wisb-Guardian-Express

The railroad boss said not to say he said it, but she could live, if she wanted to, on the narrow strip of land between the railroad and the road...Six trains each day rumbled past and shook the ground under her cabin. Fords, and horse- and mule-drawn buggies went back and forth along the road.  No one ever saw her.  Trainmen, and passengers who'd heard about her, threw out papers and food.  Threw out little crumpled slips of paper scribbled with prayers, as they passed her eye-shaped piece of sandy ground.  (Pg. 8-9)

And the following crude drawings of the characters:
If you guessed that Taylor is an aardvark, then you deserve a cookie.  Because he is an aardvark.  Why?  I don't know.  I just wanted an aardvark in this story, and a big house leaning precariously over train tracks, and a crooked-backed old man...

The only thing I will have to change is the name of the old man, since Mr. Pine is the name of a character from a series of famous children's books by Leonard P. Kessler.

The question I have for you all is this:  Are you visually oriented?  If so, how do you use images to construct stories, whether for children or adults?

(I originally posted this on Google+, but since most of you probably don't follow me there, I figured you'd like to read this.  No, I don't cross post everything.  That would be annoying...)

To this day, I still find statements (or logic) such as the following ironically amusing: "I love you, but homosexuality is a sin." It's similar to "I don't support discrimination against LGBT (QUILTBAG) people, but I don't support same-sex marriage."

Such statements point to a failure to understand the other side. To LGBT (QUILTBAG) people, the various issues they are campaigning for, which extend from the right to marry to the various protections afforded to almost everyone else (job protection, protection against abuse, discrimination, violence, etc. etc. etc.), are all Civil Rights. In other words, regardless of what one might think about these people and their "agenda," they believe to the core of their being that this is a Civil Rights movement.

Within that context, can you really blame them for seeing bigots everywhere? From the mindset ofCivil Rights, any contradictory statement like one of the two I listed above would present a bigoted position: that is that saying "I don't support same-sex marriage because I believe it is a sin" is an dogmatic position, the adherence to which links one to bigotry within the context of a Civil Rightsdiscussion.

The fact that LGBT (QUILTBAG) people are right -- it is a Civil Rights movement -- is secondary to understanding why they are so adamant about their beliefs. Some like to say that these folks are just as intolerant as the people they claim to be against, which is little more than linguistic trickery to support a victim mentality. The reality is that almost all (notice the qualification) LGBT (QUILTBAG) people do not believe they have a right to control what you do and do not believe, just that you don't have a right to impose those beliefs on them by denying them the rights and privileges heterosexuals take for granted on a daily basis. At the end of the day, LGBT (QUILTBAG) people aren't trying to take something away from their opponents. Their opponents, however, are -- that's where bigotry finds a home.

(I should probably change the name for this feature...)

Only two things are "bothering" me this week -- at least, only two things I can talk publicly about.  Let's get right to it:

Complaint #1:  I Give Myself Four Out of Five
It recently came to my attention that a number of authors, small and large, leave reviews on websites like Goodreads of their work.  These aren't self-published hacks (not that all SPers are hacks, just that a lot of the jackasses who do these kinds of activities happen to be SPers), but traditionally published authors.

Even if the "reviews" involve little more than giving oneself a 4-star rating on Goodreads, it is still unethical and borderline immoral.  Rating your own work, even if you claim that you are "being honest," skews the numbers and misrepresents your work to potential readers.  Not only is it not
the author's job to play judgment on their own work, but it dampens the impact of actual reviewers, amateur or professional, who are not connected to the work in question.

How am I, as a reviewer and reader, supposed to take you seriously as an author when you are engaging in low-key forms of distortion, misrepresentation, and deception that less-than-reputable people on Amazon have done in the past?  Writers write the book.  Readers and critics interpret it -- either for its "value" as a literary product or for its "messages."

Complaint #2:  Punk Fantasy?  Ha!
Over at Tor.com, Ryan Britt attempts to associate Lev Grossman and George R. R. Martin with the punk aesthetic.  An amusing quote:

Millhauser doesn’t claim to be rebelling against anything, and it seems Martin isn’t either. Perhaps a real punk wouldn’t call themselves a punk, but the notion of protesting an institutionalized notion of art is likely a result of some amount of stigma or shame associated with the (punk) choice. Someone with a literary background like Grossman is going to be faced with more stigma or shame when he goes genre than someone like George R. R. Martin when he pulls a slightly punk move in Game of Thrones by not having it necessarily be about a big bad guy or quest. Perhaps Martin never faced the stigma, so the “risks” he took seem less punk than Grossman.  

