So I've long been a lover of bookstores. I love to go in, and browse the sci-fi section until some cheap paperback catches my eye. Sometimes I have authors or titles in mind that I might be looking for, but more often than not it'll just be a random choice, no real rhume or reason other than my general interests and how they are peaked by the back of the book and maybe the first couple of pages.

No research, no amazon reviews, no forum look ups. Just purchase based off of what's in front of me. This is actually how I came up on books, and I love the activity like digging for records. So long as there are bookstores left (unfortunately less and less) I'll do it this way. Fuck a Kindle (I actually own one but it's for the kids) or nook. Give me a $7.99 paperback anyday.

Okay, so earlier last week I did this and picked up this book "The Hermetic Millenium" read the back and I'm like yeah I can fucks with this. Realize it's second in a series, perfect. Grab the first book "Count to a Trillion" and start reading. I'm all in.

So in between chapters I start searching for the author trying to see what else he's done. Amazon has a nice list. Then I google search. Google's auto fill does "John C Wright bigot" awe fuck me!!

https://www.google.com/search?q=john+c+wright+bigot

So yeah now I'm trying to rationalize all this bullshit about why I should just keep reading anyway. Real talk I do like it, a lot. But fuck this dude fa real. I should probably stop reading cause no matter how good it is, there is little doubt at some point his questionable shit will become apparent in the writing and taint the whole thing.

So this got me thinking about all the questionable shit I've probably given passes for in the past because there was no internet yadda yadda yadda. And that led to thinking about how politically divided sci fi is in general. Like I'd be willing to say the greater majority of sci-fi writers are probably on the conservative right. I'm really into hard sf so it's really apparent there. Tons of military conservatism. But then there are the liberal niche's. Like 'afrofuturist' sci fi is without a doubt left leaning, but subsequently generally thought of as outside of the canon. How often is Octavia named amongst the greats in general SF circles. Delany but I think there's an exception because he came in the door guns blazing the hard sf-like ish out the door. He tackled pretty much every type of sf possible so it's undeniable.

Then you get things like cyberpunk which in some regards were liberal, and yet there was an impotence to that movement in the long run forcing folk like Neal Stephenson to start doing WWII tie ins and shit.

All to start a convo on how the politics of sci fi are some interesting shit, especially when you consider that despite what folk may think, these fantasies do have direct impacts on the charts of humanity into the future.

Talk to me.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

"If PZ is going to be intellectually consistent here, then he should be quite willing to support the abortion of all black fetuses, since blacks disproportionately commit murder and 17x more people could be saved by aborting black fetuses than permitting the use of abortion to save the life of a mother. 466 American women die in pregnancy every year whereas 8,012 people died at the hands of black murderers in 2010."

http://freethoughtblogs.com/amilliongods/2014/04/28/theadore-beale-and-the-hugos/

Found out because Wright defended him apparently:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/amilliongods/2014/05/10/john-c-wright-you-dont-get-it/

This is all very very interesting to me. It's like frontlines of some shit I've only been on the fringes of and now that I realize it I'm kinda pissed I wasn't more active or aware in the past.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Still trying to find the context but from that link above dude starts going in on black sf writer NK Jimisin:

"Jemisin has it wrong; it is not that I, and others, do not view her as human, (although genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens), it is that we simply do not view her as being fully civilized for the obvious historical reason that she is not."

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://nkjemisin.com/2013/06/continuum-goh-speech/
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-black-female-fantasist.html


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

always interesting to consider wider political....agendas of those that mass communicate

Card is definitely bigoted.


Gamertag = SeppDigi
PSN ID = Seppuku Digital
AIM/Skype = Asanokyo
Ustream.com = Shinri

R.I.P. ErroSannin

but people say it's kind of about accepting "people" different from you.

If that's the case, it's doubly strange.

but that extended UNIVERSE is EXTREMELY skewed toward tolerance. Between the three Speaker of the Dead books and the spin-off Ender's Shadow quartet that whole series was pretty influential on how I view people. It was really jarring to learn how different the guy who wrote those books was from the characters he'd created.

Like, either series is ALL ABOUT characters of wildly different backgrounds learning to coexist and prosper. The Shadow series in particular wraps up with the entire world operating under one government other than the United States and nations being recognized on cultural/ethnic grounds rather than international borders.

