November 2010

SF/F Commentary

Kmart Fail (where I bitch about something unrelated to SF/F to get it off my chest)

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(Warning:  some explicit language can be found below) I won’t shop at Kmart again.  One little mistake doesn’t bother me.  Everyone makes mistakes, after all, and I can’t fault a company for the occasional problem.  That is unless you do what Kmart just did to me (i.e. fucked me). I had my birthday way back in October and my family decided they’d send me money to Kmart/Sears so I could buy a new TV (which I really needed).  I spent four days researching the TVs within my price range on the Kmart/Sears site, picked a TV I thought would be worth the money based on reviews and specs, and then placed my order (I also purchased a Crockpot, but since that’s not part of the problem, we’ll ignore that).  (The order was paid by credit and gift card, with the credit card portion meeting the amount mentioned at the bottom of this post.) Initially, I was told my TV would arrive by the 11th of November, which was part of the reason why I ordered it online, since it would appear on my doorstep sooner than I could arrange for a friend to run me to the store to pick it up in person (I don’t own a car, so Fedex sometimes makes things easier).  Then Kmart decided to change the delivery date to the 17th.  I thought that was lame, but stuff like that happens, so it didn’t bother me too much. Yup.  This says it all. But then the 19th rolled around, and I decided to give them a call to figure out what was going on.  As it turned out, Kmart had canceled my order and neglected to tell me that they had done so.  They also charged me for the TV prior to cancellation, which was only worsened by the reason for cancellation:  they didn’t have the TV in stock or in any of their warehouses.  That’s right:  they didn’t have the bloody TV in stock but still charged me for it. “Alright,” I said to myself.  “That sucks, but maybe it was an honest mistake, and shit happens.  No biggy.  I’ll just get a refund and do more research and find something else.”  I was a little upset by it.  After all, they didn’t even contact me to tell me that the TV had been canceled, but I could deal with that.  Plus, the lady on the phone was nice, so I had a hard time being angry with her when it certainly wasn’t her fault.  As such, I asked her what was the next step, and she gave me the option to use the money charged as credit towards the purchase of another TV or product, or I could have it “credited to [my] account” (her words).  Since it took me four days to figure out which TV was worth purchasing in the first place, I told her just to credit it to my account, thinking I could get a TV during the Black Friday deals and use the refund to pay my rent on the first.  “No problem,” she said.  “It’ll be there in 7-10 days.”  (Why it takes that long to give me back my money, I have no idea, but, again, I couldn’t get pissed at her, since she was fairly nice to me about the whole thing.) So I waited.  And waited.  And waited, until yesterday, when I realized that the 7-10 day period had ended and no money had appeared in my account (none of it, not even the cost that went over the gift card amount, which was pretty sizable).  During that time, I actually purchased another TV that was a much better deal and, I am happy to say, a better TV than previous one (bigger, more powerful, and sleek); it also actually arrived when the store said it would (in good condition and bright and early in the morning).  Realizing my money hadn’t reappeared, putting my ability to pay rent in jeopardy, I decided to contact Kmart this morning to inquire.  And this is what I found out: my money had been put onto a new gift card, since the total for the refund was over $20 and a gift card was originally used.  Such is Kmart policy. Here’s the fun part.  I never received an email telling me that a new gift card was available, nor did I receive the cancellation email they told me I would receive when I first started this process.  No, the emails didn’t get lost in my spam box (I checked), and my email hasn’t been blocking them, because I received my confirmation emails for the order they charged me for.  (Isn’t it a little odd that I have no problem receiving emails that remind me that they’ve taken my money, but not when they’ve screwed something up or given me the money back?) So I told the customer service person my situation:  I purchased a TV under the impression that the money would go back in my account and everything would even out, but that the absence of that money meant I could no longer pay rent.  I also pointed out that I was never told that I would receive a new gift card with the full total on it (even the amount that was charged to my credit card), because had I known, I wouldn’t have spent money on the TV I now own.  The person responded that he was sorry, but I would just have to use the gift card that was sent to me.  When I told him I never received it, he said it was emailed to me.  He never said “I will resend it” or “I am sorry to hear that, let me try to resend or get you the information about it.”  He just shrugged it off as if somehow their failure to email me what bloody well belongs to me is somehow my fault. That’s the point at which I got a little

SF/F Commentary

The Skiffy and Fanty Show #26 is Live!

