Literary Explorations: Epic Fantasy = Crushingly Conservative? (A Sorta Response to Liz Bourke)
First, read this. Have you read it now? Good. I want to start by briefly talking about two of the central problems that Ms. Bourke rightly struggles with throughout her post (and which many readers had issues developing or agreeing to on their own) — definitions and the perception of their application. For the sake […]
Rethinking Superhero Ethics and Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops Series
On the recent Skiffy and Fanty Show podcast, my friend Jen and I interviewed author Myke Cole about Shadow Ops: Fortress Frontier, the sequel to his 2012 hit, Shadow Ops: Control Point (which we interviewed him about here). During the discussion, we (Jen and I) sidetracked from asking Myke direct questions to actually considering the world […]
Distracting the Internet with Frankenstein, Dionne Brand, and Belated MLK Day!
Wouldn’t it make the world a better place if we all randomly searched through our grandparents’ stuff and one day discovered some super important antique book signed by the author? We could all share our magic book stories with one another, hold hands, and frolic in fields of emerald grass… Or we could just sell […]
“Best Of” Lists: A Game of Gap-ology?
If you head on over to The OF Blog, you’ll find this post containing links to over a dozen “Best of 2012” lists. Larry wants us to look at them and take note of the commonalities and the differences. Some of those lists are varied, unique, and fascinating; I found a lot of new reads […]
This Post is About Asian Americans (or, I Have No Proper Title)
I am currently taking a graduate-level course on Asian-American literature, which includes a considerable amount of theory, criticism, historical documents, and so on. While reading the preface to Aiiieeeee!, an anthology of Asian-American writers edited by Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Lawson Fusao Inada, and Shawn Hsu Wong, I came across the following quote: Seven generations […]
Hugo Awards Stream Shut Down / Worldcon Banned (or, Dear #Ustream: Fuck you, Signed Fandom)
If you haven’t heard already, Ustream, the serviced used by Worldcon to live stream the Hugo Awards ceremony, pulled the stream and banned Worldcon from its site for terms of service violation. What violation would that be? Apparently an awards ceremony is not allowed to play short clips (a la fair use policy) from nominees […]