Pixel Scroll 1/27/16 The Young and the Rec List

(1) BROOKLINE SHOOTING INCIDENT. SF writer Michael A. Burstein faced an unexpected emergency decision today.

When I ran for Library Trustee of the Public Library of Brookline back in 2004 for the first time, I never expected the day would come when I would be saying the following over the phone to the Library Director:

“As far as I know at the moment, this is an active shooter situation in the town of Brookline. You have my complete authority as chair of the Library Trustees to send staff home, shut down the libraries, or do whatever you think you need to do to keep patrons and stay safe. Just keep me posted and I’ll check in with the police again once we’re off the phone.”

He, Nomi and their children were safe but rattled. At the time, Brookline police were responding to reports of two local incidents in which people were shot and/or stabbed.

Police have not yet captured the assailants, however, later in the day they found their car in Boston.

Police in Brookline said they have located the car from today’s shooting but are still looking for the driver and another suspect after three young men were shot and stabbed multiple times this morning in related incidents in Coolidge Corner and Brookline Village

(2) SFWA MAY ACCEPT GAME WRITERS. Science Fiction Writers of America will soon vote whether to allow sales in writing S/F games to qualify writers for membership. SFWA Vice President M.C.A. Hogarth discussed the question at the SFWA Blog.

The Gaming Committee has drafted solid credentials for admitting professional writers of SF/F games–tabletop or computer or console or app–to our numbers. The Board has reviewed them, made modifications, and chosen a final draft. Now it’s up to our members to vote to include our writing peers in the gaming industry into our numbers. The question will be going out on the election ballot at the end of Februrary.

Games, no less than books, tell compelling stories in our genre. I hope you’ll join me in opening our doors to our professional colleagues in SF/F game writing.

(3) HURLEY SAYS FIGHT BACK. Kameron Hurley on “Traditional Publishing, Non-Compete Clauses & Rights Grabs”.

One of the big issues we’ve been dealing with the last 15 years or so as self-publishing has become more popular are the increasing rights grabs and non-compete clauses stuck into the boilerplate from big traditional publishers terrified to get cut out of the publishing equation. Worse, these clauses are becoming tougher and tougher to negotiate at all, let alone get them to go away. Worser (yes, worser) – many new writers don’t realize that these are shitty terms they should be arguing over instead of just rolling over and accepting like a Good Little Author. What I’ve seen a lot in my decade of publishing is new writers on the scene who don’t read their contracts and who rely on their agent’s judgement totally (and that’s when they even HAVE an agent! eeeee). They don’t have writer networks yet. They aren’t sure what’s normal and what’s not and they don’t want to rock the boat.

I am here to tell you to rock the boat.

(4) DRUM LESSONS. M. Harold Page finds “Writerly Lessons from Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum” at Black Gate.

Even so, this literary failure is still a heroic one. The book not only displays the craft of a veteran adventure writer, it is also an object lesson in career strategy.

As an author I benefited from reading this book. Let me tell you why…

First, this book can teach us some craft. It confirms the idea that research can be layered (link). There’s a lot you don’t need to know when writing a Historical story and a lot you can put in on the final draft.

Identify the people who are a physical threat to your character and find the conflicts that link then.

However, what makes The Walking Drum truly illuminating is that it is like sitting Louis L’Amour down with beer and getting him to brainstorm historical adventure plots until we can see how he does it.

L’Amour clearly focuses on conflicts leading to physical threats. I’m a great enthusiast for exploring story worlds through conflict (link). However, L’Amour reveals a shortcut: Identify the people who are a physical threat to your character and find the conflicts that link them. I suppose L’Amour would say:…

(5) FINDING YOUR VOICE. Elizabeth Bear on authorial voice, in “he’s got one trick to last a lifetime but that’s all a pony needs”.

You have a voice, as an artist and as a human being. That voice is part of who you are, and it’s comprised of your core beliefs, your internalizations, your hopes and dreams and influences and experiences. You can develop it. You can make it better. But until you find it–until you find that authentic voice, and accept it, and begin working on making it stronger and trusting it and letting it shine through–you will always sound artificial and affected.  And there’s a reason we call it “finding your voice,” and not “creating your voice.” The voice is there. Whatever it is, you are stuck with it. So you might as well learn to like it, and work with it, and improve it.

