Alex Acks: Sound and Nerdery

[Worldcon] What is Magical Realism?

Post author By Alex
Post date September 13, 2012
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Saturday (September 1) at 1200: What is Magical Realism?
Panelists listed in program: Roberta Gregory, Mr. Magic Realism/Bruce Taylor, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Jeremy Lassen, Inanna Arthen/Vyrdolak

Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation.

Magical realism is perhaps a reaction to colonialism; not just South American. Non-dominant culture writers. Literature of the marginalized; essentially created by people who are second-class citizens in their own countries.

Magical realism = lucid dream. Kafka in Metamorphosis didn’t wonder WHY he was a cockroach, just wanted to know what to do about it when it had happened. A lucid dream FEELS as real as reality. That is reality when you write it.

Vyrdolak disagrees that lucid dreaming is more surreal than magical realism; it’s a discrete reality with its own non-linear and illogical rules. Sees the term as almost condescending; it’s literary from non-white guy authors that contains fantastic elements that aren’t part of agreed-upon WESTERN reality. She has grown up with magic as a fact; these writers are writing THEIR reality, and it’s simply unfamiliar to the materialist western mindset. The term has since evolved and it’s moving more to the mainstream now.

Resurgence in interest is probably because there is a breakdown between popular mass media consensual reality and what we personally experience every day. There is a disconnect. “Do I live in that world? Is that my world?”

Fantastic elements slip in and are there but aren’t necessarily directly addressed.

Is ghost fiction and supernatural fiction of this type? Classic English ghost fiction? When people are explicitly playing around with the traditions of ghost fiction, it is very different. Thus anything where the supernatural intrudes into the mundane is NOT magical realism.

Appropriation of magical realism term to western sf/f of 20th century might be an attempt at trying to get validation because magical realism is still more critically “valid” than genre fiction.

Vyrdolak : The extraordinary event in a fantasy pulls the world off center and must be resolved so that the story can get back to reality. In magical realism the supernatural element is integral and does not need to be “fixed” so that the story can have meaning.

The Shout (movie) treated the ancient motif that JK Rowling used for the horcruxes and did it as magical realism instead of fantasy.

Magical realism changes how YOU view the world after.

In modern America, is imagination still suspect? Panel disagrees on this point. There is a lot of sf/f around… within pop culture there is respect for imagination. The puritanical underpinnings/foundation still values nonfiction over fiction, however. But “science fiction has won the war and made itself obsolete.” At least as far as pop culture/entertainment.

Need to be careful about exotification in saying that well indigenous people accept magic more, since it relates closely to the less romantic and ugly definition of the indigenous as people who believe in magic and are therefore inferior.

More accurate to say that new wave writers are influenced by magical realism than claiming the older writers were.

Magical realism and magical realist writing techniques are two different things.

Can movies actually be magical realism? In writing a book, there is collaboration between the writer and reader. Whereas a movie is a received experience without audience participation. Example movies:

O Brother, Where Art Thou
Midnight in Paris
Field of Dreams
LA Story
Stranger Than Fiction
Men Who Stare At Goats

Books mentioned:

Of Blood and Honey, And Blue Skies From Pain – Stina Leicht
Life of Pi – Yann martel
Martian Chronicles – Ray Bradbury (potentially)

Not just metaphor. All genres of literature can embrace a good metaphor. Though another panelist argues that mainstream literature shies from fantastic metaphor.

Liminal (?) fantasy instead of magical realism as a term?

Writers like Michael Shaven(?) allow the literary community to reassess writers like Tim Powers.

Readers of sf/f are not marginalized outsiders even if that is our core narrative. In 21st century western world, scifi won the war and our culture is everywhere. We need to let the idea that we are second class citizens go, because it devalues our victory.

Cultural approval is commercialism – popularity in the lucrative sense. Thus if it’s lucrative it’s mainstream and then people write academic papers about it. That sort of acceptance is highly ephemeral. We cannot let just the market define this.

Just because sf/f is out there doesn’t mean that it’s accepted.

Let’s start using a term other than magical realism, get away from the term from turn of the century academics. Give us a chance for better dialog. (Heuvelt disagrees and says just enjoy it no matter what it’s called.)

Whelp, after attending most of a panel about what magical realism is, I still don’t think I could manage to give you a coherent answer. Which is a little annoying, since that’s kind of the reason I went to the panel – what the hell is it even?

Though maybe that’s the point. It’s like art. Or pornography. You know it when you see it.

Or potentially, it’s also just a constructed label.

Though I find the idea that it’s based in a reality with different rules where the fantastic is ordinary, and its purpose is to make us question the nature of what is real when we’re done reading it.

So basically, I need to think about this a lot more, and do more reading. Though I found it quite interesting (and this could be because I missed the first bit of the panel) that more movies were mentioned when I was there than books.

The part of the discussion that actually caught my attention the most was the suggestion that science fiction has in fact won the war, so to speak. Science fiction and fantasy are everywhere in the popular culture. Hell, look at the most recent record-breaking bestsellers. It’s mostly been scifi/fantasy. So perhaps at one point sf/f was the literary ghetto that was just occupied by weirdos and the nerdy kids hiding in the library, but it’s certainly expanded beyond that.

And really, it does seem a little silly to hear writers bewail being second-class citizens because they write genre when JK Rowling is one of the wealthiest people ever because of fantasy. Though I do know genre writers still get grief in some university writing programs.

