Luke Beckstrand | Updates

Integrating linguistics into your science fiction or fantasy novel without writing an entire conlang

Luke Beckstrand — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 23:33:52 -0400

The purpose of this article is to help those authors who want to include language and linguistics in their books but don’t feel that they have sufficient skills, experience, or knowledge to properly write a conlang, and who don’t feel that they have the time (or the desire) to take actual linguistics classes and read all of the many books published on the topic of creating conlangs. I’m here to tell you that you don’t need to be an expert to include language in your book. You don’t even need to fully write a conlang! It’s possible to competently include language and linguistics as part of the world-building for your novel in ways that will enhance your world, story, and characters, all without spending thousands of hours studying language creation.

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Linguistic Expectations: What do readers of science fiction and fantasy want out of conlangs?

Luke Beckstrand — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 23:33:07 -0400

Conlanging, or the process by which someone creates a constructed language (conlang) has become more and more popular in recent decades. People create languages for a myriad of reasons, including cinema, books, videogames, role-playing campaigns, or even just for fun either as a side project or for personal use, or for real life functioning communication like Esperanto. The object of this paper is to study one of these fields in particular, that of conlanging for use in science fiction or fantasy books. It is easy for the conlangers (the people creating the languages) to be excited about their language, but my research question focuses on the readers. What expectations do readers have for conlangs in these books? After interviewing 8 avid science fiction and fantasy readers, and receiving 13 responses to a survey, I have discovered four major trends: 1) readers don’t want the languages to be overbearing—they enjoy simple conlangs that they can understand, 2) they want the language to serve some narrative purpose (be relevant to the plot), 3) they enjoy conlangs helping to name people and places, and 4) they want the conlangs to be well thought out (not to be shallow or just gibberish). Knowing that these are the priorities for readers of science fiction and fantasy will hopefully help authors in these genres to know how to best use their conlangs in their works.

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Axion: Spark of Life coming Sept 8!

Luke Beckstrand — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

My official publication date for Axion: Spark of Life, the first volume of my sci-fi action adventure romance series (Axion), is set for September 8th of 2026! I could not be more stoked to be getting this book traditionally published through Oliver Heber Books!

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