Genre fiction that is, well, very genre-y, isn’t inherently a punk response to literature. Only when the crossovers occur do things begin to feel that way. I always like to say that growing up with no genre biases allowed for me to read nearly everything. A background in science fiction and fantasy narratives can actually allow a reader to jump into any story that may have a historical or social context they be unfamiliar with. In my case, historical fiction is a snap after you’ve read Dune. But I don’t think Frank Herbert was a punk, because he never really had, to my knowledge, switch from a mainstream literary context. Neither did Tolkien.

I am always amused when someone tries to pigeonhole people into some oversimplified version of "punk"ism that historically inaccurate movies, books, comics, and TV shows created when the punk movement collapsed under its own anti-establishment momentum.  In actuality, the punk movement was never as simple as "rebelling" against a community standard because punks never owned rebellion.  People have been finding ways to rebel against standardized culture for centuries, both actively and passively.  What separates the punk movement from most of these rebellious moments is the kind of rebellion they provided.  They weren't just anti-establishment.  They were anarchists, socialists, anti-militarism, anti-capitalism, anti-socialists, anti-X, anti-Y, and anti-Z.  Punks were neo-Nazis, conservatives, liberals, communists, but also anti all of these things.  They were walking contradictions of pure individuality.  It was a movement that was always doomed.

Today, the punk movement no longer exists.  Not in any significant way.  What punk has become is little more than an establishment of its own.  Rebellion, if we take Britt's term, became a community brand and the aesthetic of punk -- the anti-everything, including an anti of anti-ness.  To say it again:  punk as an actual aesthetic is dead, and the exceptions only prove the rule.

And when you think about how dead punk has become -- so dead it has crossed over from undead to deader-than-dead -- you really can't make arguments like the above, where authors are "rebelling" against a fantasy literature standard.  Nothing about GRRM's writing smells of punkness.  Nothing about Grossman or Millhauser connects to a punk aesthetic either.  Crossing the literary divide or seemingly challenging fantasy conventions doesn't mean you are enacting a punk attitude.  It means you are navigating a literary "world."  And genre writers have been navigating that world for the better part of a century (so too have literary writers, in different ways).

All these writers are doing are things that have been done before -- things that our short-term collective memory has forgotten.  The difference is that these writers, for one reason or another, have caught on for now.  But doing different things in genre -- imaginary different, that is -- is no more punk than deciding not to eat five servings of veggies today.  True punk-ness in literature is almost impossible to find or write, in part because non-conformity always becomes a conformist position -- you are not a punk unless you become a punk.  This is why William Gibson's work is only punk in its historical moment; in retrospect, it is little more than the beginning of a trend -- an anti-punk-ism that makes its bed with a salable aesthetic.


What about you?  Anything strange or annoying happen in your neck of the woods?  Want to talk about it?

Sad news from Locus:

Australian author Sara Warneke, 54, who wrote bestselling fantasy novels as Sara Douglass, died September 26, 2011 of cancer.

She had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer last year and lost her battle earlier today.

While I have not read much of her work, I know that the SF/F community will miss her terribly, not just as a person, but also as a writer.  It is a sad day when we lose one of our own and I wish the best for those she left behind.  My condolences to her friends and family.  May she live forever through her work.

I've been mulling over the idea of writing a space opera, tentatively titled The Reorientation War.  One of the things that strikes me about space operas is the epic scope; much like epic fantasies, space opera offers an immense field in which to play.  For me, that means a lot of people, a lot of places, a lot of social, political, and physical conflict, and a lot of action.  And with The Reorientation War, I'm hoping to sidestep the hero paradigm and opt instead for a more brutal, realistic vision of how an interstellar human empire might function.

But through the course of considering space opera as a genre, I've started to wonder about form.  Is there such a thing as literary space opera?  Or do writers of space opera adopt the adventurous landscape established by early SO writers, and, thus, take on its contemporary "popular prose" style?

