I just got back from San Antonio and LoneStarCon 3. It was a delight to have a major convention in my home town; when I was starting to feel conventioned-out on Saturday I was able to take a break and spend a day with my family. I also got to see the Hugo awards for the third time, and continue to find it thrilling. Congratulations to all the winners, and special congratulations to John Scalzi who won Best Novel for his book Redshirts. This was especially exciting for me, as I appear in the book as a minor character. (It’s worth noting that, so far, 100% of novels in which I die have gone on to win Hugo awards. Do with this information what you will.)
Category: SF/F
Genevieve Valentine has posted a roundup of further responses to the Readercon Board’s decision not to follow their own harassment policy in punishing Rene Walling. Most notable is that a woman Mr. Walling previously harassed, Kate Kligman, has not only come forward, but revealed that she had privately alerted the Readercon Board to Walling’s history of harassment before the verdict was decided.
This is especially damning. The board’s decision to violate their own policy is unsupportable purely on principle, but to have done so while in possession of evidence that Mr. Walling is a serial harasser should make even the most sympathetic observer suspect cronyism as the primary motivation. It seems to me that, though a zero-tolerance policy may be too blunt an instrument for dealing with all instances of harassment, this case is not a boundary condition. This isn’t someone who went off his meds for a weekend and lost his shit. This is someone with a history of indefensible behavior.
Rose Fox has called for a vote from the convention committee on overruling the board’s decision. I am not familiar enough with the political structure that governs Readercon to fully understand what this means. Hopefully it is evidence that people in power are moving to do what is right: institute the lifetime ban that Rene Walling’s actions call for, and meaningfully apologize for the failure of the Readercon organizers to uphold the trust placed in them by their community.
The sequence of events: Genevieve Valentine got harassed at Readercon and bravely came forward about it. The man who harassed her did so repeatedly despite very clear communication that his attentions were unwelcome. Genevieve did not initially name her harasser, choosing instead to address the issue with the Readercon board of directors. Apparently she had interacted with the board in 2008 after a similar incident of harassment (of someone else) by a man named Aaron Agassi, and found their response–banning Aaron for life–appropriate. In the aftermath of the 2008 event the board instituted a zero-tolerance harassment policy. Today Genevieve revealed that the board chose not to enforce their own policy, and are instead suspending the perpetrator, Rene Walling, for two years. The board has issued a statement explaining their decision. They say that Rene was found to be “sincerely regretful of his actions” and that “[i]f, as a community, we wish to educate others about harassment, we must also allow for the possibility of reform.” They also state, “[w]hen we wrote our zero-tolerance policy in 2008 (in response to a previous incident), we were operating under the assumption that violators were either intent on their specific behaviors, clueless, or both.”
In 2008, Aaron Agassi was banned from the con for life, and in 2012 Rene Walling was put on 2-year probation. Also notable, Aaron Agassi was not a well-regarded member of the community, whereas Rene Walling is a frequent blogger for Tor.com and has previously chaired a Worldcon.
I have several thoughts.
1) The establishment of a harassment policy is something to be taken seriously.
Why did the need to allow for the possibility of reform not enter the board’s minds when they were originally establishing the harassment policy? Likely because Aaron Agassi was an apparently super-creepy guy with no friends in the community, and the proximate goal of the harassment policy was to exclude him specifically. That is, to put it mildly, irresponsible. I am actually somewhat sympathetic the the board’s position that their harassment policy should allow for the possibility of reform, but the time to consider that was when they were instituting the policy in the first place. They could have written a tiered policy, with explicit levels of punishment for specific kinds of trespass, and attendees could have then decided whether the punishment schedule made them feel comfortable. But instead they instituted a zero-tolerance policy, and allowed congoers to believe they were governed by it. So let’s call this Big Mistake #1: instituting a policy that they lacked the conviction to universally enforce.
2) Retroactively changing the policy is a bigger deal than any one incident of harassment.