(6) X-FILES. Steve Davidson has lots to say in “The X Files Return: Review & Commentary” at Amazing Stories. No excerpt. BEWARE SPOILERS.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 27, 1967 — Astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a fire aboard the Apollo 1 spacecraft during a launch simulation at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center

(8) MINSKY OBIT. Marvin Minsky (1927-2016), a leader in the field of artificial intelligence, as well as occasional sf author and convention participant, died January 24 reports SF Site.

He served as an advisor on the film 2001: a space odyssey and later collaborated with Harry Harrison on the novel The Turing Option.

The New York Times obituary noted:

Professor Minsky, in 1959, co-founded the M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Project (later the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) with his colleague John McCarthy, who is credited with coining the term “artificial intelligence.”

Beyond its artificial intelligence charter, however, the lab would have a profound impact on the modern computing industry, helping to impassion a culture of computer and software design. It planted the seed for the idea that digital information should be shared freely, a notion that would shape the so-called open-source software movement, and it was a part of the original ARPAnet, the forerunner to the Internet.

(9) GRATEFUL. Mike Reynolds is one of the finalists who was not selected to be the teacher-astronaut aboard the Challenger.

The 30th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster this week has a deep meaning for college professor Mike Reynolds. At the time, he was a teacher at Fletcher High School and a finalist for the ill-fated Challenger mission.

Reynolds was picked out of thousands of educators nationwide, to fly in NASA’s teacher-in-space program, which was announced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. It was teacher Christa McAullife who was ultimately chosen and perished during takeoff with the entire crew.

Reynolds witnessed the Challenger explosion from the Kennedy Space Center viewing area.

“It was so surreal. It took probably a minute, even for someone like myself who is familiar with launches, to really sink in what had happened,” Reynolds said….

Reynolds said the days and months that followed were the most painful in his life, but he made friends with families of the seven onboard, including Capt. Dick Scobee’s wife, June Rodgers Scobee, and Greg Jarvis’ parents. Reynolds said the horror the nation witnessed on that day deeply affected him.

“It’s really affected me, knowing that every day on this earth is a gift, so use that time wisely and stick to your mission and God’s given gifts, and that’s why I stayed in education,” he said.

(10) PLAQUE FOR PRATCHETT. The Beaconsfield town council knows Pratchett will eventually get one of those famous blue plaques. In the meantime, the city will honor Terry Pratchett with a commemorative plaque of its own.

Born in Beaconsfield and educated at John Hampden Grammar School in High Wycombe from 1959 to 1965, [Pratchett] went on to become a reporter at the Bucks Free Press in 1965 before making a name for himself as an author.

The town council hopes to install a plaque on the wall at Beaconsfield Library in Reynolds Road, where Sir Terry was a Saturday boy and returned to give talks.

Cllr Philip Bastiman, chair of the open spaces committee, said the council had been in touch with Sir Terry’s daughter Rhianna, who was “very supportive” of the idea of commemorating the author.

He said: “Because I believe he worked in the library and used the library a lot and he came back and actually gave talks at the library relatively recently, in their mind, it had a place in his affections.

“They feel it is wholly appropriate to have a commemorative plaque to Terry Pratchett at the library itself.”

Cllr Bastiman said they could have to wait “a number of years” for a blue plaque, which are commonly used to commemorate historical figures and places, so will remember him with their own plaque.

(11) COMMENTS DEFACE HARTWELL OBIT. The Register gave David G. Hartwell a nice obituary. Unfortunately, Puppification intruded at the third comment.

(12) WOMEN IN SF. Kristine Kathryn Rusch is working on an anthology, Women of Futures Past, that will be published by Baen. The project’s blog has a new entry by Toni Weisskopf.

[Kristine Kathryn Rusch] When it became clear to me that the sf field was losing its history, particularly the history of women in the field, I decided to do an anthology. And I immediately knew who would be the perfect publisher/editor: Toni Weisskopf of Baen. We’ve been the field for the same amount of time, and I knew, without checking, that all this talk about the fact that there are no women in sf had to bother her as much as it bothered me. We got together last February at a conference, and sure enough, I was right…

[Toni Weisskopf] …So I never experienced this mythical time of science fiction being an old boys club, with the Man oppressing women, keeping us down. What do these people imagine all the women in field before them did? I didn’t need Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg to remind me about the contributions of editor Bea Mahaffey at Other Worlds, or the obituaries to tell me about Alice Turner at Playboy; in my circles, they were both still remembered. Same with Kay Tarrant at Astounding/Analog and Cele Goldsmith at Amazing.

