SF/F Commentary – Page 33 – Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

My Hopes and Anticipations for Science Fiction and Fantasy in 2014

2014 is almost upon us, and I’m already thinking about what is to come. What will 2014 be like? Will it be awesome? Will someone release a stunning science fiction novel or an exciting YA fantasy or an *epic* epic fantasy? The only way to find out is to live long enough to see it, I suppose (that’s my early New Year’s resolution). But I do have my hopes for next year. Big, juicy hopes. And they are as follows: A World SF Sorta Year If you don’t already know, my SF/F podcast, The Skiffy and Fanty Show, is hosting a massive World SF Tour throughout 2014. We’ve already lined up a lot of great folks from all over the world, and that’s just for the first couple months. This thing has barely begun. Since the World SF blog has ended, I’m hoping this special season of the show will help fill the gap a bit. More importantly, I really hope we’ll open further dialogue between (and within) the western SF/F spheres and the equally valuable spheres from elsewhere. We should be talking to each other, and this whole Internet thing is a great way to make that possible. So I really hope we’ll spark a bit of a discussion in the community. That would be a great thing indeed. No Kerfluffles I know this dream will never come true, but I’m putting it here anyway. I would really like to see a year in the SF/F world that doesn’t include fiascos and people saying racist, sexist, or downright douchey things. Just for one year. Please. Please? The Author List Here are all the authors whose work I’m looking forward to in 2014 (assuming they’re releasing anything) Myke Cole (Breach Zone comes out in a month, and I get to interview him with my bestie. So, basically, my life is awesome right now.) Stina Leicht (I don’t think she’ll have anything out next year, but I hear she’s working on something that’s super cool beans — I may have the inside scoop.) China Mieville (It better be clever. Oh, hell, who am I kidding? Of course it will be clever!) Lauren Beukes (Will she ever stop writing awesome books? No. Never. EVER!) Ann Leckie (I quite liked Ancillary Justice and am eagerly anticipating the sequel. I’m told it’ll be an even stronger book.) Nick Mamatas writing noir crime fiction (because that should be very interesting indeed) Nalo Hopkinson (Sister Mine was fantastic, so if she releases anything next year, I’ll be happy) Tobias S. Buckell (more Xenowealth stuff, please!) Yoon Ha Lee (I have dreams that she’ll release a novel and that it will be the most amazing thing since the invention of air.) Christopher Barzak (two things: 1) I demand more writing in any form imaginable, and 2) I cannot wait to see the film adaptation of One For Sorrow) Karen Lord (she could release a story on a restaurant napkin and I’d probably still read it enthusiastically) Brian Francis Slattery (Lost Everything was genius, so another novel would be amazing) That’s not an exhaustive list, obviously. They’re names that came up when I started thinking about this whole thing. I’d also love to see something new from Alden Bell, Jane Rogers, and even some translated works from China and the surrounding nations (Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, etc.). I’d also love to see some groundbreaking SF/F next year. I haven’t the foggiest what that would look like, but I do think we’re overdue for a year that really throws us SF/F folks for a loop. Dialogue Reboot This is somewhat related to the kerfluffle thing above. Basically, I think it would be lovely if we could actually have a dialogue about things like sexual harassment at cons, sexism in SF/F, racism in SF/F, and so on. A discussion. A talk. Not two groups screaming at each other or self-segregating out of convenience. I realize this is a tall order, in part because disparate groups simply don’t agree about things, but I think we could get a lot more done if these issues were discussed more openly without the need to simply reject every claim. This is also a completely absurd request. Movies I anticipate that the following will be true in 2014: Marvel will continue to dominate in film. With X-Men: Days of Future Past, Captain America: the Winter Soldier, and Guardians of the Galaxy coming our way, it’s hard to imagine Marvel won’t be king for another year. Science fiction will dominate. With Edge of Tomorrow, Interstellar, the Marvel films, Hunger Games 3, The Giver, and Jupiter Ascending expected to hit theaters next year, I strongly suspect SF will be all the rage (as it was this year, really). Robocop will probably be a lot of fun, but I expect it to bomb. I couldn’t care less about Transformers 1132424 or The Maze Runner (it will bomb). But I expect those other films to do quite well. Science fiction will not receive any major award nominations in categories people remember (namely, best director, actor/actress (lead or supporting), or best picture), and at least one of the films released this year will have deserved to have been on those lists. Hunger Games 3 will be the knockout of the year. If Hunger Games 2 is any indicator of this franchise’s success, you can expect the (supposedly two part) finale to rock the box office. Fantasy will mostly suck in 2014. There are a couple of decent movies coming, and I have no doubt the genre will make a pretty penny, but I really don’t think there will be anything of serious note from the fantasy genre next year. The Hugos (and Other Awards) When the awards season rolls around, I suspect a lot of people will be annoyed and pissed off again. I look forward to a thoughtful discussion about the merits of these awards that leads to something worthwhile (like changes or new, viable awards). Or we’ll just have another pissing match. I’m getting quite