By retroactively changing their policy, the Readercon board becomes complicit in pattern of well-connected men getting special treatment when they harass women. It doesn’t matter if, absent of other policies, a 2-year probation seems a proportionate response. If the policy is zero tolerance, the facts of the harassment are not in dispute, and tolerance is nevertheless extended, then the harasser has gotten away with it. He was exempted from normal system of punishment. The message that this sends is that the feelings of a harasser are, or at least can be, more important than the feelings of the harassed, and that systems which claim to offer redress in the event of harassment cannot be relied upon. It takes what was an isolated event and elevates it to the level of systemic problem: harassers will get special treatment if they are somehow important and express contrition. (And, while not being at all personally familiar with Rene Walling or his motives, I would note as many others already have that false contrition is a common attribute of a serial abuser.) This will serve to make women feel more at risk, more powerless. Genevieve herself says, “the results of reporting my harassment have been more troubling, in some ways, than the harassment itself.” So, Big Mistake #2: turning an isolated problem into a systemic problem by extending special treatment to a harasser.
3) What the board should have done.
So the board found itself in the position of having a case of clear harassment, but not wanting to issue a lifetime ban to the harasser, despite a zero-tolerance policy. The right course of action would have been to avoid Big Mistake #2 by following the policy, and then, after dealing with this specific circumstance of harassment, begin a process reforming their policy. This would have meant opening up a discussion about harassment and punishment with the Readercon community. It could even have resulted in the creation of an explicit appeals procedure that Rene Walling could have, at some point in the future, availed himself of. Doing this would have been transparent, responsive to the needs of the community, and resulted in a policy that the board could thereafter enforce with conviction.
4) What the board should do now.
I’ve never been to Readercon, so other people may have a more incisive view here. But my answer is: what they should have done in the first place. With the added step of apologizing for fucking up, and promising to take their own policies so seriously in the future that no one can ever suspect they are being applied selectively depending on how much of a Big Name Fan the person in question is.
After a year away I returned to my first and favorite SF convention, WisCon. I last attended in 2008, and had such a good experience that I sent Nalo Hopkinson flowers as thanks for having convinced me to go despite my incredulity. As good as 2008 was, this year was even better. A big part of the reason why relates to that pink thumbnail.
Day 1:
J, sky buddy.
My WisCon began before I even got to Madison. While still in DFW airport I met up with J, just parted from M after flight delays forced them to take separate planes. J had been assigned the last standby seat on a direct flight to Madison, whereas M had already boarded a plane to Minneapolis, where she would get a ride into Madison from Haddayr Copley-Woods and David Schwartz. Fortunately for me, though, J’s flight was the same as my own, and we got to sit next to each other chatting about interesting research in psychology and physics all the way to Wisconsin.
We were picked up at the airport by Karen Meisner. She took us to her (amazing!) house, and introduced us to (amazing!) Amal El-Mohtar. We chatted for a while in Karen’s library, then went to the Madison Concourse Hotel to check in to our rooms. Then it was off to the Guest of Honor reading at A Room Of One’s Own, one of the last remaning feminist bookstores in the country. The event began with the reading of Joanna Russ’s story, “When It Changed,” and then WisCon Guest of Honor Nisi Shawl read an excerpt from a story that was, I believe, published in one of this year’s WisCon publications. It involved oracular dreams about Michael Jackson, who would also be a subject of Nisi’s Guest of Honor speech on Day 4. (UPDATE: Karen points out in the comments that the story, “Pataki,” was originally published in Strange Horizons and can be read here.)
After the reading J went off to find M, and I met up with roommates Keffy Kehrli and Liz Argall (who was to stay with us unti Liz Gorinsky arrived the next day). We ended up going out to a Japanese fusion restaurant with a group that included my former teacher Mary Anne Mohanraj, Kat Bayer, as well as a man named Alex. (Unfortunately, no one had name tags yet, and I didn’t get Alex’s last name written down. If you read this, let me know who you are!)
After dinner it was back to the hotel, where Keffy and I had a pleasant reunion with Geoff Ryman, our other former Clarion teacher who was at the con. We ended up in the bar, where Geoff bought us drinks, and I finally got to meet Rachel Swirsky and her husband Mike. Rachel is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and was extremely generous with her time when I emailed her out of the blue some months ago to ask about her workshop experience. It was lovely to finally meet her, and I ended up spending a long time at a table chatting publishing with Rachel, Keffy, Liz A., Kater Cheek, and Julie Andrews. Eventually the gin that Geoff poured into me had me feeling extra social, and I introduced myself to Gwenda Bond and reintroduced myself to Annalee Newitz, whom I had met previously when she gave a lecture at Trinity University. We discussed our favorite extinct megafauna. Eventually the bar began to empty, and Keffy, Liz A., and I went up to our room and crashed.