So one wonders who is really devaluing the work of women. Perhaps it is those who imply that the women who are successful in SF today need some sort of special consideration. Or is it simply that these people have not bothered studying the history of the field they are talking about? I finally begin to understand the purpose of those lists of names in epic poetry and the Bible: these people existed, they were there. It is my hope that Kris’s anthology will do something towards balancing the scales and prove a resource for anyone who loves great SF and cares about historical accuracy.

(13) SHORTCHANGED. Remembering that the sf genre had ANY women addresses a different question than the fairness issues that arise now that there are MANY women genre writers. Consider the next post about the horror genre…

Nina Allen asks “Where Are We Going? Some Reflections on British Horror, Present and Future” at Strange Horizons.

Somewhat conveniently for the purposes of this discussion, FantasyCon 2015 saw the launch of three “best of” horror anthologies: the latest (#26) in Stephen Jones’s redoubtable Best New Horror series, which has now been running for more than a quarter of a century, The 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories under the editorship of Mark Morris, and the twenty-fifth anniversary reissue of Best New Horror #3, from 1991. Looking down the table of contents of this last, I encountered many familiar, well-loved names—some sadly no longer with us, some very much still writing and contributing to the literature. I want to stress right from the off how important the Best New Horror series has been to me, both as a reader and as a writer. When I began developing a professional interest in horror fiction towards the end of the 1990s, BNH was where I first started to acquaint myself with the field: who was writing, what they were writing, how they related to one another. I would read each volume cover to cover when it first appeared, adding to my knowledge and developing my taste with each new outing.

When I look at the table of contents for BNH #3, I see the names of writers who first drew me into the genre (McGammon, Grant, Newman, Etchison), writers who deepened my understanding of what horror writing could do and cemented my allegiance (Campbell, Royle, Lane, Ligotti, Tem, Hand), as well as one more recent discovery, Käthe Koja, whose writing is everything that modern horror should aspire to be. A wonderful compendium indeed, and if I felt a little disappointed to see that of the twenty-nine stories listed, only four were by women, I reluctantly put it down to the times. While women have always written horror, the awareness of women writing horror was not then so advanced as it has become more recently. Any anthology that styled itself “Best New Horror” in 2015 would surely provide greater parity in representation.

How surprised was I then, when I turned to the table of contents for BNH #26 and discovered that of the nineteen stories listed, a mere three were by women writers.

Three must be somebody’s lucky number, and nineteen, come to that, because of the nineteen stories selected to appear in the 2nd Spectral Book of Horror Stories—and this from more than five hundred submissions received—only three of those were by women, also.

I honestly don’t see how this is a situation anyone can feel happy with. I’m not even going to get started on the representation of writers from minority ethnic backgrounds in these tables of contents, because it’s practically nil.

OK, those are the facts, the figures I’d brought with me for discussion on the panel. They speak for themselves, and what they say about the state of horror fiction in the UK in 2015 is that it’s very white, heavily male-dominated, and furthermore, that this situation hasn’t changed at all in the last quarter-century.

(14) MORE TO REMEMBER. The BBC has a little list of its own — 10 Women Who Changed Sci-Fi. The name that follows Mary Shelley is –

Ursula K Le Guin

Le Guin has been a significant player in the science fiction field since the 1960s and has nourished the sci-fi and fantasy genre with piercing visions of race, gender, ecology and politics. She has also been its heroic defender with a host of best-selling writers citing her as an inspiration.

(15) SHINDIG. The Hollywood Reporter details plans for the Star Trek 50th anniversary fan event in New York City.

This September, Star Trek marks its 50th anniversary by returning from the final frontier and landing in New York City for Star Trek: Mission New York, a three-day event based around a celebration of the beloved TV and movie franchise.

Taking place Sept. 2-4 at the Javits Center, Mission New York comes from New York Comic-Con organizers ReedPOP. Lance Festerman, global svp for the company, said in a statement that the new convention “will be a completely unique fan event unlike anything seen before, giving [fans] the chance to go beyond panels and autograph signings, and immerse themselves in the Star Trek universe.”

(16) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born January 27, 1832 – Lewis Carroll.

