April 2012

SF/F Commentary

Your Orientalist Genre Anthology of Exoticism (or, WTF, Ticonderoga?)

/

Ticonderoga Publications is currently reading for an anthology called Dreaming of Djinn.  All well and good, right?  Things get rather strange, however, when you read the description: This anthology, with the working title Dreaming of Djinn, will look at romantic Orientalism through a speculative fiction lens. You might find lost cities, magical lamps, mummies, thieves, intrepid explorers, slaves, robotic horsemen, noble queens, sorcerers, outcast princes, harems, dancers, djinn, assassins and even smart-talking camels and cats, set in exotic Persia, Egypt, Arabia, the Ottoman Empire, or a modern incarnation of these. Oh boy, here we go! The Middle East isn’t exotic.  The oceans of Europa are exotic, because fuck-all lives there; if you stuck someone in them, I suspect their first reaction would be “Holy shit, I’m miles under ice in an ocean on another planet.”  Hell, even the oceans on Earth are exotic for the same reason (“Holy shit, I’m inside a submarine in the Marianas Trench!”).  People live in the Middle East, that oh-so-exotic place with all the different countries and peoples and histories (it’s a country like Africa, right?  Right?  Ha!).  I know, that’s shocking, right?  Maybe I should say “people.”  That’s better.  That way you can question whether they are people, since they’re all exotic and whatever. Unless, of course, if you take your head out of your ass and you realize that, hey, people from the Middle East live in this country, and other Western countries, and many of them have kids, so to say “oh, hey, those weird people from Persia are exotic weirdos” is sort of like saying “My left arm is strange, but my right one is el normal!”  And that’s really the problem.  Are there “exotic” cultures on this planet?  I don’t know.  I don’t know about all the cultures on this planet.  I’m sure there are cultures that seem strange to me, but I’m in tune with my own reality enough to know that that opinion is not relevant because it is subjective.  Other cultures are exotic because they are not my own culture. And this is really the problem of Orientalism as Edward Said articulated it, and as so many academics and non-academics alike now understand it.  The moment we start producing these binaries, in which one culture is “normal” and the other is “exotic” (read:  savage, wrong, not-us, etc.), then we are engaging in orientalist behavior.  That the editors used Orientalism in the description without noting this profound irony is disconcerting. I’m sure they mean well, and that what they really want is to find are stories which show pulpy adventures taking place in the Middle East and other places once identified as part of “the Orient.”  There’s nothing wrong with that; it’s even a pretty good idea.  But I certainly hope they think through the implications of their call for stories, or they might end up with an actual anthology of Orientalist Romances, chock full of racism, ethnocentric stereotypes, and so on.  Something like this: Anywho… ——————————————————– What does everyone else think about this?

SF/F Commentary

Basic Conference Etiquette: Don’t Be THAT Guy

/

Anyone who attends conferences (academic or otherwise) knows there are three kinds of annoying people who attend: People who run way overtime. People who do not come prepared to give a talk. People who don’t actually ask a question during the Q&A. There are probably more, but I’d like to talk about just these three for anyone thinking of attending a conference.  There may be a bit of snark to follow… STFU Already When I say that people who run way overtime are annoying, I am not referring to people who add 3 minutes to a 15-minute presentation.  That’s practically normal, in all honesty.  Rather, I’m referring to douchebags who run 5-10 minutes over time.  Because when you run over time, you’re in fact saying “I did not prepare at all.”  You’re saying “I’m more important.”  “Who cares if I suck time away from the others?  They’re dumbasses anyway.” And here’s the truth:  you’re not that interesting that we want to hear you talk for longer than the allotted time.  Really.  You’re not.  While you drone on and on about your topic, we’re hoping you’ll shut up so we can get a drink, or shift in our chairs, or move on to another person with a different topic.  Some of us even hope you fall down so we can laugh.  Others hope for worse things (perhaps you’ll catch an STD from the chair, or one of the lamp fixtures will accidentally fall on you, or a gorilla will run into the room and kidnap you…if only…) If you go to a conference, don’t be that guy.  Practice.  It’s okay if you go over a little bit.  It happens.  Things never go exactly as planned.  But don’t bring a 20-page paper to a conference where you’ve got 20 minutes to present.  3 minutes a double-spaced page — that’s the average. Rambling About Nonsense Does Not a Talk Make Let me tell you a story about an annoying person.  This person happened to have flown all the way to Florida from a foreign university (no, the foreign-ness isn’t relevant except to say “he came a long way for a conference”).  He came with some papers in hand — presumably his presentation.  And so, when said person went up to give his talk, you’d assume he gave something like a talk, right?  Wrong.  Said person decided that he’d ramble about a famous philosopher for close to 20 minutes (5 minutes over time; see previous point), read three paragraphs from his presentation, and decided his presentation would be a good time to hawk his book and the conference he’s putting together elsewhere.  Oh-ho!  You sly devil. People come to conferences for two main reasons: To meet people (network) To hear new ideas They don’t go to conferences to be lectured to about things that make no sense, nor to be inundated with advertising. When you go to a conference, it is essential that you actually have something prepared.  It need not be an essay proper.  I’ve seen great talks given by people working straight from notes, and people working from PowerPoint.  But you have to have something to say, or you’re wasting everyone’s time.  And that pisses people off, especially if they have academic standards. Is There a Question in There? I once suffered the consequences of a rambler at an academic conference.  Ramblers are a kind of pernicious virus that can’t actually infect anyone with anything but annoyance.  This rambler decided to use all 15 minutes of the Q&A section to launch critiques at one of my fellow panelists.  No questions.  Just “I disagree, and here’s why, and also there’s this, and here’s why that is relevant.  Oh?  You answered?  Well, how about this…”   If it takes you more than one minute to lay out your question, then you should save it for afterwards.  Q&A is about getting answers; it is not your soapbox.  We don’t want to hear your voice for 15 minutes.  Get your own panel!  If you want a soapbox, get a blog (hey, look at that — I’ve got one!).  Otherwise, ask your question, sit down, and shut up. And Moving On Don’t do these things.  If you want to be taken seriously.  If you want people to be interested in what you have to say.  If you actually want people to respect your opinion (that doesn’t mean they like you, but it does mean that when they listen, they actually want to engage).  If you want all that, then you have to act like a professional.  Come prepared with an appropriate-length presentation.  And make sure that you don’t spend forever trying to ask a non-question question. Or you can be a douchebag.  Up to you… Any questions?