Maybe the strangest part of the whole OSC thing is that one of his best reviewed books, Songmaster, is specifically about a homosexual relationship.



~~~~~~~~~
"This is the streets, and I am the trap." � Jay Bilas
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517
Hip Hop Handbook: http://tinyurl.com/ll4kzz

If you go sifting thru sci-fi writers(or writers in general)for bigots or other questionable ‪ traits,you'll end up with a pretty poor pool of books.
Orson Scott is an asshole and it comes thru in his books but that doesn't make ender's game any less of a classic(though some of the later books are infuriating).
What's hilarious to me is that for the most part we don't exist in the future or at best we are so mixed that race is not a problem.
I'm just glad these attitudes did not affect me as a young reader or warp my sense of self.

but I've come to accept my opinion of it could easily have changed today. but i wouldn't give the mofo the time of day to find out. i actively didn't see the movie. i've actually got the download on a harddrive collecting dust debating whether i'll ever watch it.

i think it's one of those things you can just put aside but question whether you should

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

which is something that orson scott card definitely doesn't do today. i have almost as much problem with him as a book mercenary as i do with his politics.

the original ender's game wasn't special. the stuff that appealed to adolescent readers was there but the novel didn't get a lot of it's best stuff until he had to recontextualize it while writing speaker for the dead.

absolutely fantastic work. and i loved Ender's Game. it was brilliant. but SFtD was moving and was one of the best sf treatments of the issues around colonialism i've read.

>which is something that orson scott card definitely doesn't
>do today. i have almost as much problem with him as a book
>mercenary as i do with his politics.

yeah. the parallel ender's ish has gotten out of hand. the first couple were cool. but they had already started to feel mass produced and had lost my interest before i started paying attention to OSC's politics and careening into assholishness.
>
>the original ender's game wasn't special. the stuff that
>appealed to adolescent readers was there but the novel didn't
>get a lot of it's best stuff until he had to recontextualize
>it while writing speaker for the dead.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
** i move away from the mic to breathe in

always have me wondering why we don't exist in sci fi. I know the answer, but it makes me ask anyways.

http://www.dailydot.com/lifestyle/sfwa-sexism-sci-fi-nebulas-mary-kowal/

http://informationjustwantstobefree.tumblr.com/

http://www.dailydot.com/fandom/controversial-email-inflames-sexism-debate-sci-fi/

http://www.scribd.com/doc/206139199/SFWA-Original-Petition-by-Dave-Truesdale

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

there's a lot of latent brown people fear and misogyny in the books. i'm going to read the next one (not going to let politics keep me from reading a book), but i suspect it will be unsatisfying because the protagonist is supposed to be this fulcrum of history but he doesn't actually do anything other than be there.

i do think we have to remember that science fiction is a genre dominated by white men with time on their hands, and thanks to e-publishing we have access to all of their thoughts without a veneer of editing.

>there's a lot of latent brown people fear and misogyny in
>the books. i'm going to read the next one (not going to let
>politics keep me from reading a book).

why not? i think my problem is i just can't remove that context, and it starts ruining the read for me as all I can do is project ulterior motives onto every thing they write. but i can also put it into context if there's something I'm trying to get out of the reading. In this case I was just looking for some quick entertainment. the present information pretty much ruined the possibility of that.

>but i suspect it will
>be unsatisfying because the protagonist is supposed to be this
>fulcrum of history but he doesn't actually do anything other
>than be there.

I figured based on the summaries I'd read it seemed like it could only go good for two books without getting to the punch and the third one seemed like it hadn't happened yet. but i was good for the first two.

>i do think we have to remember that science fiction is a genre
>dominated by white men with time on their hands, and thanks to
>e-publishing we have access to all of their thoughts without a
>veneer of editing.

yeah not so surprisingly sf writers seem to think the internet is theirs to say as they please. i'm kinda wishing i hadn't opened this door because now i feel like i have to be more diligent in what's generally just my casual fun reading.

incidentally knowing the wright books would you recommend anything?

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

i wouldn't recommend either, no. i don't intend on reading his other books, but i prob will read the rest of this series to see if he pulls it off.

>yeah not so surprisingly sf writers seem to think the internet
>is theirs to say as they please. i'm kinda wishing i hadn't
>opened this door because now i feel like i have to be more
>diligent in what's generally just my casual fun reading.
>
>incidentally knowing the wright books would you recommend
>anything?

i don't know what you'd like or what you've read/haven't read. i'm reading "oh such a full sea" right now, which i like but the buzz out there is that it doesn't go anywhere. i reread almost all of iain bank's books this year after he passed and i'd highly recommend them.

i think the best "for fun" science fiction reading i've done over the past couple years was reading liu cixin's books after a they translated a bunch of them and put them out for kindle. i'd probably start with "sun of china" or "the wandering earth."

"containment" by christian cantrell and "the martian" by andy weir were good fun novels.

none of these other than some of liu cixin's stories are anything like the wright books in terms of scope though.

What's wild is that I was reading e-books before there was a kindle or a nook. Shit before there was an iPhone. But I haven't gone back to them in almost 7 years now and really don't want to. We'll see though, may have to sneak the kids Kindle.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I recall when I read Stranger in a Strange Land, which was my first exposure to Heinlein, not really digging the worldview but still enjoying the writing.

I'm not as familiar with sci-fi as I'd like sometimes, just due to feeling constrained on time and not feeling like I can relax with a book very often --- but I try to gradually check stuff out now and then. I also prefer hard sci-fi, I think - what I like is when there is a clear idea/projection being explored in a narrative -rather than stuff that leans more towards fantasy/plot. So while Asimov gets knocked for not having deep characters, I always liked him because he's using the story as a vehicle for an idea and does that part well.

So more recently I bought a copy of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars - not read yet - but I did this after reading his short stories in a compilation. He's more what I like and I gather leans left rather than right - environmental at times and all that. Some reviews online suggest that some people find him dry, and I understand why but it doesn't bother me that much.

There's enough sci-fi podcasts out there devoted to reading current stories that this isn't a bad way to keep up if you have time - I wish I listened as much as I used to, because I was able to hear a lot of the main award nominees in a given year.

>I recall when I read Stranger in a Strange Land, which was my
>first exposure to Heinlein, not really digging the worldview
>but still enjoying the writing.

I haven't read it in long enough to comment properly. When I did I was kind of meh with it. But I really wonder about 'enjoying the writing'. To go extreme, people say Hitler was a great speaker but was it also good writing or just effective?

So much fiction writing today is more focused on effective than good. I blame the Davinci Code. That has to be one of the worst written books of all time. Seriously. But it's effective as shit, meaning it keeps you turning the pages, makes you feel smart (if you're dumb enough to be manipulated like that, ie the majority of the book reading public) and touches on all the cultural signifiers. There's nothing clever about it, no technique at all, it just works. I'm guessing that it's the same with shit like Hunger Games and Game of Thrones, which is why they too are so easily adapted to visual media. They lack any depth which would be lost when taken beyond the page.

Sorry that was a tangent.

>I'm not as familiar with sci-fi as I'd like sometimes, just
>due to feeling constrained on time and not feeling like I can
>relax with a book very often

It's literally been a couple of years since the last time I've had time to read a book, but recent circumstances pretty much required I pick up some reading material to offset everything else happening in life. Lo and behold just doing that has taken me in to the stress filled reality of our modern society.

>--- but I try to gradually check
>stuff out now and then. I also prefer hard sci-fi, I think -
>what I like is when there is a clear idea/projection being
>explored in a narrative -rather than stuff that leans more
>towards fantasy/plot.

Hard SF is typically defined by an adherance to scientific consistency. No fantastical elements to muddle the potential science. I often like fanstastical shit as character and social studies, but am more pulled by hard sf that chart the possibilities from what we know right now.

Again I think it's an interesting break down to how right leaning the writers on that side of the spectrum are. It's a conservatism to only imagine from what we know right now and not imagine beyond the realms of known and predictable science. Other sf writers are more likely to take liberties in order to emphasize social and character points.

>So while Asimov gets knocked for not
>having deep characters, I always liked him because he's using
>the story as a vehicle for an idea and does that part well.

Yeah the concepts are the key to his work not neccessarily the characters, which is why I think a lot of his stuff doesn't translate as well to visual media which is all character driven.

>So more recently I bought a copy of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red
>Mars - not read yet - but I did this after reading his short
>stories in a compilation. He's more what I like and I gather
>leans left rather than right - environmental at times and all
>that. Some reviews online suggest that some people find him
>dry, and I understand why but it doesn't bother me that much.

There have been some environmental sf that I've read (havent read KSR) which could be understood as right leaning but at the same time holding to a level of conservatism. The book "Earth" comes to mind.

>There's enough sci-fi podcasts out there devoted to reading
>current stories that this isn't a bad way to keep up if you
>have time - I wish I listened as much as I used to, because I
>was able to hear a lot of the main award nominees in a given
>year.

Yeah I just don't have the time for podcasts. I may have to pick up an anthology. I'm thinking of grabbing Ancillary Justice last year's nebula winner. I really need some casual reading material to get me through the summer.



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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>I'm
>guessing that it's the same with shit like Hunger Games and
>Game of Thrones, which is why they too are so easily adapted
>to visual media. They lack any depth which would be lost when
>taken beyond the page.

Hunger games yeah, but it's a teen novel. It also does a pretty great job of having a diverse cast at least on the page Not that GOT needs any defenders, but the reason it translates well is because its so dense politics/character wise and fits in the HBO model of "Cram as much stuff in so people will want to talk about it at the water cooler in the morning"

I haven't read either so I'm no authority but...

>Hunger games yeah, but it's a teen novel. It also does a
>pretty great job of having a diverse cast at least on the page

is the diversity of those characters explored or are they interchangeable?

>Not that GOT needs any defenders, but the reason it translates
>well is because its so dense politics/character wise and fits
>in the HBO model of "Cram as much stuff in so people will want
>to talk about it at the water cooler in the morning"

I've only been privvy to a popular weekly podcast (sorry don't know the name) that a friend subjected me to. After listening to two episodes it became perfectly clear to me that the books as well as the show were absolute shite. I came to this conclusion because the podcast was obviously made by detail oriented fans who were obviously very invested in the series as a whole, and yet all they could do was talk about how absurd and outlandish it was... for two fucking hours each ep. I kindly thanked my friend for sharing the podcast and saving me the trouble of ever thinking I'd need to watch or read.


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>is the diversity of those characters explored or are they
>interchangeable?

Your asking alot here buddy, lol. Just be happy we throw in a few darkies who aren't beating drums, brutes, or extremely primitive. Lets help sci-fi realize that minorities are people first before you speak that crazy talk!

>>Not that GOT needs any defenders, but the reason it
>translates
>>well is because its so dense politics/character wise and
>fits
>>in the HBO model of "Cram as much stuff in so people will
>want
>>to talk about it at the water cooler in the morning"
>
>I've only been privvy to a popular weekly podcast (sorry don't
>know the name) that a friend subjected me to. After listening
>to two episodes it became perfectly clear to me that the books
>as well as the show were absolute shite. I came to this
>conclusion because the podcast was obviously made by detail
>oriented fans who were obviously very invested in the series
>as a whole, and yet all they could do was talk about how
>absurd and outlandish it was... for two fucking hours each ep.
> I kindly thanked my friend for sharing the podcast and saving
>me the trouble of ever thinking I'd need to watch or read.

Don't wanna dive into the "YOU GOTTA WATCH" speech since GOT does suffer from alot of the 'cism mentioned in the post...but unless you don't do fantasy at all you owe it to yourself to give an episode or two chance ...its another example of how geek culture's kind of invaded in ways I think would be very improbable ten years ago

>>is the diversity of those characters explored or are they
>>interchangeable?
>
>Your asking alot here buddy, lol. Just be happy we throw in a
>few darkies who aren't beating drums, brutes, or extremely
>primitive. Lets help sci-fi realize that minorities are
>people first before you speak that crazy talk!

LOL!! This is a piece a came across in my wknd research:
http://www.brokenfrontier.com/yes-but-is-it-racist-science-fiction-and-the-significance-of-9/

I'll swipe the first few paragraphs cause that's all you really need:

****BEGIN SWIPE****

I remember once, years ago, my father asked me why there weren�t more black characters in my stories. At the time my answer came down to the classic response, �Write what you know� �

�I dunno, dad. I went to a mixed high school. Half the population was black, but it wasn�t like the rest of the kids. Latino, Asian, East-Indian, White� we all hung out together, but the black kids mostly stuck to themselves. I just haven�t been around black culture enough to feel comfortable writing it.�

cultbarbw2terminusI wasn�t lying when I said that. But I wasn�t being entirely truthful, either. Deep down there�d always been that nagging fear of kicking over a hornet�s nest. And I�m not the only one. Over the years, I�ve known plenty of writers who�ve shied away from creating black characters due to the perceived consequences of getting it wrong. Unless your audience is what Hunter S. Thompson dubbed, �The Stupid Brute� crowd, getting tagged a racist can be the kiss of death for an up-and-coming author.

But that was then. Times have changed. Now I�m in the process of writing a novella that stars a black protagonist. The reasons for this are many. I�m more comfortable in my skills. My circle of friends has grown. And I�ve traveled more and been exposed to a great many things. But most importantly, the story demanded it. It crawled into my head one night and refused to be ignored.

Called OBJECTIVE: Terminus, the novella is the journey of an inner-city teen who goes from being a drug dealer to a refugee, to a soldier in the Second American Civil War. The hero being black is strictly a matter of form following function. The story could not be told any other way, nor should it have to.

****END SWIPE*****

Like this is the most hilarious things I read. I read it and burst out laughing for like an hour afterwards. And this is one of the good guys I'm sure. We're so fucked.

>Don't wanna dive into the "YOU GOTTA WATCH" speech since GOT
>does suffer from alot of the 'cism mentioned in the post...but
>unless you don't do fantasy at all you owe it to yourself to
>give an episode or two chance ...its another example of how
>geek culture's kind of invaded in ways I think would be very
>improbable ten years ago

I don't mind fantasy but it's not my first choice. I appreciate the place that it's having in our social organism is good for geek culture, but ultimately I can't be convinced its good. I mean just in general I don't trust any series that has more than three books. There's no way the author was thinking further than that ahead when they started, and odds are if it can just go on and on like that they are writing more on whim then intent at some point.


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>I mean just in general I don't trust any series
>that has more than three books. There's no way the author was
>thinking further than that ahead when they started, and odds
>are if it can just go on and on like that they are writing
>more on whim then intent at some point.

Because that's when there is a clear dive in the quality of the series.

Those first three books though...

http://i.minus.com/ib0PUQiYNKMirF.gif

Spectacular *evil grin*

>>is the diversity of those characters explored or are they
>>interchangeable?
>
>Your asking alot here buddy, lol. Just be happy we throw in a
>few darkies who aren't beating drums, brutes, or extremely
>primitive. Lets help sci-fi realize that minorities are
>people first before you speak that crazy talk!
>
werd

But yes to everything you've posted.

Agreed on all points offered so far, its quite weird but rather telling about the caucasian mind. Weird how even in the future our people are relegated to the 'back of the bus' so to speak. I've spoken here about this a number of times. I first noted it in the work of Terry Goodkind (Sword of Truth series) every 'ebony skinned' person was talked about like they were an animal. All magic or physical combat echoed this. It seems like Science Fiction is the last bastion of the noble savage that has been in literature since, like, forever. I was 12 when I read Goodkind then I went on to George RR Martin, same thing.... (where are the black folk in Westeros? They're there, but one has to read between the lines a bit, with the exception of the pirate dude that was the Dragon Queens dude for a time, I think-as it was more than a decade back when I read them- all the brown folk came from the 'Sun Islands)

What can we do? Write more books, I guess. With the browning of Amerikkka I am glad this issue is being discussed more freely. NK Jemisin (as noted above) has written beautifully poignant pieces about race/gender in sci fi as of late. If you havent read her work I highly recommend it. I have more to say but can never arrange my thoughts properly in this forum. COMIC BOOKS (or I guess their creators) are guilty as well. Barracuda in the Punisher series or anything by Garth Ennis really..... I could continue. Peace

Probably check her out.

Whole thing makes me want to write more, which is actually not the urge I needed when I was trying to find a book to read. *lesigh*

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

A god has lost his memory.
A blind, black lady finds him....and nurses him back to health. Its much more than that but thats a quick synopsis. Quite good, IMO

always appreciate when you post around here

and yes more of us need to write books. that's why i can't fuck with the "i don't need more fiction about brown and black struggle folk," we need those of us writing that as much as we need us writing sci-fi and spec fic, even though i'm not a fan of spec fic

She's got a new one coming out this year but I want to catch up on her before it comes out. Yet every time I'm in a bookstore her books are nowhere to be found. Considering her level of exposure (she seems to be highly regarded amongst peers) seems like a serious injustice.

I may have to just do an Amazon buy, but I literally haven't done that in months. Coincidentally I can't find William Gibson's new one on shelves anywhere either.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

the way he describes people of different color of skin in his book is well done

does it really matter?

all i ask is that the author try
also try not to be ridiculously overt about it

again this should be heavily considered when folks pass out accolades
like
"best ever"
"greatest"

the clear place is banality and average

its takes a great author to truly write great material and understand they bigotry and what place their books take in the pantheon of great writers

i think past writers should also be viewed with this modern perspective and the cards reshuffled

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

>i think past writers should also be viewed with this modern
>perspective and the cards reshuffled

for a short story too. where all of history's heroes are held accountable for their bias.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>>i think past writers should also be viewed with this modern
>>perspective and the cards reshuffled
>
>for a short story too. where all of history's heroes are held
>accountable for their bias.

i'd read it

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

experiencing a bit of a bump thanks to hipsters and the like

but they all seem to be in neighborhoods i simply don't fuck with, and for that reason don't really serve me as a reader. The one indpendent bookstore I regualr is Books of Wonder for kids, because it's just great and I've become cool with a lot of the folk there.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I dream of opening a book and record shop in 10 years. Call the place ANALOG.

But then realize that reads way too much like ANAL LOG.

And that's just... no.

Like I can't see the truck outside bringing you the sandwiches and then be asked to pay $10 for half of one like you just made that shit. And while I appreciate you cartering to my needs as a parent with the faux gourmet shit, you'd make a killing with some pb&j's.

But it's a minor fault considering how much awesomeness is happening in that space.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

i guess i tend to fall into plausible deniability
with whitewashed stories, to a lesser extent characters, etc

but dudes flat out talking subhuman, different species type stuff... cant ignore that level of imbecility

http://thebaffler.com/past/the_billionaires_fantasia

That actually makes a lot of sense.

Great read, thanks for that.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

.

w/ him no more as he's purportedly a HUGE right wing asshole.

heinlein was great for his time. yeah, his shit was jingoistic and white male patriarchal and all that but i give him a pass for his era.

l ron hubbard's politics and evil machinations dripped all through his writing, and he was a shitty writer to boot, so he kinda telegraphed where he was coming from.

i don't like, typically, if a writer's isms and b.s. comes through in their writing.

one of either gregory benford or greg bear (whoever wrote COSM ) was writing a black character and it sounded like ronald reagan or some fucking body wrote what they thought a black character should be. i was gagging through that. (the story was about one of these advanced particle accelerators fucking up and creating a black hole on earth and destroying the planet).

if someone is a private asshole, i prolly am ok with it. i'm not going to be able to rock w/ most ppl's opinions. if someone is all extra with it, then i'm prolly not putting $$$ into their pockets.

and it IS different in this day and age where you can google ppl, or read their blogs, etc.

my main turn off on contemporary sf (and not browsing in store and getting geeked off the jacket cover) is that everything is part 7 of a fucking 50 book series. iont got time for all of that.

i don't want to invest in your characters if i have to keep messing w/ you forever.

an exception (and one of the few fantasy writers i read, b/c i tend heavily toward hard sf) is terry pratchett. the discworld books are fantastic because they can mostly be taken independently, and they are like douglas adams for the fantasy genre


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
** i move away from the mic to breathe in

>one of either gregory benford or greg bear (whoever wrote COSM
>) was writing a black character and it sounded like ronald
>reagan or some fucking body wrote what they thought a black
>character should be. i was gagging through that. (the story
>was about one of these advanced particle accelerators fucking
>up and creating a black hole on earth and destroying the
>planet).

back in the 90's-00's I was just devouring those. Pretty much can't remember a lick of them now (though I'm pretty sure I read the one you're describing).

The thing I find most interesting is that so much of what was being talked about by them is obsolete. I mean sure there could be a black hole opened up in the center of the earth but seriously are we really worried about that anymore? There are so many other relevant issues that they just didn't put in their books.

I read William Gibson's non fiction book and it was kind of eye opening on the cyber punk movement because he basically through them under the bus. Like yeah that shit was completely wrong. That's why he shifted to short term projections.

ONe I do want to go back and reread was Bruce Sterling's "Distraction" I remember it being a laugh out loud riot for the absurdity of it all and yet I think if I read it today it might have more relevance than even he imagined.


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

his portrayal of women as dumb sex slaves is gross

sidenote for work i go to this conference every year. soooo much poon to be gathered on top of the free books! Never, ever see any other mes (black dude, 34, chillaxin)its quite weird. Skipping it this year but i thought it pertained a bit to the post.
http://thegrio.com/2014/05/27/diversity-an-issue-as-book-convention-opens/

EW YORK (AP) � Three years ago, guest speaker Mindy Kaling joked that publishing�s annual national convention, BookExpo America, resembled �a high school reunion where all the jocks were killed in a plane crash, and all the minorities, too.�

Little seems to have changed.

From Wednesday to Saturday, tens of thousands of publishers, authors, agents and librarians will meet at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York for a convention predominantly organized by whites, spotlighting books predominantly written, edited and published by whites.

Non-whites are virtually absent from BookExpo planning committees and prime promotional slots. Tavis Smiley is the only non-white among the 16 scheduled breakfast and author tea speakers, who also include Jodi Picoult, Lena Dunham and Anjelica Huston. There is little non-white representation for various other high-profile events, from �Buzz� forums for upcoming adult, young adult and middle grade releases to an all-white panel that will discuss discrepancies between how men and women fiction writers are treated.

�I don�t have a good answer for you,� said BookExpo event director Steven Rosato, who noted that publishers submit candidates for panels and other gatherings. �Clearly, there�s a gap between the industry and what�s representative of the country.�

Diversity in publishing has been in the news often in recent weeks. A study from a University of Wisconsin-based commission reported that just a tiny percentage of children�s books last year featured non-white characters, and an essay by Pulitzer Prize winning fiction writer Junot Diaz, published in The New Yorker, attacked the �unbearable too-whiteness� of creative writing classes.