(17) NEW JOURNAL. The Museum of Science Fiction has launched the MOSF Journal of Science Fiction. Journal editor Monica Louzon highlights the articles in the issue:

This first issue of the MOSF Journal of Science Fiction features four articles that explore science fiction through analysis of various themes, including—but by no means limited to—globalization, mythology, social commentary, and assemblage theory. Derrick King’s discussion of Paolo Bacigalupi’s critical dystopias explores utopian political possibilities that biogenetics could create, while Sami Khan’s analysis of Hindu gods in three Indian novels reveals how closely mythology and social commentary entwine with science fiction. Karma Waltonen examines how female science fiction writers have used loving the “other” as a means of challenging societal taboos about sex, and Amanda Rudd argues that Paul’s empire in Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965) is an entirely new assemblage composed of rearranged elements from the previous ruler’s empire and the indigenous Fremen culture.

(18) TYSON IN RAP BATTLE. Neil deGrasse Tyson and rapper B.o.B. are getting their clicks battling over B.o.B.’s flat earth claims. NPR has the story.

So, a Twitter spat between astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and rapper B.o.B over the flat Earth theory has turned into a full-blown rap battle (and it’s way better than Drake vs. Meek Mill).

B.o.B, whom you might know from his hits “Airplanes,” “Nothin’ On You” and “Strange Clouds,” kicked things off Monday when he started tweeting about how he believes the Earth is flat. He also tweeted about why he believes NASA is hiding the truth about the edge of the world. And he shared several meaningless diagrams about the planet including one about flight routes….

In a short series of tweets, Tyson explained why the Earth was round. He tweeted:

“Earth’s curve indeed blocks 150 (not 170) ft of Manhattan. But most buildings in midtown are waaay taller than that.”

“Polaris is gone by 1.5 deg S. Latitude. You’ve never been south of Earth’s Equator, or if so, you’ve never looked up.”

“Flat Earth is a problem only when people in charge think that way. No law stops you from regressively basking in it.”…

Here’s another: “I see only good things on the horizon / That’s probably why the horizon is always rising / Indoctrinated in a cult called science / And graduated to a club full of liars.” You can read the full lyrics on Gawker.

That was Monday night.

Tuesday afternoon, Tyson dropped his own dis track, called “Flat To Fact,” written and rapped by his nephew, Stephen Tyson. He tweeted: “As an astrophysicist I don’t rap, but I know people who do. This one has my back.” Here’s a sample:

“Very important that I clear this up / You say that Neil’s vest is what he needs to loosen up? / The ignorance you’re spinning helps to keep people enslaved, I mean mentally.”

(19) MEANWHILE BACK AT HARRY POTTER FANDOM. Jen Juneau explains “Why we’re crushing hard on Fleur Delacour from ‘Harry Potter’”. That was news to me, so I paid close attention….

My absolute favorite Fleur moment isn’t in the movies, which is a travesty (and one of the 32843 reasons why everyone who enjoyed the movies even a little bit should go read the books, stat!). It’s at the end of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, when Molly Weasley is tending to her son (and Fleur’s fiancé) Bill’s wounds. Molly starts lamenting over the fact that Bill will never be the same again, and that he was going to be married and everything, while Fleur is standing right there.

Fleur basically snaps and asks Molly if she thinks Bill won’t marry her now that he has been bitten by a werewolf. While Molly starts sputtering, Fleur is relentless, telling Molly that Bill’s scars are proof of his bravery and that she is good-looking enough for the both of them before snatching the ointment out of Molly’s hand and tending to his wounds herself. The scene ends with Molly offering Fleur her Aunt Muriel’s goblin-crafted tiara to wear on her and Bill’s wedding day, and the two cry and hug it out.

And though Fleur is not immune to using her beauty in the series to get ahead (but really, who hasn’t used a natural advantage to get ahead when they can?), there are two big lessons here: 1. Fleur is a certified badass who refuses to let looks define her or anyone around her, and 2. Read the books, y’all.

(20) THAT LOVABLE ROGUE VADER. Yahoo! Tech predicts Darth Vader’s role will be bigger on the inside than expected in Rogue One.

The next time we buy tickets for a Star Wars picture, we’ll be signing up for a movie that’s going to bring back the greatest villains in movie history. Darth Vader is returning to the Star Wars universe this December complete with original costume and voice and he’s going to have a bigger role than anticipated, a new report indicates.