SF/F Commentary

#NaPoWriMo Entry #9: “Great Fictions for a Maiden”

/

No need to explain the inspiration for this one.  It’s self-evident. I know what you might be saying.  “Another love poem?  When did you become such a sop?”  One might answer “when he got a girlfriend,” but that wouldn’t really account for it.  I’m simply a hopeless romantic at heart, and so I write these little poems, bad as some of them are, as expressions of that silly habit. Do with that information what you will.  (Yes, I am four poems behind now.  So sue me…) Here goes: “Great Fictions for a Maiden” For you I give my lion’s roar until the mountains quiver in their foundations and beg for mercy. Only you can give it to them with your milk honey touch. For you I raze cities and continents so that they might know what it is to be willing to sacrifice worlds for another. For you I pluck the moon and the stars from the sky with sad little fingers until skin burns to ashes and the atoms split. For you I tell great fictions, for there is no other way to express the inexpressible except to indulge in fibs and drudge up centuries of falsehoods trapped in men’s hearts. For you there is no end to that journey, to the day-by-day expressions which threaten to terrify mountains and destroy continents and split atoms. For you I give these little things as proof for a theory with no answers.

SF/F Commentary

Guest Post: “The Magic of the Pacific Northwest” by Alyx Dellamonica

/

Why is the epicenter of the magical disaster in INDIGO SPRINGS and BLUE MAGIC physically located in Oregon? Why did I pick the Beaver State as the setting for my fictional town? I get asked this quite often, especially when I go to Portland. (At home, I sometimes get asked, “Why not Vancouver?”) I had a handful of reasons: I wanted to choose somewhere in the U.S.: The same magical spill, in Canada, would be handled differently. America has a more effective military infrastructure, an aggressive approach to dealing with emergencies, and enough resources and power to tell a worried world to butt out when it has problems. Canada, faced with the same crisis, would probably be obliged, quite quickly, to accept a lot of international aid . . . some of it, perhaps, heavily armed. I wanted the landscape of the Pacific Northwest: The environment plays a big role in both INDIGO SPRINGS and BLUE MAGIC; Albert Lethewood is a gardener, and the gardens of Indigo Springs are Cascadia gardens: bulb flowers in the spring, rhododendrons and azalea and hydrangea and roses. The enchanted, contaminated forest that grows up around the town of Indigo Springs is a West Coast rain forest. Its giant cedars are bound together by runaway ivy vines and populated by overgrown, magically altered Stellar’s jays, pileated woodpeckers, raccoons, squirrels, skunks and orb weaver spiders, all the species that I see every day in the local woods. I wanted the action to be near Mount Saint Helens: I’m realizing lately that I’m something of a volcano freak. I love the triangular cones of Mounts Baker, Hood, and Rainier. I’m astounded and awed by the remains of Saint Helens. I’ve seen Vesuvius and Mount Etna and Santorini. The only really compelling reason I can think of to go to Hawaii is to go to Volcano National Park. In terms of practical story reasons, volcanos and geothermal power offer a ready source of energy for the books’ well-wizards, and the intermingled threat and possibility represented by Mount Saint Helens is important. It broods in the background of the novel, literally threatening to blow whenever the wizards draw too much power. I love Portland, so why not blast the hell out of it? In fiction, at least, I really do hurt the things I love. I visit Portland once a year, for Orycon, and it’s a great city. I know lots of people there and I like the overall vibe: it feels like one of the few places I’ve been that could become home, if one could just hop over an international border and relocate easily. I love Powells Bookstore (who doesn’t love Powells?) and the coffee shops and the parks and the weather and all my friends there are wonderful. Putting the far edge of the magical disaster within spitting distance of Portland–having Portland be the frontline of the effort to contain the contaminated forest–appealed to me somehow. When the people in my own backyard ask “Why Portland? Why not Vancouver?” I like to tell them that I wanted to leave myself room for the damage to spread out in BLUE MAGIC. And it does–one storyline plays out at a decommissioned air force base on the Nevada/Utah border (Wendover, which is the base the atomic bomb missions originated) and there are scenes in Tuscany, the Sahara desert, Atlanta, and the enormous toystore in New York City, FAO Schwarz, and Assateague Island Park National