A social media campaign, We Need Diverse Books, was launched earlier this month in response to a Blockbuster Reads panel scheduled Saturday at the Javits center that features four white, male authors: Jeff Kinney, James Patterson, Rick Riordan and Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler). In response, organizers created a new panel, The World Agrees: #WeNeedDiverseBooks, with speakers including Grace Lin, Jacqueline Woodson and Matt de la Pena.

�That this actually happened says almost everything you need to know about where the publishing industry is at with its �diversity issues,�� Diaz told The Associated Press. �You only need to look at the abysmally low number of kids� books by people of color that the industry publishes to sense that the problem is deeper than BookExpo.�

The book world has long struggled to advance from diversity panels to actual diversity, operating under a contradiction between its liberal, pluralistic ideals and the narrow range of its own population, especially in positions of power. Non-whites are absent, or close to it, on executive boards throughout, from the Association of American Publishers (AAP) to the American Booksellers Association (ABA) to the Association of Authors� Representatives (AAR). Overall, the industry has few prominent non-white publishers, editors, agents, booksellers or book critics.

At Hachette Book Group, CEO Michael Pietsch said diversity is an ongoing mission that has been difficult to fulfill.

�It�s been a great frustration,� Pietsch said. �We work hard at attracting diverse candidates, at all levels.�

Publishing officials and critics of the business cite a variety of reasons for the small number of non-whites, from the low pay that makes it challenging to recruit young people to an entrenched industry culture comfortable with what it knows. Gail Hochman, president of AAR, said her association sponsors an intern event and attendees �seem to me to come from all sorts of backgrounds.�

�If they wanted to pursue a job, I would think that some of them will get a job in publishing,� Hochman wrote in a recent email to the AP. �I do not see that the balance of diversity in publishing jobs matches balance in the basic community we live in � but I do not see barriers to offering jobs to various types of people.�

Nora de Hoyos Comstock, who runs a national Latino book club and international Latino social network (Las Comadres Para Las Americas) that the publishers association helps support, says she knows of many Latinos who are anxious to join the industry, but cannot. She said she agreed with Hochman�s comments, to a point.

�Maybe there are no perceived barriers to offering jobs,� Comstock said in an email. �But it is a similar argument to that being made before the courts today. Judge (Sonia) Sotomayor said it best in the response to the affirmative action ban � race matters.�

The marketplace has also worked against nonwhites as many African-American and Spanish-language bookstores closed over the past 20 years because of superstore and online competition. Oren Teicher, CEO of the booksellers association, acknowledged there are few non-white booksellers among independents and that communities served by member stores are �likely more Caucasian.� He said the association in recent years has tried to recruit more non-white members, but the results were disappointing.

�It�s absolutely something we could be working harder at,� Teicher said. �But it has been a struggle.�

�Clearly any attempt at a fix will have to confront a multitude of formidable structural challenges,� Diaz said, �but that means that the structural commitment to diversity has to be equally as formidable.�

Perhaps more like that is what's needed now. But I wonder how it should be approached. Will say more below.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I mean at this point it is institutionalized (evident by the whole Hugo debacle), which means it's not just about creating alternatives but rather somehow affecting that existant institution. I don't think it's just about writing more diverse material, I'm quite certain that a lot of that stuff already exists, but the majority of it likely at the independent level that keeps it on the fringe (if lucky) or completely outsied (more likely) of what's been established. So situated it's easy for the publishers and orgs to make diversity picks without having to engage with the full.

I wonder how many of the independent writers are members of the SFWA. Is there an internal caucus for addressing these things. Ultimately it's not so much about the writing but getting the writing to the same exposure level.

But then again I think this goes back to the separations by subgenre. I think there are levels of credibility by genre where hard sf is at the top of the list. With it being the least diverse it keeps the diversity from trickling down so to speak.


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I was reading an article about the percentages of white publishers, editors, and agents to people of color in the same positions and the amount of writers. it's worse than hollywood

I need to find that damn article

Also some of the stigma against self-publishing needs to be removed more DIY aaproaches to completing and publishing books can be embraced

My first thought was to start invading other writer's worlds. Like I think it'd be a dope anthology to get a bunch of PoC writers to do short stories that take place in the classic worlds of SF. It'd have to be done in a tasteful yet poignant way that took it a step beyond fan fiction so as not to be marginalized though.

My other thought is the need to step the short story game up. It's been a while since i read the monthly and quarterlies for SF but I know those were always the breeding grounds and inevitably we were always underrepresented. I think it's not by selection but by submission. Rather than making another of our own anthologies, it'd be interesting to get a collective of writers together that go on a submission binge for a year, just playing the numbers game. Each of them submitting a story a month to the journals. If they start receiving that level of volume of material and there's a record of it, they either have to acquiesce to publishing it on merits or showing their racist hand.

>I was reading an article about the percentages of white
>publishers, editors, and agents to people of color in the same
>positions and the amount of writers. it's worse than
>hollywood
>
>I need to find that damn article

Please do.

>Also some of the stigma against self-publishing needs to be
>removed more DIY aaproaches to completing and publishing books
>can be embraced

You know I think the biggest problem with self publishing inevitably falls to one key thing - editing. Strong editors are hard to come by let alone to come by when you're DIY and when you're DIY you won't let the lack of one stop you, which is unfortunate. And I'm not just talking copy edits, I'm talking a real editor who will help you ensure that your work flows as best it should to be received well. As much as I want to support your independent novel I can help but notice that it may have been ten or more times better with strong editing and it's actually hurting your cause that it doesn't, particularly if we're trying to crush the publishing buildings.


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>You know I think the biggest problem with self publishing
>inevitably falls to one key thing - editing. Strong editors
>are hard to come by let alone to come by when you're DIY and
>when you're DIY you won't let the lack of one stop you, which
>is unfortunate. And I'm not just talking copy edits, I'm
>talking a real editor who will help you ensure that your work
>flows as best it should to be received well.

Nah it's all marketing, and in the case of a book a lot of that falls to cover design. I say this as I read the second book in Wesley Chu's Tao series (http://www.amazon.com/Wesley-Chu/e/B0095VR1KC/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1403404404&sr=8-1) knowing that I'm going to read the third despite the fact that its horribly edited. From copy edits to just continuity errors which an editor just should have caught. Matter of fact I'll just go ahead and say it's less than par writing, the plot is contrived, yadda yadda yadda. And yet I still picked it up, mainly because the marketing targeted me. The cover, the title, the blurb on the back. Its one of those I should have known better but I did it anyway cause I need something to read on this plane things. I kept thinking this is on par with a self-pub title, but if it were it would have had the context clues that would have turned me off. Without those it was like wahtever I'll give it a shot. Kinda weird.


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

So Michael Bay picked upuChu's latest novel. PredictablePredictable.


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieljoseolder/diversity-is-not-enough?s=mobile

I love the notion that it goes beyond diversifying to normalizing. Normalizing the experiences from people of color into the vision of America.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>Also some of the stigma against self-publishing needs to be
>removed more DIY aaproaches to completing and publishing books
>can be embraced

Haven't read it but the description:

"There Needs To Be A War Going On Somewhere: Lieutenant James Shelley commands a high-tech squad of soldiers in a rural district within the African Sahel. They hunt insurgents each night on a harrowing patrol, guided by three simple goals: protect civilians, kill the enemy, and stay alive-because in a for-profit war manufactured by the defense industry there can be no cause worth dying for. To keep his soldiers safe, Shelley uses every high-tech asset available to him-but his best weapon is a flawless sense of imminent danger . . . as if God is with him, whispering warnings in his ear."

http://www.amazon.com/The-Red-First-Linda-Nagata/dp/1937197131/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1401819702&sr=8-1&keywords=Linda+Nagata

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

sexist and xenophobic messages underneath.

this genre while my favorite due to it's creativity is full of racism. most that people don't even realize.

So I picked up Ancillary Justice, with a little more research this time prior to purchase. Female author who won the Nebula award for it last year. I think it's her first book too.

At any rate in the first chapter what stood out, she uses "she" as the pronoun for everything, even going so far as to have her character (an AI) describe not being able to distinguish male from female. This is a non-earthen story so of course any liberties can be taken, but I always find things like this a bit forced. Maybe it'll serve the story in someway. Like when LeGuin did similar it was because the beings weren't male or female until mating season and (I think) even then they could go both ways from one season to the other.

There were no Jemisin books at B&N :( Also despite being the Nebula winner Ancillary Justice was tucked away on the shelf with only one copy. You'll also note on Amazon there's like a two week waiting period for the book.

Another thing I noticed, and I'd seen this before, but there's a whole separate teen fantasy (not sci-fi btw). It has some serious billing in the store. Shit like that didn't exist when I was coming up. Like there were no writers specifically writing sci fi and fantasy for kids. I wonder what that priming is like. Is the leap to adult stuff happening. And who are writing for these kids?

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

In fact I felt that the PC stuff read real novelty like. I forgot who th ebrown skin references were because once you're talking interstellar without an earth focus it's just inclusory not point making unless you actually make a point about it. The gender thing was drawn out but still didn't really go anywhere. Apparently there was a lot of androgeny around the universe which depending upon where you were you could recognize the gender cues and other places you couldn't and it was offensive to mis call someone but then she pronouns were somehow gender neutral. Yet there was nothing about the nature of the relations that made any of this relevant to the story. There were class war things which were nice because in a way they mirrored white privilege but again presented more class which leaves it open to interpretation, but a statement is made when the upper class is killed in an unjustified way though they were plotting their own injustice. That may seem spoilerish but it's foreshadowed so heavy it's not ruining anything.

All of these things are the type of stuff that make people say the author is refreshing, but to me just aren't the heart of the book. The heart of the book is interconnected AI's and how they develop over time. Actually I guess technically they are cyborgs, but with no memory of their human hosts its really about AI's. That aspect of it was really really intriguing and kept me in. So much so I'll probably read the next one. There's nothing wrong with the stuff I highlight above, it's done tastefully I guess, but again it's not the point of the book. Thankfully I like the point of the book.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I don't think I realized how powerful the world building was until I was ready to cop book two and realized it was going to be taking place back in this world. The main character is really rich in part because of her travels in the first book which gave a background which tied her both completely in the AI field while almost equally human in her uniqueness. Because of it she got this perspective on the world which she lives n that allows the reader to understand all the nunaces of social cues.

In the first book this is restrained because she;s still 'fitting in' socially, but going into the second book she is in essence liberated and the world which has been established will take on such new meaning.

At least that's what I'm hoping.

But it's major with regard to this topic because it is an author who has created a character which can navigate through the social politics of the established world in a way twhich better gives the reader a beautiful view of how social orders play out. It's kinda brilliant.


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

"So, my original goal was to portray a society that genuinely did not care about gender. Using a single pronoun for everyone was just one part of that, but the more I played with it, the more interesting the effect was. Ultimately, of course, using “she” for everyone doesn’t actually convey gender neutrality, and I realized that pretty quickly. But I think if I’d chosen to use a gender neutral pronoun—e, or sie, or zie, or any of the others—it would have produced an interesting effect, but it would have lost the way that “she” automatically goes straight to the reader’s perceptions. No, that’s not the best way to say it. I mean, the very long familiarity long-time English speakers have with the pronouns “he” and “she” means that we react to them without actually thinking much about it. We don’t stop to ask ourselves what they mean, they just go right in and trigger a particular set of associations, almost automatically, unconsciously. By using “she” for everyone, I get (for many, but of course not all readers) the effect, once those associations are triggered, of undermining or questioning them, in a very basic way, a sort of... experiential way. It’s one thing to tell someone about the masculine default, and have them understand the idea. It’s another thing to actually demonstrate how it works on your reader. But it only works (for the readers it worked for, because of course it didn’t work for everyone) because we parse those pronouns so thoughtlessly.

The various gender neutral pronouns don’t have that long familiarity for most of us. The effect I mention above, which quite a few readers have explicitly commented on and appreciated, would have been lost if I’d used one of them. It was a trade-off, I think. I can’t blame folks who wish I’d used a gender neutral pronoun instead, of course, and I’m hoping to see those pronouns used more so that they become more generally familiar. I’m seeing singular “they” for known people (instead of the nebulous “don’t know who this might actually be” use of singular they) used well in short fiction lately, and I’ve been really happy to see it. But myself, for this particular project, I think the effect that I got, at least with a sizable number of readers, was worth the trade-off.

So, in some ways I succeeded. In other ways I didn’t. But the result was interesting and gave a lot of people something to think about and discuss, and I’m glad of that."


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

portrayal of US in a book? Read that! I only picked it up cuz Every Single conspiracy post mentions it. Quickly its about aliens landing on earth (I should say orbiting I guess) and completely freaking folks out, they dont reveal themselves for 10 years. A Great, quick weekend read. I was astonished at how old it was, if you've read it dont spoil it for anyone. It was the first book of the type I've encountered though, and while it fits into this post I really cant divulge more or there would be no point to reading it. But black folks, christianity and the internet are thems explored....it was quite good, and short!

I need to read it again because while I remember the plot and the reveals, I can't say I remember the aspects you're talking about. Especially don't remember any impressions of race from the book. Hopefully I can find it before the weekend, it'll be a great read on this flight I'm taking.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

a black dude was the last human alive! figured out how to make it back to the overlords world....

Looking at the reviews on goodreads is hilarious. This story spoke to me as a former christian and a lot of imagery and metaphor brung to mind everything from Dante to Milton.

For a book written in 1954 its inter racial relationships and black hero (?) made it memorable for me.

SAGA by Brian K Vaughn is also stellar stuff and highly recommended, if you havent already read it. My words wont do it justice

http://io9.com/syfy-turning-arthur-c-clarkes-childhoods-end-into-a-mi-1630307900

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

"Addendum: This post originally stated that Arthur C. Clarke was straight, an error which has now been corrected, and for which I apologise. While Clarke's friends knew he was gay, he wasn't publicly out -- hardly surprising, when you consider that homosexuality wasn't decriminalised in England until 1967. By then, Clarke was 50, and had already been living in Sri Lanka for nearly a decade, having relocated in large part because of that country's more tolerant laws. Despite both his other social privileges and his status as one of the genre's foremost figures, the politics of the day clearly impacted Clarke's ability to live and speak freely in his home country. That being so, how much more difficult would it have been for more vulnerable, less famous fans and writers to be heard? I say again: the politics of dissent were not absent from Golden Age SFF; their visibility was simply suppressed."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/foz-meadows/politics-belong-in-scienc_b_5246418.html

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

A drink in our hands, we talk about what most publishing folks talk about when they�re off the clock: books!

Fresh beer in hand, I jumped into a conversation about Orbit books, Hachette�s science fiction/fantasy imprint. �They do great stuff. Love Nora Jemisin�s work.� A friend of mine nodded, sipped their drink. �I just wish more people read her,� they said. �Some folks see a woman of color writing epic fantasy and they don�t give her a chance.�

�People really won�t read her because of that? What the hell?� It was boggling to me, (still is), that there are readers out there who will refuse to read the work of a writer because they are a woman or a person of color, let alone both. My friend only smiled sadly, shrugged.

I may have at this point yelled something akin to, �But that�s horseshit! Her stuff is great!� There has never once been a book of hers that didn�t make me feel utterly wrenched through and through by the end of it.

As the conversation moved on, I knew I couldn�t let it go. I knew who I had to spotlight next for Book Riot.



Jemisin first came on the scene with her novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, the first book in her Inheritance Trilogy. A novel of gods enslaved by their followers, a young woman on the fringes forced to survive the power struggles of an empire, set far from the standard Eurocentric model,it rattled the genre world with its incredible depth, pain and power.

The next two novels in the Inheritance Trilogy, The Broken Kingdoms and The Kingdom of Gods, follow this world into the future as we see what time does to man and god alike, and the consequences of that empire. With influences of Hinduism, Jung, Christianity and more, combined with cutting prose, overwhelming compassion, and characters that range in ethnicity, sexuality, age, ability, creed and mortality, Jemisin�s Inheritance Trilogy is intoxicating.

Her devotion to showcasing the Other in settings that break the unwritten canon of standard fantasy storytelling is just one of The Inheritance Trilogy�s major triumphs and would be a calling card of Jemisin�s work to come.

Her next series was the Dreamblood duology, The Killing Moon and The Shadowed Sun respectively. Epic fantasy inspired by Egyptian mythology and culture, Jemisin follows the Gatherers, a priesthood of the goddess Hananja, tasked to walk the dreams of its citizens, ensuring peace is kept in the city-state of Gujareeh. Another success, it pushed even further into worlds and cultures unexplored by fantasy literature, while still examining the consequences of empire and religion on a moon orbiting a gas giant.



Jemisin doesn�t shy away from the things that make us human. She charges headlong into the muck and mire that we all wade through: our overwhelming obsession with power and control, our hunger for healthy sexual relationships and the pain that can come of seeking them, and our quest to reconcile what our faith demands of us against what we demand of our faith.

She doesn�t play it coy, either. When bodies press against each other, you can feel the passion and anxiety of two people meeting each other in the dark. I find her honest exploration and appraisal of sex, sexuality, and relationships in fantasy literature to be incredibly refreshing. Too often, sex in fantasy lit can be depicted as brutalized, decadent or ignored. Jemisin takes the time to explore the power that can come of a healthy (or unhealthy) sexual relationship and its reverse, in many different gendered and sexual pairings.

And after all this, even if her fiction doesn�t appeal to you (though I hope it does), her essays, nonfiction, and blog posts are absolutely worth your time. Jemisin takes to task those who view the world through a narrow, hate-filled and destructive lens with fiery courage and sharp, unapologetic prose, while at the same time offering critiques and solutions to the problems she sees. A pillar of support for the genre community, Jemisin vehemently encourages others to rise up and fight against the hate and bigotry that exists. (Her Guest of Honor speech at Wiscon 38, addressed recent racist and sexist attacks within the genre community. Her call to arms response is a thing of beauty).

Nora Jemisin witnesses in her writing. She doesn�t turn from the pain in our lives), but she also revels love, compassion, and magic. Her unflinching exploration of power, religion, sexuality and the Other, in worlds inspired from cultures and mythologies around the globe are what set her apart from the norm.



Jemisin deserves to be read, far and wide and to the ends of the earth. With a new series on the way from Orbit, Jemisin�s star is only going to burn hotter, rise higher, and shine brighter.

Keep your eyes on that star.

It�s going to some great places and you don�t want to miss it.

Like I said I'm reading Ancillary Justice above which is published by Orbit. So I went to their site and the page of authors http://www.orbitbooks.net/author-links/

There are close to 100 authors listed there and Jemisin is the only black one. Actually looking right now she's the only person of color. 1 fucking percent.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

It's in my Amazon cart, but I always see it on the shelf and figure I'll pick it up one day. BUt everytime I go to a store and read the back I lose the "I gotta read this now' interest. If you've read it please get me excited about it, because I want to be.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

The book itself reminds me Bones/Spock...as far as the protagonist and the other main character....

But its a beautiful book with enough detail that should could write another totally different book and use that same world she built. I am planning on going back to read her first novel now.

But I'm just now reading that it's in the same world as the last book. I'll probably definitely go back and read that one, but it's weird that most of the pre writeups didn't even mention it was a sequel.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

It was obviously further world building from the previous, though other than subtleties it did stand on its own enough fro me to not feel like I had missed essential parts of the story by not reading the first book. Yet it had the clear feel of a series that leaves me longing to learn more about the details of the world to bring it all together.

The writing was really well done, and the characterization of the 'alien' cultures and how they relate to each other socially as a reflection of basic human social interactions was great. As a huge leguin fan she'll need a lot more under her belt to live up to the parallel praise she's been receiving, but she's weaving a wonderful world which has pulled me in. Though stepping back from it now as i type this paragraph I'm reminded of how it closely mirrors leguin's hainish books at least in the formation of it. Hmmmmm...

Getting the first book now, and there better be a third because other wise that was one of the worst endings ever. Actually it still was pretty bad as an ending (not with what happened just how it just ends, when there's obvious still more to be told).

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I started about a month and a half ago. I was into it through the first couple hundred pages. But then it started feeling daunting mostly because of her style. So I was picking up other books on the side. I'd still find myself wanting to go back but couldn't really hang in for too long without taking a break.

What's interesting in the short they ad at the end 'Awakened Kingdom" is that she uses her character to talk to the critics of her style. It's interesting because it works and really highlights that it's not some literary choice, but meant to be the voice of the chcaracters themselves who are telling the story.

Over all it is really good. I would say that while in hindsight I can see how the style of voice makes sense and in many ways is beautiful, while I was reading it it was hard to get through. I'd get to points where it was clear wow there's another hundred fifty pages of this one perspective before it all gets resolved. There are so many rich chartars in each of these stories but you're just limited to the one point of view. Thankfully all of the resolutions deliver, and ultimately they all connect to each other in an aazing work of world building. But after reading over 1000 pages I only saw that world through three (and a bonus) sets of eyes.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I think it's more fantasy than sci-fi, but I just wanted to be able to share my outrage.

In quick summation, the first novel tricks you into thinking you've finally found a female protagonist of color.
She's sold into slavery but runs away and joins an army with the help of her god. She becomes an empress.

Next book is all about this white woman who has to fight to take hold of her rightful throne
after her father dies. She gets help from a Christ-like figure.

Next book, white queen has to join forces with others (including magical Asians) to stop the black empress
from taking over the world in the name of her god, which turns out to be a demon lord.
The black empress is defeated, and her exiled son helps everyone else stop her. Because he sees the white light.

Please tell me someone else has read this bullshit and threw the book across the room? lol.

>I think it's more fantasy than sci-fi, but I just wanted to
>be able to share my outrage.
>
>In quick summation, the first novel tricks you into thinking
>you've finally found a female protagonist of color.
>She's sold into slavery but runs away and joins an army with
>the help of her god. She becomes an empress.
>
>Next book is all about this white woman who has to fight to
>take hold of her rightful throne
>after her father dies. She gets help from a Christ-like
>figure.
>
>Next book, white queen has to join forces with others
>(including magical Asians) to stop the black empress
>from taking over the world in the name of her god, which turns