Or perhaps sf/f is okay when it’s young adult, because that makes it’s basic “weirdness” more acceptable. Since when you think about it, much of the wildly popular sf/f recently has indeed been young adult – Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and as much as I shudder to think of anyone reading it (let alone impressionable young’ns) Twilight. But the point was made that particularly in mainstream “technothrillers,” much of what is standard now would have been shunned as scifi in the past.

And scifi and fantasy certainly dominate in the movies. We do make for the best explosions, I guess.

Tags convention, worldcon

[Worldcon] LGBTQ in SF&F

Friday (August 31) at 1930: LGBTQ in SF&F
Panelists listed in program: Mary Anne Mohanraj, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Kevin Riggle, Catherine Lundoff, Barbara G. Tarn

Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation.

Lundoff: While there are definitely more LGBTQ characters, there are fewer large publishing houses putting out books by LGBTQ authors.

Riggle: Is it a change in identification? Let’s talk about bisexual erasure later.

Mohanraj: Lesbian is claimed as a political identity by bisexual women. Which may be less in play now than it was in the mid-90s. So maybe the demographic hasn’t changed, just the labors.

Heuvelt: Netherlands was the first country to legalize gay marriage and no one cares what you hard. He’s “heard that might be different overseas.” Yet oddly in Holland the representations in fiction seem more conservative, fewer LGBTQI characters than you see in English literature. It was a symbol in his fiction for being “other.”

Mohanraj: had her agent basically tell her that gay is okay as a coming out story if that’s the point of the story, but otherwise it risks alienating a large chunk of potential audience if it’s not for the main point. Thinks it’s present throughout publishing, but is much worse in YA.

Where have you seen awesome queer representations in sf/f and where do they fall short?

Mohanraj: Talks about Captain Jack, notes nowadays in Doctor Who/Torchwood it’s all cute flirty girl on girl action. Two formative people: Mercedes Lackey (Magic’s Price series) – don’t know how she managed to get that published when she did. And Samuel R Delaney. Ellen Kushner’s Sword’s Point, Lynn Flewellyn’s series.

Riggle: It’s easy to find incidental characters who are LGBTQ but not main characters. Recommends Elizabeth Bear.

Lundoff: Small presses that specialize in queer sf/f: Lethe, Blind Eye, Circlet (erotica, but branching out). In larger presses, Galactic Spectrum Awards look at award list; shows nominees, finalists, and winners. Tiptree Awards given for sf/f that expands gender roles/representations. Authors: Jay Lake, JA Pitts, Melissa Scott (now republished), Jo(e?) Graham, Jeff Ryman, Hal Duncan, Lee Thomas (horror)

Heuvelt: Are gay characters there for a reason, or are they “accidentally” gay? Is there something about sf/f that makes the queer characters more attractive to write about? For him it was more purposeful because it was a symbol.

Mohanraj: I don’t like it way gay is used as a symbol. Should straight be used as a symbol? Gay is just my life, so I would never use it as a symbol.

Riggle: Fiction parallels reality. So queer people exist in real life and should in fiction too.

Mohanraj: Parallels to the awful racial literary past of white as a symbol of freedom. (Asian lady escapes arranged marriage and marries white guy instead.)

Riggle: Nightrunner and Swordspoint are an interesting counterpoint. Swordspoint, the main character being queer is no problem, just who his lover is. In Nightrunner he feels like it didn’t matter enough either way for him to enjoy the story. It was so backgrounded that it didn’t matter enough to the story. (clarified: the relationship didn’t matter enough, not the queerness.)

Audience: Are LGBTQ authors taken seriously, or are they in the sort of “ghetto” that scifi/f authors were generally in within the 50s, where they weren’t taken seriously.

Mohanraj: They are taken seriously, but like women and POC authors you still have to struggle to get out of the ghetto to BE taken seriously. Once you are there though you are serious. Example from south asian literature. Women’s books there’s always a red sari, with a female body posed, and just parts of the body, very static, with flowers or fruit. When a woman writer managed to win an award, her covers start looking like those on books written like men – full bodies, blue serious covers, a sense of motion. Assumption that women writers are writing for a certain small audience and then in order to be considered by the wider “pot” you have to struggle. Salman Rushdie has had this struggle; people still try to stick him in the ghetto, is referred to as a Commonwealth writer rather than British writer. Patterns are still holding across the board. If you are a LGBTQ author people assume you should kind of have to write about LGBTQ characters and you get pushed that way by the establishment.

Heuvelt: Doesn’t recognize these problems from a Dutch perspective. No one cares that he’s gay/has a boyfriend.

Riggle: Why do you think the popular authors are from decades ago and not now?

Lundoff: There was a social movement to support it, like with the well-known feminist authors of the past. Comprehensive social movement making a lot of noise, gives you access to a wider audience. We don’t have a movement in the same way; less urgency. Most novels with LGBTQ characters right now are romances. Not a whole lot of sf/f. Small presses/bookstores in the past proved to the big publishers that there was a market. But now there’s been a shift where the support has gone toward romance rather than sf/f. Delaney is still in print for example, but with small presses and university presses. The authors are still around but they’re producing in different publishing structures than where they would have been 20 years ago.

Former editor from Strange Horizons: They have been getting more and more LGBTQ characters to the point they don’t notice any more. 10 years ago he wrote an editorial asking for more stories like that, and got complaints that LGBTQ character would overwhelm the story and make it ABOUT that. Not the case.

Mohanraj: As a teacher her students are very hesitant about branching out. Even if they are a POC/LGBTQ/woman their default stories tend to be about straight white men. If they had no hesitation what would the market look like?

