SF/F Commentary – Page 34 – Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

Crowdfunding Links of the Week: Kaleidoscope (a Diverse YA Antho) & War Stories (a MilSF Antho)

If you haven’t backed these projects yet, you must do so right away. First, my good friend Julia Rios and Twefth Planet Press ninja Alisa Krasnostein (also of Galactic Suburbia fame) are putting together an anthology of YA fantasy stories with diverse perspectives. If you know me, I love me some diversity in SF/F, so I really want to see this project get funded. It’s called Kaleidoscope, which is a pretty nifty name if you ask me. There are only three days left (as of this posting), and several thousand bucks left to go, so please spread the word and throw down some cash! Here’s what the Pozible page says about the project: Kaleidoscope is an anthology of diverse contemporary YA fantasy & science fiction stories, which will be edited by Julia Rios and Alisa Krasnostein, and published by Twelfth Planet Press. Too often popular culture and media defaults to a very narrow cross section of the world’s populace. We believe that people of all kinds want to see themselves reflected in stories. We also believe that readers actively enjoy reading stories about people who aren’t exactly like them. We want see more stories featuring people who don’t always get the spotlight, so we’re gathering a wonderful variety of: YA fantasy stories [Update: As of 10/23 we are also open to science fiction] Set in the modern world Featuring teen protagonists from diverse backgrounds The main characters in Kaleidoscope stories will be part of the QUILTBAG, neuro-diverse, disabled, from non-Western cultures, people of color, or in some other way not the typical straight, white, cis-gendered, able-bodied characters we see all over the place. Oh, and submissions are currently OPEN! Next is a new military science fiction anthology called War Stories, edited by Jaym Gates and Andrew Liptak. Based on who is currently billed for the anthology, I suspect this is going to be one heck of a project. I mean, Joe Haldeman will contribute to this thing. That’s enough for me. Here’s what the Kickstarter page says about the project: An anthology of Military SF, exploring how warfare might affect the soldiers and civilians of tomorrow. War has been speculated about in science fiction literature from the earliest days of the genre. From George Tomkyns Chesney’s The Battle of Dorking and H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds & War In the Air to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers to Karin Traviss’s Wess’har Wars series and Dan Abnett’s Embedded, science fiction literature has long had something to say about war. Now, it’s time to tell some new stories. War Stories is an anthology that looks to the modern state and the future of war through the words of some of the best short fiction authors writing today. Our cover art is by the fantastic, Hugo Award winning artist Galen Dara, who’s worked for such places as Fireside Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, Geek Love and Apex’s own Glitter and Mayhem anthology. She’ll also be contributing some additional, interior artwork.War Stories isn’t an anthology of bug hunts and unabashed jingoism. It’s a look at the people ordered into impossible situations, asked to do the unthinkable, and those unable to escape from hell. It’s stories of courage under fire, and about the difficulties in making decisions that we normally would never make. It’s about what happens when the shooting stops, and before any trigger is ever pulled. We’ve grown up reading stories from authors such as Robert Heinlein, Joe Haldeman, Orson Scott Card, Timothy Zahn, C.J. Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold and others that have laid the foundations for ‘military science fiction’ as a distinct genre. We want to tell some different stories. Science Fiction, and military science fiction in particular, is a good look at the world today, where military actions are certainly relevant. We aim to tell some new stories that look at the future of warfare, and the people, robots and aliens involved. Submissions are also currently open for War Stories! I’ve already backed both projects, but since I’m kind of poor, I couldn’t give much. And that means you all need to get off your tooshes and back these things too. If 10,000,000 of us give $5, then…well, I guess all the aforementioned editors would be millionaires, which would allow them to raise their pay rates to $1.37 a word. That would be cool, no?