Day 2:
Spent a long, lazy morning in the room chatting with Liz A. and Keffy. Our phantom fourth roommate, Michael Underwood, had appeared sometime during the night, but was gone again before the rest of us got up. Eventually we got up and left the room, immediately running into Cat Valente who had the room across the hall. We ended up heading to lunch at a noodle place with Cat and several of her friends, whose names I failed to write down. (Were you at that lunch? Let me know who you are!) After lunch I went to the WisCon gathering and poked through stacks of ARCs. A little while later I got a call from Rachel, who wanted to introduce me to several of her students from when she was at Iowa. I met L Savich, Ryan Leeds, An Owomoyela, Jei, Sam Larsen-Ferree, and Jai Marcade. I also met Ann Leckie, who was not one of Rachel’s Iowa City students, but seems lovely all the same.
From there I went to a panel on autism and Asperger’s syndrome in fiction. Curiously, no one on the panel was actually on the autism spectrum. Haddayr commented on this and offered to give up her panel space to any audience member on the spectrum who wanted it, but no one accepted her offer. That turned out to be for the best, as Haddayr ended up being the most insightful of the panelists. There was another panelist who was woefully uninformed about autism issues and frequently made statements that were ignorant to the point of being offensive, such as characterizing autism as a mental illness and equating Asperger’s syndrome with psychopathy. Fortunately, Ryan Leeds, who is on the spectrum, was in the audience and called her on her more outrageous pronouncements, giving a much-needed insider perspective. Rachel Swirsky also was not shy with her displeasure, for which I was grateful. It was, as Haddayr later noted, a panel where the audience was educating the panelists.
Stylin’ in a piece from the M Collection.
From there I met up with Liz A., J, and M (safely arrived in Madison), and went out to another Japanese restaurant with Ben Rosenbaum, Susan Marie-Groppi, and David Moles. Liz A. and I spent most of the dinner talking with Ben about Maimonedean Judaism, and attempted a positive construction of atheist principles. After the meal we walked around Madison until we found a FedEx store to make copies of the posters for the Genderfloomp Dance Party (about which, more later) and the We Have Always Captured the Castle reading (ditto). On the way we talked of generational shifts in feminism, SlutWalks, and things from childhood that fail to age well. On the way back I mostly talked about how I was cold and getting rained on, so M, who was wearing many layers, lent me her jacket.
Back at the hotel it was time for the karaoke party. Liz A. sang “I Wanna Be Sedated,” and goaded me into finding something on the list to sing. None of my usual karaoke songs (i.e., songs that merely require speaking to a beat rather than singing) were on the list, so I ended up giving a first-time performance of “I Am The Walrus.” Ben, Amal, and David queued up “Like a G6,” but ignored the lyrics on the screen and instead performed “Roll a D6.” M offered an astonishingly great rendition of “Born This Way,” complete with contextualizing editorial against theism and biological essentialism. Then I got to serve as one of several lascivious backup dancers for Liz A.’s performance of “I Touch Myself.” By that point it was pretty much equal parts karaoke and dance party, and it didn’t let up until well after midnight. When it was over I went up to the party floor and spent a while chatting with Rachel among the wreckage of the FOGcon party, but soon discovered that three hours of dancing had left my legs unable to keep me upright for extended periods of time, and so took them upstairs to bed.
Day 3:
Began my day by following Keffy down to the “Journeyman Writers’ Group” event, largely because it was being run by Vylar Kaftan, whom I wanted to meet. There was an interesting discussion of query letter verbiage, but overall I didn’t get a lot out of it. After that I spent some time in the lobby with Rachel who introduced me to Sarah Prineas, who lives in Iowa City and who let me know about the local SF writers’ group she’s involved with. While I was in the lobby I ran into Kelly-Sue DeConnick and Laurenn McCubbin, who I had been looking forward to meeting at the con, and planned a breakfast date for the next day. Then it was back upstairs for an important cosmetics appointment.
Karen Meisner: making my stuff prettier since 2009.
