lydamorehouse: (Default)
 I don't actually have anything to say? I'm here and alive. It snowed, the first real snow we've had all winter. It's gorgeous and brilliantly sunny. that's kind of the big news.

I do feel like I should have something to say about the renewed Hugo Award scandal, but I really don't. I was a virtually attending member of the Chicago WorldCON, and, so, due to how the Hugo voting works, I was able to nominate for the Hugos. You then have to buy at least a voting membership for the current WorldCON in order to vote and, I'll be honest, I didn't want to give any of my money to the Chinese government in protest of their stance on free speech, GLBTQIA+ rights, and the oppression of Uyghur people. I understand that the Chinese fans are lovely and not to blame, but this was a choice I made. 

For the longest time, I was feeling kind of superior in a "what did you expect?" sort of way, but now I'm just utterly horrified by the fact that a bunch of Western fans decided to compile dossiers (what the f*cking f*ck) on the nominees (and then do it so very, very badly.) Thus, basically self-censoring the Hugo Award ballot. This is an absolute disgrace. Because the one take away I have held close to my heart since Trump was elected in 2016 and the shadow of fascism and totalitarianism grows ever longer in the United States is that we should NEVER, EVER comply in advance.  

We did this entirely to ourselves. 

However, generally, I am a supporter of WorldCON and the Hugo Awards. I have faith that we, as a community, can FIX this. As has been pointed out by many others, there's not a whole lot we can do in terms of righting wrongs, but we can do BETTER going forward.  In fact, I just signed up to be a virtual attendee in Glasgow next year. It cost me over a hundred bucks (US), but just as I did NOT buy a membership last year in protest, I'm buying one this year in support of the institutions of WorldCON and the Hugo Awards. 

This is, again, a personal choice and so this is why I feel, even though I just went on about it for several paragraphs, I don't really have a lot to say about this scandal. 

I'd love to hear your thoughts, however.
lydamorehouse: (Renji 3/4ths profile)
...is that you walk away with ART.

I ended up buying $40 worth of blank cards before last night's panel discussion/reading even started at the AZ Gallery. I couldn't help it. For one the cards all featured Saint Paul landmarks, and secondly, they were f*cking gorgeous! My pen pals NEED these, you understand. NEED.

Besides, I figure that supporting my hosting venue is never a bad idea.

The panel itself went well, for the most part. Ironically, we were somewhat hijacked by a guy in the audience ("that guy") who wanted all HIS questions answered. So, I guess we were basically a living example of the whole 'things that happen when you bring up feminism on the internet.' Except not QUITE that egregious.

I always feel a little... awkward on these panels because I read a LOT of women who are publishing currently, and so I tend to baulk when people suggest that there's a huge dearth of female voices or that we somehow didn't 'break in' to SF/F until yesterday.  I tried temper my comment by pointing out that it seems pretty clear to me that the issue has to do with how are voices are perceived--the whole idea that if women make up 30% of the discussion, they're perceived as dominating.  The percentage of women writing SF/F in the past has always stayed under the radar of that threshold.  Now that we're reaching PERCEIVED parity, people are squawking that we're taking over.  

Which I hope made my, "Yes, but there *is* a published author who wrote about X" a little less annoying. (If you're curious about the context, it was suggested that in science fiction women rarely worry about menstruation, I pointed out that, ACTUALLY, Monica Byrne wrote about it in GIRL IN THE ROAD, and I could also have brought up that you could have called the main theme of BOOK OF THE UNNAMED MIDWIFE by Meg Elison 'what the f*ck are we going to about our periods in the apocalypse?' TBF, the point of % representation still stands, that's two books I could think of out of how many?) 

So, it was a good panel, I'd say.  Anything that makes *me* think about how I talk about women writers is well worth it, you know?  

The reading went well, too. With luck, I drew a few more people into my work.  

lydamorehouse: (ichigo being adorbs)
Sometime I amaze even myself with my extroversion.

Today, right?  I'm at the laundromat washing some of our rag rugs.  These aren't ones we've finished, but ones that we got over the years from my mother and, before her, my grandmother.  Some have just gotten grungy.  Others, Inky decided to pee on (before he started taking Prozac to solve that issue.)  The laundromat is the one place that has sturdy enough washing machines to handle these heavy rugs.  I can put in four or more at a time.  It costs $4.50 a load, but it's worth it, because these machines have three rinse cycles, too, so ALL that grimy grit actually gets pushed out of the rugs.