The Following’s (Homo/Bi)Sexuality “Deviance” Problem

(Minor spoilers ahead. If you don’t want to have some minor details ruined for you, don’t read beyond this point.) The Following is good. Damned good. I’m almost finished with the first season of this Kevin Bacon vehicle, and I love everything from the premise (Joe Carroll, played by James Purefoy, is a charismatic, Poe-obsessed serial killer who uses his genius to create a flock of followers to do his bidding while he rots in prison) to a deep exploration of the cast (including the followers) to the downright cleverness of the plot (Caroll sees everything as a narrative, with rising and falling action, etc.). As a picky TV viewer, I had high hopes for this show, and so far it is delivered in every way…except one.[1] I’m probably not the only one talking about The Following‘s “gay” problem. And I’m certainly not the only one talking about the poor representation of LGBT people in television as a whole (though this is changing). What The Following does with its gay and bisexual characters, however, serves the fantasies of those who perceive non-hetero sexuality as a deviance of the worst order. All of the LGBT characters in the series also happen to be serial killers (either literally or in the making). While that’s not necessarily horrible by itself, the fact that the only characters shown engaging in threesomes spurred on by nostalgic longing for murder does. These characters are never presented as sexually “normal” (i.e., they do not subscribe to mainstream ideas regarding social behavior or coupling — yes, I realize defining this as “normal” is always already problematic). All the good guys, however screwed up they may be, are seen either pursuing monogamous relationships, expressing socially acceptable interest in the opposite sex, or expressing no interest whatsoever. Even Ryan Hardy (Bacon), who has a longstanding romantic interest with Joe Carroll’s former wife, adheres to these standards, demonstrating a noticeable discomfort with the prospect of having a relationship with a serial killer’s ex. Basically, the “deviant” behavior of the protagonist — made clear by the fact that he refuses to disclose or discuss it with anyone else — is never shown with the same phobic gaze that pervades the LGBT scenes. His romantic interests aren’t the sorts of things expected of his sexual persuasion, and he damn well knows it (it’s almost as if he’s having an affair and, naturally, doesn’t want anyone else to know about it; he sort of gets over this over time, though). And that’s the thing: this is about the phobic gaze (homophobic, you might say). The LGBT characters are hypersexualized, sadistic, and manipulative, and these behaviors are normalized as, at least in part, associated with their sexualities. While I doubt this was the intention on the part of the writers, it is nevertheless there, and something the writers must address to avoid this absurd paradigm within which heterosexuals are justified in “abnormal behavior” by their apprehension, but homosexuals are condemned as “wrong” simply because they give in to those behaviors (or enjoy them because they are murderers) and are not particularly bothered by it (except Jacob, played by Nico Tortorella, who seems uncomfortable with his homosexuality — however, his discomfort doesn’t seem to have anything to do with whether engaging in such behavior is wrong, but with whether he himself is gay or simply putting on an act. For context: Jacob and Paul, two of Carroll’s disciples, played a gay couple in order to get close to Carroll’s ex-wife so they could kidnap her child (a.k.a. Carroll’s son); in a sense, the question of sexuality as a performance is layered throughout the narrative of The Following, but the question is only asked of the LGBT characters / serial killers, not the heteronormative couples elsewhere). But this problem has a solution. While it is pretty much impossible to reveal Bacon’s character as a homosexual (he could, at most, be bisexual), the same is not true for some of the other “protagonists.” Revealing other protagonists as non-hetero won’t fully absolve the series from falling into the non-hetero-as-deviant trap, but it will provide a more colorful picture of people by having villains and heroes who are hetero, gay, etc. Instead of a narrative of deviant sexuality, you would have a narrative about deviant behavior in the broadest sense. And that’s all I’ve got to say on this subject (for now). ————————————————– [1]: I started watching this show months and months ago, so this post is about something I noticed at about the sixth episode. It’s an old thought, but still a relevant one, I think.

Ideological Rigidity (With a Side of Genre)(Adventures in Teaching)

Several semesters ago, I experienced what I’m going to call the indoctrination of young Americans. No, I am not necessarily referring to a specific political indoctrination, though one of the examples I will describe below falls along a left/right political spectrum. Rather, I am talking about the odd absence of critical thinking skills among college-age (or transitioning high school/college) students, whether derived from a neutered public education system or something else entirely. What I’ve discovered through my teaching in Florida is a hard shift to ideological rigidity, by which students verbally or mentally refuse to consider the multiple sides of issues about which they have already developed an opinion. I don’t want to suggest that this is an absolute ideological rigidity, though; there are always exceptions. However, when this rigid view of the issues rears its ugly head, it proves devastating to the ability to develop a relatively sound argument. In most cases, those with the most rigid ideological stances were less able to imagine counterarguments, even when the most obvious ones were available by a quick Google search, more likely to assert claims without evidence or reasoning, and less willing to engage with stances contrary to their own. Granted, what I’m saying is largely anecdotal, so take what I present here for what it is. To demonstrate what I mean, I’d like to provide the following examples: Example #1: Eating Dog Debate I have a tendency to intentionally stick students in groups in which they have to argue positions with which I know they personally disagree. Part of the reason I do this is to force them to use their brains to consider the other side of the aisle, as such discussions are necessary, I think, to understand the complexities of any given position. It is also about respect. You cannot possibly have a civil debate if you are incapable of showing respect to the other side (where respect is reasonable, of course). In all fairness, my desire to have civil debates in class is born from my increasing disinterest in the quality of ordinary conversation about just about anything. Even when discussions about relatively pointless subjects spring up, such as which science fiction TV show is “the best,” the discourse surrounding that topic has a tendency to veer towards rhetorical violence. My class debates, unfortunately, have not helped instill confidence in me that civil discourse is possible as a norm. Anywho. In this particular scenario, I put students into two groups: one would argue that eating dog was wrong, while the other would argue the opposite (they were reading this essay). One of my students emphatically said he would not take part in the debate because he thought eating dog was wrong. When I asked him why, he couldn’t say. That’s just what he thought. I pressed him further, and he still could not say. He just believed that eating dog was wrong. Only after I reminded him that I didn’t expect him to believe that eating dog is right by the end of the debate did this student reluctantly join in the discussion with his group. The result of the debate was about what I expected after discussing the issue with that student. The group with the most people set against eating dog found it nearly impossible to imagine the counterargument about why eating dog might be a good idea (note: I don’t actually agree with this, but I can understand the arguments people make in favor of eating dog). They struggled with basic facts such as nutritional value, cultural differences, food taboos, and so on. The opposite group also struggled, but they were more ready to argue from cultural value than their pro-dog-eating counterparts. After all, when you get right down to it, dogs serve all manner of purposes in our society, even beyond the basic function as a companion species. But they are also food sources in many parts of the world; as Foer notes in his essay (see above), we willingly exterminate millions of dogs every year, which means their potential nutritional value is wasted. But the pro-eating-dog group couldn’t think about these issues, though the anti-eating-dog group had its own problems (responding to arguments with emotion-driven claims). But because the who was tasked with exploring the value of dog as a potential food product couldn’t argue the position with which they were tasked, they lost the debate by a mile. Example #2: Drilling for Oil In another case, I put the same class of students into two groups: one arguing that we should drill for oil in state parks, and one arguing the exact opposite. This time, I intentionally stuck people into groups where they would be arguing from their own position on the issue, though there were a couple of students who didn’t care either way. The result? Pretty much the same thing. When challenged by their opponents on the matter of the environment, the pro-drilling group seemed unwilling to recognize the valid points lodged against them. Instead, they repeated the same claim over and over or dodge the question entirely. They had no response to the very real problem posed by drilling in general — namely, that it does not have a track record of safety, and so assurances that damage to public parks would be kept to a minimum fell on deaf ears. The anti-drilling group, however, didn’t have a response to the legitimate concern regarding the economy. They were certain that the nation would simply have to find other means of producing energy and that this could be achieved without any serious impact on the economy. When it was pointed out to this group that we had already reached a point at which a slow shift toward renewable fuels would be impossible, they resorted to the dodging/repetitive tactics. The latter group won the debate, largely because they backed up their claims with evidence more often than their opponents. However, both groups demonstrated a degree of intransigence that made debating