In response to my saying that I was not very good at it, Karen had the day before offered to paint my nails for the Genderfloomp Dance Party. I went up to my room to retrieve my cosmetics, and found Karen and Susan chatting at the 12th floor computer desk. Karen offered to do my nails right there, and produced some varnishes of her own she had brought for the purpose. We ended up doing a layer of bubblegum pink (mine) under a layer of glittery clear coat (Karen’s). It took me a while to internalize that I couldn’t use my hands normally right after my nails were painted, and Karen ended up having to redo a few of them, but eventually I figured it out. While my nails were drying I chatted with Karen and Susan about the distinctions between editorial vision and editorial bias, and as other people walked by they were drawn in by the salon atmosphere. J, Cat Valente, Gwenda Bond, and Theodora Goss all paused a while in the hallway to discuss fiction and cosmetics with us. Eventually my nails were dry and the next round of programming about to start, and the salon dispersed.
I went with Jen to the “…And Other Circuses” reading by Gwenda Bond, Richard Butner, Genevieve Valentine, and Christopher Rowe. Gwenda read the beginning of her circus-themed novel in progress. Richard read a story called “Backyard Everest” which was not circus themed in any way, but was great fun. Genevieve read an excerpt from Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, her novel which just sold out its first print run (I went to the dealer’s room an grabbed a copy immediately after the reading). (Side note: before the reading started I finally got to let Genevieve know that she seems to be the only other person on the planet who understands the fabulous wonderfulness of Flight of Dragons the same way I do. I agree with every letter of that link. Until I found a clean digital copy of the movie, it would have been impossible for me to justify having children.) Christopher read a circus-themed excerpt from his D&D novel, and then a non-circus-themed excerpt from another novel, the title of which (if it had one) I failed to record. After the reading I chatted with Christopher, M, and Alice Kim, whom I had met 2 years ago and of whose writing I have since become a great fan.
I went to dinner with Keffy, Sunny Moraine, and Liz Fidler. We went to a pub food and beer restaurant, where the food was quite good, as was the company, but I unfortunately had to leave the meal early with a minor bout of Crohn’s issues. I went back to the hotel and read in my room for a couple of hours until they passed. When I was feeling better I headed to the Governor’s Club lounge to snack, and ended up hanging out with Kater, Nayad Monroe, Michael Thomas, Lynne Thomas, and Seanan McGuire. Seanan and I figured out that I had met her once before, when I was in elementary school and she was playing Little Red Riding Hood in the touring company of Into The Woods. This set a new life record for known delay between two meetings with the same person.
I caught the end of the always entertaining Tiptree auction with Keffy and Liz A. I got there just in time to see Geoff get held down while a Space Babe temporary tattoo was applied to his cheek. (A cheek on his face, as opposed to elsewhere, thanks to a $100 intervention by the Tiptree Motherboard.) I made a late, winning bid on an ARC of “The Alchemist” by Paolo Bacigalupi. Then I went up and fluttered around the parties on the 6th floor for a while. I ran into M, J, and Alice in the hallway, and as we discussed physical fitness a group began to nucleate around us. Eventually we grew too large for the hallway and bounced around floors for a while looking for free couch space. Eventually we ended up in M and J’s room with Kater, Geoff, Gwenda, Christopher, Richard, Karen Fowler, Ted Chiang, and Barbara Gilly. We talked about primatology, and played with some of the Genderfloomp party favors, and I won a dollar bet with Ted. Eventually people began to droop, and we all retired to our rooms.
Day 4:
I slept poorly and had a few seriously disturbing dreams. But this resulted in my being awake earlier than normal, so I was able to join J for a light breakfast in the Governor’s club lounge. J let me know that reservations for next year’s convention block of hotel rooms opened that morning, so I headed down to the lobby and booked a room for 2012. Then I waited for Kelly-Sue and Laurenn.
Ten years!
This breakfast was ten years in the making. I first interacted with Kelly-Sue on the Warren Ellis Forum when I was 17 years old. She was already one of the cleverest and most well-liked people in that community when teenager-E. J. first got there, looking to impress. Laurenn I don’t think I had ever previously interacted with online, but I remember that not long after I joined the WEF, people started talking about Laurenn’s book XXXLiveNudeGirls, and I soon became a great fan of Laurenn’s artwork. Kelly-Sue got married to a man she met on the forum and had children and became a comics translator and writer, and Laurenn kept making art and became an illustrator and comics artist. I became, well, me. Finally, after a decade: coffee, tea, and scrambled eggs.
