Tag: science fiction

Categories
science fiction worldcon

Reading stories, wrestling pigs, the repetition of history. You know, the Hugos.

I edited my post from yesterday to add this, but I’m going to make it as a statement all its own too (with a little expansion), since I don’t think I made this point as strongly as I wanted.

While my sideeyeing here is mighty, I’m going to do my best to give the fiction in the Hugo packet an open-hearted read, within time constraints. I feel like if I’m going to complain about this uber-pathetic deck stacking, then it’s my obligation to not play into the game by letting my choices be made by anything outside what I read in the stories. This might be a good place to whip out that old Samuel Clemens chestnut about not wrestling pigs (because you both get dirty and the pig likes it). I’m pretty sure whichever way the awards fall this year there will be politics invoked as the reason whether it is or not.

I’m also well aware that I’m operating from a pretty privileged position here, so please don’t read this as a finger-shaking exhortation or some kind of judgment. (And feel free to argue with me on this one, I’m just doing my best and my best ain’t perfect.) At the end of the day you do what you have to do to be right with yourself. Where you draw the line for yourself is your choice, not mine. Relevant update on this notion here.I’ll be doing my best to read everyone fairly… minus one.

To be honest I feel a bit bad for anyone that’s gotten unwittingly caught in the crossfire of Correia’s incredibly unsubtle “sad puppy” campaign thing because it adds an unhappy shadow of doubt to the nominations, and that seems unfair. Then again, guys, you got nominated for a Hugo! It’s not like you need some random person on the internet feeling bad at you for that.

Also, you should read Kameron Hurley’s post. And remember that this kind of stuff ain’t new.

That is hopefully all I’m going to need to say about that. I might try to blog a bit as I’m reading. If I have time to read.

Until then–IT’S LEG DAY MOTHERFUCKERS ARE YOU READY

Categories
science fiction worldcon

Happy Hugo Nomination Day! (In which I go “Yay!” and sideeye simultaneously.)

I know, I drop off the internets for two weeks (I have a massive slate of excuses that I’m planning to elaborate on…soon-ish) and then two posts in one day! Zomg! But the Hugo nominations just got released, so I’m going to react in between moving my plate so my cat can’t get to my sandwich.

So, here’s the list of nominees!

First off, I’ll cop immediately to the fact that I don’t have as many opinions as I would like about most of the categories because the amount of reading I got done last year was somewhere between deeply pathetic and downright sob-worthy. (And much of what I did read was not published in 2013. Boo.)

I’m super happy for Sofia Samatar; Selkie Stories Are For Losers is one of those rare 2013 stories I did actually read and I loved it so much I nominated it so woo! I helped!  The Graphic Story category is very exciting this year (and god I’m already looking forward to throwing Ms. Marvel on the 2014 ballot, you have no idea) and I’m very happy to see Gravity and Pacific Rim in the Dramatic Presentation, Long Form category. Also An Adventure in Space and Time and The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot are my faves out of the Best Doctor Who Dramatic Presentation, Short Form category. Semiprozine and Fanzine both look exciting this year. And Skiffy and Fanty got nominated in the Fancast category and I love that podcast ferociously so YAY.

Standard congratulations to everyone who got nominated, particularly the five writers up for the Not a Hugo award!

So then there are the things that I’m just sideeyeing so mightily.

First off, Wheel of Time. The whole series. In best novel. Look, I get that it’s technically okay by the letter of the rules, but seriously? I just… I can’t even. And don’t take this as me just being some WoT hater. I mentioned the nomination to Mike, who has read the series and owns many of the books. He likes that massive wood pulp trainwreck in his own way. And when I told him about the nomination, he frowned and said, “Really? That had better not win.” SO IT’S NOT JUST ME.