Seashore. While the story begins with four people in the basement of an old house in a fictional Oregon town, trying desperately to contain a magical spill, it reaches a lot further as the enchantment and its effects continue to spread. But Oregon is still the starting point; by the time BLUE MAGIC ends, it’s certainly the most magic-drenched place on earth. Since what I’ve seen of Oregon and its people is downright enchanting, that seems entirely appropriate. —————————————————————————- About Blue Magic  Alyx Dellamonica’s new book, Blue Magic, the sequel to the critically-acclaimed, Sunburst Award–winning contemporary fantasy debut, Indigo Springs, goes on sale this Tuesday, April 10th! This powerful sequel starts in the small town in Oregon where Astrid Lethewood discovered an underground river of blue liquid—Vitagua—that is pure magic. Everything it touches is changed. The secret is out—and the world will never be the same. Astrid’s best friend, Sahara, has been corrupted by the blue magic, and now leads a cult that seeks to rule the world. Astrid, on the other hand, tries to heal the world. Conflicting ambitions, star-crossed lovers, and those who fear and hate magic combine in a terrible conflagration, pitting friend against friend, magic against magic, and the power of nations against a small band of zealots, with the fate of the world at stake. Blue Magic is a powerful story of private lives changed by earthshaking events that will ensnare readers in its poignant tale of a world touched by magic and plagued by its consequences. About the Author You may know Alyx Dellamonica already from her fabulous “Buffy Rewatch” series on Tor.com, but here are some more fun facts: Alyx lives in Vancouver, Canada, where she sings in a community choir and takes thousands of digital photographs. In 2003, soon after finishing her first novel, Indigo Springs, the Supreme Court of B.C. ruled in favor of legalized same-sex marriage. A month later, she achieved a lifelong dream by marrying her long-term partner, writer and wine critic Kelly Robson, at one of their favorite places, the UBC Botanical Gardens.

SF/F Commentary

#NaPoWriMo Entry #8: “To Lilium”

/

Today’s poem is all rhyme-y.  Why?  Because Adam Callaway keeps asking me to do them.  That’s not the real reason, though.  I just felt like it today. It also helps that my poem was inspired by this: “What’s that?” you say.  You’ll just have to read the poem to figure it out.  It should be pretty obvious. Here goes: “To Lilium Sweet is Lilium, whose sunset shimmer quiets a man’s stuttering wayward pipe — his solemn songs rendered to joyous glimmer — in the quickened chest of an overripe soul cast in the dye inflamed with yearning. Her quiet limbs caress the trembling air and his fingers shiver as the sojourning question paddles circles; a doe’s learning sprouts, gale-wind globes searching to tear the foundation of doubt from its mooring; For she draws the melted candle, as Orpheus mastered Elysium and broke Amore, singing of Eurydice; her instrument a truss for his warbling tune, waiting at the gate to lull Cerberus to the Land of Dreams; In whose milken hands he rests his fate and whispers vows — humbled, joyed by the streams of Euphrosyne’s tears; in whose cheeks shined Dog-Star twilight and, in Eros, a love enshrined. For a love that refashions a stubbed taper and lights a thousand harmonious Orphean tales smolders love-lost terrors to scorched-earth paper; and from Heliopolis and ashes, new love prevails.

SF/F Commentary

The Hugo Awards: Mission Fanzine

/

A few folks have raised some interesting questions/ideas over on my post about the nominees for the Hugo Awards.  I suspect I will explore these topics again in the future.  The one thing I did want to remedy about my comments is my dismissive nature of the fanzines.  It seems rather silly of me to dismiss fanzines simply because nobody I know is talking about them, etc..  I rarely do that for any other category, so why should I do it with fanzines? In other words:  I am going to read some of the fanzines on the list with the intention of getting to know what they are all about.  This will include The Drink Tank, Journey Planet, File 770, and, if I can find it, Banana Wings.  SF Signal is already in my feed reader, so they will get read as per normal.  I will read at least one issue from each and reassess the category.  I may not change my mind about which of the nominees I prefer, but at least I’ll be able to say why from an educated position. So there you have it.  My silly new mission.  I blame Christopher J. Garcia for this; he’s too nice of a guy for me to ignore! (If anyone has a copy of Banana Wings, or knows where I can find it in an electronic form, please let me know.  I cannot find it anywhere…)

Scroll to Top