SF/F Commentary – Page 37 – Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

Academic Spotlight: Afrofuturism — The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha L. Womack

This isn’t an explicitly academic book, but I’m sure the academically-minded will find as much value in Ytasha Womack’s upcoming Afrofuturism as anyone else who has an interest in the cultural movements within the SF/F field. I first learned about the concept of Afrofuturism in an American Studies course on African American SF at the University of California, Santa Cruz. We watched Sun Ra’s Space is the Place, which I still think is a weird, but sort of brilliant film, and read a number of amazing works by folks like Nalo Hopkinson, Samuel R. Delany, Tananarive Due, Walter Mosley, and several others. I mention all of this so you’ll understand why I jumped up and down when I saw Womack’s book on Twitter. In any case, here are the details: Synopsis In this hip, accessible primer to the music, literature, and art of Afrofuturism, author Ytasha Womack introduces readers to the burgeoning community of artists creating Afrofuturist works, the innovators from the past, and the wide range of subjects they explore. From the sci-fi literature of Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and N. K. Jemisin to the musical cosmos of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am, to the visual and multimedia artists inspired by African Dogon myths and Egyptian deities, the book’s topics range from the “alien” experience of blacks in America to the “wake up” cry that peppers sci-fi literature, sermons, and activism. With a twofold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves. Published by Chicago Review Press (release date: Oct. 1, 2013) About the Author Ytasha L. Womack is an author, filmmaker, dancer and futurist. Her book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci Fi and Fantasy explores black sci fi culture, bleeks, black comix, and the legacy of futurism. She is author of the critically acclaimed book Post Black: How a New Generation is Redefining African American Identity and 2212: Book of Rayla. She is also the coeditor of the hip hop anthology Beats, Rhyme & Life: What We Love and Hate About Hip Hop. Her films include Love Shorts (writer/producer) and The Engagement (director). Ytasha is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University and studied media management at Columbia College in Chicago. She resides in the Windy City. She can be found on her webpage, iAfrofuturism.

The Rubric of Apologies: Demanded Apologies

Here’s a context-less story to set the stage for this post: Recently, I got into an argument regarding a popular SF/F character and sexism. From my perspective at the time, certain features associated with that character were undeniably sexist and, by extension, ridiculous. I still think there’s a lot of sexism involved with this character, and most of the historical details that came up in the argument simply complicated what I was saying by getting rid of all the black and white, but I would be lying if I said my argument and perspective didn’t change. During that argument, I also made a rather flippant comment to an individual. This led to someone else calling me a bigot and the offended individual’s eventual demand for an apology. I ended up closing the discussion thread and blocking one of the trolls. One of the things that makes me uncomfortable about otherwise uncomfortable situations (redundancy much?) involves that demand for an apology. It’s not that I don’t think apologies are necessary in situations where you’re wrong — quite the opposite. Rather, I think apologies must be arrived at from an honest introspection of self. An apology made by demand is no more valuable than any statement made as a result of coercion. For me, apologies should not be made in intense emotional states OR in response to an intense emotional state; doing so strips away comprehension and understanding. So when I was told I had to apologize, I refused to do so (non-verbally). Why? Because I knew I wouldn’t mean it at the time. There’s no way I could. With all the accusations of bigotry and trolling, I was undeniably in an intense emotional state when that apology-demand was made, and that meant I couldn’t think clearly about every aspect of the situation. Apologies must be honest. You cannot coerce apologies if you want them to mean anything. In some cases, demanding apologies doesn’t actually solve the issue (an offense), but simply provides a self-righteous barrier between the transgressor and the transgressed. I, for one, don’t seem much value in that. What do you all think about demanded apologies?

