShairaSu, and on Twitter as @SarahJNewton. |