>out to be a demon lord.
>The black empress is defeated, and her exiled son helps
>everyone else stop her. Because he sees the white light.
>
>Please tell me someone else has read this bullshit and threw
>the book across the room? lol.



█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

existed.

that's a messed up bait and switch


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
** i move away from the mic to breathe in

I was compelled to see it through. I guess I was hoping for some redemption for someone.
Either the author, or the empress's son or SOMEthing. Anything worth saving. But nope.

It's been years now since I read those books, and I still get mad whenever I think about it, lol.
I really liked the empress even though she was bloodthirsty. She was an ass-kicking brown-skinned woman --
so naturally, she had to turn out evil. And the white woman was on the side of Good.

first book in the series had 22 one star reviews
second book had 0 one star reviews
third book had 2 one star reviews

TWENTY TWO ONE STAR REVIEWS FOR THE BLACK MAIN CHARACTER!!

And all the comments basically talk about how horrible that character is and how people hated her.

"The main character, Heket, had absolutely no redeeming quality to make the reader identify or sympathize with her."

"The primary character Hekat is just annoying as all hell. I just finally tossed it after reading about 75% of the book and realizing that I hate it more with every turned page."

In the ones for the second book its wild because folk are like if you made it through the first book you'll get your redemption here.

This is the audience. We are not it.


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

comments.

is it any wonder, then, that we e-reinforce? the world still on some separate but unequal shit and these electrons only serve to amplify it.

prolly a good sf premise in there.

if you've ever read a book or comic w/ a telepathic character disillusioned by how fucked up all the people are around them. that'd be some miserable shit.

a black female character with body image issues and ability to read minds would either have to have Jesus-level restraint or be a full blown psychopath, based upon the type of vibes she'd be picking up from people on the daily.

that's heartwrenching to even contemplate.

imagine walking down the street and real ppl thought balloons are showing the average yahoo / youtube comment bullshit? if i had telepathy + telekinesis, i'd be squeezing dudes hearts to a dead stop on the regular.

be some shit for big data to figure out.

mad atypical cardiacs and strokes following a geographically contigous pattern. cross reference w/ other environmental factors. pull out the statistical needle. one geo-sig in common, +/- 10 meters, from each event.

turns out it was this psychic jawn basically deading folk for thought crimes.

she would be very useful.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
** i move away from the mic to breathe in

if you won't let me know cause i might.

>a black female character with body image issues and ability to
>read minds would either have to have Jesus-level restraint or
>be a full blown psychopath, based upon the type of vibes she'd
>be picking up from people on the daily.
>
>that's heartwrenching to even contemplate.
>
>imagine walking down the street and real ppl thought balloons
>are showing the average yahoo / youtube comment bullshit? if i
>had telepathy + telekinesis, i'd be squeezing dudes hearts to
>a dead stop on the regular.
>
>be some shit for big data to figure out.
>
>mad atypical cardiacs and strokes following a geographically
>contigous pattern. cross reference w/ other environmental
>factors. pull out the statistical needle. one geo-sig in
>common, +/- 10 meters, from each event.
>
>turns out it was this psychic jawn basically deading folk for
>thought crimes.
>
>she would be very useful.


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>if you won't let me know cause i might.
>
>>a black female character with body image issues and ability
>to
>>read minds would either have to have Jesus-level restraint
>or
>>be a full blown psychopath, based upon the type of vibes
>she'd
>>be picking up from people on the daily.
>>
>>that's heartwrenching to even contemplate.
>>
>>imagine walking down the street and real ppl thought
>balloons
>>are showing the average yahoo / youtube comment bullshit? if
>i
>>had telepathy + telekinesis, i'd be squeezing dudes hearts
>to
>>a dead stop on the regular.
>>
>>be some shit for big data to figure out.
>>
>>mad atypical cardiacs and strokes following a geographically
>>contigous pattern. cross reference w/ other environmental
>>factors. pull out the statistical needle. one geo-sig in
>>common, +/- 10 meters, from each event.
>>
>>turns out it was this psychic jawn basically deading folk
>for
>>thought crimes.
>>
>>she would be very useful.
>
>
>█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
>Big PEMFin H & z's
>"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1
>thing, a musician." � Miles
>
>"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

do it
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

i think i will.

i already got some ideas on how to spin it, etc.

worried a bit about how to to not have it be too explicit. maybe she puts asterisks in her thought balloons, b/c she sensitive like that, when she walk past a dude thinking, LOL, DIE NI&&ERB*TCH!!!

i thought about it. there are lots of ways you could murk folks with finely tuned PK powers. matter of fact, my boys started on this topic kind of randomly and it just resonated b/c i'd had this idea not too long ago, so i floated the plot and they were like, yeah, do that.

i think it would say a lot about our society.

the few times i click on yahoo or youtube comments i legit say to myself, 'why am i wading through poison, again?'

that'd be terrible to deal with that on the daily. the emotional callous thick enough to not randomly stab ppl would need to be mad thick.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
** i move away from the mic to breathe in

>i think i will.

I been spinning it in my head for a minute and have some things I can throw at you below. But just a note, I'm more and more serious about the second paragraph in post #53. I'm going to be updating there in a bit with how that type of targeted approach would work. All this stuff we're doing in house may count but literally it doesn't mean shit to the SFWA and that's the reason we've had so much trouble getting those alternate perspectives.

>i already got some ideas on how to spin it, etc.
>
>worried a bit about how to to not have it be too explicit.
>maybe she puts asterisks in her thought balloons, b/c she
>sensitive like that, when she walk past a dude thinking, LOL,
>DIE NI&&ERB*TCH!!!

My thought was not to do it from her perspective, but to take it from the investigators perspective. I really liked that aspect of what you initially wrote, in terms of the geo pattern. So there's a trail to find. The racial aspect doesn't even have to be noticable for a grip. All these other alternate theories. Trying to connect the victims, but ultimately the trail leading the investigator to the girl.

My shit would have been the investigator goes out on a whim alone and actually finds the girl. But she's in disbelief in her head, like there's no way this __________ could have been responsible. Then the girl says in her head "oh yeah' and offs the officer so in that moment you get the motive, but it just ends there.

The bulk of the story being at how everyone is in denial that the victims could have possibly done anything wrong. I was actually thinking the girl would like write their thoughts on them like scarred on their forehead. So Little old white lady with "dumb ni**er" written on her forehead/ Her neighbors saying stuff like 'no she's not black, i don't think she even knows any black people."

LOL!!

Twisting it all around.

>i thought about it. there are lots of ways you could murk
>folks with finely tuned PK powers. matter of fact, my boys
>started on this topic kind of randomly and it just resonated
>b/c i'd had this idea not too long ago, so i floated the plot
>and they were like, yeah, do that.

Only caution I'd make is try not to make her too powerful. Powerful yes but not undefeatable so that it's not about her power but more about who she is.

>i think it would say a lot about our society.
>
>the few times i click on yahoo or youtube comments i legit say
>to myself, 'why am i wading through poison, again?'
>
>that'd be terrible to deal with that on the daily. the
>emotional callous thick enough to not randomly stab ppl would
>need to be mad thick.

It needs to be wrote.


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I'd be really interested in how she'd explore the different thoughts she encountered and how she would form the groups of people around her. Like it would be great if she was amazingly well-adjusted despite this ability you'd expect to suck.

Sorry yall since I opened this pandora's box i'm just looking at everything now.

So Jim Frenkle's a long time editor at Tor had a history of sexual harrassment, the last occurance was at WisCon last year. This time it was reported - http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/on-sexual-harassment-at-conventions-elise-matheson-speaks-out/

Soon after he was let go of from Tor. Incidentally his wife was once married to an author he used to edit Vernor Vinge. Okay that's getting a little soapy...

But then.... bladaow!!! He works as a volunteer for this year's WisCon.

*edit* just to add this link which if you scroll to the bottom includes link after link of more sexual harassment stuff including Asimov the ass pincher and Ellison the breast grabber: http://radishreviews.com/2013/07/01/harassment-and-the-back-channel/

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I'm suddenly finding myself vested in this whole thing trying to suss out the subtle truth behind all the ins and outs of this shit. I've started writing too, with a keen nose on how to be effective. EFFECTIVE.

At any rate this came onto my radar:
http://www.christopher-priest.co.uk/journal/1077/hull-0-scunthorpe-3/

I don't know any of the books he's talking about except Stross which is interesting because he's pretty much the only writer I've read consistently in the past five years but I've always considered it interesting ideas with fluffy pulp like writing which Priest kind of nails on the head (without admitting it's at least an interesting idea however), so Im inclined to think this isn't just him hating. But LOL at his conclusion:

"But there is a better way forward, and here it is.
1. The present panel of judges should be fired, or forced to resign, immediately. Their names are Juliet E. McKenna, Martin Lewis, Phil Nanson, Nikkianne Moody and Rob Grant. Chairman Andrew M. Butler should also resign. These people have proved themselves incompetent as judges, and should not be allowed to have any more say about or influence on the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
2. The 2012 Arthur C. Clarke Award should be suspended forthwith, and the planned awards ceremony on 2nd May should be cancelled.
3. The award fund (�2,012.00, as I understand it) should be held over until next year. Next year�s fund should be added to it, so that the prize for 2013 becomes �4,013.00.
4. The 2013 Clarke Award should be made to the best novel published in the two years ended 31st December 2012. All novels currently eligible for the 2012 award, whether or not they have been shortlisted by this year�s panel, are eligible again.
5. All the other usual rules of the Award should be applied.
And just in case this modest suggestion of mine is taken up, let me add one final thing:

If enough people seem to think that I have proposed this in my own interests, and that it is an attempt to have my own work made eligible once again, then I would withdraw my novel The Islanders from competition. If that does not satisfy such people, then the 2013 eligibility could be based simply on the books from 2012: and the doubled award be given to one of them. I have nothing published in 2012 that would be eligible."

**** end swipe ***

Has anyone read Priest's books. I saw Islands (?) on the shelf and was intrigued by the description but then completely turned away when I started reading the opening pags (more a format issue I wasn't prepared for).

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Talking here about, post-human, transhuman, AI, singularity, etc....

There's this tendency to think of technology as being outside of all the social functions, and I mean this ike we think of nature. It sort of just happens. Technology advances and society is expected to just adjust.

And yet there's a ton of socio-political implications just in th edirections of AI, and in that sense I'm realizing the influx of silicon valley writers is almost creating a new political agenda.

The singularity I think is an interesting one. Pretty much any singluarity story at this point is pure speculation by definition. but I think the ways forlk are writing about it is interesting.

Who will own the technology, government or hackers. What dangers do they present in either case.

All of this stuff is very relevent to the mapmaking of the actual future.

Rambling... I'll be back.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I'll be back later

I'm world building over here and loving it.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Im going to attempt one short sci-fi story this project period (I'm in an MFA program)

See how it goes

Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture

http://www.amazon.com/Afrofuturism-World-Sci-Fi-Fantasy-Culture/dp/1613747969/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y


Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond

http://www.amazon.com/Mothership-Afrofuturism-Beyond-Bill-Campbell/dp/0989141144/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y


So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy

http://www.amazon.com/So-Long-Been-Dreaming-Postcolonial/dp/155152158X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_z

>Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture
>
>http://www.amazon.com/Afrofuturism-World-Sci-Fi-Fantasy-Culture/dp/1613747969/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_y

Ultimately it was the lead up to the release of this book that got me back to engaging with SF. I'd slacked off from reading as a whole after starting a family. Then when I started reading the press and then the book itself it served as a reminder of where I stood with it. Wrote this essay on it - http://avanturb.com/news/?p=1567

Ended up having a long conversation with her last year amongst others and realizing that in the ten years I've been on hiatus nothing's really changed. That's what got me to the broader picture, and thinking beyond the niche to the greater forces at work.

Of course the issue of race and diversity would be at the top of our list of issues, but I think what this post is also trying to shed light on is that the environment is bad enough without our issues. Indeed ti would seem that the people in power are not the ones that could ever come to understand what our issues are. How do you put a full on assault on that. Not just the cry of I exist read me. But you guys are fucked from the core and that's the reason you can only pretend around my existence.


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

So I'm reading another new novel "The Disestablishment of Paradise" and I gotta say this shit go hard a hunnid pages in.

BUT

No year has been given but it takes place in a future where there is interstellar travel. Main character is at one point described as having asian features. That was about it though. There's plenty of time for them to devlop on that, and references are made back to Earth so the context could be given but I doubt it.

More *interesting* however is an antagonist who's skin is described as dark brown. Not sure this character will ever come back but the characterization of him is basically as this future big business corporate tool. But it's interesting that his skin tone is called out, but not where it comes from. Like how do we get a dark brown person this far into the future in such a role. Again non e of the earth politics have been raised per se, and they aren't part of the story. But without the context the inclusion of the dark brown feature seems like it's just done to be there. Like it's the PC thing to do to include someone with racialized features, but there's no need to provide the context for their existence in the roles they play.

Again it doesn't take anything away from the book at this point but it doesn't add anything and that's the point. I'll still enjoy it I'm sure but my hyper sensitivity to the politics of the genre is peaking. THat said this is a 'liberal' book if there ever was one.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

On the last deborah harkness that just came out and heading back to the lumatere series after but I was eyeing his for next

Thanks for the review
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

So the book I'm reading now is the type of book one would expect from a female writer. Yes this is cliche as all whatever, but it's a story about another planet which is inhabited by conscious vegetation. It's all plants and the beauty of flowers and stuff like that with an alien twist. The main character naturally is a woman. But it's written by a man.

Despite having just laid all the stereotypes out I had literally put them all aside when I started reading it. To be real I hadn't even really registered the maleness of the author until I was well into the book. But then it started becoming obvious once the male interest character came into the picture. The whole portrayal of the gender relations is so clearly from a male perspective.

Is this political. Can it actually be avoided? I don't think it ruins the story by any means but it could definitely be stronger. There've been similar things with women writing male characters. Nothing pops into my head immediately. But yeah just wondering where the line gets drawn between accepting our differences in perception and overt sexism.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

got you question answered in the other post about literary vs non

and in regards to this post. what does "expect from a female writer even mean?"

I just think it weird to start throwing around such ideas when evaluating black writers because by many we too were a niche not on the level of literature. If we're talking about the great black american novel my idea isn't about literary devices but what book is presenting an authentically black experience in a way true to our language. The one I mentioned captured that to a tee even if it isn't necessarily the best writing we've had from black folk. It was interesting (who was it spm?) their take on the protaganist being super man like. I think it was mythical but never superhuman, and always in the face of the type of adversity that's just real to our experience in this country. How did we get through that shit? Because that extra resolve was needed. The book emphasized that but not IMO to unbelievable heights. But it's been a while so maybe I need to reread.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

the "great black novel" whatever that really means, should not only capture experience(s) and languages(s) of a particular moment / era, but also be of the highest aesthetic and craft.

literature is not only about feelings or ideas, but about the actual words on the page.

>the "great black novel" whatever that really means, should
>not only capture experience(s) and languages(s) of a
>particular moment / era, but also be of the highest aesthetic
>and craft.

I'm going to let it go though, because I haven't read it in over a decade and can't argue it properly.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>and in regards to this post. what does "expect from a female
>writer even mean?"

Meaning all stereotypical to sort of emphasize the awkwardness of the position. If you could have seen my face it was all twisted in a, I can't believe I'm typing this, kinda way.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

that the framework of the book in question is that it is an actual book from the future written by an author who is a woman, despite the fact that the author (in our present time) of the book is a male. And it's meant to be a stylized historical count for which this woman author was specifically chosen to provide a proper 'context'. All of this of course coming from the pen of a man however slants a socio-political agenda on the writing which stereotypical or not has to be taken into account. Particularly as it makes itself apparent in the book, where you're thinking is this how a woman would really feel (in the future) or is this clear evidence of a man writing behind two female buffers (the main female lead and the future author of the book who is also female) to express how he feels about women in the future.

Having finished it, I'd say it's a pretty solid book, but there are more than a few moments where these questions arise.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

And I'm thinking this guy has got to be one of the most empathetic and open minded people ever (even though this post was in the back of my mind). I'd like for someone to break down his bigotry for me.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700245157/State-job-is-not-to-redefine-marriage.html?pg=1

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2013-05-09-1.html

Glad I waited until after I read the books

writings and what OSC has become.

and i share your perceptions of Ender's Game and Speaker For The Dead.

its crazy to think that this is the same dude.


peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
** i move away from the mic to breathe in

http://disinfo.com/2014/08/dont-mention-war-thoughts-h-p-lovecraft-race

Short swipe:

"I�d make the case that Lovecraft�s fiction�and Lovecraftian horror�depends on the xenophobia that was endemic to
Lovecraft�s work to the point that without it, many his stories lose their unique and uniquely profound effect.

�The Horror in Red Hook� is a direct channeling of Lovecraft�s loathing of newcomers to New York City; the
real horror of �The Call of Cthulhu� is not the octopus-headed demigod that emerges out of his underwater city to
kill all the people, but the people themselves�all either eugenically unfit denizens of the bayou or �primitive�
island cultures whose religious practices amount to a kind of proactive nihilism.

The manifestation of Nyarlathotep in the eponymous story is that of a black man
bearing trinkets, who seduces the good white folk of America into authoring their own demise.

There are other things going on in Lovecraft too: there�s the bestiary/pantheon of fantastically alien gods and
monsters; that overheated prose that veers so easily between the sublime and the leaden; his fearful, bookish characters.

But those are characteristics, aesthetics; not fundamentals. They are not the agenda.

The agenda in Lovecraft�s fiction is clear, and woven deep into the bones of his stories."

http://mediadiversified.org/2014/05/24/the-n-word-through-the-ages-the-madness-of-hp-lovecraft/

"Now the trickiest catch in the negro problem is the fact that it is really twofold. The black is vastly inferior. There can be no question of this among contemporary and unsentimental biologists—eminent Europeans for whom the prejudice-problem does not exist."

LOL... man alive.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

That's absolutely horrible

Regarding petition to replace the World Fantasy Award bust with Octavia instead of Lovecroft. Joshi's initial response to the petition called 'satire' is just so shall we say privledged. The thought to even make a satirical response reeks of an underlying 'cism that Joshi obviously feels comfortable enough to dismiss as humor around a very serious subject.

That said I do think Older should have left the 'terrible wordsmith' part out. That isn't the point and in many ways opened the door. Not that Joshi should have walked right through it but... *sigh*

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

too often we (and I mean readers / writers of color) get spoon feed who and what are the demi-gods of literature (regardless of genre), and sometimes the skill/craft is highly questionable and stays in "the canon" because it's just been there.

I haven't read Lovecraft, but it doesn't surprise me that he wrote from the place he did.

Yet, I also trust Jose's critique. He was leaving the MFA program I'm in when I started, but I built with him a couple of times and he KNOWS his shit from an analytical perspective and in terms of craft.

>too often we (and I mean readers / writers of color) get
>spoon feed who and what are the demi-gods of literature
>(regardless of genre), and sometimes the skill/craft is highly
>questionable and stays in "the canon" because it's just been
>there.
>



~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

but adding that bit just conflates the argument and allows for the diversion. there's no arguing with the fact that lovecroft was a racist. and as such he shouldn't be the face of an award, on that alone. bringing his writing ability into the discussion allows folk to shift the debate from the true offense, which is exactly what happened in this case. it starts getting into what is good writing, what qualifies as speculative fantasy/horror, who's what kind of writer, blah blah blah, all of which is dismissive of the original point that he's a racist.

after he's torn down as a racist it's open season on his writing ability because defending him at that point is defending a racist.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

can be overlooked because it was turn of the century USA, most straight white males where racist, so why are we holding him to a different standard?

that could easily be argued. Non one is asking that a vile human being like Ty Cobb be removed from the Baseball hall of fame for it, so why come after HPL?

Older critiques the writing, and it's essential, because it shows HPL wasn't only a shitty human being, but a weak writer. the last part is as important as the first.

to further my point PDK, who arguably would be on Sci-Fi's Mount Rushmore has some SERIOUSLY FLAWED novels in the later stages of his career in terms of character development, character dimension, believability of narrative, and POV. things that could be read as sexist and racist... and was fucking an 17/18/19 when he was 56.

yet if you or I wanted to rail against his award we would need to critique his word/craft, not only the person.

its okay

racist or not

alot of these canon authors just are not up to snuff
they are there because they were first
but the envelope has been pushed and it should be aknowledged
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

.

but we all know making that argument is damn near impossible. Perhaps Joshi always disliked where Lovecraft stood in the pantheon because of his writing and hence used this racist angle as a means to an end. Personally I'd disagree with that approach, though I could understand it.

But if you're going to make the racist argument, make the racist argument and make it strong. I'm just talking debating tactics here. Don't give your opponent a back door to tear your argument down. While we all might agree to his point about the writing, Lovecraft supporters have the momentum against that argument which Older fully exploited. The whole thing got whittled down to petty namecalling with Joshi having to bow out because he could not adress Older's approach.


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

If I had a camera phone I would have took a picture of it. But I had to chuckle at myself seeing it. Also worth noting there were at least two new Lovecraft volumes cosigned by modern authors on shelves in time for the holidays.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Series - http://www.tor.com/features/series/the-lovecraft-reread

Quote from the most recent:

"While it’s not the focus of the story, “Cool Air” tells us more than we really wanted to know about Lovecraft’s opinions on New York immigrants. Also, he should still not be allowed to try and spell out dialect."

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/02/revolting-yet-personable-cool-air

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/10/20/marvel_s_civil_war_storyline_is_a_far_right_paranoid_fantasy_and_a_mess.html

I think that's a bit over the top. I think the government would have good reason to treat superpowers different form gun ownership.


I always liked how Serenity flipped the Star Trek paradigm of a perfect peaceful government and told the story from the perspective of folks who would find such a government repressive.



**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

http://blackpeopleonlocalnews.tumblr.com/

Book I'm reading now has a slavery component and it made me think about how this is a regular theme in the genre. The implications I'm reading is that there's some sort of predisposition in even alien cultures to have forms of slavery. As in highly advanced civilizations, superior to our own would still succumb to the temptation of free labor at the expense of anothers freedoms.