Diversity is Not a Selfie (or, Amazing Stories + Felicity Savage = Here We Go Again)

Apparently Amazing Stories has become a version of controversy bingo. Attacks on liberals? Check. Attacks on subgenres? Check. Attacks on women? Check. Attacks on people of color? And check… I’m obviously not going to link to the story here. Instead, I’ll point you to “Diversity is not Narcissism: A Response to Felicity Savage” at The Other Side of the Rain, “Mirror, Mirror: Quien Soy?” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and “False Equivalence: Selfies and Diversity in SFF” at Radish Reviews. They’ve covered much of what I’m going to babble about here, though I’ll try to add to that existing discussion.[1] So here goes. Savage begins her diatribe by discussing the validity of “selfies,” an understandably amusing practice which has become the subject of much parodying. Of course, Savage doesn’t note that selfies have also been used for arts projects, such as the numerous videos on YouTube in which the user takes a single picture of themselves everyday for a set period of time — the purpose of these videos is not unlike a self-portrait, which Savage raises to “art” status, albeit in the form of a time capture. You might wonder what selfies have to do with diversity in SF/F. You’d be right to wonder just that, as the analogy Savage wishes us to buy into is already fallacious from the outset, as the purpose of a selfie, as she defines it, bears little resemblance to the purpose of diversity projects like Expanded Horizons or the various other magazines which have posted diversity policies. In Savage’s own words, a selfie is as follows: The principle here is a familiar one. The harder you try to look good the worse you will actually look. The pictures on the left and right illustrate of the difference between a self-portrait and a selfie. Hint: the self-portrait is the one where the subject isn’t trying to look good. Selfies remove objectivity from the subject-artist loop of creation. Add in a professional photographer or portrait artist and beauty happens. Conversely, grotesquerie is inherent in the selfie creation process, this having been reduced to a mirror-gazing session. What does this have to do with diversity in SF/F? Well, Savage doesn’t exactly say. She throws out a random line about the community seeming like a hall of mirrors, and then conveniently changes topic, leaving the weak analogy in place, but without even the attempt at explication. The only other line that references the several-paragraph description of selfies is a throwaway I’ll come back to later. The implication of these first paragraphs, however, is quite clear. If we’re to take the analogy as it is presented, then Savage believes seeking out diversity in SF/F is grotesque in the same way as a selfie: it is without objectivity; it is without art; it is simply staring into a mirror. We’re off to a good start, no? The central premise of Savage’s argument is simply this: attempting to create diversity by deliberately seeking out non-white and/or non-male writers is narcissism of the highest order: But the call for diversity is usually interpreted with deadly literal-mindedness as a call for more characters who are female / black / Asian / what have you. Why are we all so keen to see ourselves on the page? Never mind that people of all colors and genders (let alone orientations) are calling for diversity, and leave it to Savage to conveniently forget that these variations of self are merely variations of the human, let alone that the default subject has historically been white and male. That we are seeing exceptions to that rule makes those variations no less valid or important than the stock standard white dude. Savage, of course, seems remarkably oblivious to the impact of fiction or imagery on a population’s view of different peoples. There’s a reason by the Romani people are still viewed so unfavorably, and it’s not because there’s something inherently wrong with them. The public image of Romani people, as fed to us through the arts and other mediums, is rarely positive; culture undeniably functions via transmittal, and the most effective way to do so is through various forms of media. The narratives of colonization were transmitted through written travelogues, art, advertising, and so on; these held, in many cases, for centuries. In the U.S., the image of the “lazy negro” persisted well into the 20th Century, supported by plantation propaganda in the form of comical advertisements (look up “negro with watermelon” for an example) and so on. The dominant class, whoever that may be, will always seek transmittal of their cultural values.[2] The production of such diversity in admittedly artificial. Savage, however, seems to believe diversification in such artificial terms destroys SF/F’s image by reducing it to the literary equivalent of a drug-addicted celebrity: “Just don’t stare into the mirror too long or your reflection may start to look like a trout-pouted minor celebrity with a cocaine hangover.” She likewise criticizes Expanded Horizons as a space for mixing and matching “your preferred ethnic / sexual identifiers to create your very own comfort zone.” The point, however, is quite clear: diversity is actually a bad thing. Either it is a form of tokenism — a legitimate problem — or it destroys the face of genre. The latter of these two problems is an attack on diversification as a process, as it seems to suggest that a challenge against the status quo — inserting people of color or women into roles which had previously been dominated by white men — violates the sanctity of a pure space of difference. This becomes more clear when Savage writes the following: What speculative fiction does well is diversity on the species level. Our aliens, dragons, orcs, and even or especially our far-future selves ask us, in as many ways as there are books, what it means to be human. The pure space of difference — a largely white and male space — is challenged by diversity only in situations when the purity can be preserved.