This is my “I can’t believe I’m really having breakfast with Laurenn McCubbin” face.
Laurenn told me about her experiences getting an MFA, and about the visual media program she’s going back to grad school for, and told me that, based on our conversation, she thought I would do well as a grad student. Kelly-Sue congratulated me on Iowa and told me that she and her husband Matt had followed some of the younger WEFugees online over the years and that I hadn’t disappointed, which is one of those absurdly generous compliments that comes out of nowhere to knock your world slightly askew. We talked about Kelly-Sue’s career, and her children, and I got to tell her how an interview she gave while pregnant with her second child was crucial to helping me crack open the emotional core of a story I was writing. It was a delightful meeting with people I’d admired from afar for years, who turned out to be even more impressive in person. I hope I don’t have to wait ten more years for our next encounter.
After breakfast I went to the panel, “How to Respond Appropriately to Concerns About Cultural Appropriation,” and listened to Geoff, Rachel, Victor Raymond, and K. Tempest Bradford speak intelligently on the subject. Geoff had a comment I especially liked that cultural practices and artifacts are embedded in cultural context, and that severing them from their context to serve as set dressing in a story is a hallmark of poor writing. After that panel I stayed in the room for the next bit of programming, “Sibling of the Revenge of the Not Another F*cking Race Panel,” with Tempest, Amal, LaShawn Wanak, and two other people whose names I neglected to write down. (UPDATE: The other two were Candra Gill and Isabel Schechter.) This was almost all good fun, but was pretty much ruined for me by one guy who went up and made an ass of himself. His name was Ben, and he had already revealed himself as someone prone to boorish behavior at the karaoke party. He went up to ask a question, and my stomach twisted into knots at the car-crash-seen-through-a-window feeling that something bad was about to happen and I was powerless to stop it. Sure enough, he spent a few minutes with a microphone in his hand doing little other than harassing Amal. She handled him with great aplomb, but I, who frequently watch awkwardness comedies like The Office through the cracks in my fingers, had my face buried in my hands the whole time. Eventually the audience booed him and Tempest called him on spouting entitled nonsense and sent him back to his seat. After that the panel proceeded normally, but I was too keyed up to really enjoy it.
After the panel I left the hotel and went to Michelangelo’s for the “We Have Always Captured the Castle” reading with Ben, J, M, David Moles, Amal, and Geoff. Ben read an excerpt of his novel in search of a title, in which multi-bodied humans of the far future scoff at the notion of colonizing other planets. J read a lyrical story of a fisherman with a magical boat. M read an excerpt of her novel-in-progress, which was fantastic. (I’m just going to pause here to reiterate: M is writing a novel. Get excited, tell your friends; this is a big fucking deal.) David read a story called, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Giant Robots.” Amal sang a song, recited a poem, and read a story. Geoff, being a gifted performer as well as a brilliant author, was made to go last. He read a monologue-style story about a man whose job is to collect evidence for war crimes trials in areas where rape is being used as a weapon of war. He embodied his main character, and the whole room was stone silent, and when the story ended it took us a good 15 seconds to remember to applaud. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room. I had to remove my glasses because watching him perform while I listened to him became a little too overwhelming. It was a deeply disturbing and powerful piece.
Between the unpleasantness at the panel and the affecting end to the reading, I ended up a bit dazed. The sequence of events evoked a surge of social anxiety, and I wandered around feeling oddly insulated from my environment. Back at the hotel, Karen Meisner found me and asked, “Are you feeling a little lost?” She gave me a huge, unprompted bolus of acceptance and reassurance, and cemented my perception of her as one of the kindest and most gracious people I’ve ever met. I headed up to my room to wait out my already ebbing funk, and commiserated with Keffy, who was also feeling shaken after an unpleasant encounter with someone possessed of a very poor understanding of how to be a trans ally. We chilled for a while, talking and reading. Then I went to have a dinner of snacks from the Governor’s lounge before heading down to listen to the Joanna Russ memorial and the Guest of Honor speeches, both of which were moving. I did not, though, stay to watch the Tiptree Award presentation, because it was time to prepare for the Genderfloomp Dance Party.