I’m super disappointed that Her didn’t get nominated in the dramatic presentation, long form. I’m guessing it’s because it wasn’t as massively popular (or well-advertised) as any of the other movies, but goddamn it was phenomenal. (It very much deserved the Oscar it received for best screenplay, and every one of its nominations.) And of course Europa Report, but I had no illusions about that one even having a chance since it was a relatively teeny independent film.

Then the dramatic presentation, short form category. The Best Doctor Who category. But really, The Name of the Doctor? And frankly, I have such a hate/love relationship with The Day of the Doctor that I just can’t even start on that. I guess I’m just glad The Time of the Doctor didn’t get a nomination or I might have punched my fist through my laptop screen. Boy I can’t wait until next year when The Loofah of the Doctor and The Worrying, Hairy Mole That Should Probably Get Looked at of the Doctor battle it out against Game of Thrones: The Lion and the Rose. (I have never watched nor read GoT, and yet it’s very likely even I would vote for that episode because I am an adult human being with an internet connection.)

And then there’s this thing where my sideeyeing hits the sort of level that might indicate incipient eye strain. Natalie Luhrs posted at her blog and there’s also a bit about it over at File770, which is basically the fact that several of the nominees were on sample ballots pushed by the dreaded Vox Day and the not-dreaded-and-is-probably-a-perfectly-nice-dude-in-person-but-online-sounds-like-a-real-asshole Larry Correia.

Now, I have no idea about the quality of most of the work on the ballot this year. I didn’t put nominees in a lot of the categories because I didn’t get to read much new stuff, which is kind of the point. It goes without saying that you shouldn’t nominate things you haven’t read. And for all I know right now, these are all equally fantastic damn stories; I look forward to finding out when I read them. In fact, I had no thoughts beyond, “Oh hey, good for you Brad Torgersen, two nominations!” and so on until I heard about this grossness. (Exception: I did think, “Wow, the Prince of Darkness got nominated for a Hugo? What the hell does that story do, press and iron your shirts while you read?”)

People post their personal ballot picks all the time. I actually look at those when the nomination period is drawing close so I can try to squeeze in a few more things to read and get a better spread on my own nominations. But there is a subtle but very important distinction between, “So this is who I’m going to nominate” and actively exhorting your followers to pony up the $40 for a supporting membership and participate in a “Sad Puppies Hugo stacking campaign” because it’ll… make liberals cry or something.

Bonus points for VD trying to blame it all on the subject of his massive internet hateboner, John Scalzi:

It should be interesting to see how this all turns out. But after John Scalzi – how entirely unsurprising – laid the groundwork for the open politicization of the Hugo Award, it was inevitable that what had always been done quietly behind closed doors would come out in the open.

See! He totally did it first! We’re just doing it better or something!

I get that there is an element of politics inherent in award giving, particularly when it’s “big” awards–all you have to do is observe the Academy Awards to see that. And I get that there is a lot of deck stacking when it comes to platform. (Shit, man, I was just bitching about how a movie I thought was fucking amazing didn’t get a nomination because it was insufficiently popular.) Yet all you have to do is really look over the nominations to see that it’s not just the 900-lb gorillas that get on the slate for these things.

While it might feel good to tell yourself that the only reason the people in your in-group aren’t raking in all the awards is because fancy schmancy people who write stories you don’t like because there’s too much global warming and not enough guns are having a massive circle jerk and didn’t invite you, it’s also pretty goddamn sad. It’s “you plebes just don’t get my genius” in a different form.

It just seems really…pathetic. Yeah, that’s the word I’m looking for.

ETA on 4/20: And since I feel like I didn’t make this point strongly enough in the original post–while my sideeyeing here is mighty, I’m going to do my best to give the fiction in the Hugo packet an open-hearted read. Because if I’m going to complain about this uber-pathetic deck stacking, I feel it’s then my obligation to not play into their game by letting my choices be made by anything outside what I read in the stories. I’m also well aware that I’m operating from a pretty privileged position here, so please don’t read this as a finger-shaking exhortation or some kind of judgment. (And feel free to argue with me on this one, I’m just doing my best and my best ain’t perfect.) At the end of the day you do what you have to do to be right with yourself. Relevant follow-up here.