The reason I ask these question is because I consider literary fiction to be more formally oriented than other genres.  That is that literary fiction, for me, places an extraordinary amount of attention on the language and the interrelationship of parts, which may or may not leave room for a linear plot.  Since much of space opera seems oriented towards plot-oriented conflict, it seems to me that much of the SO genre is potentially antithetical to the "literary."

A great deal of what we associated with SO borrows liberally from the same sources as Star Wars
and Star Trek.  Traditional hero models.  Traditional plots.  That's not to say that these are uninteresting or uninspiring elements -- heroes, to me, are valuable commodities in literature.  Rather, what I'm trying to suggest is that the distinction between literary and non-literary is utterly formal, in which non-literary work tends to borrow from those mythical sources we've come to know and love.  This is precisely because those forms -- the hero and his journey -- work.  We love heroes.  We love quests and journeys and excitement, and we equally love galactic empires and space battles and the intrigue that SO has tended to offer.

But can you still write an SO novel if you're missing some of these elements?  If you're not telling a story about heroes, per se, but about complex human relationships in a setting of empire a la Star Wars, can the story you are writing still be considered SO, or does it become something else entirely?

Honestly, I think it remains SO, but only because I think what I am associating with SO here is inaccurate, in part because there is this thing called New Space Opera and in part because SO is a complex genre.  But I still can't think of any SOs which one might call literary.  Perhaps I missed them.  If so, let me know in the comments.  Because now I'm throwing the question at all of you...

To clarify some of the above:  I am not talking about literary as "respectable."  I think that's a bogus and elitist definition of any genre, popular or otherwise.  Non-literary fiction -- that is, fiction which is more plot oriented and pays less attention to the language and interconnected structures via metaphor, etc. -- is just as valuable and fascinating as literary fiction.  I would not call Tobias S. Buckell or Nalo Hopkinson "literary writers," but I would consider their works just as, if not more, valuable as/than anything written in any other genre.

(I blame Adam Callaway for all of the above.)

Every once in a while I feel like complaining about a few things instead of engaging the issues in a more sustained manner.  Usually I don't blog about such complaints (which sometimes aren't complaints so much as confusions or general "mehness").

And that's why I've created the Complaint Department Discussion Department feature:  to give me a little space to complain or babble about a few things without sustained thought (or to point out stupid things people say and do in the SF/F community).

Here goes:

Complaint #1 -- Connie Willis and the Heinlein Award
She won it.  Alright.  That's fine.  I haven't read most of her work (though Jason Sanford tells me her latest novels aren't very good).  But then you read the mission statement of the Heinlein Award and the red flags go up:  "For outstanding published works of science fiction and technical writings to inspire the human exploration of space."

I'm sorry?  What do Blackout or All Clear have to do with that?  Nothing, you say?  Then why did she win this particular award?  That's like giving a major league baseball player an award for MVP in the Superbowl.    He might be a great athlete, but the award is way outside his field.

Does anyone have any insight on this?  Did Willis write a short story set in space that changed the SF game or something?

Complaint #2 -- The SF Writer Vietnam Drinking Game
Here's how it works:

• Name as many science fiction or fantasy writers from before the 1980s in two minutes.
• Compare your list to the image provided below.  
• For every person you named who is on the left, take a shot.  
• For every person on the right that you should have named, take a shot.  
• For every person on the left whose presence you are shocked by, take a shot.

Complaint #3 -- Sony to Ban Users Who Refuse to Waive Right to Sue
Because no corporation is immune to acting like a total and utter dickhole, Sony is apparently making it a requirement to waive your right to sue them if there is a security breach. If you don't sign the new ToS? You get banned.

That's right: you will not be allowed to use their system unless you agree not to sue them in the event that your credit card and other sensitive information are acquired because their security system wasn't good enough to fend off hackers. Who wants to bet that in a few years they'll stop putting so much money into security?

Thanks, Sony. You've just lost a customer for life.

(Note: The new ToS does allow you to go through arbitration, but this is done via an arbitrator selected by Sony. How many red flags does someone in HR need at Sony to realize this is a really dickhole idea?)

Complaint #4 -- Science Fiction is About the Future
You know, that stupid argument that people make about SF that completely handicaps the genre by claiming it is about something it can't fulfill, no matter how good the writer may be.  I've babbled about this topic before.  In two parts.  I don't deny that a lot of the classic SF authors (and perhaps most of them today) believed they were predicting the fortune by writing SF, but using that as a basis for saying that the genre is about extrapolation (as opposed to saying extrapolation is sometimes a part of the form) is sort of like saying you buy your friend's argument when he says "I only eat apples" while munching on an orange.