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It’s time for another episode, but with a slightly different format.  This week we bring in James Knapp, author of State of Decay and other novels, to talk with us about his books and zombies.  Feel free to tune in and enjoy the discussion. Thanks for listening!

SF/F Commentary

TSA (Totalitarian Sexual Assault): My Thoughts on the TSA’s New Procedures and People in General

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(Warning:  explicit language and politics are below; ignore if you’re not interested in either) I’m going to take some flak for this post (at least, I expect to).  This is because I’m not going to say anything particularly kind about the TSA (or Totalitarian Sexual Assault, as I will now call it) or the large portion of my fellow Americans who have decided the new measures aren’t that big of a deal.  Of course, if you’ve been ignoring the Internet, or don’t pay attention to politics or the news, you have no idea what I’m talking about.  So, I should probably clear that up first. The TSA recently changed their search policies for the security lines in U.S. airports (Nov. 1st, I think) to allow the use of full-body scanners OR, if you refuse to be scanned or the image of your naked torso appears suspicious, TSA agents will perform a pat-down that includes a groin and chest search.  What does that mean?  It means that your options, should you be selected for the special TSA treatment, are to have your body x-rayed, allowing a TSA agent to see you naked, or to be sexually molested by a member of your own sex.  In the case of the first, the agent is supposed to delete the images, but, of course, the feds are particularly bad at that–that link also points out that the images that were leaked on the net.  In the second case, you literally will be subject to full groping of your private parts, whether male or female. All your testicles are belong to them. I first learned about this from this guy, whose story about his refusal to subject himself to the new measures at the San Diego International Airport resulted in a threat of a $10,000 civil suit and expulsion from the airport (you should read the full story to get the bigger–and more disturbing–picture).  Needless to say, I was pretty damn shocked.  I wanted to know how these new policies came to be and how we, as citizens, could sit idly by and let it stand.  Now?  I’m livid.  The body scanners and the new pat-down procedures are obvious violations of our rights.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that requiring Americans to subject themselves to sexual assault or body imaging in order to fly is a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects everyone from unwarranted search and seizure.  Read the Amendment for yourself. The fact that the TSA sees these measures as acceptable is even more shocking.  They say it’s in our best interests–to protect us.  The terrorists, after all, are real resourceful, what with all those successful bombing attempts in the U.S. since 9/11.  Well, except for the fact that they haven’t been.  The problem is that I don’t feel any safer now.  I have no reason to be.  My rights mean jack shit in this post-2001 world, and my government regularly violates them in the interest of my “safety.”  To say that the terrorists have already won is an understatement.  Look at what we’re giving up.  We frequently claim that America is the freest country in the world, the one beacon of hope and yadda yadda in the world.  Except it’s not.  Far from it.  We’re allowing our rights to be stripped from us faster than a stripper takes off her clothes.  And we’re doing it because we’re told we should be scared.  The operating word in “terrorism” is “terror.”  It’s objective is to create terror.  I’m not going to go so far as implying that our government is a terrorist agent, but it would be fair to say that the terrorists we’re supposed to be fighting have already begun the slow process of destroying us.  The difference is that it’s happening from the inside–ourselves. Turn your head and cough, please… Child abuse in action. But more alarming to me is the fact that so many Americans have shrugged off the new TSA procedures.  Some Americans have even said that they’re worth it to feel safe.  I think those people are cowards.  Every one of them.  I also think they barely deserve the rights the Constitution grants them, since they clearly hold them in such low regard–you can’t think highly of something you’re not particularly interested in preserving.  Why have the Constitution if we’re not even going to uphold is laws?  I’m not willing to go so far to say that they should lose their rights.  I think everyone should have the rights we’re supposed to be celebrating every 4th of July.  (And don’t get me started on parents who allow TSA agents to grope their children.  Those people are committing child abuse, and how you expect to convince your four-year-old that nobody should touch their privates after allowing a TSA agent to touch them is beyond me).  But it makes me wonder if people’s opinions would change if the situation were different?  Maybe if the government decided you need to have your belongings searched before purchasing milk, because they’re afraid you’re going poison the milk supply, people would say something.  I don’t know.  It seems to me that so many people are crippled by the fear of something they can’t even properly describe, and, thus, are willing to give up anything just to have their pathetic little security blanket wrap them up and proclaim that they are safe. The reality?  You’re not safe.  Nobody is.  You could die tomorrow in a car crash.  Should we have checkpoints at every door in the entire country to make sure nobody drives while drunk?  You might also die of food poisoning, perhaps by your own action.  Should the government force you to let licensed cooks make all your food for you?  People seem so desperately concerned over something that is both incredibly unlikely, but also just as nameless and faceless as an unexpected asteroid attack.  The difference is that nobody is freaking out about the asteroids we don’t know about (oh, and