TBH I feel a bit bad for anyone that’s gotten unwittingly caught in the crossfire of Correia’s incredibly unsubtle “sad puppy” campaign thing because it adds an unhappy shadow of doubt to the nominations, and that seems unfair. Then again, guys, you got nominated for a Hugo! It’s not like you need some random person on the internet feeling bad at you for that.

Anyway, good luck to all the nominees! And may the odds be ever in your favor.

Categories
gender logical fallacies science fiction

Geeze, Larry Correia, leave some straw men for the rest of us.

So, Larry Correia wrote a fantastically dickish blog post about Alex Dally MacFarlane’s post on Tor.com in regards to the default gender binary represented in mainstream SF literature. The post in question involved Alex making the incredibly revolutionary1 observation that transwomen and transmen, you know, exist. As well as other people who do not conform to the strict, aggressively Leave It To Beaver-ish gender binary that’s still presented as the default. And it’s time to get away from that being the default. And hey, there have already been works written that touch on the issue, so let’s discuss those and then move forward. (Alex, if you ever happen to read this, I hope I have not misrepresented your position overmuch in my rather flippant summary.)

Jim Hines, bless him from his shiny head to his sofa-marrying heart2, possesses such intestinal fortitude and abundance of spare time that he’s done a point by point take down of Correia’s post.

My normal inclination here is to have the same response as I had to John C. Wright and his wall of misogy-text, namely: would you get a load of this fuckin’ guy. But there are a few things that are bothering me particularly, though. In short:

  1. Correia spends the whole time calling Alex “he” in his original post. (Alex isn’t a man. It takes exactly one google search or two clicks to double check that.[ETA] Her bio is literally at the bottom of her post. What kind of fucking laziness does this take?) I actually went and looked at Correia’s blog to see if he corrected himself, and he did… kinda? Somewhere in the word salad of this long response to Jim he corrects himself on Alex being “she,” airily dismisses it as a mistake and says he further doesn’t care anyway BECAUSE IDEAS NOT PEOPLE. Perhaps at this point misrepresenting someone’s gender feels like a drop in the ocean of douchery, and that’s the excuse for not taking two seconds to type out the word ‘sorry.’ But it’s a damn pathetic excuse.
  2. Seriously, what is with the dog whistle liberal versus conservative culture war bullshit framing? Perhaps this is bothering me more than normal because in my offline life, I just had a strong reminder that being conscious of gender identification isn’t a default liberal versus conservative issue, it’s a not being a douchebag issue.
  3. Correia’s thesis as written seems to be that (a) straw Alex wants all books to be nothing but non-standard characters and there will be checklists nothing but checklists forever, (b) this would make everything a preachy issue book (presumably because straw Alex does not care about story?), therefore (c) that would destroy the genre of science fiction.
  4. The “I don’t like thing X, therefore if you write thing X IT WILL DESTROY THE GENRE,” line has gotten so common that I believe it deserves its own name. It’s like an appeal to consequences and appeal to tradition got together and had an ugly, whiny baby. Any suggestions? The best I’ve got is Appeal to Destruction, and that’s admittedly tepid.
  5. Correia keeps coming back to story being the most important thing. I don’t think there’s any halfway decent writer who would argue the point that story is where it’s at. So where the fuck is this disconnect? How does what Alex actually said in any way preclude the primacy of story? How does even making a conscious effort to write non-default characters equal preachy issue book? Is there some kind of mathematical proof I’m missing out on here that shows the number of transgender or genderqueer characters is inversely proportional to the amount of story and/or fun?
  6. Geeze, dude, leave some straw men for the rest of us. Seriously. Worldwide shortage.
  7. Cisgender hetero guy with enormous biceps kills vampires and then must face their sire in a world-shattering showdown versus Transwoman with slightly less enormous biceps kills vampires then must face their sire in a world-shattering showdown would both be driven by the same basic story. Each would be distinct because, say, for option B you’d have to consider how the heroine’s status as trans would effect her interactions with other characters and all of their choices–yet in the end it’s still about some badass killing a shitload of vampires and saving the world.
  8. I do not tend to buy books that promise to preach at me. But you know what I will go out of my way to buy? Books with female protagonists. Books with explicitly bisexual protagonists. Because like all human beings, I’m an egocentric jerk and I enjoy being able to see people like me in stories, saving the world and doing other badass shit. [ETA: I would hope this goes without saying, but you never know. I want good and interesting books with the aforementioned and following. Books with excellent story, which very much do exist when combined with “non-default” main characters. Yeesh.] But you know what else I’ll go out of my way to buy? Books with genderqueer protagonists. Books with non-white protagonists. Books with protagonists from cultures other than my own. Why? Because I want to imagine things outside of myself as well. And imagining ye olde heterosexual white dude? We all basically know how to put those shoes on mentally before we can tie our literal shoelaces in the real world.

