I’ve decided to rename the Complaint Dept. feature to Discussion Dept. Why? Because half the time I’m not really complaining about anything, and it seems silly to label something so negatively when really all I’m trying to do is open a bunch of topics to discussion. So, from now on, this feature will be knowing as Discussion Dept., to which I hope you all will contribute.
The two discussion points begin below:
Discussion #1 — Political: What does it mean?
Jason Sanford recently had a column posted at SF Signal about the political controversy associated with Military SF. Some of what he talks about is old news, but if you’re unfamiliar with Military SF and its history, the article is well worth reading.
What I’m curious about, however, is Aliette de Bodard’s response to Sanford’s use of the term “political”:
I’ve seen it before, to refer to diverse other things, such as people’s positions on QUILTBAG relationships, abortion, women’s rights… The thing is, for me, those are not political problems. My position on war and abortion isn’t politics: it’s a matter of pure ethics, of how I put things in the context of my personal morals, rather than where my chosen political party stands on the issue (in fact, if anything, it would be a matter of where my religion stands on the issue).
I certainly see where Aliette is coming from, but I take issue with the separation of ethics from politics. It seems to me — and perhaps this comes from living in the U.S., which she sees as the central (or partial) problem for defining “politics” — that you can’t separate, in most cases, the political from the ethical. At least, not in a democracy. The government is constantly trying to solve or address ethical problems, which is precisely why we associate ethical problems with political motivations. We can argue over whether it is unethical to turn ethical problems into political talking points (i.e., things people say to get elected), but that doesn’t mean we can separate the two. Things like healthcare, civil rights, and so on are ethical issues, but they are only dealt with on ethical grounds within the political sphere. You do not have civil rights without government, for example; without the government creating, voting in, and enforcing laws, offering “civil rights” to the public is like offering little more than lip-service to the ethical quandary.
What do you think?
Discussion #2 — The West Loves Itself (in Publishing)
This is less a complaint/rant than me saying “you need to read what Charles Tan has to say about how publishing and access to ‘written’ material is disproportionately geared towards Western audiences.” Tan has written about these topics before (read his blog), but his latest discussion has a great section on ebooks and why it is so difficult for people outside of the West (i.e., the Philippines, etc.) to participate in the literary community. The kinds of things we get pissed off about in the West — hidden costs, low wages, etc. — are things Tan just has to deal with because that’s the way things are.
A quote:
Even if the author and publisher wanted to sell me books, they can’t, unless it’s an App. Because Apple won’t allow it. At least not without the workaround of obtaining a valid US billing address, credit card, and using prepaid iTunes cards to make purchases.
But readers should rejoice right? I mean previously, only the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, and Canada had access to Books. Last week, Apple opened it to 26 new countries in Europe. The world has an estimated 196 countries.
Amazon has different kind of problems. As a consumer, I have to deal with the ambiguous $1.99 international Whispernet surcharge (you’re still paying it if you download it from your computer). Granted, this doesn’t apply to each and every country outside of the US (Australia isn’t affected by this anymore for example), but it’s there.
Go read the article here.
I know some of my readers are not from the U.S. As such, I am curious about your ability to access print and electronic books. Is it expensive for you? Difficult? Let me know in the comments.
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Discussion Dept. Vol 3: Military SF + Politics and Publishing Privileges the West
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I’ve decided to rename the Complaint Dept. feature to Discussion Dept. Why? Because half the time I’m not really complaining about anything, and it seems silly to label something so negatively when really all I’m trying to do is open a bunch of topics to discussion. So, from now on, this feature will be knowing as Discussion Dept., to which I hope you all will contribute.
The two discussion points begin below:
Discussion #1 — Political: What does it mean?
Jason Sanford recently had a column posted at SF Signal about the political controversy associated with Military SF. Some of what he talks about is old news, but if you’re unfamiliar with Military SF and its history, the article is well worth reading.