Audience member notes military sf author who wrote a good story and included a gay character (?) and got shut down by his audience. This happened very recently

Mohanraj: Notes that John Scalzi is v. liberal. And people read his military SF and assume he will be conservative, then find out his real views and get very offended and throw a lot of pushback his way.

Audience: Gay filmmaker; one motivation of his and contemporaries to push back against the terrible representations of gay life by straight people. Has been shocked by the number of straight people writing gay characters; it’s not them representing their personal experiences.

Tarn: They are people who have emotions and are in love; the gender of the other person is not important. It’s love. She has done research. Not a big fan of write what you know because she’s a fiction author and is bound to make things up.

Mohanraj: Difference between really problematic writing – straight men writing “lesbian” porn – and those trying to be respectful and checking. Real concern about LGBTQ authors being crowded out. Falls on the side of write about whatever you want, just be ready to take the flack if you mess it up.
Carl Brandon Society. We didn’t just want to do exploration of race/ethnicity, but wanted to encourage POC authors. That is not the same thing.

Riggle: There needs to be an openness to the lived experiences of queer people, because if you are straight and writing about LGBTQ people, your audience is likely to be queer.

Mohanraj: Question of responsibility. If you are going to borrow material that is not your own life, you need to be ten times as respectful.

Heuvelt: Isn’t this inherent in sf/f?

Audience: Historically sf/f has been about people who don’t fit. Talking about a Martian versus talking about someone from the gay community is still going to strike the same misfit chord.

Heuvelt: I’m a mountain climbing and all mountain climbing movies suck. But the audience doesn’t know that. How is that all that different? If it’s not a perfect representation does it hurt?

Mohanraj: There are systems of oppression that don’t include mountain climbers though.

Audience: Oppressed communities complain we are erased, but now we’re simultaneously complaining that we’re represented because it’s not perfect. I would rather we get shown more as long as it’s not really horrible! The point is about exploring. To hell with write what you know, it precludes exploring.

Audience: All fiction writers are liars. We need to be able to write what we don’t know.

Mohanraj: Writing the Other – find this book, good exercises for writing people who aren’t like us in an intelligent way.

Riggle: Writing the other versus writing FOR the other. Straight depictions are unsatisfying because they are written for a straight audience.

Bisexual erasure book rec: Shauna Macguire starting with Rosemary and Rue

SLASH!
Riggle: Slash doesn’t work for him because it’s written for straight women. Hasn’t yet encountered any slash he found compelling.

Audience: Most of the women I know who write slash are queer. Same thing as saying there’s no good science fiction.There are some queer guys that write slash. The best stuff doesn’t feel like it’s appropriating gay culture.

Audience: (woman) There’s a huge following for this slash fix for Sherlock that was written by an actual gay guy. Google either abundantly queer or absolutely queer to find it.

Mohanraj: Read slash as a teenage and didn’t see it as erotic, more liked it because it was about letting men be emotional.

This panel was very interesting, but to be honest I also felt like it was kind of a mess that never quite gelled and couldn’t quite stay on task. I also tend not to be a fan of panels where the audience jumps in to participate beyond questions, unless the member of the audience is someone that can be pointed to as an expert. I think with the panel already wandering a bit, the audience jumping in just made everything more scattered.

Also, please note that my use of “queer” within the notes is as it was used in the panel. Toward the beginning Mohanraj established that was her preferred term and no one had any objections.

I found the question about characters being “purposefully” versus “accidentally” gay an interesting one. I’ve written characters that have organically decided their sexualities on their own, and others where the choice was purposeful because of how it fit into the plot. I don’t think choosing that factor in character necessarily transforms it into a symbol. There are experiences (particularly in modern or historical fiction) that an LGBTQ character is simply going to have that a straight character won’t, and that might be integral to the story you’re trying to tell.

I also found the point about “writing the other” versus “writing for the other” very interesting. Of the stories I’ve had published, none of them have really been about “the other,” come to think of it. While I’ve written stories with male main characters, all my published ones have had female protagonists, some of whom are straight, some bisexual, and one lesbian. (All of which are identities that I, as a bisexual woman can identify with a fair amount of ease.)

I kind of wonder if this is a sign that I need to work more on bettering my male characters… (Though the majority of my stories have had female protagonists, and I don’t really feel that bad about it because male protagonists are in no danger of becoming extinct as a species.) Next challenge to set myself as a writer, maybe, once I finally nail down this short story thing to my satisfaction. (HAH.)

Also, I would like to note, in a stroke of delicious irony, after mentioning bisexual erasure (and then me asking about it, selfish little bi-girl that I am) the panel adjourned without ever getting around to talking about it.

Oof.

Tags convention, lgbt, worldcon

Uncategorized

Hate Fatigue

This just in: women are people and it’s still not okay to threaten to rape someone or encourage them to commit suicide if you don’t like their opinion. I can’t believe that it’s 2012 and this shit is still happening.

It’s easier to ignore hateful name-calling when it’s coming from people you already know oppose you. It doesn’t bother me as such when conservative assholes like Rush Limbaugh call Sandra Fluke a slut, for example. That’s the sort of behavior I expect from him and his ilk.

But what about when it’s coming from what’s supposedly our side?

I’m lucky in a lot of ways. I’m physically intimidating enough that no one has had the brass balls necessary to harass me in person, and I’m a nobody, so no one cares what I say on the internet. But I have eyes and ears. I’ve seen how Rebecca Watson, Greta Christina, and Jen McCreight have been verbally harassed, attacked, and threatened.