 

1 – Mmm, sarcasm italics. How I have missed you.

2 – Some of the comments on Jim’s post are gold.

Categories
writing

Award Eligible Stories (Published in 2013)

Yes, it’s that time of year again, where I make googly eyes at you and hope you’ll keep me in mind for various awards. 2013 was a very good year for me–I have nine stories that are eligible!

Note: I had my first pro sale in 2010. I am not Campbell eligible, just in case you were wondering.

Legend
[LGBT] = Involves QUILTBAG character(s)
[★] = Personal favorite
[F] = Free to read

Short Stories  
Significant Figures from Strange Horizons (12/16/13) [★][F]
Stranger from Silver Blade Magazine (9/5/13) [F]
Breaking Orbit from Daily Science Fiction (07/23/13) [★][F]
Samsara in Waylines issue #4 (July 2013) [LGBT][F]

Novelette
Murder on the Titania from Musa Publishing (4/5/2013)

Novella
Do Shut Up, Mister Simms from Musa Publishing (11/1/2013) [LGBT]
Blood in Elk Creek from Musa Publishing (9/6/2013) [★][LGBT]
The Curious Case of Miss Clementine Nimowitz and Her Exceedingly Tiny Dog from Musa Publishing (6/14/2013) [★][LGBT]
The Ugly Tin Orrery from Musa Publishing (5/17/2013) [LGBT]

Thank you so much!

Categories
sarcasm science fiction writing

Yes, I am trying to destroy science fiction, thank you for noticing.

God, what does a woman have to do around the internet to get her heathen liberal-fascist* feminazi reverse racist anarcho homosexual agenda aimed at the complete destruction of a literary genre noticed? I was about to start setting shit on fire, I fucking swear.

But it’s okay, guys! Senpai noticed me! (Okay, and a lot of other people, but I’m still getting some dokidoki in my shriveled, blackened little kokoro.) Finally, someone gets what we’ve been trying to do all along! We no longer have to go creeping around under cover of the internet, stealing Edgar Rice Burroughs novels from babies and pushing well meaning white guys (who just want to explain to us that we should stop whining because racism and sexism aren’t actually a thing any more, or wait maybe they are a thing but we should just suck less okay) down the stairs.

I for one am relieved. I’ve hated scifi since the minute I first encountered it. As my mother read The Hobbit to my brother and me as children, I had only two thoughts:

1) I was pretty sure I could take my older brother in a knife fight. If I sacrificed him on the altar if the dark and terrible lesbofeminazi gods, would I grow up to look absolutely fabulous in trousers and have my very own mustache to twirl?

And.

2) I was going to destroy Middle Earth and the rotten literary ground from which it had sprung. And then salt the soil with the bitter tears of all god-fearing, proper fans.