It's always interesting how it's handled and there's obviously a parallel in how it's treated and some form of appologist attitude toward our own history of slavery. Like see even in the future out in space it would have happened and perhaps we handled it better than even aliens would.

It's a strange thing. not any reflection of the book I'm reading mind you. I think their handling of it is great and it makes sense in the context, but the general topic raises an eyebrow for me.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Slavery, bondage, subjugation, or whatever you want to call it is a cornerstone of human existence. Not sure if you ever watched Robotech (aka Macross) which is a Japanese sci fi series, but the main antagonists in that were an alien culture that had been used as slave labor by an even more advanced race. So I think it's a kind of cross cultural thing with the depiction differing based on whatever culture is writing the story.

>Slavery, bondage, subjugation, or whatever you want to call
>it is a cornerstone of human existence.

All of the evidence may point to there being some truth to it, but I believe it to be a self fulfilled prophecy. And I guess what I find disturbing is our willingness to flat out accept it and even more project it into the future upon beings that are not supposed to be like us.


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

But we only have ourselves as a frame of reference. Plus I think when folks write sci-fi they ultimate are picturing a world "they" would want to live in. That right there could explain a lot when it comes to white sci fi writers.

Can I just say on book four I'm tired as fuck of reading this. Kids love it though. It's not bad, but so often it just feels like such drivel. But again kids love it so we'll keep reading.

That said finishing book four, fuck how they dealing with this house-elf shit. They gonna raise all this slavery shit is wrong, and then just leave it hanging there. Something tells me it ain't gonna be resolved in the other books either. It's like yeah ummm it's kinda wrong, at least Dumbledore's doing right by one of em, but we ain't bout to ruin all the fun with a full blown emancipation.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

So they took the whole elf shit out of the fourth movie. They took a lot of shit out of the movies (kids notice it all) but that shit really struck me.

I'm obviously late on this whole thing and have been just trying to see how many others caught it, and indeed it does seem to have a decent amount of blogging. But no one really puts any fault on Rowling for her presentation of the issue. There's one quote from her about how it came out in book two which, i don't know, it's kinda disturbing to me:

“Hermione gave me a lot of trouble! She was really misbehaving. She developed this big political conscience about the House elves. Well, she wanted to go her own way, and for two chapters, she just went wandering off. I just let her do it and then I scrapped two chapters and kept a few bits. That I liked. That’s the most trouble anyone’s ever given me, but it was fun so I gave her her head.”–J.K. Rowling

From a writer's perspective I understand how this happens. You create a circumstance and as a consequence of it a character has to do something. So she created houseelves and they end up being the backbone to the school. Hermione finds out and has to respond to it. But that wasn't the author's intent.

In this case I wonder if the character isn't herself revealing something about the author's ambivilance ot the issue. She want's to do something but ultimately she *wouldn't*. It's not the point of the series anyway, pushed to the side.

But in so doing she's created the literary environment where it's unresolved and dismissed as well. I recently had a talk with six kids including two of my own about it and everyone from their reading on the book was just like "well they like it, they don't want to be free" and then quoting all indications of this from the book. I of course continued the conversation and got them to see how fucked up it was. But that raises the question was I just doing my fatherly duty to follow up on my kids reading or should the author be held accountable for not dealing with it.


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=amb_link_427057922_2?ie=UTF8&node=10207159011&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=merchandised-search-2&pf_rd_r=08BM08QPB8S21RRDV6N9&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1978776962&pf_rd_i=25

Looking at it just makes me feel some kinda way about the genre. I mean it's always like this, usually with one standout which gets the annual praise. But I don't know, everything seems like a retread.

"Contemporary Fantasy" seems to be a new thing. I think that's how The Bone Clocks would be classified but honestly nothing about the story interests me in the slightest, only mildly intrigued by *who* I've heard praising it.

But there's something awkward about contemporary fantasy. Something about the modern setting gets in the way.

William Gibson has a new one. I might grab that. I've dug his recent stuff. But reading the synopsis seems like a retread of a Charles Stross novel, who I've recently burnt out on.

There's this whole thing about being on the singularit cusp which makes writing about the future seem like a bad bet. Nobody's risking shit.

I need a new book bad. Ann Leckie can't write fast enough. I'm interested in Karen Lord's new book, but kinda ho hum on giving Best of All Possible Worlds a shot. I don't want my opinions of it (clouded by my perceptions of the theme) ruin the next one (for which the theme is really intriguing for me).

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/06/04/monstro

Haven't read Juno in maybe a decade but this felt great. Gave me a good kick in the ass too.

I'm really interested in what *you're* writing though.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Juno, is possibly my favorite contemporary writer, yet for as much as I loved This Is How You Lose Her, I felt that was an "easy" book for him to produce. This though, was just really fucn good and imaginative, and inspiring.

but he's "chickening" out of finishing it. When I spoke to him at skylight books two months ago, he said he hasn't touched it in over a year. he's a slow writer though. I really hope he finishes this

as for me, I'm working on realist/literary linked short story collection revolving around two cousins in the periphery of Los Angeles County. I'm about 2/3rds (well, really half way) done with it. I like were I am in terms of my voice and tone. I'm still working on refining my perspective and "designing the setting(s)".

also, after reading a lot of sci-fi recently, I wrote my first short sci-fi narrative. it ended up being about 23 pages long. My mentor believes that I need to keep going because it's more than a short story.

basically its 2165 global warming has claimed vast areas on the ocean borders of the northern continent, but civilization is still thriving. Black and Brown have claimed (through war) big chunks of what was once America and are now regions. What is now middle America for the most part is still predominantly white and their militants are trying to recolonize / conquer the west. also near half the population, in the non-white regions, are mixed

the protagonist, Robeson, is a film maker who is in love with a woman, Sasha, who left him to create one of the emerging autonomous areas, away from the megalopolis regions, which just ended up mirroring much of "our world". Robeson ends up wrapped up in the conflict to defend "these areas/regions" after visiting her.

anyway, i'm still trying to refine the tech and look of the world, and see where I could, If continue to expand. I want to ask Tananarive Due if she can take a look at what I have currently. She was my mentor last semester.

Junot's piece reminded me of the last time I read a latino voice in sci-fi which was one of William Gibson's last books (can't remember if it was Zero Country or the one before) where there's a Cuban family and I had to suspend all of my disbelief because he just got so much cultural shit wrong. It wasn't quite offensive but, just not well done.

I've always liked Junot's voice because well it's right, but I think he overstates it in his writing sometimes. Like it isn't subtle and maybe tat's just a preference of mine. I like it when the tone speaks to me in a you have to know what I mean kinda way rather than see I know what I mean!! Does that make sense.

that said it was refreshing to hear this because of that tone of his.

>as for me, I'm working on realist/literary linked short story
>collection revolving around two cousins in the periphery of
>Los Angeles County. I'm about 2/3rds (well, really half way)
>done with it. I like were I am in terms of my voice and tone.
>I'm still working on refining my perspective and "designing
>the setting(s)".

Designing the settings... say more in a sec.

>also, after reading a lot of sci-fi recently, I wrote my first
>short sci-fi narrative. it ended up being about 23 pages long.
>My mentor believes that I need to keep going because it's more
>than a short story.

Awesome. As is clearly evident I want more approaches to the genre.

>basically its 2165 global warming has claimed vast areas on
>the ocean borders of the northern continent, but civilization
>is still thriving. Black and Brown have claimed (through war)
>big chunks of what was once America and are now regions. What
>is now middle America for the most part is still predominantly
>white and their militants are trying to recolonize / conquer
>the west. also near half the population, in the non-white
>regions, are mixed

What about in the white regions though?

>the protagonist, Robeson, is a film maker

first question is what does it mean to be a film maker in 2165?

>who is in love with
>a woman, Sasha, who left him to create one of the emerging
>autonomous areas, away from the megalopolis regions, which
>just ended up mirroring much of "our world". Robeson ends up
>wrapped up in the conflict to defend "these areas/regions"
>after visiting her.

interesting.

>anyway, i'm still trying to refine the tech and look of the
>world,

You know I think this is one of the hardest aspects of sci-fi. Particularly from our perspective where so often the sci-fi is the setting. In hard sf you start with the tech and the issues it raises and then build the characters around that. from the opposite end of the spectrum you start with characters and plots and try to put them in the technological world appropriate. the little details like that can make or break a story just as much as in hard sf though.

>and see where I could, If continue to expand. I want to
>ask Tananarive Due if she can take a look at what I have
>currently. She was my mentor last semester.

Oh wow. That's dope.

I've been writing most of the weekend on the piece that I started in the middle of this thread. right now I think it's a short self contained story but I've built a world which can definitely be expanded on. Basic premise is that society pushes forward technologically via an AI that isn't really an AI because it was designed to have human checks and balances. Main character is a policy analyst who when given a special assignment finds an inconsistency in the programming that can have world shattering implications.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>Junot's piece reminded me of the last time I read a latino
>voice in sci-fi which was one of William Gibson's last books
>(can't remember if it was Zero Country or the one before)
>where there's a Cuban family and I had to suspend all of my
>disbelief because he just got so much cultural shit wrong. It
>wasn't quite offensive but, just not well done.
>
Question, which other Gibson book would you recommend. I finished Neuromancer recently, and that book really deserves all the love it gets. I appreciated how much space male and female voices got within the text and how Gibson, at least, attempted to have ethnic or an international feel to the narrative, in particular in 1984, when sci-fi was still very white.

>I've always liked Junot's voice because well it's right, but I
>think he overstates it in his writing sometimes. Like it isn't
>subtle and maybe tat's just a preference of mine. I like it
>when the tone speaks to me in a you have to know what I mean
>kinda way rather than see I know what I mean!! Does that make
>sense.
>
makes perfect sense and the reason his last collection wasn't great with a capital G. it's become a bit of a crouch for him.

>>basically its 2165 global warming has claimed vast areas on
>>the ocean borders of the northern continent, but
>civilization
>>is still thriving. Black and Brown have claimed (through
>war)
>>big chunks of what was once America and are now regions.
>What
>>is now middle America for the most part is still
>predominantly
>>white and their militants are trying to recolonize / conquer
>>the west. also near half the population, in the non-white
>>regions, are mixed
>
>What about in the white regions though?
>
in my mind the white regions are 80% white. the rest distributed among mixies, blacks and latinos, maybe Asians. The white regions are also very much Tea Party fantasies, sort of like Atwood's world in The Handmaid's Tale without the costumes and social regiments.

>>the protagonist, Robeson, is a film maker
>
>first question is what does it mean to be a film maker in
>2165?
>
great question. still working it

>
>You know I think this is one of the hardest aspects of sci-fi.
>Particularly from our perspective where so often the sci-fi is
>the setting. In hard sf you start with the tech and the
>issues it raises and then build the characters around that.
>from the opposite end of the spectrum you start with
>characters and plots and try to put them in the technological
>world appropriate. the little details like that can make or
>break a story just as much as in hard sf though.
>
pretty much. If i continue to expand. i want to add a bit about space travel and how 150 years in the future we still haven't made contact with other life...
>
>I've been writing most of the weekend on the piece that I
>started in the middle of this thread. right now I think it's
>a short self contained story but I've built a world which can
>definitely be expanded on. Basic premise is that society
>pushes forward technologically via an AI that isn't really an
>AI because it was designed to have human checks and balances.
>Main character is a policy analyst who when given a special
>assignment finds an inconsistency in the programming that can
>have world shattering implications.

Question, is this a singularity story? and how are you conceiving the "human" checks and balances to affect an AI. Are you working in terrain similar to Asimov's Robot Series? Also, how distant is this future.

also the character, single? married? children? Black? alt-Balck?

>Question, which other Gibson book would you recommend. I
>finished Neuromancer recently, and that book really deserves
>all the love it gets. I appreciated how much space male and
>female voices got within the text and how Gibson, at least,
>attempted to have ethnic or an international feel to the
>narrative, in particular in 1984, when sci-fi was still very
>white.

All of the eraly cyberpunk ones are good so if you dug Neuromancer definitely go for Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive, etc.

Distrust That Particular Flavor his nonfiction book is definitely worth reading for some perspective stuff. I particularly love his reconciling his cyberpunk days with the newer stuff, and in that regard I think the newer stuff is well up to par. In particular All Tommorrow's Parties and Idoru.

One thing about Gibson and which he notes when talking about cyberpunk in hindsight is that they all date themselves really quickly. But he sort of embraces that.

I just shot you an inbox if you want to move the writing talk to other channels so as not to go too far off topic here.


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2014/10/william-gibson-peripheral-vision-time-travel-interview

starts about the 19minute mark

It's a hard science boner around first contact. Multidimensional space, quantum entaglement and all that.

But I think the most interesting thing for me reading it was the perspective from a Chinese author. He puts a lot of it in the past and so the history of China's Cultural Revolution plays an important role in the story which unfolds. The characters, motivations etc are all driven by things that come out of the socio-political context, and then that is projected onto another alien civilization. Absolutely fascinating.

I can't tell if its the writing or the translation but I think it could be difficult read in a literary sense. There are some beautiful lines and passages but it gets into scientific explination a lot with the main characters being an astrophysicist, a mathemetician and a guy building nanotech (nanotechnician?). There is a detective thrown in there to keep it lay when it needs to be but yeah.

It's funny in the afterward the author talks about how he tries to avoid the social and cultural stuff for the hard science aspect. He thinks science is the most fascinating story there is. And yet no matter how much of that he throws in this (and its a lot) it simple cannot escape cultural context. Which made me think about how perhaps that is easier for American hard sf writers. To ermove their works from the cultural context, or rather to idealize them rather than present them as they are or would be. If Liu were atempting to do this as he indicates, he failed utterly and made a better book because of it. I think without the cultural elements this would have fell flat on its face.

Part one of three... Got like six months tilll book two drops but I'm in.

Whole thing was really eye opening for me about chinese culture from a contemporary perspective though.


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

In particular about the quality of writing of the canon. Then flipping back on the purpose of the genre from different perspectives. Site for engineers I frequent did this list of SF writers who were actually trained in science:

http://www.designnews.com/author.asp?section_id=1386&dfpLayout=blog&cid=nl%2Edn14%2E20141208&itc=dn_analysis_element&dfpPParams=ind_182%2Cindustry_aero%2Ckw_robotics%2Caid_275846&doc_id=275846&image_number=1

Funny thing is that while Clarke and Asimov are definitely on my list, they aren't at the top. I think Clarke dealt more with the social despite being heavy into the science, and Asmiov as well. But yeah other than those two (maybe even with them) I'm not sure there are great writers on that list.

But SF is often read by the science community and judged on that grounds and so from that perspective the literary strong but scientifically lax pieces are probably not on their top lists.

Is there a middle ground. Is either perspective right? Of course not on the latter. But then again what is the purpose of SF? The projection of science into the fictional realm which allows for exploration beyond the realms of here and now, or the use of science a s cultural backdrop fro understanding the cultural and social aspects of our humanity?

There is no right answer, right?

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

that MOST sci-fi writers are NOWHERE near any literary canon

you might see Hanline, Asimov, PDK, and Gibson mentioned, but overall nah...

Shit Bladwin and Morrison, in certain circles and departments, struggle to get into the Proust, Tolstoy, Melville, Joyce, Hemingway, Faulkner, Salinger, Cheever club

we must always continue to read, write, theorize and discuss against, through and beyond the canon. it's essential to a collective radical imaginary functioning beside any social and legislative progression

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2004/12/a_whitewashed_earthsea.single.html


Culturebox
Arts, entertainment, and more.
Dec. 16 2004 9:14 AM
A Whitewashed Earthsea
1.5k
476
2
How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books.
By Ursula K. Le Guin
1_123125_123050_2093349_2110503_041216_earthsea Ged (right) is a pale imitation of Le Guin's protagonist

On Tuesday night, the Sci Fi Channel aired its final installment of Legend of Earthsea, the miniseries based—loosely, as it turns out—on my Earthsea books. The books, A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, which were published more than 30 years ago, are about two young people finding out what their power, their freedom, and their responsibilities are. I don't know what the film is about. It's full of scenes from the story, arranged differently, in an entirely different plot, so that they make no sense. My protagonist is Ged, a boy with red-brown skin. In the film, he's a petulant white kid. Readers who've been wondering why I "let them change the story" may find some answers here.

When I sold the rights to Earthsea a few years ago, my contract gave me the standard status of "consultant"—which means whatever the producers want it to mean, almost always little or nothing. My agency could not improve this clause. But the purchasers talked as though they genuinely meant to respect the books and to ask for my input when planning the film. They said they had already secured Philippa Boyens (who co-wrote the scripts for The Lord of the Rings) as principal script writer. The script was, to me, all-important, so Boyens' presence was the key factor in my decision to sell this group the option to the film rights.

Months went by. By the time the producers got backing from the Sci Fi Channel for a miniseries—and another producer, Robert Halmi Sr., had come aboard—they had lost Boyens. That was a blow. But I had just seen Halmi's miniseries DreamKeeper, which had a stunning Native American cast, and I hoped that Halmi might include some of those great actors in Earthsea.

At this point, things began to move very fast. Early on, the filmmakers contacted me in a friendly fashion, and I responded in kind; I asked if they'd like to have a list of name pronunciations; and I said that although I knew that a film must differ greatly from a book, I hoped they were making no unnecessary changes in the plot or to the characters—a dangerous thing to do, since the books have been known to millions of people for decades. They replied that the TV audience is much larger, and entirely different, and would be unlikely to care about changes to the books' story and characters.

They then sent me several versions of the script—and told me that shooting had already begun. I had been cut out of the process. And just as quickly, race, which had been a crucial element, had been cut out of my stories. In the miniseries, Danny Glover is the only man of color among the main characters (although there are a few others among the spear-carriers). A far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned. When I looked over the script, I realized the producers had no understanding of what the books are about and no interest in finding out. All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic McMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence.

Most of the characters in my fantasy and far-future science fiction books are not white. They're mixed; they're rainbow. In my first big science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, the only person from Earth is a black man, and everybody else in the book is Inuit (or Tibetan) brown. In the two fantasy novels the miniseries is "based on," everybody is brown or copper-red or black, except the Kargish people in the East and their descendants in the Archipelago, who are white, with fair or dark hair. The central character Tenar, a Karg, is a white brunette. Ged, an Archipelagan, is red-brown. His friend, Vetch, is black. In the miniseries, Tenar is played by Smallville's Kristin Kreuk, the only person in the miniseries who looks at all Asian. Ged and Vetch are white.

My color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn't see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn't see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and why all the leading women had "violet eyes"). It didn't even make sense. Whites are a minority on Earth now—why wouldn't they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?

The fantasy tradition I was writing in came from Northern Europe, which is why it was about white people. I'm white, but not European. My people could be any color I liked, and I like red and brown and black. I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for "young adults") might not identify straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees—hoping that the reader would get "into Ged's skin" and only then discover it wasn't a white one.

I was never questioned about this by any editor. No objection was ever raised. I think this is greatly to the credit of my first editors at Parnassus and Atheneum, who bought the books before they had a reputation to carry them.

But I had endless trouble with cover art. Not on the great cover of the first edition—a strong, red-brown profile of Ged—or with Margaret Chodos Irvine's four fine paintings on the Atheneum hardcover set, but all too often. The first British Wizard was this pallid, droopy, lily-like guy—I screamed at sight of him.

Gradually I got a little more clout, a little more say-so about covers. And very, very, very gradually publishers may be beginning to lose their blind fear of putting a nonwhite face on the cover of a book. "Hurts sales, hurts sales" is the mantra. Yeah, so? On my books, Ged with a white face is a lie, a betrayal—a betrayal of the book, and of the potential reader.

I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being "colorblind." Nobody else does.

I have heard, not often, but very memorably, from readers of color who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in—and how much this meant to them, particularly as adolescents, when they'd found nothing to read in fantasy and science fiction except the adventures of white people in white worlds. Those letters have been a tremendous reward and true joy to me.

So far no reader of color has told me I ought to butt out, or that I got the ethnicity wrong. When they do, I'll listen. As an anthropologist's daughter, I am intensely conscious of the risk of cultural or ethnic imperialism—a white writer speaking for nonwhite people, co-opting their voice, an act of extreme arrogance. In a totally invented fantasy world, or in a far-future science fiction setting, in the rainbow world we can imagine, this risk is mitigated. That's the beauty of science fiction and fantasy—freedom of invention.

But with all freedom comes responsibility. Which is something these filmmakers seem not to understand.

Ursula K. Le Guin is the author of the Earthsea series, the Hainish series, and other novels.

and i remember when it came out and she wrote this it kinda sealed her place in my pantheon. not so coincidentally i've met both of my favorites (the other is delany) to the same reaction. i had prepared all these things that i wanted to tell them about the powerful impact their writing had on my life. then a couple of choice questions that showed i actually really knew their work not just casually. then i meet them face to face and i go fucking speechless. hand them a book which they sign, and all i say is thank you.

mind you that isn't like me at all. i'm an introvert but not afraid to talk when i have something to say. but in the context it just seemed silly for me to say anything. only other time that's happened was with cassandra wilson.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I just got the, I think, animated series to boot
I may just reread her books instead
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

" They then sent me several versions of the script—and told me that shooting had already begun. I had been cut out of the process. And just as quickly, race, which had been a crucial element, had been cut out of my stories. In the miniseries, Danny Glover is the only man of color among the main characters (although there are a few others among the spear-carriers). A far cry from the Earthsea I envisioned. When I looked over the script, I realized the producers had no understanding of what the books are about and no interest in finding out. All they intended was to use the name Earthsea, and some of the scenes from the books, in a generic McMagic movie with a meaningless plot based on sex and violence. "


that's so messed up. they baited and switched it. that's crazy as hell that they can do this, though.

as a creative, i cringe at the thought of someone buying the rights to my work and being able to do whatEVER the hell they want with it. and still put it out under my name. i mean, this ain't some nobody who wrote a lil short story. ursula k leguin is one of the most noteworthy and critically acclaimed sf writers ever. dayum.




peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