SF/F Commentary

Harry Potter: Would it still be big if Harry was Harriett?

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I can’t remember where I got the link to this thread at SFFWorld, but the second I saw it, I knew I had to talk about it here.  The thread was started by a user named Rilzik, who asked a very peculiar, but interesting question about the Harry Potter series.  Specifically, he or she asked: Would the books and movies be as popular and/or have made as much money if harry was a female and the supporting roles switched to reflect that. Would it have been more, the same or less popular? Could the story with a female lead have reached that sort of super stardom? Would/are females more willing to watch/read a male lead then males are of female leads? Is the audience the same as with twilight which does have a female lead? are these comparable? A lot of folks have said “it would be the same” to the first batch of questions and “no” to the very last question, largely because the series is not oriented toward sex appeal, for the most part.  Aside from the fact that nobody can actually know what would or would not have happened if Harry Potter were a girl, I think it’s great to see people seriously considering the place of female characters in the SF/F market, especially without some kind of controversy as the foreground.  There’s a kind of openness to a discussion that isn’t sparked by drama, and I think much more gets done and said that isn’t oriented towards making anyone feel bad about themselves and their mistakes.  If you read the thread, you’ll notice a great deal of people considering everything from the gender ambiguity of J. K. Rowling’s name (who we all know is a woman), how gender forms opinions about characters, and so forth.  The discussion, I think, needs to happen in this way so more people are exposed to the problems and progressions without forcing anyone to pick a side (and, thus, subject individuals to the penalties of side-choosing, which all serious political/social debates in the SF/F community have been oriented towards). In the case of Harry Potter–again, setting aside the unknowability of alternate history–I think there is something crucial that some individuals (with the exception of KatG) who have commented are missing:  namely that Harry Potter was centered at the dawn of YA fiction, which preceded the vast majority of the major YA fantasy series with female protagonists (such as Twilight and the dozens of other urban fantasy types that followed in its wake).  I would bet that if Harry Potter were Harriet Potter, the series would not have sold as well.  It’s possible that we could chock this up to sexism, but I imagine it would be much more complicated than that.  Today, the climate is different.  Female readers are more common than ever (visually speaking), and female protagonists are in greater numbers in the YA market.  But in 1997, when the first Harry Potter book was released, the reading world was a very different place, not just in terms of who was reading (which was largely the same as it is today, though more people are reading now than thirteen years ago), but also in terms of how books were marketed, what was being picked up by publishers, and so forth. That’s not to say that things are all peachy on the gender front–because they aren’t–but I think it’s absolutely crucial to note how different the climate is today from 1997 overall.  Switching Harry’s gender likely wouldn’t have gone on so well with publishers, and maybe the same is true for readers.  It’s not a simple task to switch the gender of a character, because to do so also means changing who the character is, how the character acts, and so forth.  Remember that Harry Potter is raised in a very specific kind of culture–ours–and that culture is one that frequently normalizes certain kinds of gender roles and gender constructions, even when individuals attempt to reorient their children toward more open forms of gender formations.  Harriett Potter undoubtedly would be an entirely different person; the result would be that readers would identify with the character differently and the books likely would not have become as popular as they are today, since it would not have appealed to the young male audience of 1997. But, again, this is all guesswork.  Without a time machine, I don’t think any of us can truly know what would and would not have happened if things were different.  We can guess, but guesses aren’t necessarily truth (they can become truth, though).  In the end, it’s a fun exercise, but not one that is productive on its own–the productive discussions are all those things people have pointed out in regards to gender and writing, which point directly to the middle questions in the quote above.  Maybe I’ll talk some more about those questions another time. So, what do you think?  Do you think Harry Potter would have been just as successful if the main character was a girl?