Like you do, I brought along my computer and tried to write. To be fair, I didn't just try.  I actually managed it. I added another chapter of UnJust Cause up on Wattpad.*  But, with three rinse cycles, the rugs take a long time. I bought a candy bar... and a guy helped me find a quarter that the machine rejected so forcefully that it skidded onto the floor.  I thanked this stranger and... happened to notice he was reading Ann Leckie.

"Aha!" My mind went into full POUNCE mode, "A science fiction fan!"

So, I asked him how he was enjoying the book. I noted that I'd read both Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword.  He thought the book was okay. I confessed that I found the gendering thing a bit distancing, like I never really connected to the characters because I couldn't imagine them, physically, in my head.  We bonded over this.  He said he'd been recommended the book by Greg at Dreamhaven.  "Ah," I smiled, "So you're one of my people.  Do you go to science fiction conventions?"

He blinked. "I didn't even know there WERE conventions"

Oh, my friend. I have Good News for you.

This reminds me of the fact that Naomi Kritzer and I have long *wished* there was some geek version of a 'chick track' that you could pull out and hand people like this. Seriously, it would say, "Geek! Have you heard the Good News!" and then go on to explain that you don't have to be alone (especially not in this town), Fandom is waiting to welcome you home.  For all that it would mimic a religious track, it would be full of useful geek info, like a list of some of the conventions in town with websites, the bookstores, resources, etc.  

I, of course, ended up telling him that I'm a science fiction writer and gave him my business card. Which reminds me, I have to put more in my wallet.  Because, yes, I actually hand them out CONSTANTLY. (Too bad this only works to boost my local reputation.  When I volunteered for WorldCON programming this year, I got the, 'uh, we're not sure who you are exactly and while you *might* be cool enough to be on paneling, we can't guarantee anything, but go ahead and fill out our survey anyway' version of the programming letter.  Which is fine, actually, because last WorldCON I went to was Chicago, and I suffered a massive attack of impostor syndrome and didn't really have a good time.  This WorldCON, I'm hoping to avoid all that by hanging out with my friends Eleanor and Naomi and generally just being a fan.)

Anyway, I just thought it was both a really funny exchange, and also REALLY TYPICAL of me.

---
*I'm actually starting to think I might be closing in on an ending to this story.  If I do get to an end, I'm probably going to pull down copies of all the chapters and rework the thing into an e-book that I'll self-publish.  Fingers crossed.  It's going to be a lot of work, because a huge section in the middle kind of makes no sense and was entirely ramblely, but it'd be nice to have an e-book out there.  I still occasionally hear from fans of Precinct 13, so that's cool.


lydamorehouse: (Default)
K. Tempest Bradford would like to challenge you to "Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis, Male Authors for a Year."

Let me first and foremost say, I support this idea.

Secondly, it will not be difficult.

You could easily read a book a day and only read women writers. I actually did this spontaneously when I was in my youth, probably somewhere in the mid-1980s (and continued well into the early-1990s), when it was also still very easy to find women writing SF/F. In fact, we were just coming off the great boom of the New Wave and I simply spontaneously and naturally drifted in the direction of books with women's names on the cover, This was when I read nearly everything by Anne McCaffery and Katherine Kurtz. I supplemented with Mercedes Lackey and Anne Rice and Joan Vinge and Pat Cadigan and Pat Wrede and Emma Bull and Ursula K. LeGuin and Marge Piercy and Elizabeth A. Lynn -- many of whom were also writing ABOUT gender and sexual orientation/fluidity back when most the mainstream had no idea what genderqueer was.

But, even if you limited yourself to books written in the last few years, this would also not be difficult. The largest percent of fiction written and bought in the United States published by New York publishing houses is by women for women. It's this genre you may have heard of called: Romance --which also has an ENTIRE SUB-GENRE DEVOTED TO STORIES BY AND ABOUT PoC. Yet, even if you limited yourself to science fiction and fantasy, this would not be hard.