so i've been flirting with self pub for a minute and it looks like 2015 may be the year i take the leap. i actually met with a publisher about a book i had and was completely turned off by the fact that they were more concened with my social media profile than my actual writing. i'm too old and got too many dependents to do the hoop jumping. so self pubbing seems like the best way to keep me from putting yet another idea on a shelf.

but i want to do it right... i'm just wondering how to be effective at it in away that addresses the concerns here. i don't want to isolate myself from the broader sf community. i do want to subvert it with quality that deals with our issues tactfully. so i'm just going to take this year to keep the pen working, but not just that ensure that what i'm writing is actually getting out there.

i was actually inspired by the fact that nebula recognized a self pub author and feel that ultimately that's my goal. i guess the question is what are the things i need to be careful of to get me closer to that goal.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

If you have questions, I can help.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

NO BLACK PEOPLE!!!

http://hieroglyph.asu.edu/

In describing the project they even manage to forego the origins of the word (remember it's a greek word specifically to describe egyptian writing)

"The name of Project Hieroglyph comes from the notion that certain iconic inventions in science fiction stories serve as modern “hieroglyphs” – Arthur Clarke’s communications satellite, Robert Heinlein’s rocket ship that lands on its fins, Issac Asimov’s robot, and so on. Jim Karkanias of Microsoft Research described hieroglyphs as simple, recognizable symbols on whose significance everyone agrees."

There's one person of color in the bunch - Vandana Singh

We ain't even in consideration, let alone the conversation.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

So I've gotten more and more into reading them. Most recent delve was into the reviews for Karen Lord's Galaxy Games. There are only a few for the new one atm but for there's a lot of 'I don't get it' in those. So then I go to the ones for The Best of all Possible Worlds. I go straight to the worst reviews, which to some credit for that book are only 2 stars. But the thing I found interesting is that two thirds of the 2 star reviews came from folk in the Amazon Vine program. I didn't really know about that, and found out its the program where folk that review heavily on Amazon get early reads if they'll post a review. I wonder how they choose which books go to whom because it would seem that ultimately all of these reviews were from people that had different expectations of sci-fi, and that's their main critique. That kinda sets it up ya know.

But then there's just something to be said about the general expectations of the audience. People looking for sci fi epics and being disappointed with deep character and cultural analysis. And perhaps that is the bread and butter so to speak of the minority sci-fi writer. Specifically on the placing of culture in the sci-fi context. Is it telling that sci fi readers don't really care about that or put another way find that type of exposition off putting.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.amazon.com/The-Salt-Roads-Nalo-Hopkinson-ebook/product-reviews/B00QN352S8/ref=cm_cr_dp_qt_hist_one?ie=UTF8&filterBy=addOneStar&showViewpoints=0

This novel made no sense at all to me. I was interested in reading it because it was about slavery in the Caribbean (so I thought), but the real story of that horror was demeaned by the author's amateur attempts at trying to imbue her novel with "kewl", and by her bringing "magic" into it.

I know that superstition was (and is) a part of primitive people's lives, and that Victorians believed in spirits, but having characters conjure up a vision from a chamber pot full of urine and menstrual fluid seemed to me to be not only gross, but to cheapen the story being told about the conditions under which slaves were forced to live, and turning the whole thing into a gaudy circus. And that bit wasn't even in the Caribbean, it was in Paris!

****

I found that opening paragraph interesting in characterizing the reviewer as someone who would be interested in a novel about slavery. The thing that's interesting is that the book isn't really about slavery, a portion of it just takes place in that setting. I haven't read it but that second paragraph... lol.

The reviewer goes on to say they stopped at page 50 something in a 4 hundred page book because they just didn't know what was going on.

Not sure why i'm finding this type of thing so fascinating, but it is.


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I just recently found out about rush as an author. Now learning about Beck.

http://www.amazon.com/Agenda-21-Glenn-Beck/dp/147671701X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1422808128&sr=1-2&keywords=glen+beck+21

Kind of insane because they both share the same intent which is using ficion in a clearly didactic way to reframe the story of America.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Review is kinda irrelevant though it references a few books but peep:

"Maybe this represents some sort of watershed in the development of hard SF: Arthur C. Clarke’s famous and annoyingly overquoted dictum that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic has given way to ‘‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from nature’’ (italics mine). That comes from Peter Watts’s Echopraxia, where he attributes it to Stella Rossiter, but exactly the same thought appears in Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Causal Angel (‘‘sufficiently advanced technology should be indistinguishable from nature’’). Likely a coincidence, unless they talked on the phone before coming to school, but it’s an interesting shift. Clarke’s quip seemed to give hard SF license to go wonky whenever it felt like it, including Clarke’s own occasional fits of reluctant mysticism...

"What I think is particularly interesting about that magic vs. nature question is that it may help explain why so many of us get tangled up when trying to even decide what hard SF is: we’ve almost always tried to discuss it solely in terms of its conceptual parameters rather than by how it works as fiction. Theoretically, those parameters are, simply, nature – physics, astronomy, biology, etc. – suggesting that Watts and Rajaniemi’s formulation is closer to the mark than Clarke’s. But in practice, almost since the beginning of SF, that ‘‘sufficiently advanced technology’’ rubric has served writers as a Get Out of Jail Free card not all that far removed from Clarke’s magic, so the argument becomes circular: we can’t distinguish advanced technology from a natural process, and we can’t distinguish an unknown natural process from magic, so we’re back to square one.

Except for one thing: replacing magic with nature substantially reduces the degree of pure handwaving permitted in hard SF, and as a result writers have for the past few decades been developing strategies for incorporating cutting-edge science and technology into their narratives, making them part of the aesthetic fabric, and that takes us back to that question of how this all works as fiction. In addition to the traditional weaving of character, plot, setting, style, etc., the literary hard SF writer needs to weave information into the fabric as well, and how they do this looks very much like a set of artistic decisions.

By coincidence – and in fact what set off this ramble – three of the works we’re looking at this month represent three distinct such artistic strategies. Nancy Kress’s Yesterday’s Kin follows the more traditional Heinleinian model, offering just enough science to power the issues she wants to address – mostly evolutionary biology – while pretty much ignoring less relevant questions (such as how her alien spacecraft operate). Peter Watts, on the other hand, is fascinated by the science behind all aspects of his constructed world in Echopraxia, and wants you to sit still for some dauntingly dense asides about it, almost as the price for getting to enjoy what turns out to be a pretty solid space adventure. Hannu Rajaniemi’s strategy in The Quantum Thief trilogy is to work out all that science and information theory, pack it into an initially bewildering array of neologisms and images, and then explain nothing at all, lest it slow down the kinetic pace of what is at heart a romantic adventure tale.

Put another way, Kress’s scientific rhetoric is in support of her plot, Watts’s is in dialogue with his plot, and Rajaniemi’s is the backdrop of his plot. Which is the more effective strategy is at least partly a function of how much work the reader is willing to put in, but all are good examples of how the rhetoric of science becomes part of the rhetoric of fiction in a way that is unique to hard SF"

****

Reading this was interesting to me of primary interest because of the breakdown of categories. I haven't read any of the books but I think it's always interesting thinking about the perspective of the reader in this. And while it says just Hard SF I think it's a good break down for sf in general. And i think a lot of authors and writing get judged based on that.

There's also a male female thing (and i think minority too) with this where inevitably female and minority writers automatically start out in the 'scientific rhetoric' side of things. This in a lot of circles leads to the dismissiveness of the writers as serious sf writers. More like writers obssessed with their own issues (race, gender, etc) throwing them in a science fiction context.

But is science fiction really about the science... is it really.

Labels

Also magic, mysticism etc. Thin lines all around.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

As I recall people with extraordinary talents were able to display their talent and stuff like that?

I think it involves a ballerina who breaks the rules and dances better than everyone else and they shoot her? Does that sound familiar?


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

http://blackpeopleonlocalnews.tumblr.com/

http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"One of the most important things in life is what Judge Learned Hand described as 'that ever-gnawing inner doubt as to whether you're r

Reading reviews from Phillip DiFlippio (a writer who's short stories I have previously enjoyed) for Locus, I came across his review of the book I mention in the og post. Now I have no idea what his political affiliations are, and based on the review wouldn't know where Wright's lay either.

On the one hand I'm like yeah maybe that shouldn't be in there, but then on the other I recall how the politics (or cultural mores) of an author tend to be a focal point when reviewing women or people of color. Even white male authors can have their ideologies shape their reviews when they wear them on their pages. So it has me wondering if Wright's shit doesn't show up on the page (i doubt it) or if I have to wonder if DiFlippio is a supporter or appologist.

It would seem that the only way to address these things from the community is if these types of issues are being addressed in reviews. But can we really be critical about these things or just speak to them objective (eg Wright's political leanings show their face in the relationship between x and y and y's apparent prejudices). I don't know it's delicate.

Anyway that led me to this:

http://www.intercollegiatereview.com/index.php/2014/05/07/heinlein-hugos-and-hogwash/

Of course its worth noting the audience there. But objectively speaking it is a good counter argument.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>http://www.intercollegiatereview.com/index.php/2014/05/07/heinlein-hugos-and-hogwash/
>
>Of course its worth noting the audience there. But objectively
>speaking it is a good counter argument.

I admittedly posted this only halfway through, right before he started really going over the cliff. The last paragraph basically sums it up though:

"The lunatic Left planned and struggled for years, decades, to achieve their cultural influence. Let us imitate their perseverance, and retake our lost home one mind, one institution, at a time. Start by praying."

The absurdity of that is hillarious, but to a point I wonder. It would seem there is no middle ground. If either side is ahead in 'influence' the other must be brought down. So then there comes the question is either side objectively right, and can the other be made to see that. Hmmmmmm.

At any rate having finished it was nice to see there have been some nice detractors to that piece:

https://fozmeadows.wordpress.com/2014/05/07/silence-is-not-synonymous-with-uproar-a-response-to-john-c-wright/

http://thisblogisaploy.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-loudest-sound-in-world-is-bigot.html


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/05/the-hugo-wars-how-sci-fis-most-prestigious-awards-became-a-political-battleground/

partial swipe:

The Hugos have an advantage, though: they are difficult for a single group to dominate if others rise to challenge them. All one has to do to vote in the awards is pay a small membership fee to the World Science Fiction Convention. For the few who are brave enough to defend artistic freedom openly, the Hugos are a good place to make a stand.

That is precisely what is now happening. Ahead of 2013’s Hugo Awards, Larry Correia began making public blog posts about his nominations, inviting his readers to discuss and agree on a shared list of Hugo nominations, and vote collectively. The idea was to draw attention to authors and creators who were suffering from an undeserved lack of attention due to the political climate in sci-fi. The “Sad Puppies” slate was born.

(The original idea was to call it the “Sad Puppies Think of the Children Campaign” – a dig at those who take their social crusades too seriously.)

What began as a discussion among bloggers has turned into an annual event. Last year’s Sad Puppies slate was extraordinarily successful, with seven out of Correia’s twelve nominations making it to the final stage of the Hugos. Among the successful nominations was The Last Witchking, a novelette by Theodore Beale, also known as Vox Day – a writer whose radical right-wing views had put him at the top of the sci-fi SJWs’ hit list. The fact that an author like Beale could receive a Hugo nomination was proof that SJW domination of sci-fi was not as complete as the elites would have liked.

*****

shit wild

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Been going on for a bit, but the blokes i mentioned above now compile a list of nominees for the Hugo and Nebula awards for their group to then nominate en masse:

https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/sad-puppies-3-the-unraveling-of-an-unreliable-field/

One of this year's nominees responds:

https://www.facebook.com/davecreek/posts/10152797018734473


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

https://bradrtorgersen.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/sad-puppies-3-the-unraveling-of-an-unreliable-field/

partial swipe:

Imagine for a moment that you go to the local grocery to buy a box of cereal. You are an avid enthusiast for Nutty Nuggets. You will happily eat Nutty Nuggets until you die. Nutty Nuggets have always come in the same kind of box with the same logo and the same lettering. You could find the Nutty Nuggets even in the dark, with a blindfold over your eyes. That’s how much you love them.

Then, one day, you get home from the store, pour a big bowl of Nutty Nuggets . . . and discover that these aren’t really Nutty Nuggets. They came in the same box with the same lettering and the same logo, but they are something else. Still cereal, sure. But not Nutty Nuggets. Not wanting to waste money, you eat the different cereal anyway. You find the experience is not what you remembered it should be, when you ate actual Nutty Nuggets. You walk away from the experience somewhat disappointed. What the hell happened to Nutty Nuggets? Did the factory change the formula or the manufacturing process? Maybe you just got a bad box.

So you go back to the store again, to buy another box of good old delicious and reliable Nutty Nuggets!

Again, you discover (upon returning home) that the contents of your Nutty Nuggets box are not Nutty Nuggets. The contents are something different. Maybe similar to Nutty Nuggets, but not Nutty Nuggets. Nor are the contents like they were, with the prior box. You dutifully chomp them down, but even adding a spoonful of sugar doesn’t make the experience better. In fact, this time, the taste is that much worse.

Two bad boxes in a row? Must have been a bad shipment!

Return to the store. Buy another box. Bam. It’s not Nutty Nuggets.

This time, you add bananas, sugar, and berries. This only makes up for the deficit a little bit.

Return to the store again for yet another box. Yup. It says NUTTY NUGGETS proudly on the packaging. You are sure in your heart that you love and adore Nutty Nuggets! And yet, the magic is gone. This is not the cereal you first fell in love with. The box may say NUTTY NUGGETS but you won’t be fooled any longer. Nutty Nuggets are dead. Or at least they are no longer of any interest to you.

So, you reluctantly turn to another brand. Maybe Freaky Flakes or Crunchy Bits? You give up on Nutty Nuggets, and you let some other cereal woo your taste buds. A cereal that is reliably what it claims to be on the outside of the box.

That’s what’s happened to Science Fiction & Fantasy literature. A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds. If you saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women. Battle-armored interstellar jump troops shooting up alien invaders? Yup. A gritty military SF war story, where the humans defeat the odds and save the Earth. And so on, and so forth.

These days, you can’t be sure.

The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings?

There’s a sword-swinger on the cover, but is it really about knights battling dragons? Or are the dragons suddenly the good guys, and the sword-swingers are the oppressive colonizers of Dragon Land?

A planet, framed by a galactic backdrop. Could it be an actual bona fide space opera? Heroes and princesses and laser blasters? No, wait. It’s about sexism and the oppression of women.

Finally, a book with a painting of a person wearing a mechanized suit of armor! Holding a rifle! War story ahoy! Nope, wait. It’s actually about gay and transgender issues.

Or it could be about the evils of capitalism and the despotism of the wealthy.

Do you see what I am trying to say here?

Our once reliable packaging has too often defrauded our readership. It’s as true with the Hugos as it is with the larger genre as a whole.

****

Mofos are championing behind this shit.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

"The answer is simple enough, once you see it. The reason why science fiction books are not popular in a society where science fiction is more popular than ever is because the books published, labeled, marketed and sold as science fiction are not.

They are not science fiction.

They are social justice fiction, or chick lit in science fiction drag, or whining experimental deconstructist folderol and tripe, but not science fiction. If DUNE and STARSHIP TROOPERS and CHILDHOOD’S END and FOUNDATION and other novels from four or five decades ago — you heard me! I said decades – are selling better than the most widely reviewed and praised SFF work on the New York Times bestseller list, then the simple answer is that your book is not science fiction, but Herbert, Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov simply are science fiction.

Likewise with comic books. If you cannot sell a comic where Superman denounces his American citizenship, or Ms Marvel is a Muslim girl, or Batwoman is a Lesbian, or Captain America is shot by a sniper, or Thor is a girl — well, it is because you have stopped telling stories of heroes who fight for truth, justice, and the American Way, and have started telling stories about victims.

Simple as that."

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

.

That's from this past week mind you.

Takes me back to the first paragraph on #53. Like a blog about a character that just invades all of these fuckwads worlds and exposes shit. But that would mean entering their worlds. Kinda be worth it though if they reacted the way I think they would.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/05/the-hugo-wars-how-sci-fis-most-prestigious-awards-became-a-political-battleground/#disqus_thread

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

believe that.

is he really saying that if ALL of the sf on the bookshelves can't be white patriarchal jingoistic shit then the entire genre is ruined?

i'd never thought of sf as a country club until now. how dare all of these othery others try to fuck up augusta national's pristine ivory tradition.





peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

i'm obviously vested in this shit now. lurking for now, but man listen.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

"We denounce and abjure and anathematize anyone who pretends to be a storyteller, but who, when asked to tell a tale of science fictional wonder, instead delivers a nagging lecture or dull piece of partisan political propaganda.

We are not opposed to women authors winning Hugos for writing award winning science fiction regardless of her sex, but we opposed to women authors winning Hugos solely on the ground of her sex regardless of her writing skills; or anyone winning a Hugo solely on the ground of being not white, or not straight, or not Christian, or any number of factors about the writer that have nothing to do with the writing and everything to do with the reverse bigotry euphemistically called affirmative action."


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.scifiwright.com/2015/02/suggested-reading-list-for-racialist-whineloons/#more-13509

"Larry Correia is also a “writer of color” who grew up in disadvantaged circumstances. As he relates in a recent post, “I grew up with all that fancy Portuguese Dairy Farmer Privilege, where I got to have an alcoholic mother and a functionally illiterate father… where I got to spend my formative years knee deep in cow shit at 3:00 AM, so that I could later work my way through Utah State.” Despite starting life on the bottom rung, however, Larry persevered and is now a multiple-award-winning urban fantasy author."

"And let’s not forget James Young, an up-and-coming African American writer who has dipped his toes in both military science fiction and alternate history. An Unproven Concept is an excellent place to start sampling his work."

and my favorite part

"And, no, I do not know what ‘Cis’ is and I do not want to know. I speak English, not lunatic. There are some concepts so stupid that, once they stain your brain, your brain can not be make clean again. No one tell me. I assume it is part of their glorification of sexual deviancy."


█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/04/04/hugo-awards-nominations-swept-by-anti-sjw-anti-authoritarian-authors/

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Swipe:

"Even when the action resumes, however, it’s all surprisingly unengaging. This may be a flaw of the medium and not the work itself. The problem lies in the need to keep the era recognizably Victorian, when really, it shouldn’t be. Actual Victorian mores and politics were a reaction to a specific series of historical events, technological and scientific developments, and ethical trends in which the commodification of people was de rigueur. In “The Tropic of Serpents” (as in similar neo-Victorian works), these ugly bits of real history are elided. There’s little mention here of an international slave trade, no British Raj. There’s some space allotted to a push by Western powers to get access to the iron of other lands, but this is relevant only in how it threatens the protagonist’s goals: Properly treated, dragon bone is stronger than iron. She fears a speculative run that could wipe out the beasts. In a way, this illustrates the niggling problem with neo-Victorian fiction. That Isabella frets so obsessively about conservationism while the nation around her ratchets toward war is ­actually spot on as an example of a colonizer’s patronizing attitude — but not enough actual colonialism exists in this world to support that attitude. And meanwhile the story’s focus on the liberation of only wealthy, white and otherwise highly privileged women ignores the grassroots-driven, labor-movement-inflected struggle that actually took place in our own world’s England. All of this actually serves to emphasize what’s been left out of these idealized Victorian worlds, and trivialize the struggles and complexities that made the era fascinating in real life.

"Which is fine, for readers who aren’t especially interested in engaging with those complexities. In that case, the story is exactly what it says on the tin: a rollicking adventure in which women wearing unnerving amounts of underwear tromp through jungles on dragon-hunting safaris. Really, that should be more than enough for just about everyone."

*****

HOLY FUCK!!!

If that isn't the most eloquent takedown I've ever read. Like on one hand she's like yeah I see you trying to promote a strain of feminism through the backdrop of this era but in so doing you're just perpetuating the bullshit you think you're trying to work against, and before you go off on some bullshit about how you're more of an expert on the era because you've spent however many years studying it, let me just tell you how your own cultural bias has rosed over the obvious, then she's like but i get it chile you're just having your fun so go on do you m but don't think I didn't just check you like no one else has done yet.

LMAO!!

Gonna go cop the Inheritance Trilogy now.

(yeah i been saying i been gonna do it this whole thread, but i swear they never have her shit in on the shelves so imma just do the amazon thing now)

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

.

nevermind got it

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/books/review/jeff-vandermeers-authority-and-more.html?_r=0


~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

"If, into this invented fantasy world, certain assumptions about gender roles, skin colour, sexual preference, etc, are carried ad hoc from our world, then it is incumbent that they be challenged. Why? Because it matters. Because, every time shit like that is carried over, an underlying assumption is made: that such assumptions adhere to some Natural Law, wherein arguments in defense of such choices devolve into falsehood ('history shows it was always that way' {no, it doesn't}, and 'in a barbaric world a patriarchy is given' {no, it isn't}, or, 'in a post-apocalyptic world where remnants of hi-tech is akin to magic, men will still rule and dominate every social hierarchy' {say what? That doesn't even make sense!}). The Natural Law argument is a fallacy; more to the point, the Fantasy genre is the perfect venue in which to utterly dismantle those assumptions, to offer alternative realities and thereby challenge the so-called givens of the human condition."

http://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/2vnkyp/rfantasy_exclusive_authorial_intent_discussion/

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

"Say what you will about the SJW Glittery hoo ha crowd, they get this. I speculate that they get it because while we (the guys that grew up watching STOG and said “Hey those doors are COOL, how would you do that for real? Those communicators, could you do that?) went to engineering and hard science classes and started building the future that we wanted, the aforementioned individuals where going to the soft sciences (not real sciences at all in my NSHO) and studied how cultures work.

Our plan for the future was that we would tell the stories of how we wanted it to be, and then go forth and MAKE it. Our myths where written during the “golden age of SF”. Steered by guys like Campbell, even when the myths involved the soft sciences, it made them into hard science (Foundation, anyone?). Well our view of the future has virtually no intersection with the preferred future of the SJWs, or at least so it seems to me. Their view of the future seems, in science fiction to be more driven by Silent Running, etc etal.

So, since they DIDN’T go to engineering schools, they use the tools that they have to try to drive the future they want. They have been working diligently at it for about forty years now. They are doing it by attempting to destroy the myths that are the foundations of our societies, and replacing them with their own, or with NOTHING. They’re pretty far along in England, but then they started earlier there, and had the advantage of a nation exhausted from two world wars that destroyed many of the best and brightest of three generations. In national politics they are working at it with things like attacking George Washington as someone who not only owned slaves, but was a virulent supporter of the institution. If they can destroy the myths that we base our cultural view on, they change the culture."

****

A lot more of the fuckery here - https://otherwheregazette.wordpress.com/2015/02/16/destroy-the-myth-destroy-the-culture/