Genderfloomp:
*pout*
M had told me she was planning the Genderfloomp dance party with Liz G. some months prior to the con, when we were hanging out in Austin. The mandate: “We seek to explore and expand our concepts of gender via booty-shaking.” The motto: “Fuck the binary, let’s boogie.” When she told me about the event, M also mentioned that all the guys she had told responded with something like, “Sounds fun, do I have to dress up?” and preemptively assured me that I could attend even if I was unwilling to do drag. By implicitly doubting my commitment to sparklemotion, M ensured that I would go absolutely overboard. I gave myself a $50 budget and spent two weeks putting an outfit together, getting lessons in fashion and cosmetics from hand-picked representatives from the San Antonio community theater crowd. I color-coordinated my accessories and bought ankle boots. I grew a beard just so I could shave it off before the dance. I was shooting for dazzling.
The dance was easily my favorite con programming. It was joyous and human and enthusiastic and exhausting. People made shadow puppets, twirled feather boas, kicked off their shoes and pasted on mustaches. There was a dance contest, which Keffy won after an epic one-on-one battle with Ben. I won Best Dressed, along with another fellow whose name, I believe, was Tom. At some point Liz A., Keffy, Amal, and I went up to the photobooth on the 6th floor and posed for floompy pictures. As the winners of Best Dancer and Best Dressed respectively, Keffy and I had to pose for a fight picture:
Cynthia Sparklepants vs. Charles Beauregard
While up in the photobooth, we stood in a circle and gave each other new names. I named Liz A., “Lionel Cho, disgraced patent attorney.” Liz A. named Keffy, “Charles Beauregard, construction worker at large.” Keffy named Amal, “Gus Wrigley, accountant to the stars.” Amal named me, “Cynthia Sparklepants, party princess.” These names have been immortalized in the WisCon 35 Photobooth Flickr stream. That silliness done, we went back to the dance party and boogied until we dropped. The crowd did eventually begin to thin out, but there was a group of post-floomp hardcore who stuck around until 5:00 am, which included myself, Anthony Ha, Karen, Ben, Liz A., Liz G., Amal, Alice, and M. But even we had to, eventually, call it a night. Hopefully there will be more floomping at future WisCons. For more pictures of Genderfloomp, you can view my Picasa album, or [broken link to M’s album removed].
Day 5:
Travel day. After packing away my cosmetics and jewelry, I had a quick breakfast in the Governor’s lounge with Keffy, Mike Underwood, Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders (both of whom had cut up the dance floor something fierce the night before). Then checkout, a sprint through the airport to catch my plane, and a lot of sitting around until I found myself back in San Antonio, WisCon behind me, the Texas sun sparkling off of my fingernails.
Home.
I’ve been in blog hibernation for a while, and it may continue a while longer, but this meme caused me to stir–if for no other reason than because I want this list of writers in a place I can easily find it.
First, the wonderful 3 minute video that inspired it:
Then the meme:
Bold the women by whom you own books
Italicize those by whom you’ve read something of (short stories count)
*Star those you don’t recognize
Andre Norton
C. L. Moore
Evangeline Walton*
Leigh Brackett
Judith Merril*
Joanna Russ
Margaret St. Clair*
Katherine MacLean*
Carol Emshwiller
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Zenna Henderson*
Madeleine L’Engle
Angela Carter
Ursula LeGuin
Anne McCaffrey
Diana Wynne Jones
Kit Reed*
James Tiptree, Jr.