SF/F Commentary

Video Found: Neill Blomkamp’s Mysterious Teaser

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I don’t know what the brilliant creator of District 9 is up to, but a recent teaser sent to Wired Magazine seems to point to something more human-oriented than his alien-refugee blockbuster (genetic manipulation a la Splice, perhaps?).  Whatever it is, I’m looking forward to seeing it–in theaters this time. Here’s the teaser (after the fold): Look interesting to any of you?

SF/F Commentary

Speculative Horizons to Close For Questionable Reasons

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I’ve nothing against James Long, author of Speculative Horizons–one of the good SF/F blogs out there.  His blog has been in my Google Reader for almost a year now and I’ve enjoyed many of his thoughtful posts.  But it appears he’s decided to close things down.  Why?  Partly because he’s going to be an editorial assistant at Orbit Books (congrats!), and partly because of this: Of course, this means I can’t continue with my blogging here. I’ve always tried to blog with honesty and integrity, and there’s just no way I could continue blogging while working for a major genre publisher – it would bring my personal and professional credibility into question. Wait, what?  Stopping because of new responsibilities makes perfect sense.  Working in publishing is a rough business, particularly if you’re in a lower position at a relatively major press (Orbit is pretty big in the SF/F world, after all).  But instead of a perfectly reasonable reason, he offers one that makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.  How exactly is working in publishing and blogging at the same time a threat to one’s personal and professional credibility?  Did someone bother telling Lou Anders about this, who is the editorial director of Pyr and blogs at the same time?  What about the dozens of agents, assistants, marketing people, and so forth (and that link doesn’t include the dozens of others that are out there) who routinely blog about the things they love, whether it be about what they do or their personal lives (which might very well be about what they do too)?  Is their credibility (personal or professional) shot to shit because they do both?  Of course not. So what’s the real reason, James?  Are you contractually obligated to no longer blog at SH?  Does the new time commitment make it difficult for you to do both at the same time?  Do you just not want to continue because you’ve moved on to bigger and better things (to which I would say “well, we love you too” in a very sarcastic voice, followed by “we appreciate your honesty”)?  Because from where I’m standing, the rational sounds suspiciously like a slaughterhouse worker saying he doesn’t want to eat meat anymore because it might make people question his character, instead of saying he can’t stand the sight of meat because he sees it all day. The big question, of course is this:  since when does being a blogger with “honesty and integrity” damage one’s credibility?  Seems to me that the only time blogging kills your credibility as a critic (or anything) is when you intentionally lie or manipulate the truth–sort like what this douchebag did. Then again, maybe I’m just being a downer about this whole thing.  Maybe I’m missing something.  If so, someone can correct me…

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