SF is always about the present (with rare exception -- and, as we know, exceptions prove the rule).  This annoying focus on extrapolation does nothing but make the genre look like a silly game of "guess who."  Who cares if jetpacks came true?  We got space shuttles, advanced medical technology, and smart phones instead.  Who cares whether a prediction is "accurate?"  Asking such questions seems absurd to me.  The future is unattainable the further you move away from the now.  Let's worry about realistic stuff, like what tomorrow will look like and how we can make it better.  You don't need SF to do that for you.

That's what I've got.  What about you? What has been bugging you this week?

• The Electric Slide (performed poorly, of course)
• Peanut Butter Jelly Time (somewhat quietly displayed due to me being a nice person)
• The Truffle Shuffle (performed a little too well for my comfort...)

Feel free to share it.  You know you want to!

Update:  Some folks have said they are having issues using the above video.  Below you should find a YouTube version for your amusement.  Thanks!

No YouTube version after all.  The copyright bastards swarmed in and deleted all the audio simply because I used part of a song, despite giving it proper attribution.  So...I deleted the video and will never upload anything there again.  To those that had issues using the Blogger video above:  sorry.  I tried to provide an alternative, but the pricks at the music companies have apparently neutered YouTube.  Post a song with music in it and they'll cut the audio out.  Meh.  It's crap like this that contributes to piracy.

The lovely writing duo joins Jen and I on The Skiffy and Fanty Show to talk about their Vampire Earth series, alternate history, brash Americans, and much more.  Check out the episode here!

In other news:  it poured rain outside my apart today in a way that makes me suspect flash floods have destroyed downtown Gainesville.  This, of course, would be God's justice for the city allowing such a seedy backwater hellhole to exist in the first place.  Pah!

In other other news:  a video will hit this blog some time tonight.  Look out for it!

I recently had a brief, but amusing discussion with one of my friends in my graduate program about surviving the end of a series.  I've probably noted something like this before, but the completion (or cancellation) of some of my favorite series (books, TV shows, and movies) has left an endless void in my life.  It's like getting excited about going to Disneyland, finally going, and then having to cope with the knowledge that the event is over when you come home.  But you can re-experience Disneyland in a variety of ways (returning to it when you're older, taking your children there, etc.).

Yet, the same could be said of creative series.  I can still re-experience Battlestar Galactica, and just as Disneyland can change when they add new rides, so too can BSG when the producers add new material (Caprica and Blood and Chrome, for example -- though the former wasn't all that
great).  The same is perhaps less true for book series.  Though J. K. Rowling can certainly return to her world, it's not as likely that she will, or that her return will garner the same attention as before.  We are notoriously overly critical of authors who return to their favorite worlds and try to tell new stories within them.  The completion of Harry Potter, sadly, puts Rowling in a strange position as a writer:  on the one hand, she wants to please her fans, who are clambering for more HP, but on the other hand, she wants to move away from that to new things (to make a new "name" for herself).

But even if you can re-experience BSG or HP or Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever else you became obsessed with in your youth (or middle age, as the case may be), it's not the same as experiencing the anticipation and love in the moment.
So the question is this:  how do you move on when your favorite series ends?  How do you find something to fill the void?
If you loved BSG, what did you replace it with when the show ended (the same goes for HP or Star Wars or whatever other thing you fell in love with)?  I suppose another way to put it is to ask:  how do you survive series withdrawal?

I have an extra copy of Edward Lazellari's novel (from Tor) to give away to one lucky reader.  The competition is open to U.S. residents only (unless you want to chip in a couple bucks via Paypal to help cover shipping).  Before I get to the book information, here's how to enter:

• Leave a comment saying something other than "please enter me" or "give me the book" or whatever.  Say something amusing or dumb or goofy or funny.  I don't care what it is so long as you do something other than tell me you want the book.

Cal MacDonnell is a happily married New York City cop with a loving family. Seth Raincrest is a washed-up photographer who has alienated even his closest friends. The two have nothing in common—except that they both suffer from retrograde amnesia. It’s as if they just appeared out of thin air thirteen years ago, and nothing has been able to restore their memories. Now their forgotten past has caught up to them with a vengeance. 