Rachel Pollack*
Jane Yolen
Marta Randall*
Eleanor Arnason*
Ellen Asher*
Patricia A. McKillip
Suzy McKee Charnas*
Lisa Tuttle*
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Tanith Lee
Pamela Sargent
Jayge Carr*
Vonda McIntyre
Octavia E. Butler
Kate Wilhelm
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro*
Sheila Finch*
Mary Gentle
Jessica Amanda Salmonson*
C. J. Cherryh
Joan D. Vinge
Teresa Nielsen Hayden
Ellen Kushner
Ellen Datlow
Nancy Kress
Pat Murphy
Lisa Goldstein*
Elizabeth Ann Scarborough*
Mary Turzillo*
Connie Willis
Barbara Hambly*
Nancy Holder
Sheri S. Tepper
Melissa Scott*
Margaret Atwood
Lois McMaster Bujold
Jeanne Cavelos*
Karen Joy Fowler
Leigh Kennedy*
Judith Moffett*
Rebecca Ore*
Emma Bull
Pat Cadigan
Kathyrn Cramer
Laura Mixon*
Eileen Gunn
Elizabeth Hand
Kij Johnson
Delia Sherman
Elizabeth Moon
Michaela Roessner*
Terri Windling
Sharon Lee*
Sherwood Smith*
Katherine Kurtz*
Margo Lanagan
Laura Resnick*
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Sheila Williams
Farah Mendlesohn
Gwyneth Jones*
Ardath Mayhar*
Esther Friesner*
Debra Doyle*
Nicola Griffith
Amy Thomson*
Martha Wells*
Catherine Asaro*
Kate Elliott
Kathleen Ann Goonan
Shawna McCarthy
Caitlin Kiernan
Maureen McHugh
Cheryl Morgan
Nisi Shawl
Mary Doria Russell
Kage Baker
Kelly Link
Nancy Springer
J. K. Rowling
Nalo Hopkinson
Ellen Klages
Tanarive Due*
M. Rickert
Theodora Goss
Mary Anne Mohanraj
S. L. Viehl*
Jo Walton
Kristine Smith*
Deborah Layne*
Cherie Priest
Wen Spencer*
K. J. Bishop
Catherynne M. Valente
Elizabeth Bear
Ekaterina Sedia
Naomi Novik
Mary Robinette Kowal
Ann VanderMeer
That’s what I’ve heard, anyway. And I think I can scrape up that many. First, some good news: my story “Husbandry” was given an honorable mention by Ellen Datlow for her anthology Best Horror of the Year Vol. 2. Thanks so much, Ellen, I’m thrilled to make your longlist.
Next, a digital version of the April/May double issue of Asimov’s, containing my story “Adrift,” is now available from Fictionwise. If you wanted to read “Adrift” but were unable to find a physical copy of the magazine, you can now download it here for about $5.
I need a third thing. How about a weird Turkish knockoff of Star Trek? It is based on the first episode of the show, “The Man Trap,” and has English subtitles. It steals footage from the original for effects shots and when the opening credits run too long for the Star Trek theme, they cleverly borrowed music from other science fiction shows to make up the difference. And the description says that it features once popular Turkish character called Omer the Tourist.
People interested in the ongoing discussion about the future of short fiction may be interested in the most recent episode of The Sofanauts. The Sofanauts is usually a show about current events in the SF field, but this week’s episode is a special with writers Jeff Vandermeer and Jeremy Tolbert and Asimov’s editors Sheila Williams and Brian Bieniowski, discussing the state of Asimov’s in particular and the print markets for short SF in general. Among the interesting things on the program is an explanation for why the seemingly precipitous decline in subscriber numbers over the last couple of decades, commented on by Warren Ellis and others, is a misleading artifact of a changed marketing model. (I’d actually like even more detail on what the old model was and how it contributed to inflated numbers.) Also, Sheila informs that subscriber numbers have risen 10% in the last year, lead by electronic subscriptions through the Kindle. Jeff and Jeremy take Brian and Sheila to task for the state of Asimov’s internet presence, and Sheila reveals some behind-the-scenes information about the contraints that come with being part of a larger organization. A very interesting 90 minutes for people following the “are the magazines doomed or aren’t they?” debate.
My friend and Clarion classmate Damien G. Walter has been agitating for a movement in support of speculative fiction’s short story markets, and it has culminated with Oct. 1 being designated Support Our ‘Zines Day. He is urging all of us to find ways today — monetary contribution, private communication, public oratory — to express our appreciation for the ‘zines we love.
Foremost in my affections is Strange Horizons, for reasons I’ve written about before. Another online magazine I frequently enjoy is Clakesworld Magazine. As far as places on the internet to read neat stuff goes, it really doesn’t get better than these two.