Movie site JoBlo says it’s able to confirm that Darth Vader will indeed appear in the film, and his role will be bigger than just appearing in hologram messages. Even so, it’s not clear what Darth Vader’s role in the movie plot is. In fact, the actual plot of the picture is still secret.

What we know about the movie is that Rogue One tells the story of a group of daring rebels looking to steal the plans of the Death Star. The action in Rogue One takes place between Episode III and Episode IV.

(21) FORCEFUL CARTOONS. Nina Horvath posted examples of “Cartoons from the Dark Side: Star Wars Exhibition in Vienna” at Europa SF.

Tomorrow a new Star Wars exhibition will start and open its doors until March the 6th, 2016. It should not be confused with the Star Wars Identities exhibition that takes place in the same city at almost the same period of time, no, it is different: It shows funny cartoons inspired by the Star Wars universe. Like Darth Vader experiencing the result of his paternity test!

cartoon

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and David Langford for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]

192 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 1/27/16 The Young and the Rec List

  1. TechGrrl1972 — I knew staying up late to do laundry had a purpose!

    Yes, you’re just in time for the spin cycle…

  2. I thought Walking Drum was boring. I expected to like it, but never got out of the first chapter.

    Soon Toni Weisskopf will need to drop the crypto- from crypto-Puppy.

    Never assume rappers are stupid. I eventually internalized this. IOW, I believe B.o.B is trolling. And my god what a brilliant job of it too.

  3. (11) COMMENTS DEFACE HARTWELL OBIT.

    Oh dear, that Breitbart article is the gift that keeps on giving isn’t it?

    ETA: Fifth (actual).

  4. (2) SFWA MAY ACCEPT GAME WRITERS – Interesting. How would they approach a scenario where a game was written by multiple people though? Indies are more straightforward, but many AAA games tend to have an entire team doing it.

    (11) COMMENTS DEFACE HARTWELL OBIT. Enh. I think it’s less Puppification and more random troll. Though mind you, the difference may be non-existent.

    (12) WOMEN IN SF – I’m glad for her experiences, and that she had a much easier time of it in fandom than other women have had. She’s no doubt someone who has had a considerable impact on the field. I wish she focused on that more, instead of using it to discount the experience of. so. many. other. people. I wish she didn’t rely on the whole “never happened to me, so it never happened”.

    @Camestros – “Well I’m glad Toni W defeated that strawman she built.”

    Heh. Yes.

    (18) TYSON IN RAP BATTLE. – Yeah. I’m pretty damn sure that B.o.B. was (quite succesfully) trolling.

    (20) THAT LOVABLE ROGUE VADER – aaaand this is my cue to once again promote the current Marvel Star Wars run, particularly the Darth Vader issues and the Vader Down storyline. It makes it absolutely clear why he’s one of the “greatest villains in movie history”

    As soon as I can figure out how the TPB volume is set up, I will add it to my Hugo longlist (alongside Uber, Hawkeye, Secret Wars, Oglaf, Order of the Stick)

  5. (2) SFWA MAY ACCEPT GAME WRITERS

    I hope that goes through. There can be as much world building in an rpg sourcebook, and as much story in a game, as in a novel.

    (3) HURLEY SAYS FIGHT BACK

    The non-compete clauses she talks about are rather worrying. I’m reminded of a Charlie Stross account of how having his SF output tied down via an option to a publisher with a slow schedule prompted him to write the Merchant Princes series as fantasy so he could sell it elsewhere (except it was really SF pretending to be fantasy, of course!) A non-compete would have stymied even that maneuver.

    (10) PLAQUE FOR PRATCHETT.

    Very nice. Reminds me of the existence of streets named after Discworld.

    (14) MORE TO REMEMBER

    Because she never reads the comments, I won’t mention that Ann Leckie makes #10.

  6. Thanks for the link!

    Hurley’s non-compete thing (3) is interesting and sinister. Publishing doesn’t exactly have its act together at the moment, so new writers – like myself – have to subsist on a mix of traditional (in my case 4 franchise contracts) and indy (a series called Swords Versus Tanks).

    What publishers perhaps miss is that indy authors have a very immediate incentive to market themselves. If I do, say, a blog entry promoting my work, then that helps my conventionally published books. only see the effects when, eventually, assuming my book earned out, a royalty cheque arrives. However, I can see the effect on my indy works immediately and the money arrives a month and as bit later.