Cal's and Seth’s lives are turned upside down as they are stalked by otherworldly beings who know about the men's past lives. But these creatures aren't here to help; they're intent on killing anyone who gets in their way. In the balance hangs the life of a child who might someday restore a broken empire to peace and prosperity. With no clue why they're being hunted, Cal and Seth must accept the aid of a strange and beautiful woman who has promised to unlock their secrets. The two must stay alive long enough to protect their loved ones, recover their true selves—and save two worlds from tyranny and destruction. 

Awakenings launches a captivating fantasy saga by an amazing and talented new storyteller.

 Ben Bova also says it's a good book, according to his cover blurb.

I was reminded of a very important fact today by SQT of Fantasy & Scifi Lovin' News & Reviews and John Scalzi of Whatever (and writer of those funny things made of paper which we call books):  my blog is old.  But it's not that old.  SQT has been at this blogging thing a year longer than I and Scalzi has been doing it for thirteen years -- which makes my five look rather pathetic, don't you think?

But in the interest of celebrating something good, I'd like to say how shocking it is that I'm still here after five years.  Even more shocking is when and how I started.  On September 3rd, 2006, I wrote my first blogger blog post entitled "Yes!"  Apparently I was excited to have found it within myself the energy to put nearly incoherent words into a magic Internet box and press the "publish" button.  I was also excited about having a mystical mission to entertain the billions of people who still don't know I exist.

And what followed?  "Good News & Bad News," in which I mourned the death of Steve Irwin and pointed out my supreme ignorance as a writer by stating that I don't write outlines because they are oh so lame.  Then again, I still don't do outlines...  After that, I wrote "Names and Things" -- the first post where I had something coherent to say, but also the first post in which I proclaimed my
love for reptiles.  There are two pictures there of animals I either used to or still have (one of which was stolen by my evil, wicked mother from the West).

But things picked up from there.  I started a novel (The World in the Satin Bag), which turned out to be a piece of high fantasy YA garbage.  I'm still working on editing that junkfest, and so far I've made it 100 times better -- and, yes, there are short stories coming and a video (I swear).  And in five years I've had a few "hits," some of the "this is interesting" variety, and others of the "you stupid bastard, I hate you" variety.  I've stirred up quite a lot of trouble, said some dumb stuff, pissed off a fair share of people, amused some and made at least one or two laugh.

What do I have to show for all of this?  229,815 unique visitors from 178 countries (that leaves about 26 I've yet to touch) and 334,095 page views, 4,343 comments, and 1,884 published posts (including this one).

What can I say?  That's not bad at all, right?

But none of that could be done without you weirdos who have been following this blog, whether recently or since the beginning-ish.  So I'd like to say thanks to all of you for your comments, page views, and link sharing.  You all rock.

Here's to another five years!  Maybe by year six I'll have reached 500,000 unique visitors.  Or not.  Whatever...

It's here!  Late as heck, but here!  And it's all about zombies.  This week, Jen and I talk to Rhiannon Frater about her zombie novels, Texas' survival chances when the zombocalypse finally drags the world into blood and flames, and some deeper topics, such as what makes zombies such a compelling monster, etc.

Hopefully you'll all check out the episode.  A fun interview, that's for sure.

If you've been living under a rock today, then you might have missed this disturbing news from Publishers Weekly (the Genreville blog):

The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation. 

Rachel replied, “Making a gay character straight is a line in the sand which I will not cross. That is a moral issue. I work with teenagers, and some of them are gay. They never get to read fantasy novels where people like them are the heroes, and that’s not right.” 

The agent suggested that perhaps, if the book was very popular and sequels were demanded, Yuki could be revealed to be gay in later books, when readers were already invested in the series.   

We knew this was a pie-in-the-sky offer—who knew if there would even be sequels?—and didn’t solve the moral issue. When you refuse to allow major characters in YA novels to be gay, you are telling gay teenagers that they are so utterly horrible that people like them can’t even be allowed to exist in fiction.

There's much more at the link, but that little bit is the core of the problem (and not the only incidence where an agent or editor told someone to change a character from gay to straight, etc.).

But Rachel Manija Brown and Sherwood Smith didn't set out to make agents look bad.  Rather,
they wrote that post in order to get us to speak up.  And that's precisely what I'm going to do here.