Oh, John Ringo and Your Silly Fantasies About People (or, I Now Like Redshirts)

In relation to this year’s Hugo Awards, I am two things: An unabashed crazy leftish pinko liberal hippy gerfferrmerrfle (whatever that is) On the record for having disliked John Scalzi’s Hugo Award-winning Redshirts (truthfully, I hated it) But #2 is over with now. I still don’t think Redshirts is a good book, and perhaps some of my disappointment comes from the fact that some of his other work has blown me away in terms of quality; this one just didn’t have the strength of the others. But, as I said, I’m done hating it now. Why? Because John Ringo said this craziness: There’s nothing wrong with Scalzi’s writing. This is a reasonably good novel (from what I’ve heard) with no real SF or literary merit beyond being a reasonably good novel. But he’s been speaking truth to power about the degradation of women in SF along with other idiocracy and so he’s beloved by all the hasbeen liberal neurotics who control the Hugo voting and balloting. Look to many more in the future as long as he toes the Party line. Huzzah. Umm, what? So let me get this straight. Worldcon 2013 is just so jam-packed with liberals who have no standards that anything Scalzi writes will automatically win or get nominated because he says things we like to hear? Logical fallacy says what? First, how does Ringo account for all those other novels Scalzi wrote which didn’t win or get nominated for a Hugo Award. Was he just not liberal enough those years? Did the secret conservative cabal take over that year? Do you have to get in a pissing match with a sexist troll to earn the respect of the imaginary establishment liberals before winning an award? He does realize that liberals don’t Google-snoop every author to intentionally avoid nominating or voting for a novel they like, right? Maybe there’s a secret Google-snooping room somewhere… Second, how do you account for all the folks who didn’t vote for Scalzi’s novel? Are we all conservatives or closet conservatives? Are we secretly objectivist monkey overlords from Nerpton 7, hell bent on rigging a relatively small literary award in favor of people who don’t like seeing women treated like turdfactories? Oh, I know! In the Ringoverse, uh…conservatives were secretly denied voting rights and so they couldn’t vote on the books and now they live in a camp somewhere (we’ll call it Fartabulous Camp) where they eat oatmeal and watch re-runs of Charlton Heston movies. No? That’s not it? Damn. And here I was getting my hopes up…Drat. I won’t deny that there are a lot of liberals in the SF/F world, but let’s stop pretending for the time being that it’s all puppies and flowers for us libbies, or that all it takes to get in our metaphorical pants is a bit of political pandering. I agree with almost everything Scalzi says on a political level, but I didn’t actually pick Redshirts because I didn’t like it. His politics didn’t come into it. I know a lot of folks of the liberal persuasion who did not vote for Scalzi’s novel, whether on the nomination or the final ballot. Shockingly, they were able to decide for themselves that they didn’t like it (or they didn’t read it). Free will is a bitch. So, with that being said, I would like to thank John Ringo for making me a fan of Redshirts. It seems all it takes to convert us is for folks like Ringo to say demonstrably nonsensical things. We should hire him to convince all our children to eat their vegetables…