As I've said previously, the challenge I've issued myself is to read all the books nominated for awards this year. So far I'm only just finishing the list for the PKD. Out of six nominees, 4 were by women. Just to make that clear, a THIRD of the books nominated for the 2015 Philip K. Dick award are by women (and one of the women is also in translation.) The Nebula Awards nominees, which were just announced this past week, didn't do as well. Of the six nominated novels, only 2 were obviously by women, but one of them is in translation (and, honestly, given my lack of understanding of Asian names could also be by a woman). By Tempest's criteria, that's still HALF of the nominees you could read.

So far we have seven books you could read right there. If you read a book a week, you're already deep into your second month.

That's without even really trying.

Tempest's list is a fine start and, if you've not heard of any of those writers, you really ought to go ahead and put them on your list ASAP. But, she's certainly not even scratched the surface. 

I'll say again, I think this is a fine challenge. If you've never done anything like this in your life, you really should.  Once you've done it, though, consider allies also.  If I limited myself to these criteria my whole life, I would be fine (and would never have lacked for books), but I would have missed out on a story that blew my small town mind back in the 70s (and even more so when I discovered it was written in 1953).  And that would be Theodore Sturgeon's short story, "A World Well Lost."  Which is basically about bigoted assumptions people make and how wrong homophobia is.  It was the first time I'd read a story where the protagonist was a gay man and it expertly played with my assumptions that everyone was straight. This is the kind of story that, even though it was written by an old (dead now) white guy who I presume is straight, EVERYONE SHOULD READ. I taught this story in class and I can say it doesn't entirely stand the test of time.  The prose is very 1950s, which reads somewhat clunky to a modern ear, but the idea is still mind-blowing.

So, you know, yes, but there are diverse books EVERYWHERE these days.  You just have to look around.

Do we need more diversity?  Yes, always. But could you do this without breaking a sweat (even just within SF/F?)?  YES.

Hell, I've got about 15 books by a queer woman just sitting here on my desktop (oh, because THEY WERE WRITTEN BY ME)... some of them are even award winners.  ;-)

Edited to add: You know what would be a more interesting challenge to me?  Read only comic books, graphic novels and manga written by woman/PoC (well, with manga, you'd have to close the loophole of PoC or you could read any manga you wanted.)
lydamorehouse: (Default)
I've been watching everything that's been happening in Egypt for many reasons, not the least of which is that I have a friend there and, since basing RESURRECTION CODE in Cairo, I've come to know and love Cairenes and Egypt. But, while I heard about Google's attempt to work around the internet shut down, I missed this awesome article. [livejournal.com profile] naomikritzer found this in Newsweek, in which the Egyptians invent mouse.net... kind of.

This weekend was good/bad. We had a really, REALLY crappy Saturday, which required an actual re-boot. We were all so snarly and grumpy after swim class that we decided to literally go back to bed and call a "do over." It worked... eventually. Saturday was one of those days, actually that I wish the universe could refund so we could get that time and energy back and use it more constructively.

Ah well.

Sunday, however, was fairly awesome. We had a birthday party at 11:00 am for a younger friend of Mason's. It was dance themed, and we had a blast boogying underneath their disco glitter ball. Plus, once again I found my tribesfolk and I got to talk nerd/geek among my own kind. Always awesome. I was only a little disappointed that Mason pooped out early and we ended up leaving before anyone else. But, I've learned from experience that if he starts askng when we can go, it's time to just pack up.

It was so nice outside yesterday that we built a snow fort in the back yard. I wanted to take a picture of my handiwork, but it melted and collapsed almost as soon as we got inside. Still, we had a lot of fun staging a brief snowball war. My jeans and gloves were soaked (but warm) by the time we came in.

It really feels like spring today too. Unfortunately, this means that the garbage is starting to resurface. When Mason and I go out today (he's on another intersession vacation), I'm going to bring a bag and pick up some of the grosser stuff. Garbage is a huge pet-peeve of mine. I hate seeing is so much that I'm willing to put on gloves and pick it up myself.

I'm hoping to get writing done today while Mason plays video games, but we have to take advantage of the winter too. Last night I stayed up to 11 pm (super late for me) finishing some revisions from Wyrdsmiths, though as a bonus I added 666 new words (seriously. And stranger? This is the second time I made that particular word count.) Today... forward! Though at some point I need to write a couple more of the promotional vingnettes for the prequel, as I have only one more saved up for tomorrow. Gah!

Anyway, I hope you're having a great Monday (and Valentines day.)

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