I'm a reader, reviewer, writer, and academic.  All four of these deserve little sections of their own:

As an Academic:
I'm a postcolonial theorist, which means that much of what I am interested in academically are issues of representation.  In particular, I am focused on minority groups in the West, such as Caribbean peoples, Native Americans, and other peoples of color.  But I'm also generally fascinated by stories which look at issues of identity.  While such stories can be told without LGBTQ or other minorities, having such characters presents new perspectives -- especially ones which have been marginalized by western civilization for one reason or another.  And if we need anything in academia, it's more diversity -- especially via YA books.

As a Writer:
Some of my fiction features women, gay, non-white, and other non-standard (straight white male) characters.  I enjoy writing these characters, in part because it's different from writing people I identify with.  But Ms. Brown and Ms. Smith have pointed out that there are barriers for writers who want to present these characters in their fiction.  Those barriers need to go away.  If OSC can publish a rip-off of Shakespeare with heavy doses of homophobic drivel, then it seems only fitting that others can publish stories that fairly represent gay people, etc., even in the YA section.

As a Reviewer:
I don't receive enough books with non-white, non-male characters as protagonists.  This surprises me because I read science fiction and fantasy, the community for which, at least until recently, seemed quite open to the idea of including new perspectives into the mix.  Outside of the various small, specialty presses, I have received few books which have a gay person, African American, non-American, woman, etc. as a protagonist.  I want to see those books at the big presses too.  You know why?  Because a lot of people who live in this country are gay, lesbian, African American, women, Native American, and so on and so forth.  And as much as I like reading about people who are like me (white, male, and straight), I also really enjoy reading about people who are not like me.

As a Reader:
Everything I could write here has already been said elsewhere.  I like reading about straight white males just fine, but I want new perspectives too.  And I want to read about people who are like my mom (lesbian and white) or like people I've yet to meet.  More importantly, when I was a kid, I didn't spend a lot of time with people outside of my standard demographic (straight and white).  Why?  Because there weren't a lot of non-straight or non-white people around, and I was an idiot anti-gay child who might have benefited from YA books about people who aren't like me.  Diversity is good for us.  It really is.

But now I'm an adult and I love reading these kinds of stories.  What kinds of stuff have I read and enjoyed?  Wicked Gentlemen by Ginn Hale, One For Sorrow by Christopher Barzak, Carnival by Elizabeth Bear, Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler, Zoo City by Lauren Beukes, and many many others, from small and large presses (granted, most aren't YA).  And I want more.  Lots more.  I want publishers sending them to me knowing I'm part of the target audience (i.e., folks who like reading about LGBTQ, "colored," and minority characters).  But they also should know that I'm not part of such a small group after all.  More of us should be speaking up!

For those interested in stories that are already out there, Ms. Brown and Ms. Sherwood provided a few fantastic lists of books which feature minority characters:

• SF/F YA Novels w/ Major LGBTQ Characters
• SF/F YA Novels w/ Protagonists of Color (Part One)
• SF/F YA Novels w/ Protagonists of Color (Part Two)

Over at Universe Today, Fraser Cain wonders when we will go to Mars:

When do you think humans will set foot on Mars for the first time? Will it be a specific country or an international team effort? Or do you think it’ll never happen?

These seem to me to be the wrong questions.  It's not a matter of when we will go.  Rather, I think it's a matter of when we want to go.  All those questions about who will do it and so on and so forth seem to be questions worth wondering about after we set a goal for ourselves.

Of course, being an American, I have a soft spot for the idea that America might be the first on Mars.  Do I think we will be?  Not if a change doesn't occur in the way we think about our country, the way we demand it to work, and so on.  Right now, the climate is enormously anti-science.  By that I mean that the U.S. is a nation which no longer demands us to think outside the box.  Our
imaginations have been stifled.  When we were challenged to put people in space and on the moon, it was a wake up call.  And we answered it with amazing ideas, amazing risks, and the spirit that I wish we had today.

But that's not the America we live in anymore.  I'm of the opinion that we need a swift kick in the ass.  One that shows us how far we've fallen from greatness and makes us all realize that we desperately need to change the game.  Politically.  Ideologically.  All of it.  Chuck out the current book on how things are done and restructure our nation from the ground up.

So to answer that question:  when do I want us to go to Mars?
No later than ten years from now.  We need the challenge.  No more of this "well, we'll get to Mars some day" crap.  Set a time and date.  Tell NASA or Space X that they need to meet that challenge somehow.  Tell them to take chances and risks.  Turn up our imaginations like a crazy imagination-y machine.