Worldcon Recap: The Nonsensical Version

I got back from Worldcon yesterday night. Things are still a bit of a blur. My mind has been dragged every which way by so many good feelings. Truly. Honestly. So what follows is a recap of things I can remember right now, in a completely random and nonsensical order. If I forgot you for some reason, please smack me in the comments. Friends! I went to Worldcon with my besterestestest friend ever! On top of that, I met a lot of folks I consider to be friends, but whom I have not met in person. Friendship is wonderful! Yay! General Reaction I’ve never been to Worldcon (or any straight SF/F convention), so I didn’t really know what to expect (I suspect the same is true for Jen, who came with me, but I can’t speak for her). Sure, a few folks offered a lot of opinions about it, but since we’re all a little different, I didn’t know exactly what to make of it all. There were also those worrisome bits involving The Song of the South and what not prior to the actual event. That said, I had an absolute blast. I’ve been to anime conventions before, but since I’ve never been embedded into the anime world, I always felt a little like an outsider at such places. At Worldcon, the tables had turned. I actually knew people. More surprising was the fact that some folks knew me. Nothing could really have prepared me for that. In a weird way, Worldcon felt like the kind of place at which I belonged — a literature-heavy SF/F/ bonanaza! Would I go again? Yes. And if I can afford to do so next year, it’ll happen. Podcasting We recorded a whole bunch of interviews and discussions at Worldcon. Expect them to appear on The Skiffy and Fanty Show soon! Needless to say, it was awesome. WSFS Meetings After hearing about the horror show on the first day of the WSFS meetings (from Rachael Acks), I decided I’d rather spend my days talking with people who won’t make me feel like stabbing myself. There’s a podcast about this stuff coming soon… San Antonio It sucks. The Alamo is about as unimpressive as the giant ball of twine in Cawker City, Kansas. I get that you’re not really supposed to leave the hotels and convention areas, but San Antonio made it so you never had a reason to anyway. Maybe that’s kind of the point. Greycon I’m not sure if this is normal, having never attended before, but the average age of a Worldcon attendee seemed to be in the area of 55. More 20s-30s seemed to show up over the weekend, but they were insanely outnumbered by older folks. We talked about this very thing in one of the recording sessions at Worldcon, which will show up on The Skiffy and Fanty Show page eventually. Whitemalecon There were an awful lot of white male folks at Worldcon. Perhaps that has something to do with the venue, or maybe it’s just a normal occurrence. All I can say is this: it’s just weird. That’s how I feel about it now. I spend my workdays surrounded by women, people of color, etc. So going from a relatively (though incompletely) diverse space to one that seemed, at least from my view of things, nearly monolithic in form…well, it was just plain weird. Programming I’ll break this down into mini sections: I was genuinely surprised to see so many panels about SF from elsewhere in the world. Based on some of my interactions with certain factions of the SF/F community involved in Worldcon, I seriously expected the world to get ignored. Future Worldcons should certainly do more, but I applaud the effort. The combat panel with Elizabeth Bear, Elizabeth Moon, etc. was quite interesting, though Jen and I were both surprised at the weird gender split: this particular panel featured all women; the other combat-related panel featured all men. I don’t know what to make of that right now. In any case, the panel was awesome. I think we went to every panel on which Tobias Buckell was a panelist. He was awesome. Myke Cole did a stint as Lou Anders for a panel featuring authors I happen to really like. He was hilarious. Why were Scott Lynch, Nick Mamatas, Myke Cole, and so many other authors and professionals absent from the programming (with the exception of Myke, who moderated a panel)? Seriously. The most annoying thing about programming at Worldcon: all the folks who have no business being on a panel about X because they are not reasonable authorities about X. Jen and I went to several panels in which one or two of the panelists either didn’t know why they’d been pegged for that panel or simply didn’t belong. Case in point: the panel on the future of the US-Mexico border featured absolutely zero Mexican and/or Hispanic panelists (as far as I could tell). Apparently what counts as “qualified to talk about the US-Mexico border” are “folks who live or lived near or crossed a border somewhere on the planet.” This is probably the worst example, but we also saw a lot of panels about science or subgenres or writing that featured folks who simply didn’t fit in. There were so many professionals and knowledgeable folks at Worldcon, so it doesn’t make much sense, to be honest. Would it be possible to stop having panels about subjects SF/F peeps have been debating pointlessly for decades? And can moderators start cutting these questions out from consideration? Why are we still talking about the definition of space opera or loose explanations for the connection between science and genre? People The list of people I met, however briefly in some cases, is so long that I’m still drawing blanks. That said, I’d like to thank all of these folks for talking to me, even if only for a few moments (in no particular order): Julia Rios (for putting

RIP: Frederick Pohl

The science fiction legend, Frederick Pohl, passed away yesterday. Jo Walton has written up her emotional reaction to the news (while in attendance at Worldcon) here, which I recommend reading. I may have more extensive thoughts later. Right now, I’m jetlagged and incapable of fully taking in such news. He was undeniably one of the greatest science fiction writers that every lived, and while he experienced an extraordinarily wonderful (and long) life, it is becoming clearer and clearer these days that so many of the folks who made the genre a genre will not longer be with us by the end of this decade. He will most certainly be missed, not just by his family, not just by other writers, but by the entire community. –End

Dr. Shaun Duke, Professional Nerd

Editor. Writer. Professor. Host.

Category: SF/F Commentary

Academic Spotlight: Afrofuturism — The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture by Ytasha L. Womack

The Rubric of Apologies: Demanded Apologies

Top 10 Blog Posts for August 2013

Oh, John Ringo and Your Silly Fantasies About People (or, I Now Like Redshirts)

Worldcon Recap: The Nonsensical Version

RIP: Frederick Pohl