I’m tired of seeing all the hatred spewed at women from within communities they’ve helped build and strengthen. A threat of violence against one woman is a threat against us all; I don’t buy into the fiction that “she’s a bitch but you’re different.” It’s never acceptable.

I think it’s easier to brace yourself against hate when it’s coming as a frontal attack. It’s not so easy when it’s at your back, from people with whom you thought you shared common cause. I wouldn’t go to dinner with Rush Limbaugh. But I could potentially end up sharing a table and a water pitcher with people who have threatened and verbally abused women for having opinions, or even perpetrated the more minor but still damaging aggression of accusing women of “crying wolf” for daring to speak up about real in-person harassment. The very thought makes my skin crawl.

I have hate fatigue. I’m disgusted and exhausted beyond measure, seeing how my fellow women have been treated by groups in which they’ve invested a great deal of time and effort. And I fail to see why I should continue expending my two most limited resources (time and money) where there is such vociferous reactionary hatred and not even the fig leaf of an anti-harassment policy.

Sorry, my friends. I think my time and money for now is going to go to Worldcon rather than The Amazing Meeting. The Scifi/Fantasy community and conventions have their problems (hello continuing Readercon fallout) but at least are farther down the path.

Love will triumph in the end. I believe that. I’m going to go where I feel that love, get back my energy, and I’m going to dance.

(And what Janiece said.)

(Edited at 1815 to clarify a few statements that didn’t read correctly.)

worldcon writing advice

[Worldcon] How to Avoid Getting Published

Post author By Alex
Post date September 11, 2012
No Comments on [Worldcon] How to Avoid Getting Published

Friday (August 31) at 1800: How to Avoid Getting Published
Panelist listed in program: Jack McDevitt

Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation.

This is a bit different because it’s just Jack McDevitt guy talking and asking questions of the audience. He asks us questions and then explains things. This is all very basic stuff but I know it helps to have it reiterated.

Don’t name all the characters with similar sounding names.

How many characters should there be? The absolute minimum number.

He says the easier way is to sell a short story first. Don’t be afraid to make changes, it’s not sacred because you wrote it. Send it off, forget about it until you get a response. Write another in a meantime. Keep going.

He was an English teacher for years. The students who thought they were pretty good were pretty good. “We all grow up having authority figures tell us what we do wrong… English teachers circle all the stuff you do wrong and never tell you what you do right.”

“Is it possible you don’t have a story to tell?” What drives the narrative? Can you say in 25 words why someone should care about this story? The weakest source of conflict is good guys versus bad guys. The engine that drives the story is conflict.

The protagonist should be human. Should be like us. We need to identify him. He needs to be flawed. NOT CLARK KENT.

In describing setting, you need to give the reader somewhere to put his feet. You don’t need to over describe – they will fill in a lot of the blanks on their own. But you need to give them a skeleton to hang those imagined details on.

Withholding critical information the main character knows and not telling the reader really pisses off the readers. That’s why Watson is necessary – you can’t tell the story with Sherlock because he knows everything and there is no mystery.

You can’t drag a reader through 400 pages and have nothing happen. You can’t leave them hanging at the end, novel or short story.

Things need to be logical. It needs to make sense for people to know things.

If a major event occurs DO NOT HAVE IT HAPPEN OFF STAGE. We don’t want to just get a phone call. Especially if it’s coming out of left field. If you set it up so readers can extrapolate the event, it’s more okay.

If you’re not calling in your spouse/friends to excitedly tell them what you did and read to them, you are doing it wrong. Writing is hard work, but it’s also supposed to be FUN. You have to love it. Write the kind of stuff you like to read. If you’re not enjoying it while you’re writing it, you’re on the wrong track.

Treat your own material as material. Don’t get your ego involved. Don’t get personal when people critique. You need to listen. Your work is not sacred. When you get a correction, first ask yourself if it is correct, if the critic has a point. And then fix it. It’s better you get rid of it than someone else tell you that you should have.

Jack McDevitt didn’t really bother with the cute premise of the panel – he just cut straight to basic advice on how to construct a story that people will want to read. (And will therefore hopefully get published!) I mostly decided to poke my head in to see if there was anything I was missing out on, and because it never hurts to have someone point out the basics again.

I actually had fun being the person shouting out answers when the rest of the audience was stumped. Jack at one point jokingly accused me of having “taken this course before.”

I’m really glad that he made the point that while writing is work, it’s also supposed to be fun. I think writers tend to be a little too in love with the bit of the art that’s suffering. Because hey, we’re human. We love to kvetch. But we should also be honest that we’re doing this because it’s fun. And he made a very good point that if we’re not (beneath all the whining) having fun, then what we’re is not going to be fun for anyone to read.

I’m sure my husband could tell you stories about the number of times he’s seen me cackling gleefully at my keyboard or spinning my chair in circles because I’m just so damn excited about something I wrote. That’s how it’s supposed to be. (And he gets extra bonus points for then being kind and asking me what I’m so excited about. Half the time he manages to keep the dread from his voice, even.)

The other important part of that is writing what you like, and what you like to read. This question came up several times in panels I attended, with a writer with aspirations to be published asking the panelists what’s popular or trending. Publishing is a bit of a dinosaur (particularly for longer works) – trying to catch the wave is ultimately a losing prospect, because by the time you’ve managed to write a novel and get it published, there’ll be something new burning up Amazon. But even more importantly, you need to be writing because you’re excited about it and because it’s what you would want to read, not because you think it’s what is popular and going to sell. You’ll likely lack the necessary passion if you do that.