I never managed number one, though I do still look fabulous in trousers. But goal number two is ticking along nicely. I have joined an (apparently not so secret) cabal composed of basically everyone who isn’t a straight white guy oh wait there are some straight white guys in or cabal too, um shit, I guess it’s actually a cabal of people who just don’t think everything has to be about straight white guys. Yeah, that. And then, of all dastardly things, we WRITE.

Because we saw, you see. We saw so clearly that the foundation of all speculative fiction is actually straight white guys, not, you know, fantastical elements and what if like those lying bastard liberals tell you in their “college courses.” (Hah! Our secret liberal indoctrination works again!) So if you replace the straight white guys in fiction with people that actually reflect the diversity of the population, IT WILL ALL COME CRASHING DOWN LIKE A JENGA TOWER SURROUNDED BY DRUNKEN UNDERGRADS.

AHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA

I mean, we SAY we would just like to read stories about people like us, that a little diversity doesn’t hurt, but smart guys like senpai know. He’s on to us. We hate art, because art is only the stuff senpai likes reading, and the rest of us totally don’t count because we don’t get the greatness of all that ART. We’re just going to burn that shit down. I for one only read scifi because I hate it. I only do things I hate. That’s how my bitter, sad, and twisted life works. That’s why you should all run out right now and bake me cakes because if there is one thing I hate more than scifi it’s cake and I’ll eat cake while I read a scifi novel so then MY HATE-FILLED, MISERABLE EXISTENCE WILL BE COMPETE.

I am so glad I don’t have to pretend any more. It’s like a great burden has lifted from my shoulders.

Now, I’m going back to writing my story about a lesbian Sikh werewolf going to the prom because I am doing my part to destroy everything that scifi stands for. Which, let us remember, is only straight white guys. Only that. Ever.

* – That’s what it’s called, right, Bill O’Reilly (or was it Glenn Beck I don’t even know any more they’re all like the same person) is no longer actually intelligible through all the froth, so I’m guessing.

Categories
movie

Europa Report

This is an independent science fiction movie. It was released a week ago, but the release is so limited it’s not in any theaters near me. Thankfully, it’s also available from On Demand for $8, which made it cheaper than actually seeing it in a theater. I was excited about this movie. It didn’t disappoint.

To be honest, watching it on the home screen I think might have worked better than at the theater, just because of the film style (found footage, so generally not high quality) and the CGI wasn’t the greatest; what flaws I was able to see on a 55″ flatscreen would have no doubt been all the more glaring on a movie screen.

This is definitely one of the most scientifically accurate movies I’ve seen in a long time. (Per Phil Plait, JPL scientists were consultants on the film, and it looks like the filmmakers really took what they said to heart.) And the science really plays into the story and helps drive and define the plot. It’s the motivation and not the villain, which was very refreshing. It also serves as a good reminder that accurate, basically present-day science still has some amazing storytelling possibilities for speculative fiction in it.

At its heart, I think the movie is very much about science, and the wonder scientists feel, and the sacrifices they are willing to make for the sake of answering one of the greatest questions to ever face our species: are we alone? The cast really sold it, I think, and Daniel Wu and Anamaria Marinca were particularly good I think.

And there’s an adorable reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey at the beginning, which I loved.

The movie is mostly found footage style, which is a format I’m increasingly disenchanted with, though I understand why it’s used–it’s generally a cheaper option. For the most part I felt like it worked pretty well, and it put us in the action with the crew. I didn’t like how some of the jumps and cuts were done, since it really didn’t fit with the narrative frame of “here we edited this together for you.” It felt like a transparent attempt to make the movie seem scarier than it was or needed to be.

This was not a scary movie, despite what the trailer wants you to think:

If you believe the trailer, this is going to be a “found footage thing where team of astronauts goes to alien world and gets horrifically eaten by sneaky, evil aliens that may or may not look like giant space spiders.” And it’s really not. It’s tense, it’s heart-wrenching at times, but this is definitely not a horror movie.

SPOILERS

Continue reading “Europa Report”