  7. 10 Women Who Changed Sci-Fi:

    Mark: Because she never reads the comments, I won’t mention that Ann Leckie makes #10.

    Yeah, what’s with posting photos of the other 9 women and not posting one of her as well?

  8. @Camestros Felapton,
    I see someone having fun with the 5 minute edit window. 🙂

    @JJ,
    The omission of an Ann Leckie photo is really obvious.

    (3) HURLEY SAYS FIGHT BACK.
    As a reader who is interested in how the sausage is made, these sorts of articles are fascinating.

  9. Last night I attended the reading/signing for Charlie Jane Anders’ book All The Birds In The Sky, which looks like a book I will enjoy from the first 18 pages that I read. So glad that I went! She has an essay up at Scalzi’s blog about the book, which does it much more justice than I can at this hour of the morning.

    Of course, then I read this morning about (1) and the event was at Brookline Booksmith at Coolidge Corner. I had no idea!

  10. @Paul Weimer

    El Reg’ is the tabloid of the IT press world in many ways and the commentards (in their own parlance) reflect this. It was only one comment though with several dissenters.

  11. (9) Grateful – I had just left teaching in those days, and remember thinking that McAuliffe sounded more impressive, the more I heard about her.

    (12) Toni Weisskopf wonders who is devaluing the work of women, and Kristine Kathryn Rusch sees that “the sf field was losing its history, particularly the history of women in the field”. Maybe Rusch can answer Weisskopf’s question. Though one would hope that the publisher would have a good idea of what the anthology editor is doing and why …

    Also, what Camestros and Snowcrash said.

    (14) More to remember – thanks especially for the links: pure gold, especially the Pratchett piece.

  12. (12) Some people seem to think that saying “women have been devalued in science fiction” means someone is saying “there have never been women in science fiction”. The fact that the list of women who published in science fiction in the “old days” always has the same names on it: McCaffrey, Henderson, Le Guin, Wilhelm, Cherryh, and a couple of others, is evidence of the problem, not evidence against it.

  13. (1) Shooting Incident.
    First of all, damn that it’s happened, again, again.
    Second of all, damn that a knife was involved, because now the gun-fanciers will display their repetitive wit in another series of sniggering “Hey why don’t they have knife control haw haw” posts and letters. Apparently, nothing is funnier to these simple souls than the idea of someone being killed by anything that’s not a gun. Knife? Ho ho. Car? Tee hee. A big stick? Comedy gold, and every one will bring out the “_____ control” jests from the crowd that thinks spelling someone’s name wrong is the highest form of putdown (and that putdowns are the loftiest human endeavor).

    (7) Today in History
    To the memory of Grissom, White, and Chaffee, who willingly sat on a massive explosive device, over and over, to explore where no one else had gone. I can’t fathom this type or degree of bravery. I can only salute it. To their successors in space, long life with a minimum of natural gravity.

  14. Aaron: Some people seem to think that saying “women have been devalued in science fiction” means someone is saying “there have never been women in science fiction”.

    I’m also getting really tired of hearing, from some women, “Well, I’ve never noticed or experienced sexism, or discrimination toward women, or erasure of womens’ accomplishments, so therefore it does not happen.”

    That’s such a myopic, “my perspective is the only true female perspective” view of the world.

    Just because you’ve never had a flat tire on your car, it doesn’t mean that no one else ever has a flat tire, either.

  15. 1) (Brookline Shooting): Michael A. Burstein (my local Campbell Award winner) still managed to make it over to Brookline Booksmith for Charlie Jane Anders’ signing.

  16. Re (12)

    In a very limited defense of Weisskopf, people will have the perspective on events that their situation allowed them. What you experience on your way up will shape your perspective on that journey; Toni Weisskopf would have had a different experience in forming her career than Octavia Butler or Anne McCaffrey or Ursula LeGuin. It’s only expected that she’ll tell the story of her rise differently from how another person, who had a different story to tell, would.

    Whether I think her story particularly representative, or her insights on the situation particularly good, is another story entirely.

  17. [ticky]

    Watched the latest episode of The Expanse, “Salvage,” yesterday. (I’d recorded it; it comes on at 11:00 PM where I live, and that’s a bit too late for me to stay up.) Holy crap, what a cliffhanger. I can’t wait for the finale.