Tags convention, worldcon, writing advice

worldcon writing

[Worldcon] Military SF – Reality vs. Writing

Post author By Alex
Post date September 10, 2012
1 Comment on [Worldcon] Military SF – Reality vs. Writing

Friday (August 31) at 1500: Military SF – Reality vs. Writing
Panelists listed in program: Mike Shepherd Moscoe, John G. Hemry/Jack Campbell, Elizabeth Moon, Jim Fiscus; in Atlanta at Dragon*Con: Kacey Ezell, Louis Hibben, Mark Malcolm, Michael Z. Williamson

Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation.

This panel took place half in Chicago and half in Atlanta. Yay videoconferencing. Weird echo, though.

“In war everything is simple, and everything simple is hard.”
Most of the time everything works out too easily, equipment never breaks down, etc. There should be a lot of difficulties that much be conquered.

Hazing – the Mickey Mouse and the shit you have to put up with.

EM: battle scenes need plot relevance and shape. Real battles often do not have the kind of shape that a story requires. The stories of real battles often are not of the right kind of shape and have to be retransmitted
A lot of civilians don’t believe what happens in the military. – e.g. GI Jane the military liked the training sequences, civilians thought they looked ridiculously brutal.

Esprit de corps comes from the Mickey Mouse shit. In short fiction you don’t have the word space to build the spirit up. In longer works you can have the Mickey Mouse shit and actually build the reader into the cohesive unit, which means the reader feels part of it when you refer to it later.
“Things are funny to us aren’t necessarily funny to anyone else.” – e.g. “I need fifty yards of flight line.”
Military people know that stupid orders get given all the time (e.g. clean the deck with a rag) where civilians won’t believe it.

EM: There is stupid stuff… and there is also stupid stuff coming from editors. e.g. instead of “manning” the weapons on a spaceship, you should “staff” them. /facepalm There is a different between staffing and manning.
EM: Conversely some veterans are so enthralled with their experience that they tend to miss out on the issues inherent to fiction.

EM: Wants to hear about specific things that just make a vet’s toes curl up.

One I see repeatedly is the general that loves war and wants to fight! Someone like that wouldn’t last that long for a multitude of reasons. They’re answerable to the people both above (money holders) and below them. Someone would kill them eventually!
Writers cross-pollinating service terms. In the Navy you stand on a deck. If you’re anyone else, it’s the floor.
“Tell the different services to secure a building…” the Navy would turn out the lights and lock the doors, the Army would occupy the building so no one else can get in, “the Air Force will get a six year lease with an option to buy,” “Marines will blow it up and call in from the smoking crater, ‘sir the building has been secured!'” The word means wildly different things across services!
Misrepresentations of the relationships between the officers and the enlisted. Officers often portrayed as autocratic jackasses and the enlisted don’t do anything about it and feel like they can’t. Now it varies, but from her personal experience the enlisted guys kept her alive and she appreciated that. The relationship can’t really be that adversarial.
Discipline is what keeps people alive. It’s a survival tool. It doesn’t need to be dumbed down or dull. It’s not a weapon for officers to wield against the enlisted.

EM: We think of discipline in the school sense but it’s not. It’s not punishment. It’s not discipline for someone to be disrespecting the person they’re giving orders to.

In Star Trek the officers know everything and the specialists always turn to the captains and they figure out how to fix it. The officer is usually the generalist and the enlisted are the specialists who know their subject much better than you do. That messes up the entire relationship.

Q&A
You can’t really put the boring mandatory trainings and stuff in works (even longer works) because they are boring and you’ll lose the reader. (and in short works there isn’t room)

You have to make a choice between details and action/adventure. EM gets a little too tangled in the details because she’d rather read the story than get distracted by math. This is more a writer question than a military experience question.

The relationship between officers and enlisted has changed over time – historical fiction means you need to research. In history it wasn’t the same as it is now. You need to put thought to why people were loyal as well. (Merc vs. personal loyalty, etc.) Also need to keep in mind the differences between the types of different units. e.g. it will be different between electricians and infantry. The electricians for example might be older and have spent more time in civilian life before enlisting. Everyone interacts with their superiors differently.

In the Army, under fire the instinct is to shelter in the vehicles. In the Air Force, the engineer gets the hell away from anything that could be a target.
“Marines return fire.”
EM: If you shoot at us, we will shoot back.

For historical battles, you can’t really recreate historical battles with different technology. You can’t recreate Agincourt with machine guns and tanks. Be very careful about trying to borrow. Space battles in particular can’t be recreations of terrestrial battles because there are three dimensions of complete movement instead of two.

(Now the people at DragonCon have been shut down)

If you want to change the commands (historically) you have to change the commander. Commanders have a command style.

EM: every war changes the ethics of war. Everyone goes in to the war thinking they won’t do X and then have to violate that thing to save themselves/their platoon. If enough people do X, that will change the moors. The problem is the people in charge haven’t been in the pit. They don’t know about fighting and are unrealistic.

The ethics of warfare are constantly changing. WWII we indiscriminately bombed cities… we don’t do that any more.

EM: There are things I was taught in the 60s/70s that were thrown completely out the window in Iraq. It made people very angry, and they complained, wrote letters in protest, and it made no difference. When you have people who think war is profitable and a good idea, and who will never fight it and their kids will never fight it, it’s out of control. Armies get out of control too. The worst things that happen are religious wars because every action is justified at that point. Any society saying god is on their side is bad. War is never good. War is hell. Fighting when you don’t have to fight is really stupid.

The entire last paragraph is in bold for a reason. I wish, oh how I wish, that my little fingers could have typed fast enough to get down what Elizabeth Moon said verbatim. Or even more, I wish that you all could have been there to hear it, because it was a thing of beauty. I could feel her frustration and anger in those words.