On the print publication side, Weird Tales is one of those magazines that I not only enjoy for its content, I also enjoy the way that reading it in public makes me feel cool. It’s just has that much character to it, holding it makes you feel like part of something. So, Weird Tales gets a thumbs up from me.
Electric Velocipede I haven’t ever read a copy of yet, but it seems to be buying stories from every one of my awesome friends, clearly reflecting a daring and laudable editorial philosophy. I’ll be buying this one myself soon.
Apex is publishing a fair amount of stuff I like lately, as is Fantasy Magazine. Back amongst the living is Realms of Fantasy, and while it remains to be seen what its new incarnation will be like (I found it pretty inconsistent before), it published one of my favorite individual stories I read in the last year. Sybil’s Garage is another one of those strong-on-character ‘zines that combine content and presentation into a really exciting package.
Finally, let us not forget America’s Big Three — getting smaller by the day and as in need of support as ever — Asimov’s, Analog, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. Asimov’s just bought a story from me, and getting a story into the other two, especially F&SF, is a career goal. People criticize them for being slow to react to a new media landscape, and there is perhaps some truth to that. But I’d like them to stick around, and think we will all be poorer for it if they go.
So, that’s a lot of links, reflecting a lot of different creative visions. I encourage you to go, sample, see what strikes your fancy. And if something strikes it especially hard, subscribe/donate/write an encouraging letter. Spend a little time and energy giving one of these publications a nudge forward into the future.
For one day only, John and Kristine Scalzi will match donations made to Strange Horizons, up to $500. I got to meet Kristine and John at Worldcon, and they are fully as amazing people as this act of generosity would suggest. Let’s help them make the most of this awesome gesture. Donate to Strange Horizons today.
Karen Meisner has explained that she and the other editors of the online SF magazine Strange Horizons, which is run as a donation supported NPO, have a problem I can easily relate to: a lack of facility for self-promotion. I need to merely think back to how my high school councilors tore their hair trying to get me to sell myself in my college applications to empathize with this. I feel healthier and happier when I let people decide for themselves what sort of person I am, without trying to convince people I’m awesome, so I am right there when she says that the self promotion push makes her feel icky. But Karen is very clever, and knows that while tooting one’s own horn is unfun, gushing about things you love and are unconnected with is pleasant and wholesome. So she has declared this Strange Horizons appreciation week, and asks that people who like the magazine talk about it and explain why.
I first came to Strange Horizons as a reader in 2006. I originally got sucked in by the stories of Meghan McCarron and Joey Comeau, and I stuck around, finding new authors and voices to love. At this time I was still working on my physics degree, and in retrospect I can see Strange Horizons as an early step in my focus shifting from science to fiction. I got unexpectedly excited reading reviews by such cogent and incisive critics as Abigail Nussbaum and Paul Kincaid. The next semester I carved out a place in my schedule for a class called Fiction Writing, and the semester after that I took Advanced Fiction Writing.
In both of these classes the professor asked that we stick to mimetic fiction rather than writing genre fiction, as he would be focusing his lessons on qualities (complex characterization, exploration of meaningful human scenarios) that mimetic fiction had and genre fiction largely did not. By the second semester of his course I had built up enough good will that I felt comfortable challenging these stereotypes, and tried to write a piece of genre fiction that ticked all of his mimetic fiction checkboxes. It was a story of decrepitude and self deception and zombies. A couple of years later I decided I wanted to go to Clarion, and used that story in my application. And when the people at Clarion convinced me that it was worth trying to get my work published, I sent that story to Strange Horizons. They published it earlier this year — my first professional sale.
This is the wall over my desk. The photographs on the right are my high school creative writing class, my college graduation, and my Clarion class. On the left is a National Merit Scholarship certificate and a print by John Picacio. In the middle there is a lot of empty space that it is my intent to fill with more letters like the one I have framed from the fiction editors of Strange Horizons telling me they wish to publish a story of mine. They gave me the first chance to fill some space on my triumph wall, as they have done for many others. Championing new talent is part of their mandate, the fund drive page says that over 10% of their stories in the past year were first publications, like mine. There are lots of of reasons to love Strange Horizons, but one of the most important is that they are a conduit through which new voices come into the field. They supported me, and will support other talented people in the future, if we support them.
Go give the Strange Horizons fund drive page a look.