Updatery and An Interview w/ Me: Postmodernism, Comics, SF/F, Podcasting, and Larry Nolen

Two quick things for readers of this blog thing: I’ve not been active on the blog throughout much of November for one very simple reason: this is the busiest month of the year for me, and more so because I’ve been working almost non-stop on exam materials throughout the month and the three months preceding it. I’m getting a PhD, after all. I also have a lot of other stuff to deal with: I’m grading a lot of papers (teaching three classes), I have three exams to write up and administer, and I’m teaching a bunch (four days a week). Add all that in with holidays and so on and you’ve got a not-very-active Shaun person. Granted, I’ve also been playing a bit of Starcraft 2 as a stress reliever, so… But there’s one interesting thing going on, and that’s this: Larry Nolen of OF Blog of the Fallen just posted a 5,500-word interview with me! I think it will be of interest to readers of this blog, as Larry asked me questions about blogging, podcasting, comics, postermodernism, fandom, and much more. I think it’s a pretty darn good interview. Feel free to read it and leave a comment over there. And that’s that!

A Plea for Universal Free Wireless (in airports, at least)

I am currently sitting in Houston’s magnificent airport after leg two of my four-leg flight to Sacramento. The things I do for family… Anyway. A few hours before, I was in Tampa, FL, whose airport not only has a pretty impressive view of the skyscrapers in a gorgeous dawning sun (I have a picture that I can’t share right now for reasons that will become apparently shortly), but they also had wireless. Gorgeous wireless. It was relatively swift, allowed all of my normal functions (blogging, Twitter, Facebook, general searches, etc.), and was all around just good. Before that, I was in Gainesville, FL, whose airport barely deserves the title, but also includes at least usable wireless — it’s not all that quick, but compared to the public wireless at the community college where I am employed, it is like night and day. Houston, however, has none of these things. Right now, I’m snatching wireless off one of the airline desks nearby; they apparently have never heard of passwords. This service only allows me to access Blogger and general search, but Twitter and all of my apps (even the ones that have nothing to do with social media, but require Internet to function) are blocked. I can’t even search for ebooks on this thing… The only other public option around here is one run by one of the hotspot companies. It costs $4.95 for an hour, which is the only time I can use anyway (your only other option is $7.95 a month, but since I don’t fly all that much, let alone to or from or around Houston, it’s really not worth it). I think this price is basically extortion. In other words, there is no viable Internet option here. This is not the first time I’ve been trapped in an airport without free wireless. You’ll forgive me for demonstrating my privilege, but I think all airports should have free wireless by default. There are a lot of good reasons for this, from simple convenience and customer satisfaction to the fact that social networks allow information to move quickly within airport terminals (just in case something has happened inside and you don’t know what’s going on — Tweeting, after all, is quiet; then again, maybe this is a stretch). Ultimately, I think customer satisfaction is the one that will matter most, as giving us access helps us pass the time doing something we apparently enjoy, whether it’s chatting with friends online, reading online newspaper articles, searching for an ebook to read, or something else. So this is my plea for universal wireless in airports. I’d love it if Internet access were universal in general, but I think this is a good place to start. Go wireless, go wireless, go, go, go wireless!