I checked youtube, but if someone recorded the panel, they haven’t put anything up yet. I live in hope.

Mike Shepherd Moscoe is listed in the program book as being the moderator for the panel.(Edit) He was there, but because he had been running late, Elizabeth Moon took over moderating the panel. And I will say, she was one of the best moderators I saw all weekend as well. The panel was fun, interesting, and she managed twice the normal number of panelists with efficiency.

Honestly, I have nothing else to add about this panel. It was fascinating and a good reminder of why, if you want to write military SF/F and have had no military experience yourself, it’s a good idea to do some research and talk to people who have actually done active duty.

Tags convention, worldcon, writing

steampunk worldcon writing

[Worldcon] The Steampunk Genre

Post author By Alex
Post date September 9, 2012
No Comments on [Worldcon] The Steampunk Genre

Friday (August 31) at 1330: The Steampunk Genre
Panelists listed in program: Sarah Hans, Jay Lake, Michael Coorlim, Chambers, Paul Genesse

Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation.

Steampunk is unlike cyberpunk in that cyberpunk is primarily dystopian.

Steampunk is much more participatory; Costuming, film, music, not just literature. Much more participatory in that way than scifi/fantasy. At steampunk cons, most people are in costume. (WAY MORE than at Worldcon or anime cons.)

[Worldcon] Violence in Fantasy

Post author By Alex
Post date September 8, 2012
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Friday (August 31) at 1030: Violence in Fantasy
Panelists listed in program: Scott Lynch, D. H. Aire, James Enge, Doug Hulick

Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation.

Scott Lynch: You can’t just set Doug Hulick on fire.
Me (from the crowd): Maybe you can’t.
Crowd: applause

The panel mostly focused on how much violence is too much, when is it gratuitous. The conclusion seemed to be that it’s not gratuitous if it’s necessary to the story, but you shouldn’t just be using it as a way to get yourself out of a corner you’ve written yourself into.

Also, violence acts as a symbol of agency for readers, so they can feel they can palpably affect events for the better within the world.

The question is when does emphasizing violence as agency become pathological? No good answers for that. People need to be able to know the difference between wish fulfillment violence and it being appropriate in the real life.

So should the bad guys be humanized or no? Split view there. Orcs should be gross and evil. (But this is something I never really liked because reality is not that black and white.)

Also, what about gross out? Well, horror is best, terror is next best, and if you can’t get either gross-out will work. (Stephen King paraphrase) Sometimes you just want to do that to your readers.

I don’t have a whole lot to say about this panel – it was mostly just very entertaining, and I got to heckle Scott Lynch from the crowd like an asshole. I regret nothing.

I do think the idea that violence is a symbol of agency is an interesting one. Sf/f tends to have a lot of stories in it that do involve violence, particularly ones with quest plotlines. If nothing else, that means reading them takes us to a very different place beyond just the setting. Most of us will never participate in violence like that in our lives, and it is a very palpable symbol of acting directly upon the world and whatever problem is at hand. (Hell, if we ever come up against violence in our lives, there’s a good chance it will be as a victim of that violence.)

I’m not a fan of sf/f where things are extremely black and white. I like to see characters struggling with difficult decisions. And violence plays into that because it becomes a difficult, painful thing when the struggle isn’t black and white. That’s something I’ve really enjoyed about the Vorkosigan books so far, for example.

Chandler’s Law got mentioned – “When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.” There was some lively discussion around this, because it’s something that could really go well or poorly. Sometimes the man with the gun can open up all sorts of new plot possibilities – who is the man? Why is he coming after the characters? But there’s a major chance it’ll just scream hey I totally wrote myself into a corner.

I’ve never had to resort to Chandler’s Law, myself. I’m really hoping that I never do.

One thing I wondered (and maybe they covered this but I missed it) how much sf/f is actually being viewed as too violent. I can see this being an issue in video games and movies, since of course there’s a visual representation of that violence – and yeah, a lot of them just have action scenes for the sake of blowing shit up. But perhaps I’ve been lucky in my choice of books; I’ve yet to encounter one where I felt it was really overly violent or gory. (I’ve only encountered one book in my life that I found truly over the top, and that was American Psycho; that book actually made me physically ill. I also generally don’t read horror.) If nothing else, trying to have violence in the written word the way it exists in a movie would be… difficult to accomplish. And probably incredibly boring to read.

Tags convention, worldcon, writing

books

Books with animal protagonists

Post author By Alex
Post date September 7, 2012
No Comments on Books with animal protagonists

Matthew Bennardo (@mbennardo) asked on Twitter:

Besides White Fang and Call of the Wild, does anybody know any good books told from animals’ perspectives? (Either first or third person.)

Which is a very good question, I think, and worthy of a list of books. I used to love reading stories from the perspective of animals when I was in grade school particularly. Those books do seem much more scarce as an adult.

I put his question to my lovely friends on plurk and they helped me come up with a book list so excellent I feel compelled to share it. Note, these are books with animal protagonists that are not anthropomorphised. They don’t wear clothes or wield swords; as good as the books are, Redwall is right out, and the Guardians of Ga’Hoole.

If you have any suggestions, I’ll add them to my list!

Please note, I have not personally read all these books, so I am trusting you guys to stick to the criteria as laid out. (And let me know if you have hit on one of those rare books that doesn’t even anthropomorphise to the point of giving the animals language.)