actually worth clicking because he gets killed in the comments section.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

https://www.facebook.com/david.gerrold/posts/10204973223422658?pnref=story

"So ... here's where I kinda pull rank. He points to Star Trek, The Original Series as a catalyst for the engineering students. And to a great degree, he is right. The optical disk happened because two engineers saw "All Our Yesterdays" and wondered how you would store data on a big silver record. Sliding doors and flip phones and tablets and phasers all showed up on Star Trek and certainly there were people wondering how to make those devices.
But where Lehman has completely missed the point is that he uses Star Trek to justify his own beliefs while overlooking the much more important fact that Star Trek, The Original Series wasn't about the engineering as much as it was about the "Social Justice Warriors Glittery hoo ha" stuff.
I was there. I know what Gene Roddenberry envisioned. He went on at length about it in almost every meeting. He wasn't about technology, he was about envisioning a world that works for everyone, with no one and nothing left out. Gene Roddenberry was one of the great Social Justice Warriors. You don't get to claim him or his show as a shield of virtue for a cause he would have disdained.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

writing about other cultures. i think she says everything she's supposed to say in 2015... and made me realize how much issue i have with that shit:

http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/02/midnight-in-karachi-episode-7-monica-byrne

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/02/finalists-2014-nebula-awards-with-free-fiction-links/

I've read Ancillary Sword and Three Body Problem. Just picked up Annihilation. Trial by Fire is the Sad Puppies nominee. Doesn't look like the puppies got anything else in there. Awaiting their outrage.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

i look for boks to read off of these lists
Hugo as well
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

politics making the simple 'check the awards stuff' not as simple as it used to be.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

"The Husband Stitch" Carmen Maria Machado - http://www.granta.com/New-Writing/The-Husband-Stitch

"The Devil in America" Kai Ashante Wilson - http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/04/the-devil-in-america-kai-ashante-wilson

"A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i" Alaya Dawn Johnson - http://bestsf.net/alaya-dawn-johnson-guide-fruits-hawaii-fantasy-science-fiction-julyaugust-2014/ (not the full story though i anticipate it'll appear online soon enough)

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I think I just realized how badly I want that to happen after reading this piece on him in the New Yorker - http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chinas-arthur-c-clarke

Like if this red commie wins how these sad puppies gonna react? I'd anticipate uproar but the crazy thing is that it's the exact type of Sci-Fi they should be championing.

Being honest I enjoyed the book conceptually, but I think some of the affect of it got lost in translation which causes it to suffer slightly. It was better than Annihilation but not better than Ancillary Sword.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I noted that book on the list and it looked interesting but accompanying articles help
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

http://www.diversityinya.com/2015/02/perceptions-of-diversity-in-book-reviews/

It's really a beautiful breakdown.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/02/a-different-cluetrain.html

Right now, I'm chewing over the final edits on a rather political book. And I think, as it's a near future setting, I should jot down some axioms about politics ...

We're living in an era of increasing automation. And it's trivially clear that the adoption of automation privileges capital over labour (because capital can be substituted for labour, and the profit from its deployment thereby accrues to capital rather than being shared evenly across society).

A side-effect of the rise of capital is the financialization of everything—capital flows towards profit centres and if there aren't enough of them profits accrue to whoever can invent some more (even if the products or the items they're guaranteed against are essentially imaginary: futures, derivatives, CDOs, student loans).

Since the collapse of the USSR and the rise of post-Tiananmen China it has become glaringly obvious that capitalism does not require democracy. Or even benefit from it. Capitalism as a system may well work best in the absence of democracy.

The iron law of bureaucracy states that for all organizations, most of their activity will be devoted to the perpetuation of the organization, not to the pursuit of its ostensible objective. (This emerges organically from the needs of the organization's employees.)

Governments are organizations.

We observe the increasing militarization of police forces and the priviliging of intelligence agencies all around the world. And in the media, a permanent drumbeat of fear, doubt and paranoia directed at "terrorists" (a paper tiger threat that kills fewer than 0.1% of the number who die in road traffic accidents).

Money can buy you cooperation from people in government, even when it's not supposed to.

The internet disintermediates supply chains.

Political legitimacy in a democracy is a finite resource, so supplies are constrained.

The purpose of democracy is to provide a formal mechanism for transfer of power without violence, when the faction in power has lost legitimacy.

Our mechanisms for democratic power transfer date to the 18th century. They are inherently slower to respond to change than the internet and our contemporary news media.

A side-effect of (7) is the financialization of government services (2).

Security services are obeying the iron law of bureaucracy (4) when they metastasize, citing terrorism (6) as a justification for their expansion.

The expansion of the security state is seen as desirable by the government not because of the terrorist threat (which is largely manufactured) but because of (11): the legitimacy of government (9) is becoming increasingly hard to assert in the context of (2), (12) is broadly unpopular with the electorate, but (3) means that the interests of the public (labour) are ignored by states increasingly dominated by capital (because of (1)) unless there's a threat of civil disorder. So states are tooling up for large-scale civil unrest.

The term "failed state" carries a freight of implicit baggage: failed at what, exactly? The unspoken implication is, "failed to conform to the requirements of global capital" (not democracy—see (3)) by failing to adequately facilitate (2).

I submit that a real failed state is one that does not serve the best interests of its citizens (insofar as those best interests do not lead to direct conflict with other states).

In future, inter-state pressure may be brought to bear on states that fail to meet the criteria in (15) even when they are not failed states by the standard of point (16). See also: Greece.

As human beings, our role in this picture is as units of Labour (unless we're eye-wateringly rich, and thereby rare).

So, going by (17) and (18), we're on the receiving end of a war fought for control of our societies by opposing forces that are increasingly more powerful than we are.

Have a nice century!

Afternotes:

a) Student loans are loans against an imaginary product—something that may or may not exist inside someone's head and which may or may not enable them to accumulate more capital if they are able to use it in the expected manner and it remains useful for a 20-30 year period. I have a CS degree from 1990. It's about as much use as an aerospace engineering degree from 1927 ...

b) Some folks (especially Americans) seem to think that their AR-15s are a guarantor that they can resist tyranny. But guns are an 18th century response to 18th century threats to democracy. Capital doesn't need to point a gun at you to remove your democratic rights: it just needs more cameras, more cops, and a legal system that is fair and just and bankrupts you if you are ever charged with public disorder and don't plead guilty.

c) (sethg reminded me of this): A very important piece of the puzzle is that while capital can move freely between the developed and underdeveloped world, labour cannot. So capital migrates to seek the cheapest labour, thereby reaping greater profits. Remember this next time you hear someone complaining about "immigrants coming here and taking our jobs". Or go google for "investors visa" if you can cope with a sudden attack of rage.

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://nkjemisin.com/2015/02/a-world-in-which-race-matters/

Case in point, since we’re talking about Dragon Age Inquisition: Vivienne. She’s an awesome character in so many ways: powerful, occasionally vulnerable, subtly manipulating events to her advantage at every turn, and not at all shy about telling the player she’s doing so. But she’s also a painfully incomplete character. We meet her love interest at one point, Duke Bastien — but unlike other playable characters in the game who have lovers*, we know nothing about him beyond what Vivienne tells us (and Vivienne’s an unreliable narrator). She seems to have no friends, only allies and enemies. And what is she? Nearly everyone else in the game has an origin or a “people” — among the humans, there’s the various nationalities, and then subsets of the nationalities (e.g. the Chantry-worshippers vs the Disciples of Andraste/Havenites vs the Chasind, among the Ferelden). Vivienne has nothing. She’s a Circle Mage — but by her own admission she’s spent little time in her Circle (and her attachment is apparently to the Circle system as a whole, not any Circle in particular). She says that each Circle has its own unique customs, but which one(s) does she follow? We don’t know. She wears the trappings of Orlesian nobility but only so that she can effectively play the Game; she’s not really one of them and shows that she understands this in a variety of ways. She was born in the Free Marches but retains nothing of that identity but the accent. She’s not Rivaini — doesn’t share the physical characteristics of Isabela and Duncan, like light brown skin and straight hair, and clearly isn’t acculturated as such — but then what is her race? Does it even have a name? This is the problem: Vivienne is affiliated with many groups but few of them seem to have contributed anything to who she’s become. She’s the only playable black woman seen in the entire trilogy of games so far, and she is cultureless, rootless, and quintessentially raceless.

How much better a character could Vivienne have been if, when Bull complained about the lack of horn balm, Vivienne complained back about the difficulty of finding a hairdresser in Val Royeaux who had the skill to handle her kinky hair when it’s grown out (which might explain why she wears it now in such a short, if high-maintenance, style; good grief, the poor woman must have to shave and edge every day)? What if, when Sera complains about raisin cookies, Vivienne sends her a box of some confection that only Vivienne, out of all Skyhold, knows how to make? What if Vivienne spoke of her family, as several of the other playable characters do — if not the people who birthed her, then the family she forged within one of the Circles she lived in? Apparently at some point in the game, some of the Orlesian nobles make disparaging comments about her skin color and how she must “disappear in the dark”; what if we knew that she laughed at this because where she came from, her particular shade of blackness was prized? How much more resonant a character might she have been if she had a complete history, a unique accent and cultural trappings, and some reason for trying to gain power other than “because she wants to”? How much more interesting are those DA characters for whom we do have this level of completeness?

█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

I just picked it up, curiously, I asked the store owner about business and he said the book buying business is better than ever.

swipe:

"Dan Simmons, for years familiar to fans of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, made his way to the general reader with two historical/horror hybrids. The Terror, published in 2007, was an enthralling and fantastical conjuring up of Sir John Franklin's doomed voyage in search of a Northwest Passage. Drood, appearing two years later, was a creepily ingenious extrapolation of Charles Dickens's unfinished last novel and his vexed friendship with Wilkie Collins. Then came last year's Black Hills, a less satisfying story that posited an American Indian's mystical union with the soul of General George Custer.

So much for history. With Flashback, Simmons has, for the moment at least, put the past behind him and turned a righteous pen to a dystopian future. It is circa 2032, or more precisely, the 23rd year of Jobless Recovery. The U.S. is tottering, weighing in at only 44½ states, its mass eaten away by Mexico, its interior rotted out by floods of immigrants, by loss of faith in a free-market economy, by national health care and a myriad of other entitlement programs, by the global-warming hoax and green-energy boondoggles, and by drugs, the most pervasive being "flashback," which allows its users to visit their pasts in a dream state. It's a bad, bad time, and its fatal origins lie, we are instructed, with the Obama presidency, its spendthrift domestic programs and pusillanimous foreign policy.

Highways are disintegrating, people live in former malls cut into cubicles, and, adding insult to injury, right-wing talk radio has been banned. Japanese overlords have set up "green zones" across the land and America’s once proud and powerful military is now hired out as mercenaries to fight for Japan and India. At the same time, a New Global Caliphate flourishes and Islam spreads. An immense and towering mosque sits at Ground Zero and annual celebrations commemorate the attacks of September 11, 2001. In Los Angeles, where much of the story takes place, the bells of Christian churches add their peels to "the cries of the muezzin…to show their solidarity, understanding, and forgiveness." The Caliphate has obliterated Israel with eleven exceedingly dirty nuclear bombs, killing six million Jews. The survivors of this "Second Holocaust" are now sequestered in a former Six Flags amusement park in Denver by a U.S. government "terrified of angering the Global Caliphate" that is waiting to exterminate them.

With all this going on (and on), there hardly seems room for a plot, and yet there is one, balky and encumbered by jeremiads though it may be. Nick Bottom, Denver resident, ex-policemen, and sometime private detective, has been addicted to flashback ever since his wife was killed in a car crash five years ago. The drug lets him relive their happy times, but it has ruined his actual life and alienated his son. This is Val, who has gone to live in Los Angeles with his maternal grandfather. But the boy, tumid with anger and angst, is going to the bad, having joined one of the many "flash gangs" that roam the disintegrating city, committing violent and unspeakable acts in order to revisit the thrill through flashback. Val's gang has something big planned, but he himself just wants to get back to Denver to kill his dad for not phoning him on his birthday. Plus, L.A. is erupting into full-blown war; so Val and the old man join a convoy of big rigs traveling west over lurid and lawless highways and meet people with strong views, all thoroughly aired.

Meanwhile, Nick has been hired by a Catholic, multibillionaire Japanese overlord to solve the six-year-old murder of his son, a case Nick had failed to crack when he was on the police force. Why call on him again? It's a mystery and a growing source of great fishiness. Getting to the bottom of it involves quantities of flashback, some high-tech virtual-reality spectacles, an enormous, impassive Japanese warrior dude, a few ninjas, two futuristic armored personnel carriers, and one 2015 Chevy Camaro with gun slits for windows and a "raging 6.2-liter l99 V-8 engine" (delivering "603 horsepower and 518-pound-feet of torque"). If anything can plow through polemics, this baby can, and indeed, the battles and chases that interrupt their didactic flow provide the book's only entertainment. In the end, the novel's real mystery remains: How could the witty and potent imagination that produced The Terror and Drood wither to such smug and censorious dullness?"


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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

"The survivors of this "Second Holocaust" are now sequestered in a former Six Flags amusement park in Denver by a U.S. government "terrified of angering the Global Caliphate" that is waiting to exterminate them"

I never read his other books but nothing too offensive in Hyperion,just your regular white worldview like you'd expect.
You should pick it up one day.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2015/02/27/387533895/this-month-and-every-month-black-sci-fi-writers-look-to-the-future

As long as there are only one or two black writers, Delany wrote, he doesn't expect to experience much overt racial hostility in a field where people pride themselves on their liberal values. But that's only "until, say, black writers start to number thirteen, fifteen, twenty percent of the total. At that point, where the competition might be perceived as having some economic heft, chances are we will have as much racism and prejudice here as in any other field."

Here we are, a force for once in numbers as well as talent (we always had that), spinning visions of futures where our existence is not just a token nod to diversity, but fundamental to our understanding of the world.
Nearly 20years later, that prejudice abounds: Whitewashed covers, hostile dismissals of "identity politics" and "political correctness" as a barely veiled attempt to silence us, all-white panels on diversity, all-white anthologies of "the best" science fiction and continual institutional barriers to traditional publication based on appeals to marketability that really reflect the publishing houses' disbelief in the power and appeal of black storytelling.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

literature because I think it falls into these discussions here, with the politics of writing and publishing within 'genres'.

taking it back to a previous thread which gets noted in this one, astral i think my issue with the term literature is that well who the fuck cares. there's good storytelling and there's bad storytelling. the power of the written word not to be diminished but really (just watched book of negroes) are we raising the author of literature above the djeli (sp) who can weave beautiful stories out of every life they encounter? i'mma get side tracked though because what made me bring this here was this piece by leguin:

http://bookviewcafe.com/blog/2015/03/02/are-they-going-to-say-this-is-fantasy/

Mr Ishiguro said to the interviewer, “Will readers follow me into this? Will they understand what I’m trying to do, or will they be prejudiced against the surface elements? Are they going to say this is fantasy?”

Well, yes, they probably will. Why not?

It appears that the author takes the word for an insult.

To me that is so insulting, it reflects such thoughtless prejudice, that I had to write this piece in response.

*****

I also finished reading Annihilation today which was cool but got me wondering how its being judged (in this case for the nebula award) because me thinks the fantastic elements of it while there well to be honest they just didn't do anything for me. also wondering if the publisher's decision to publish the whole trilogy in the same year may have been a vie for more recognition come awards season where only the first book is nominated. cause i guess with the other two books it could become awesome as there's a nice premise laid out. But just based on the first book shit's just liek words words words. the story itself is only interesting in the context. but i think it might be literary which... yeah meh. a bunch of not really believable (in the world created) shit where the supension of disbelief is allowed for because - fantasy!

oh and don't take taht to mean i can't appreciate words. you know my favorites are masters of words but they don't let the words master the story. therin lies the difference.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.nerds-feather.com/2015/03/blogtable-iii-defining-science-fiction.html

some interesting thoughts there including:

"There are two ways of talking about genre. (Actually, there now seem to be three ways: I've started to see anything that might link disparate bits of writing together being described as a genre. Fiction by British-Asian writers: it's a genre; fiction by women: it's a genre. So far as I can see, this is a completely useless and meaningless employment of the term, but beware, it's out there.) The oldest and broadest and, for some people, still the only correct way to use genre is in terms of type of writing. Prose, poetry, drama: these are genres; science fiction, in this context, clearly isn't.

The more recent, and now more generally accepted use of the word is as a characterization of story. Here we know the basic structure of the story, we know the end point towards which we anticipate the story will lead us (or which may be subverted, but you need to recognize where it should go in order to recognize the subversion). Crime is a genre: it leads us to the solution/restoration; coming-of-age is a genre: it leads to personal growth; quest is a genre: it leads to the finding of what was lost; romance is a genre, bildungsroman is a genre. Genre is what shapes the story we are reading. Science fiction is not a genre, there is no natural end point towards which a science fiction story leads (a point made in very different ways by Brian Stableford when he talks of an sf story having no ending, and by Brian Attebury when he describes science fiction as a parabola open to infinity); on the contrary, science fiction can employ any of these genres. Science fiction, in other words, is what enables the story, not what shapes it. The same is true of historical fiction, for instance, or contemporary mainstream literature. "

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

For the longest time along with art

Both mostly meant white people to me for the longest

Photography in HS taught me and brought me on the long journey towards finding people of color in all of the arts
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

it allows me to know what I'm about to get into.

I really don't think it's as easy as there is good story telling and bad, because I don't give two shits about plot if the writing is great, just as if the writing is mediocre but the plot is very engaging I'll tough it out and likely enjoy it.

I think crime fic, spec fic, sci-fi should sit comfortably next to realist or literary stuff, they only reason they don't is because of the gatekeepers.

hopefully my gen who will be the next gen of teachers and writers that can bridge that gap

I mean I've read hella Morrison and Baldwin, but just "found out" about Delany and Butler and a lot of that is due to the how much the distinction even makes its way into the "literary authors of color"

folk should just read everything, or as much as they can regardless of genre

http://www.steinershow.org/podcasts/arts-and-culture/octavia-butler-and-diversity-in-science-fiction/

http://octaviasbrood.com/

Thanks for the reminder about this project. Takes me a bit to fit podcasts into my listening life but I'm gonna try to listen to it this week.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.amazon.com/Octavias-Brood-Science-Fiction-Movements/dp/1849352097/

I actually know the answer is because of the publisher AK Press. But fuck that. Actually nah not fuck that. That's my knee jerk reaction but can we talk about this? Apologies if it's in the podcast Castro posted.

I mean I get it we where our politics on our skin and shit, but why can't this just be a sci-fi anthology. Would Octavia really want her brood to be pigeonholed as necessarily an activist movement?

Hmmmmm.

Shout out to all my peoples in here though. Already pre-ordered.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

After I got out of college and spent a few years working in tech, I had enough extra income to buy season tickets to the ballet in Los Angeles. This was sometime in the early nineties. I loved the ballet – the dancing, the music, the grace. I invited a friend of mine, who is a black male. He looked at me like I was crazy, and he said something like “Black people don’t go to the ballet.”

“You don’t like ballet?”

“I probably like ballet. How would I know? But I bet there aren’t any other black people there.”

I actually didn’t know how to answer him. I had never noticed. Not once.

The end of the story is he went with me, and at least on the night that we went, he was the only black man in the audience. Which I would never have known if he wasn’t with me. People who had always been nice to me before weren’t. They weren’t overtly mean. They just weren’t nice. I felt awkward.

This was a great lesson for me in my own prejudices (why had I never even noticed the ballet was almost exclusively a white and Asian audience? Why had I never cared?)

http://skiffyandfanty.com/2015/03/04/on-sniping-women-and-sf-by-brenda-cooper/

It fits in context when you read the rest of the piece. I'd love to hear the black man's side of that story though. lol.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://time.com/3731977/science-fiction-future-wrong/

Partial swipe:

More serious fans of science fiction are probably drawn to the works of Isaac Asimov or Frank Herbert. In his Foundation series, Asimov describes an empire that has lasted for 12,000 years. Herbert’s classic Dune also envisions an empire, and, through the book’s basic conflict, we see what generally happens when extractive institutions dominate a society. In the story, one aristocratic family battles another for the right to rule and extract resources from the planet Dune. The outcome of the battle topples the empire.

Readers of Why Nations Fail, though, would have to ask: How could the future be dominated by an “empire”? Empires are generally based on extractive institutions; with significant resources generated by members of the society being claimed by the Emperor/Empress and his/her allies (this is explicit in Herbert’s Dune). But, such societies would not generally promote the technological change necessary to settle and connect millions of planets. Perhaps the basic economics behind the stories told in many works of science fiction isn’t quite right.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

=========================================
I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

http://gizmodo.com/the-great-internet-debate-over-not-reading-white-men-1690376231

Recap of what's happened since this

http://www.xojane.com/entertainment/reading-challenge-stop-reading-white-straight-cis-male-authors-for-one-year

and this

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/20/i-only-read-non-white-authors-for-12-months-what-i-learned-surprised-me

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://thenewinquiry.com/features/things-to-come/

The whole Lovecraft shit is now 4 years redic. It's kinda crazy in some sense we're powerless to do anything but complain (not that that isn't anything).

Also the points on magical realism. All these fucking labels man.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

what I wrote above in terms of realism v sci-fi / spec fic / fantasy

yet, I do not agree with how they represented magical realism. That was a literary movement out of latin america that was coined by the authors. how white critics and teachers have perverted the meaning, doesn't mean they should dismiss it they way they did, because in some ways it contradicts what they had just said about sci-fi versus relaism.

magical realism sort of a signifier of that. from a judeo christian perspective, everything outside of miracles allowed in those canons is fantasy which is 'not real'. but once you get outside of those cultures as one of them was talking about, the reality of spirit and power of that is a very real thing. that's what magical realism as a term is trying to capture. this isn't just imaginary fantasy but magic rooted in real human history. (or maybe i'm being to broad with that). that literally doesn't happen from a western perspective. and i think subtly the resistance and dismissal of that is indicative of the insecurity of that judeo-christian realist perspective.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

http://www.listchallenges.com/npr-top-100-science-fiction-and-fantasy-books?fb_ref=Default

Guess what it's lacking.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

https://www.neondystopia.com/cyberpunk-politics-philosophy/not-here-to-save-you/