What I’m curious about, however, is Aliette de Bodard’s response to Sanford’s use of the term “political”:
I certainly see where Aliette is coming from, but I take issue with the separation of ethics from politics. It seems to me — and perhaps this comes from living in the U.S., which she sees as the central (or partial) problem for defining “politics” — that you can’t separate, in most cases, the political from the ethical. At least, not in a democracy. The government is constantly trying to solve or address ethical problems, which is precisely why we associate ethical problems with political motivations. We can argue over whether it is unethical to turn ethical problems into political talking points (i.e., things people say to get elected), but that doesn’t mean we can separate the two. Things like healthcare, civil rights, and so on are ethical issues, but they are only dealt with on ethical grounds within the political sphere. You do not have civil rights without government, for example; without the government creating, voting in, and enforcing laws, offering “civil rights” to the public is like offering little more than lip-service to the ethical quandary.
What do you think?
Discussion #2 — The West Loves Itself (in Publishing)
This is less a complaint/rant than me saying “you need to read what Charles Tan has to say about how publishing and access to ‘written’ material is disproportionately geared towards Western audiences.” Tan has written about these topics before (read his blog), but his latest discussion has a great section on ebooks and why it is so difficult for people outside of the West (i.e., the Philippines, etc.) to participate in the literary community. The kinds of things we get pissed off about in the West — hidden costs, low wages, etc. — are things Tan just has to deal with because that’s the way things are.
A quote:
Go read the article here.
I know some of my readers are not from the U.S. As such, I am curious about your ability to access print and electronic books. Is it expensive for you? Difficult? Let me know in the comments.
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Shaun Duke
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A Reading List of Dystopian Fiction and Relevant Texts (Apropos of Nothing in Particular)
Why would someone make a list of important and interesting works of dystopian fiction? Or a suggested reading list of works that are relevant to those dystopian works? There is absolutely no reason other than raw interest. There’s nothing going on to compel this. There is nothing in particular one making such a list would hope you’d learn. The lists below are not an exhaustive list. There are bound to be texts I have forgotten or texts you think folks should read that are not listed. Feel free to make your own list and tell me about it OR leave a comment. I’ll add things I’ve missed! Anywhoodles. Here goes:
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Duke’s Best EDM Tracks of 2024
And so it came to pass that I finished up my annual Best of EDM [Insert Year Here] lists. I used to do these on Spotify before switching to Tidal, and I continued doing them on Tidal because I listen to an absurd amount of EDM and like keeping track of the tunes I love the most. Below, you will find a Tidal playlist that should be public. You can listen to the first 50 tracks right here, but the full playlist is available on Tidal proper (which has a free version just like Spotify does). For whatever reason, the embedded playlist breaks the page, and so I’ve opted to link to it here and at the bottom of this post. Embeds are weird. Or you can pull songs into your preferred listening app. It’s up to you. Some caveats before we begin:
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2025: The Year of Something
We’re nine days into 2025, and it’s already full of exhausting levels of controversy before we’ve even had a turnover in power in my home country of the United States. We’ve seen resignations of world leaders, wars continuing and getting worse and worse (you know where), the owner of Twitter continuing his tirade of lunacy and demonstrating why the billionaire class is not to be revered, California ablaze with a horrendous and large wildfire, right wing thinktanks developing plans to out and attack Wikipedia editors as any fascist-friendly organization would do, Meta rolling out and rolling back GenAI profiles on its platforms, and, just yesterday, the same Meta announcing sweeping changes to its moderation policies that, in a charitable reading, encourage hate-based harassment and abuse of vulnerable populations, promotion and support for disinformation, and other problems, all of which are so profound that people are talking about a mass exodus from the platform to…somewhere. It’s that last thing that brings me back to the blog today. Since the takeover at Twitter, social networks have been in a state of chaos. Platforms have risen and fallen — or only risen so much — and nothing I would call stability has formed. Years ago, I (and many others far more popular than me) remarked that we’ve ceded the territory of self-owned or small-scale third party spaces for massive third party platforms where we have minimal to no control or say and which can be stripped away in a tech-scale heartbeat. By putting all our ducks into a bin of unstable chaos, we’re also expending our time and energy on something that won’t last, requiring us to expend more time and energy finding alternatives, rebuilding communities, and then repeating the process again. In the present environment, that’s impossible to ignore.1 This is all rather reductive, but this post is not the place to talk about all the ways that social networks have impacted control over our own spaces and narratives. Another time, perhaps. I similarly don’t have space to talk about the fact that some of the platforms we currently have, however functional they may be, have placed many of us in a moral quagmire, as in the case of Meta’s recent moderation changes. Another time… ↩
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