Young Adult/Middle Grade
Bunnicula (and the rest of its series) – Deborah and James Howe
Black Beauty – Anna Sewell*
Roxanne, the Blue Dane – Alice Kingham-LaChevre
The Fox and the Hound – Daniel P. Mannix
The Incredible Journey – Sheila Burnford
The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book – by Rudyard Kipling
Fire Bringer – David Clement-Davies
Ratha’s Creature (and its series) – Clare Bell
Silverwing (and its series) – Kenneth Oppel
Charlotte’s Web – EB White [Maybe a bit of a stretch, but it’s such a lovely book]
Pigs Might Fly – Dick King-Smith
The Animals of Farthing Wood – Colin Dann
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents – Terry Pratchett
Dogsbody – Diana Wynne Jones
101 Dalmations and The Starlight Barking – Dodie Smith
I, Houdini – Lynne Reid Banks
War Horse – Michael Murporgo
Beautiful Joe – Marshall Saunders*
Call of the Wild – Jack London*
White Fang – Jack London*
The Biography of a Grizzly – Ernest Thompson Seton*
Wild Animals I Have Known – Ernest Thompson Seton*
Animal Heroes – Ernest Thompson Seton*
Wild Animals At Home – Ernest Thompson Seton*
Anthill – Edward O Wilson [viewpoint split between human and ant colonies]

Adult
The Plague Dogs – Richard Adams
Watership Down – Richard Adams
Wish You Were Here (mystery series starting here) – Rita Mae Brown and Sneaky Pie Brown
I Am a Cat [吾輩は猫である] – Soseki Natsume
Dog On It (and the rest of the Chet and Bernie mysteries) – Spencer Quinn
Raptor Red – Robert T. Bakker [This one is really cool because it’s about a dinosaur!]
Tailchaser’s Song – Tad Williams
The Heavenly Horse From the Outermost West – Mary Stanton [Okay, this one might be a stretch.]
The Grizzly King – James Oliver Curwood*
The Family Tree – Sherri Tepper
Solo’s Journey – Joy Smith Aiken
Duncton Wood – William Horwood
The Kindred of the Wild – Charles GD Roberts*
The Watchers of the Trails – Charles GD Roberts*
The Haunters of the Silences – Charles GD Roberts*
The Song of the Cardinal – Gene Stratton-Porter*
Forest Neighbors – William Davenport Hulbert*

I also wonder if maybe books from the His Majesty’s Dragon series by Naomi Novik could be counted in here, since some of the books are partially from the perspective of Temeraire, the dragon in question. But that might be stretching it a bit far.

ETA: Matt clarified he was looking for books where the animals don’t talk at all, not even for each other. Those are much, much harder to find! I’ve marked the few I know definitely fit that narrower criteria by bolding them.

ETA2: Added several more books, thanks to an e-mail from Matt (posted with his permission):

I’ve read snippets of most of these books [RA: I have marked the ones he’s referring to with a *], and they are more or less from the animals’ points of view. (Some have a human observer as intermediary, who drifts in and out, but each of them attempts to “get in the heads” of the animals in some way.) Many of the books (especially those by Seton and Roberts) are collections of short stories, each about different animals. Roberts even eventually attempts stories from the POV of deep sea critters, which is pretty audacious.

As to how successful these writers were… This article is interesting (and in-depth) reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_fakers_controversy

It boils down to this: Many naturalists in the early 20th century criticized writers who tried to tell stories from animals’ points of view, believing the stories were deceptive and painted a false picture of animal behavior and psychology. They considered even these non-talking animals as dangerously anthropomorphized. Eventually, this controversy led to then sitting President Theodore Roosevelt mucking it up with Jack London, trading insults via magazine articles.

I suspect this controversy explains the drop-off of these kind of stories as the years go on. (Of the 14 books I found, 9 of them were published in a flurry between 1898 and 1907.) Though, of course, my list is not comprehensive, so there may not have been any real drop-off at all.

Also, I’ll note that there isn’t really a clear YA/Adult split in the books Matt listed, so I kind of took my best stab at them. If I misclassified any, please let me know!

Tags book list, books

feminism rants things that are hard to write

Stop calling me a "real woman"

Post author By Alex
Post date September 7, 2012
No Comments on Stop calling me a "real woman"

Because you know what that implies? Are there really femmebots out there, complete with boob guns that make up the category of “not real” women? Are there girls made out of plastic? Is there a test you have to take, or are there government regulations sort of like they have for beef that mean we get tagged as real women, right next to the stamp stating we’re organic, because hey we’re composed of carbon-containing molecules?

It’s a bullshit term. It always struck me wrong when I went to Lane Bryant and was rewarded with “real woman dollars” for shopping. But the wrongness burst into ugly life when I re-watched the episode of Project Runway where one of the designers is a giant toolbag to a plus-size lady. The utter patronizing tone in which its delivered and that it’s obvious he’s using it in place of “fat” because he’s trying to weasel out of being eviscerated for being an asshole is even more insulting.

You’re not fooling anyone. We shouldn’t need some kind of smirking consolation prize for wearing clothing that’s bigger than a 16. We already know we’re real. We exist. It’s a sad disguise for the fact that often plus-size clothing feels like cultural punishment by setting set us in an adversarial position to women who wear “normal” sizes. Perhaps if we’re too busy trying to look down our noses at each other, we’ll miss the evil truth that we’re being compelled to attack people who should be our allies in this struggle, divided falsely along superficial lines.

Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe it’s just a pathetic attempt to make us feel better about ourselves. Hey, you’re large and are apparently considered unworthy to wear anything other than black smocks (it’s slimming, you know) but you’re a real woman. As if realness is determined by mass rather than an authenticity of spirit.