    Also, whoever mentioned Betsy Cornwell’s Mechanica, thank you. I’m almost finished with it, and it’s just fabulous.

  18. 11) Well, I don’t know how low the puppies can sink to, but this is kind of sad. Dave Hartwell kept his mind open in many areas and was always more upbeat than not.

    It does seem to be one person there, and not a crew. Cheap shots at a dead man.

  19. Whether I think her story particularly representative, or her insights on the situation particularly good, is another story entirely.

    The important thing in a discussion concerning how women have been treated in general over the history of science fiction is context, which is something that the Puppy and Puppy-adjacent crew seem to be fairly weak on. Once you place the number of women in science fiction history into context, it becomes readily apparent that they were vastly underrepresented in the field.

  20. @3: Hurley says “You have to prove your mettle in the small presses or write something insanely marketable the first go-round just to break through.” Time was when authors had to prove themselves with shorter work before publishers would listen to their book proposals; are indy presses the new equivalent to short-fiction magazines? ISTM that publishers looking for quick hits aren’t helping themselves, let alone the field, but perhaps authors also need to expect not to start at the top?

    That doesn’t alter the main thrust of her argument that corporatized publishers are trying to get more and more out of authors for the same (at best) money. (And considering the huge number of titles published, a publisher arguing “that you know, fewer people are reading books” would show extraordinary gall; no one person could read even half the books published in the US these years.) It’s a sorry statement on today’s market that an Ellison-class attitude seems necessary for survival. I would have thought that’s what an agent is for (like the middle roller in an offset-lithography press); learn something every day….

  21. @Aaron

    Or how women in science fiction would need to go an extra mile, in whatever form, that their male colleagues would never dream of having to either do, or be subjected to.

    Or how reactions to more feminist writing can be part of the subversive “cool” of a new fashion. I’m thinking Cyberpunk.

  22. Re More To Remember,

    I was also very pleased to see Pat Cadigan among the listed authors.

    Re Women in SF

    Different women have different experiences in Fandom. Personally I never noticed myself being excluded or hit on… but one thing about being over six feet tall is that I don’t get as much of the physical intimidation crud as other people do, and I’m also fairly socially insensitive and might not notice sexual harassment that didn’t escalate to the physical. So I attribute my happy experiences to luck and don’t tell other women it doesn’t happen.

    And it is of course fine that many editors are women. It doesn’t follow that they will not discriminate against women writers, (if that is what Toni is trying to imply) because discrimination can be accidental and prompted by “gut-feelings” that arise from currently existing inequality and that pass unexamined in the course of a work day. Women are just as subject to that as anyone else.

    It would also seem to follow that if women were so prevalent at the assistant level in the past, one would reasonably expect them to be equally prevalent at the senior level now; I wonder how that is going.

    And yes, there were women SFF writers back in the day. There are certainly reporters working on deadline and not particularly familiar with SFF history who get that wrong. Those reporters do not represent the SFF fans, writers and editors who are pointing out a *real* problem–that women SFF writers who “made it” were a tiny fraction of all successful SFF writers and that there were other women writing good SFF who broke in but faded quickly away again, and thus almost certainly women writing good SFF who couldn’t break in at all, probably because they were less likely to be published, read, reviewed or have their work promoted because they were women.

    Conflating clueless reporters with fans, writers, and editors reads like an attempt to pretend there is no problem, and to do it by claiming that the fans, writers and editors are similarly clueless when they obviously are not. It is pretty insulting.

  23. On 19) There are actually a lot of great women in the HP books. Luna, Ginny, Molly, Fleur, Hermione…it’s utterly unsurprising that there are great swathes of the fandom utterly uninterested in the protagonist.

    In other news, I picked up ‘All the Birds in the Sky’ last night, but it’s going to have to wait until I’ve finished ‘Gulp’ by Mary Roach. Which is absolutely amazing. Not quite as good as ‘Stiff’ or ‘Bonk’, but right up there. She’s a national treasure, a science writer who is as fascinating and accessible as she is knowledgeable.

  24. Also, my perception of cyberpunk is that to make themselves look shinier, the authors involved deliberately erased the good parts of 1970s SF from their version of genre, which coincidentally erased the work of a lot of women.