Over the past year or so, I’ve read quite a few manifestos and essays shared online hoping to capsulize what cyberpunk means and what it is expected to do or look like now that there is a world that can truly appreciate it, because, whether consciously or subconsciously, people all over the world have begun augmenting their reality with technology, consuming pharmaceuticals at an alarming rate, and grown accustomed to corporate and political malfeasance ad the norm–classic cyberpunk tropes. What many of these examinations get wrong is the idea that cyberpunk is the answer to these problems.

Allow me to demystify my thesis before we go any further, and unburden you of any delusions you may have had. Cyberpunk is not here to save you.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://sunnewsonline.com/new/?p=112456

Nigerian-American Nnedi Okoroafor’s science fiction charts new territory for the reader. With inspiration from the like of Octavia Butler, Ngugi wa’ Thiongo and Hayao Miyazaki, the author’s stories are strong and brave.
A PhD holder in English from University of Illinois, Chicago and Professor of Creative Writing at Chicago State University, Nnedi wrote her first official story 16 years ago as a patient sitting in a hospital bed and, since then, her career as a writer blossoms. Okorafor is a 2001 graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop in Lansing, Michigan, Chicago. She is an associate professor of creative writing and literature at the University at Buffalo (SUNY) and lives between Buffalo and Illinois with her family. Among her prizes are the Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa and the Macmillan Prize for Africa.
In this interview with Literary Review in Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria, Okorafor, the writer, who loves to see the world in a magical way, believes that there is no invention without a story. She bares her mind on why she is at home with local culture rather than whole nation, her soft spot for female characters, among other issues.

We understand you wanted to be an entomologist, which is the study of insects. What really upturned the idea?
Yes. I wanted to be an entomologist, which is the study of insect. I was good in the sciences and mathematics. I wrote my first book while in the hospital bed. And this took me away from the public glare. I had surgery and woke up sterilized without an idea of what happened. When I couldn’t move, that was when the story came. I have confidence in the sciences, and science fiction was one genre nothing was really happening. But I could neither figure if nor work it. I didn’t want to study science anymore. I still love sciences and biology, but I could not do that anymore. When I discovered everything about writing, and I was good at it, I started writing, and that is what I have been doing.
My first book is Who Fears Death. It is set in an alternate/post-apocalyptic/futuristic African desert (with magic). The book opens with a teenage Onyesonwu at her father’s funeral. Grieving, she briefly and unintentionally starts to bring him back to life. She is a
sorcerer, feared and hated because of her powers and her parentage. Her abilities, though spectacular, mostly endanger her and cause her suffering. But they also lead her on a quest to save her mother’s people from impending war, slavery, and eventual genocide.
The story is non-linear and framed as a more mature Onyesonwu’s last words. Though complex and exotic, the way it’s told makes everything clear and easy to follow, with background introduced just when we need to know it. In its skeleton, the novel is not so different from a classic quest fantasy. There’s a magical apprenticeship, prophecies, a quest to fight evil, and travels with a band of companions, but the details make the experience very, very different.
Who Fears Death deals frankly with some horrific subjects. The reader should be prepared to face the reality of topics like rape, war, genocide, and female circumcision. It’s never gory, gratuitous, or –amazingly –particularly depressing, but nothing is glossed over.
The characters were all distinct, real, and interesting. The plot is engaging and logical. While there are real-world political and social issues addressed, the story –Onyesonwu’s story –which is where the story derives its title –is what matters.
Your recent work is entitled Kabu-Kabu. Why did you choose the theme?
Kabu Kabu is a book of short stories. It is short stories I have written over the years. Some are either based in Nigeria, or in a place like Nigeria and other places. I have always believed my stories take place in Nigeria. And when I wrote my first official short story, it was in a place in Nigeria. So, from that period on, it has remained like that. It is a combination of Nigerian stories. There, was one novel of a bit under a hundred pages. And the story is called Kabu-Kabu. It is about Nigerian-American woman who is coming to Nigeria for a specific wedding, and she is late and hailing a taxi, but it couldn’t come.
It was not actually a taxi but a kabu-kabu. And it picked her on a very interesting journey to the airport. She never makes it to the airport end of story and straight to Nigeria in a magical way. It is where the title and idea of the story came from. Also, kabu-kabu is a legal taxicab in Nigeria. So, my stories go the way they should to go. It takes the same way and also breaks many rules and ideas that, when one writes about science fiction, one cannot put fantasy in it and vice-versa. I have always broken through. That is the whole idea about Kabu Kabu; that one cannot break away from the fact that it is a legal taxicab in Nigeria, it is the way to go and kind of perfect.
You are not based in Nigeria. How does the idea of a ‘close up’ view of local culture rather than whole nation come about?
I don’t know. It is like I was first born and raised in the United States of America, have an accent. But from a young age my parents were taking my younger siblings to Nigeria. While we were having our American story, coming to Nigeria, my American story was affecting my childhood and American upbringing as much. The connection has been maintained and, when I finally settled down to write and, coming to Nigeria, it is like I always see similar place, almost a quarter of a place, a mystical place. When I do that, it came back to Nigeria, the country of my parents. And it has always been like that. And that is how I found out that the connection is where my stories are coming from.
You also wrote the book, Lagoon, in 2014. Tell us about it?
Lagoon is a funny story with humour. The easy way to describe it is that the story is about something that happened to me. It probably had been at the back of my head for a long time. It came from a blockbuster movie project, the first of its kind, science fiction to come out of Africa. It gave me problems. And one of the greatest problems is that it portrays Nigerians specifically in very bad light. It mirrors Nigerians as prostitutes, cannibals, criminals, violent and every bad thing one can think of. And coming from the United States, I just expect to see this kind of film. So, when I call it Lagoon, it is everything it should be, and some of my sisters get more infuriated about the movie.
When one watches it, it is about everything going on in places like Johannesburg, South Africa, and when I think about the movie and aliens, the impression is that what would happen to Nigeria when the alien come to Nigeria and learn the skill. And When I think about alien in Nigeria, the first place I thought that it could happen is Lagos. So, the perfect place for the story is Lagos. So, the story is about Lagos, and its wide-wide lively, wonderful and terrible human being. Lagoon is a story about aliens coming to Nigeria. And when I wrote the story, it is not just about the alien, because, when they come, they can move like human being, manipulate, meet every body; and all the people in Lagos. They need the people, plants and animals. Lagoon is an alien encounter with all the people in Nigeria.
Considering the movie you watched in America that was woven around your book, Lagoon, would you say the screenplay represented Nigeria or Africa in better form?
My own interpretation of Nigeria is to present it the way I know it: diverse with different kinds of people. Some are negative, positive, in between and confused. And because I have visited Lagos and want to show it, I know I have to write the story and present it from my own point of view mainly at the same characters with different viewpoint. It is like looking at the same incident but with different kinds of people. That is talking about those who are positive, negative or confused. It is a character view with different worldview.
How do Nigerian youth in America think about the country?
My own story is different, but most of the immigrant kids don’t want to have anything to do with Nigeria. They don’t even want to be called Nigerians. They don’t want to come back; they don’t have any interface, because they claim most Nigerians are terrific human beings. So, they are not proud to be Nigerians. The country has issues –that is the problem, but no country is perfect. They feel they are not given the kind of unconditional love they desire. It is still the same way nothing seems to have changed. I have two of my brothers who are well connected. We always come back to Nigeria. That is the way we were raised, and that is the way we have maintained, and we are proud to be who we are.
I tell people I’m Nigerian-American, and I maintain that. And all of us have Nigerian names, and we are proud of that. None of us has American names. But we are not good in Igbo language. I still want to learn the language, but it is very difficult to speak it, because we aren’t living around people speaking the language. When I was growing up, I spoke the language; after a while, it became difficult and humiliating. I have friends, who come from different countries of the world they don’t care. They keep moving forward, but, for me, it makes me go back into myself, even though it is not the best for me.
How do you think we have used science fiction as a genre of literature in our development agenda?
I’m just one person. The genre is still new. The whole idea of science fiction movement is just starting in Africa. And not much yet has been done in this direction. But I think, in the future, we are going to see interesting developments and the ideas of science fiction coming from different indigenous people of different places, especially in Nigeria, different types of idea and technology coming forth, and those ideas are going to facilitate inventions. That is what science fictions do. They see different messages and ideas, and are able to facilitate it. I’m thinking about someone from Nigeria specifically coming up and saying something about the country’s needs through science fiction and start inventing. That is how it works. First, it is to get ourselves together, and we are working at it.
A writer is supposed to address issues of the society; unfortunately, many of them don’t adequately do that. What are your burdens as a writer?
A writer is not ‘supposed’ to. That is the job of a writer. I don’t know what other writers do, but I know I have to. In Lagoon, my alien invasion in Lagos, set in 2009, has a lot of politics. The book addresses issues on government, the military, religion –not specific one, and I have fun with that, and the people. It is very political. I didn’t set out that way, saying, ‘Oh! I have an agenda’. I set out writing on an idea of alien coming to Lagos and what would happen. When I settled down to do that, all the politics came forth. When it comes to political statements, I don’t have a strong view. I don’t have what I specifically set out to say, there was no agenda.
In all my novels, there is politics, and it is has Nigeria influence. There is Nigerian magic in them, whether is about child soldier, female prostitution, circumcision and all that, it is science fiction with a lot of fantasy. It is an idea of realistic novel versus science fiction and realism; it is about the idea of relating it to our world, as issues of the country’s present and future. And talking about African writers using literature to address specific issues, yes! We are expected to do that. In the West view, it is believed that African novels have to be addressing wars, famine, diseases and other stereotypes. I know I like to write from strong African female characters. It is a big issue for me.
I read a lot of African literature. I’m an avid reader who can read anything. Of all the African literature I read, African female character gives me more burdens. It is always good a lot of times but I need to see more of the African female characters. I wouldn’t say it is my agenda; it is what gives me comfort. The idea of presenting a modern Nigeria is one of the reasons I started writing science fiction in the first place. I read stories that portray African in science fiction, especially among the West as a place of dark.
African-American would portray it as a place they left behind, something in the past, alien and without a future. And coming to Nigeria and going back and forth, I want to see a Nigeria that is, in the future, in terms of technology and innovation. Technology is used in unique ways everywhere around the world. And many countries are warming up to see Nigeria excel through science fiction. And imagine what Nigeria would be in future!
What is your imagination of Nigeria of the future?
I would like to see in terms of corruption a Nigeria that is free from it. Imagine what would happen to the country if corruption were gone. Aliens would come and bring change in Lagos, radiating to the people of Lagos. I’m imagining if we can deal with corruption in a magical way, patriotism instilled and people wanting to do well for the nation as opposed to oneself. I think that is what many of us especially the politicians should crave for.
Authors now find it easier to sell their books online. Which one is favouring you most?
It is all about balance. I’m still a strong believer in physical book. This is not to say I don’t like e-book. I love it, too. I read things electronically sometimes, but I feel reading physical books, because it doesn’t give any charge. There is physical dynamism. And I know people have different opinions about that. In a study that came out, it is said that when one reads electronically, one doesn’t retain as much. It makes sense, because the feel and touch of a physical book is also part of the reading. I’m a strong believer in physical book, but the dissemination of information is much easier and faster electronically, especially in places where one cannot physically reach in parts of the world. That is what world leaders are doing now; bringing in electronically many books and novels to many parts of Africa using different mechanism. I feel there should be a balance between physical books versus e-book.
What is the picture of your family background?
My parents were both born and raised in Imo State, Southeast of Nigeria. My mum was born in Jos. The reason they came to the United States in the first place was for education. My father went on to become a cardiovascular surgeon (Heart Surgeon) and my mum very educated with PhD. They came to the United States to acquire education and planned to go back to showcase what they have learnt from the United States to Nigeria but were stalled by the Biafran War. They weren’t able to come back. And trust Nigerians, wherever they go, they find the way to get by. That was how they found themselves in the United States. Even though they stayed behind, they never wanted to be in a country they never returned, so they came back to Nigeria and maintained connection with the aborigines.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NY9yElW2Vg

Adrienne Maree Brown, editor of the speculative fiction anthlogy "Octavia's Brood", reads her story "The River" in front of a packed house at Red Emma's bookstore in Baltimore, MD on April 7th, 2015.

Tons of coverage. George Martin says the awards are forever ruined. And for context the author I started this thread about is one of the benefited in this coup.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

No seriously. Shits is amazeballs

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

shit is Pattern Master?

>
>shit is Pattern Master?

time travel usually goes firmly under the sci-fi label

although
"Butler has categorized the work as "a kind of grim fantasy.""
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kindred_(novel)

patternist series most definitely
because of the breath of time it encompasses from past through to future
~~~~
When you are born, you cry, and the world rejoices. Live so that when you die, you rejoice, and the world cries.
~~~~
You cannot hate people for their own good.

I think that is the hallmark of Octavia's work- it rides the line between fantasy and sci-fi...the Earthseed series is what I refer to as "Speculative Realism".

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/28/harold-covington-northwest-front-dylann-roof-manifesto-charleston-shooting

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

before is now unbearable.

#1 Tananarive Due is killing it in her Uhura outfit.
#2 They just gave no award to the first category dominated by a puppy slate. *edit* they No Awarding all the dominated categories.

This battle will be won, but the war ain't over.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Awwwe man this has been awesome.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Read a couple of articles.

http://www.wired.com/2015/08/won-science-fictions-hugo-awards-matters/

I am not that deep in the Sci-Fi scene but this is fascinating.

People who read. Do y'all think stories of a lesser caliber have been winning because of an attempt to be more inclusive?


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

Movies I need y'all bastids to see so we can discuss:

Five Star
Appropriate Behavior
Margaret

Its no different than what is happening with Literary Fiction...a whole lot of dense navel gazing.

The reaction to the new faces and voices is just more visible because of the puppies. Vox Day is a racist troll who is enjoying his time in the spotlight. Many of the rest of the puppies come off as closet racists that are embarrassed that to be associated with the rabid puppies.

The fact that they are acting brand new is hilarious- if you go back past this puppies thing, there are reams of blog posts and accounts of different white male editors and authors acting racist and sexist towards their peers...

Laughable to a degree but when some barely known like Beagle refers to one of the brightest new storytellers a 'half savage' as he did with nk jemisin it already lets you know what they're on about. Anyone thats read six sci fi stories before hmm lets just say 2000 will admit that they all started from the same place normally (white male protagonists that heroically overcome their social class/status to change their world), utter bollocks that was growing stale as fuck. Not to mention that by its very definition genre lit is Supposed to be some of the more creative shit out there. I could go on but better writers than me have already attacked this. I voted for Hugos this year and was happy to shut them whiney white folks out. Its like they felt it was thenlast sacred spot a white guy could be accepted for the sexist, racist drivel they produce without being held accountable.

vs. what's popular outside the genre.

Outside the genre all the tropes that made the puppies into fans are being turned into mainstream ideas. Particularly through other media. Superhero movies and the like. Comic culture and convention culture is hot as shit right now.

Sci-fi has always sat in somewhat parallel to that even when superman was in black and white. but there was never a superhero novel winning a hugo (i may be wrong). Rather sci-fi was the literization of these ideas though often with a pulpy edge. A litttle too far nerd for the mainstream. And that's still the case, but there's this whole thing happening which is sci-fi book to big screen and its getting eaten up. If you search for Wesley Chu in here you'll read my thoughts on that, and oddly enough he one the Campbell award this year too. He's writing some pulpy shit if there ever was one.

So this is the shield these guys can hide behind. Look at what's popular with comic book and movie going fans, how come our genre isn't seeing reflecting that. Well that's because the genre traditionally praises those that go beyond the level of engagement with the audience. These movie properties are just as diversified these days so why should't sci-fi reflect that same diversity but rather than tokenise it (which in some regards it does) similarly take it a level deeper.

Look, I wrote about Ancillary Justice above as well which is really the one that pushed them over the ledge. That shit is fucking phenomenal. And if the lead character was clearly demarked as a blonde white male these guys would have soaked it up. They want to position about it being all about the story, but then end up getting trapped in the use of gender pronouns so much they can't even appreciate the fact that it's a fucking space opera. A fantastic one at that.

Yeah they just racist and mad. some more the latter than the former but the most vocal more the former.
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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

_____________________________________________________
"You can win with certainty with the spirit of "one cut". "Musashi Miyamoto

its fantasy not sci fi but I enjoyed his stuff.


_____________________________________________________
"You can win with certainty with the spirit of "one cut". "Musashi Miyamoto

You can get the live stream here
http://livestream.com/aas21/fergusonfuture

I can talk about this shit for days and it's always great to come back to.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Interview with the author
http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2015/09/guest-post-ayize-jama-everett-writing-liminal-people-entropy-bones/

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

One of y'all please read this cause man alive its great to ponder. I think the translation is better this go round but am now able to say the ideas are probably better than the writing. The theory presented though is great, and the story itself is great at exemplifying it. Honestly the whole thing could end right here though which has me worried about the third book. Without a cliff hanger even if there are some loose ends just doesn't feel necessary,and I'm not convinced it'd take a whole book to wrap it up.
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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Just finished The Water Knife

Pretty decent. This dude Paolo's been on my radar for a minute but never read him. Doesn't really state his ethnicity online anywhere, but he's from colorado. Could be some sort of mix I guess. But for now I'm just going to assume he's white (is that wrong).

I don't got any real problems wiith the portrayal of race in the book. It's interesting because no one is explicitly white (except the real bad guy with blonde hair but he only gets a few pages really). Everyone else is distinctly not though. Texans are actually the butt of the joke throughout, even called wetbacks at some point. But there are mexicans. There's a big black dude. then there's the gentrifying reporter woman. I don't know it's weird, because its a diverse book, but at the same time it's kinda textbook. The main mexican is a bad ass cholo exposed to that cartel life from an early age. There's this whole enviro/economic collapse that sets the stage for the whole thing. Mexico however has become the Cartel states, which only makes sense in extremely reductive reasoning. Like yeah we know there's a big narco issue right now, but projecting the Narco takeover of Mexico *while* the US is going down the toilet without further info... ionno.

It's a fun read, I'm just hyper critical.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Thinking on this for a minute. Really came up in Lagoon. Her choice to bring the gods into the story seemed to me that need to echo out a historical memory from our own tales and mythologies to ensure there's a place for them in the future. I think this is common among writers of color, yet often absent from their white counterparts. It should however be said for the most part I don't read christian sci-fi which may also touch on it. But when you get to a lot of sci-fi especially those on the realism side which lean toward hard stuff, the only past that exists is the last hundred years when the science to back up what they are talking about existed. In someways its an erasure of the historical memory because I assume for them the science is at odds with it.

With folk of color in some regards it seems like the wave of progress moves forward without them they know they have to get on board but they will not let go of their own traditions. And so they project the validation of those into a future context. I read the first of Ramez Naam's trilogy which is all about this technological wonder drug, and in the midst of it is a nod to the fact that the tech is just what was already known through Buddhism (he's Egyptian not sure if he is buddhist).

That one's an interesting example because it is hard sf, and while the buddhist angle is clear it wouldn't fall into fantasy. So it's evaluated amongst peers as real sci-fi. It was an easy line to draw there. But I notice that in a lot of afram specific work a lot of time the crux maintains a fantastical element which throws up a wall for the trad sci-fi fan (of which I'll admittedly say I'm more of a fan). There becomes an unverifiable speculation.

The thing I wonder though is how that plays into futurism. I got the Black Quantum Futurism book which is cool and I guess for some could be seen as practical but at the same time... maybe just not me.

Which takes me back because Sun Ra brought me into this where the myth is the thing. That is the thing. But I think the dominence of science today is so strong that the fantastic can't really flirt with it and expect to be considered. Fantasy and metaphor can be considered in there own right, but if it's to be placed in the practicality... and by practicality here I mean the fact that indeed afro futurism is about projecting the afro future... well then perhaps different tactics are needed.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

So thanks for that.



"1) God doesn't exist

2) And anyhow he's stupid"
—Philip K. Dick

http://austinato.bandcamp.com

http://www.discogs.com/lists/Favorites-of-2015/222933

Listen live at 8am PST/ 11am EST:

http://ic1.mainstreamnetwork.com/kpfk-fm.mp3

.

I recorded it and set up a new link on my website:

newfuturism.com/redlines

https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/2015/10/26/nnedi-okorafors-the-book-of-phoenix-review-round-up/

I respect this site and this analysis. But something about the
unappealing character part bothers me. Makes me wonder if
people of color particularly strong people of color are
inherently unlikeable for general audiences. 

Having not read phoenix I do wonder in what regard the
character is a rflecrion of contemporary issues of frustration
and anger.

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am
1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://nkjemisin.com/2015/11/whew/

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/11/the-counter-currents-h-p-lovecraft-prize-for-literature/

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

Just started Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson. He's getting a lot of press these days and a friend just finished and really enjoyed it. So yeah I might be back about that.

But in reading about this piece came up - http://www.newrepublic.com/article/123217/new-utopians

And it made me think, ideas of utopia are a rate privildge. Here speaking about practical utopias not fantastical ones. Like I can't even imagine what a utopian society would be from here because we're just so far removed from a decent society - LOL. And utopias pretty much never deal with the elements of our society that I want addressed. If race comes up it's all peachy creamy with no notion for how it got to be that way, whcih is pretty much when the whole idea jumps shark to fantasy to me. Oh look at all htese different races getting along like they have no historical memory of pat grievances... uhuh!

Probably why LeGuin's dispossesed and the related shorts are the closest I get to embracing a 'utopia'. The motherfuckers that hate the odonians kick them off the planet so they can keep their bullshit not expecting the odonians to really do much, menawhile they continue to spiral in their dystopia and the odonians come close to a utopia on the moon. (Of course it isn't a perfect utopia still but that's what makes it such a good book)

but yeah utopia is pretty much fantasy land for me. what say you/

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Big PEMFin H & z's
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." � Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."