Being a woman isn’t a contest that some of us have to lose. There is a full spectrum of women to which we all belong, an infinite continuum of what it means to “look like a woman,” and no part of that spectrum should be defined as inherently superior. Doing that (and then gleefully jumping over a cliff with the invention of photoshop) is what got us into this mess in the first place.

I’m tired of the implication that my struggle to accept myself has to come at the detriment of other women.

Real women are fat. Real women are thin. Real women come in all colors and shapes and identities, and sometimes we have curves, and sometimes we don’t but damnit we’re all real women.

And we’re all really beautiful.

Tags body image, body policing, fat, feminism, plus size, rants, skinny, things that are hard to write, women

gender lgbt worldcon writing

[Worldcon] Writing Gender Roles in Science Fiction

Post author By Alex
Post date September 6, 2012
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Friday (August 31) at 0900: Writing Gender Roles in Science Fiction
Panelists listed in program: Joan D. Vinge, Julia Rios, Catherine Lundoff, Victor Raymond, Anne Lyle (Note: Joan D. Vinge was definitely not in attendance.)

Disclaimer: These are my notes from the panel and my own, later thoughts. I often was unable to attend the entire panel, and also chronically missed panelist introductions. When possible I try to note who said something, but often was unable to. Also, unless something is in double quotes it should be considered a summary and not a direct quotation.

Works in which characters that are outside gender norms but not as a reaction to an oppressive government (incomplete list):

Diana Comet and Other Improbable Stories – Sandra McDonald
Bone Dance – Emma Bull
The Tawny Man trilogy and The Farseer trilogy – Robin Hobb. (Everyone tends to refer to the Fool as male but it clearly is not quite in the binary.)
The Einstein Intersection – Samuel R. Delaney
The Female Man – Joanna Russ
Fly Into Fire – Susan J. Bigelow (Transwoman protagonist)
Dragonsbane and Sisters of the Raven – Barbara Hambley

George R. R. Martin does a lot of good stuff particularly with his older women – as working within strictures of misogynistic society. Early books at least, Anne Lyle has issues with the later books it sounds like. Goes off the rails bit after the first book.

Writing characters of different genders; do you consciously decide to present them in ways you consider “good”?
Catherine Lundhoff: In sf/f there are very few female werewolves. There are very few middle-aged men already as protagonists, there are even fewer middle-aged women as protagonists. They tend to just be the evil queen.
Anne Lyle: I just write people and see how they turn out.

Mary Robinette Kowal – “Jane Austen with magic.” First book very traditional, second book (Glamour and Glass) has main character after she’s married, in Belgium at the point Napoleon comes out of exile. Goes into a war situation as a married woman who has strict social moors and must break out of it for reasons of plot.

Lois McMaster Bujold – Cordelia, working within the restrictive society to try to open minds while playing by their rules. The Vorkosigan saga “A Civil Campaign” is a comedy of manners set in scifi.

Audience question: Recommend stories that have alien cultures with something beyond the gender binary (e.g. 3 genders, etc)?
Source Decay in Strange Horizons

I asked for examples of transmen in sf/f since there had been several named for transwomen:

The Courier’s New Bicycle – Kim Westwood
A Civil Campaign – Lois McMaster Bujold
Steel Beach – John Varley
Recognizing Gabe – Alberto Yáñez (Strange Horizons)
Supervillainz – Alicia Goranson [ETA: Catherine Lundoff tweeted this one to me today]

Also, it was noted that transmen (and transwomen) are much more common in erotica than in sf/f. I very nearly stumped the panel with this question.

I thought this was a solid panel with good discussion, though I missed a significant portion of it. I actually ended up buying a copy of Catherine Lundoff’s Silver Moon in part because of this panel. There really aren’t older female protagonists very often, and I’m charmed by the idea of one being a werewolf.

The reason I asked the question about characters who are transmen is I’ve noticed generally that transwomen seem to be a bit more visible in pop culture and sf/f. Sometimes it’s very negative (eg: news stories about a transwoman being attacked are far more common than those about transmen) and on the more positive side I’ve seen more transwomen activists than transmen. When there are trans characters in the genres I read (and this happens rarely as it is) they’re almost always transwomen.

I wonder if this is partially because transwomen are to a certain extent more transgressive than transmen. From the viewpoint of a society where being white and male is still the “norm” it must seem more transgressive for a man to “wish to be” a woman than for a women to “wish to be” a man, because it’s a movement counter to the center of power.

Transmen also seem to have better luck “flying under the radar” than transwomen. (Transmen – nature’s ninja?) I wonder if this is connected to the way, say, drag queens tend to be far more culturally visible than drag kings. There’s the titillation factor, of course. But there’s also the fact that if you see someone your brain identifies as female, if they’re dressed in male clothes it doesn’t tend to really register in the same way someone who may be male in female clothes does. Women regularly wear men’s clothes, or clothes that are styled after those men wear.

Of course, this is on my mind because I’ve got a short story in which the main character is a transman. (And the plot for a novel as well, yikes.) Here’s hoping I can find a magazine that’ll want it at some point…

Anyway, I’m hoping we generally see more diversity in characters in the future, and not just in regards to gender. The fact that people are having conversations about this is definitely a step in the right direction. And of course, with more e-publishing and small presses springing up like wildflowers, I’m hoping to see more diversity as well.

ETA: Catherine Lundoff has a more complete reading list from the panel at her livejournal.

Tags convention, gender, lgbt, worldcon, writing