    I also seem to recall a snarky term like “the Bryn Mawr girls” used for a wave of new editors in the … 1980s, I think.

  25. 14) The BBC’s list of women SF authors is attached to a radio show which may be more interesting than the list. From the BBC’s promo web page:

    In 1915 women could neither vote, divorce nor work after marriage, yet in that same year the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman envisaged a revolutionary world populated entirely by women who were intelligent, resourceful and brave. Her great science fiction novel Herland tells the story of three men who crash land on an island where the men have died out; women reproduce by parthenogenesis. Until Gilman’s book was published most visions of utopia, though turning the world on its head, struggled to envisage a place where gender had changed. …

    The programme is 30 minutes long and can be heard on demand at this link:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06yfhqr

    for at least 30 days. The audio streaming should work world-wide. It does require Flash.

    Apparently Herland is less obscure than I thought; Wikipedia notes about eight editions published since 1979.

  26. I vaguely recall a puppy discussion that included the Bryn Mawr girls during the recent troubles. I think it had been updated from the Seven Sisters to the Ivy League, but the concept was overeducated women entering the publishing business who were ruining science fiction with those liberal beliefs they learned in their expensive colleges.

  27. (12) “I never experienced this mythical time of science fiction being an old boys club…”

    I never experienced menstruation. Doesn’t mean periods don’t exist.

  28. Darren Garrison said:

    Coincidentally, the link to the Hartwell obit allowed me to notice another nice article about a nuclear power plant:

    The whole Geek’s Guide to Britain series has been fascinating stuff. You can find all the articles in this section, but note that they’re mixed in with other articles.

  29. I left a comment on Weisskopf’s piece, because as a reader and (mostly aspiring) writer, I’ve been neck deep in female SF/F authors since I was 9, and yet my lived experience didn’t cause me to discount the stories of several other SF readers and writers who have noticed that marginalization.

    Or imply it’s the modern women who are doing the erasing (she never says it out that straight but it’s easy to infer from what she does say).

  30. So I attribute my happy experiences to luck and don’t tell other women it doesn’t happen.

    +1 this. I started in computers in that sweet spot when PCs (which didn’t even mean IBM yet) were just getting affordable but still a niche market, so *anyone* with a PC was rare and guys would go “ooh, cool, you like computers too”. Doesn’t mean I don’t understand that when they were mega-expensive before that or mega-popular afterwards, the attitude was more “ew, girls in the boys-only club”.

  31. @Robert Whitaker Sirignano:

    Well, I don’t know how low the puppies can sink to, but this is kind of sad. Dave Hartwell kept his mind open in many areas and was always more upbeat than not.

    It does seem to be one person there, and not a crew. Cheap shots at a dead man.

    I think it was more using a dead man as a club to beat the living. The commenter actually seems to be saying that the giants like Hartwell are passing into the Great Unknown and they were all that was holding back the dread SJW tide. This has bupkis to do with the actual David Hartwell of course.

    One school of Puppies believes that it’s the aging, dwindling SMOFs who have ruined SF/F with their bizarre, passe theme for progressive themes, and they are destined to be swept away by a rising generation of libertarian-conservative indie authors and their readers. The other school believes there were giants in those days but now we’ve got nothing but Tumblr kids. The two schools do not evince any impulse to reconcile their theories.

  32. @Chip

    Re agents, There is a conflict of interest there. The agent cares about the best price, not necessarily the best contract.

  33. I’m sure that many people here (you are all more literate than what blokes like I is, after all) will be familiar with All That Outer Space Allows, the final volume in Ian Sales’s “Apollo Quartet”… where the main counter-factual element in his alternative 1960s is that science fiction is seen as women’s literature.

    And I think – with the exception of the protagonist – all the women writers and editors and fans mentioned were actual real people who were writing and editing and… fanning… around that time. But the SF world presented in Sales’s story is very different from the one we know. It’s almost as though, well, in the real world, people didn’t pay as much attention to the women in SF.

    So. Were there women in SF during the “Golden Age”? Yes, absolutely, and quite a few of them. Were they, well, marginalised?… It does kind of look that way.

  34. “Science fiction of the fifties—called by its admirers the Golden Age—had been a gender ghetto, occasionally infiltrated by woman wearing a false mustache, calling herself Andre, or using her first initials only.”

    Ursula K. Le Guin, The New Yorker, June 4-11, 2012

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