Why I Stopped Paying Attention to Feedburner Subscriber Numbers

Readers of this blog probably haven’t noticed, but the little chicklet/button for Feedburner disappeared from my sidebar about a month ago. The Twitter one, however, has stayed fixed in place (mostly so people can easily find my account; the feeds for my blog are linked above the Twitter gizmo). There’s a good reason, too. One of the things that I have noticed since the disappearance of Google Reader is the unreliability of Feedburner subscriber numbers. They’ve never been terribly reliable, for sure, but the death of GR resulted in a massive drop off in subscriber numbers for my blog, and, it seems, a whole lot of weird fluctuations throughout the blogosphere. For example, in a matter of hours (yesterday), SF Signal’s subscriber numbers went from 19k, then down to 4k, then up to nearly 21k, then down to 15k, and so on. For a site like SF Signal, I suppose those drops are meaningless, since the popularity of the blog can be easily measured via other means (a vibrant comments section and site views). For a blog like mine, where I babble about things I like, there isn’t a whole lot of that kind of activity, so measuring popularity relies on subscriber numbers. But watching the numbers for my blog plummet by hundreds after the death of GR made me rather anxious, and after a time, I became aware that I had put too much attention into how many people read my blog, and not enough attention elsewhere. And since Feedburner, thus far, hasn’t demonstrated the ability to catch numbers from cloud-based RSS readers (like Feedly), I also realized that there isn’t a point even paying attention to the numbers anymore. People read my blog. They are now commenting more (in part, I think, because I took all of the barriers away). Whether I have 400 subscribers, 800, 100, 12, or 47.5, I think there’s something toxic about fixating on subscriber numbers, in part because that means energy I could spend on other things (you know, like blogging interesting things) is spent worrying about where my subscribers went and how I can get them back. I’ve never spent a lot of energy on the numbers, but I’ve come to the conclusion that any time spent thinking about these things is stupid. So I deleted the chicklet. Feedburner is now merely a RSS dispensary for this blog. And that’s what it’s going to be for the time being. There’s no point sitting around worrying about numbers. If people hate my blog, then they hate my blog because I suck. I trust that someone will tell me as much at some point. If they love my blog, they’ll comment or lurk forever (I will hunt down all of you lurkers eventually). But it’s time to move on now. It’s time to just blog about shit I like. It’s time to stop caring about the numbers.

Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

Editor. Writer. Professor. Host.

Category: SF/F Commentary

Top 10 Posts for October 2013

Crowdfunding Links of the Week: Kaleidoscope (a Diverse YA Antho) & War Stories (a MilSF Antho)

The Following’s (Homo/Bi)Sexuality “Deviance” Problem

Ideological Rigidity (With a Side of Genre)(Adventures in Teaching)

Top 10 Blog Posts for September 2013

Why I Stopped Paying Attention to Feedburner Subscriber Numbers