Star Trek: a Worf TV Show? (Some Thoughts)

A few weeks ago, the Huffington Post released an interview with Wil Wheaton and Michael Dorn, who played Wesley Crusher and Worf (respectively) on Star Trek: the Next Generation. I recommend reading the whole thing, but for now, I’m only concerned with one quote from Dorn: Business things got in the way in terms of the JJ Abrams movie coming out and CBS/Paramount and their relationship with JJ Abrams. I don’t think they wanted to step on his toes by putting a new series on, but it’s not dead yet. I’ve finished the script and hopefully someone will take a look at this and say “we can do this.” Basically, we’re not that far off from seeing a Captain Worf TV show. Let me say that again: a Captain Worf TV show. By “not far off,” of course, I don’t mean “next year.” This is Hollywood, after all, and even getting into talks with the studios still means you’re about as far from production as we are from going to Mars. Still, in production terms, that’s a lot closer than “I’ve got the rights” or “I wrote something” or “someone answered my phone call.” In other words, yeah, we’re really not that far off from a possible show. The big questions are these: How exactly are they going to fit this show into the universe everyone now knows (Abrams’)? And if they’re not going to integrate Worf into this new universe, how can they justify the character to a new viewing public? First, there are big problems with sticking Worf into the Abrams universe. Even taking into account the ridiculous time travel changes that have occurred, the character of Worf doesn’t appear until well after the events of the first two ST films. He’s from an entirely different era, and his character is so defined by that era that to try to artificially shove him 100 years forward would entail an entirely different set of political conditions, most notably the fact that the Federation and the Klingons haven’t even begun their war in the Abrams universe. Star Trek Into Darkness takes place in 2259 — eight years before the Federation-Klingon war took place in the original universe. And the film makes clear that war is pretty much inevitable, as it was in the original universe. Since Worf’s character is partly defined by the post-war period, after which the Klingons eventually sue for piece (as in The Undiscovered Country), it doesn’t make much sense to shove him into the immediate universe of the Abrams film. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if they did just that, since this film series seems incapable of inventing new characters; instead, they borrow liberally from everything that came before. One of the other problems has to do with which ST TV shows people are most likely to remember. The Abrams ST films are probably more popular with casual or non-Trek viewers than with the traditional Trekkie crowd. As such, its primary audience likely knows about TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager, but their most recent ST experience would have been with Enterprise. The good news: STE doesn’t violate Abrams’ new canon, since its events, more or less, take place before Kirk’s birth (in fairness, I haven’t finished STE yet, so there may be stuff in there that contradicts this). You could easily suck STE into Abrams’ canon without much problems, which is not something you can easily do with a Worf TV show which springs off of TNG and DS9 (as the title, Captain Worf, suggests). A show set in the Next Gen universe will also have a hard time competing with the film universe precisely because its characters aren’t the dominant representation of ST anymore. They may be some of the most recognizable non-TOS characters in the ST canon, but the universe we’re playing in now would, by its very nature, have to diverge significantly from the world we learned about in TNG. After all, the Vulcans aren’t really there to help out anymore. They’re a decimated species who might, in 100 years, get some semblance of interstellar control back, but they’re basically out for the count right now. And that means Abrams has to take into account that the Klingons will likely have more of an influence on the Federation than they would have had before — they’re minus one formidable opponent. Right. Wandering. This is the problem. The Abrams universe has become, in my mind, *the* ST universe. It’s the one we’re all really talking about as a culture. As much as I want a Captain Worf show set in the TNG universe, I worry that it will only confuse new fans of ST. After all, part of the reason the new ST movies are so action oriented is to snatch up younger viewers. It’s not designed for Trekkies, as much as they might hate the idea. And the worst thing you can do to a newer, younger (and, hey, possibly older-but-never-been-into-ST-before) crowd is confuse them with ST stuff that doesn’t fit. Well, maybe not the worst thing, but it’s a legitimate concern. But who am I to say it won’t work? I’ll watch the show regardless, as will most Trek fans. Worf is a beloved character, and watching him grow as a formidable captain would be pretty awesome. Bogh tlhInganpu’, SuvwI’pu’ moj, Hegh!

Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

Editor. Writer. Professor. Host.

Category: SF/F Commentary

My Hopes and Anticipations for Science Fiction and Fantasy in 2014

Top 10 Blog Posts for November 2013

Diversity is Not a Selfie (or, Amazing Stories + Felicity Savage = Here We Go Again)

Updatery and An Interview w/ Me: Postmodernism, Comics, SF/F, Podcasting, and Larry Nolen

A Plea for Universal Free Wireless (in airports, at least)

Star Trek: a Worf TV Show? (Some Thoughts)