Ten years.  That's the time.  By September 11th, 2021, we need to have a man or woman on Mars (or both, for that matter, which would be cool).  Tell your elected officials.  Send messages to NASA, Space X, or whatever space agency you'd like.
And, no, this doesn't have to be a U.S.-only effort.  I really don't care if we put together a collective of nations to share resources and ideas to get the job done.  What we need more than anything right now is a world full of ideas that can change the course of history.  Humanity is stagnating.  Kick it in the ass and get the engines rumbling again.

The firefighters in Texas need a lot of help.  Due to budget cuts, a lot of firefighters are being forced to pay for supplies out of their own pockets.  Cutting from fire departments and other public services is always a stupid idea, but Rick Perry did it anyway.  And now Texans are suffering the consequences.  It's sickening and horrible.

the computer.  Then that night, he spent five to ten minutes staring at me from the corner of the bed looking like he wanted to jump up and say hello.

Over at The Skiffy and Fanty Show you'll find a brand new interview with none other than Nick Mamatas, who I am referring to from now on inside my head as Master Splinter.  The interview went pretty well and we talked about a lot of fascinating things, such as Japanese SF/F, parasites, and his writing.

Check it out and let us know what you think!

In other news:  I'm on my desktop again, because the keyboard on the brand new laptop apparently needs replacing.  This, needless to say, sucks...

Thanks to Kevin Hearne for taking the time to answer my ridiculous questions.  Don't forget to check out my review of Hexed.

Now for the interview:

First things first: what drew you into writing in the first place, and why fantasy in particular? 

I was drawn into writing by One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. Chief's voice is so well done and I wanted to be able to grab somebody the way that book grabbed me. I wound up writing
fantasy mostly because that's what I enjoy reading more than anything else.

Your Iron Druid series draws heavily from Celtic folklore, including figures like the Morrigan and other members of the fae "pantheon." Why did you focus specifically on the Celtic/Irish roots for your main character, Atticus? What is so interesting about Celtic folklore for you (and, perhaps, for us)?

Part of this comes from my loathing for Disney and what they were doing to "fairies." My daughter thought fairies were cute and helpful and delicate and it was driving me nuts. But then I realized it wasn't just Disney -- there were any number of other sources that had strayed quite far from the original Irish roots of the Sidhe. I'm an Irish/English mutt, so the focus on the lore was naturally interesting to me. For others, I'd think the mythology would be interesting in its own right, since the Irish didn't follow the same patterns as others. Most cultures have goddesses of love, not gods, for example, and the Irish god of love, Aenghus Óg, was kind of a dick.

An interesting aspect of your novel is that it places limits on the various religious deities and figures. Gods, we learn, can be killed. Every "faith" has a magic system unique to it, which has weaknesses or strengths in relation to other magic systems. How did this world in which practically every deity that ever "lived" actually exists come to be? 

I asked myself why only the Irish pantheon would still be alive and well in the present day when there were so many other great traditions out there. And what it all came down to was that I couldn't come up with a reason to make the Irish the "one true faith." The great truth is that we all construct our own truths in our efforts to improve ourselves, and besides, it turned out to be much more fun to write with an inclusive view of the world than an exclusive one.

Were you at all concerned that your audience would be too unfamiliar with the various mythologies Hexed plays with? Atticus does, after all, explain a great deal of things, but it's obvious that he can't explain it all. 

No concerns at all. I respect the readers. Fantasy readers in general have some pretty good brains, and if they want to know more about something, they'll go learn. As a reader myself, I love it when I find books that teach me something and spark a little personal investigation.
Would it be fair to assume that you are a dog lover based on Atticus' relationship with Oberon? In a lot of ways, the two characters have an intimate connection that most people wish they had with their pets (and dog-like critters appear frequently in your book). Why do dog-like "things" dominate the cast of Hexed? 

I'm certainly a dog person, but the number of canine characters in this particular book is a coincidence. I didn't have any particular point to make with them. But I can say this series was spawned around the characters of Atticus and Oberon—it was always a story about a man and his dog. All the rest of it came later: those two characters are the core.

One of your main villains, the Bacchants, could be described as the moral antithesis of civilized society. Hexed walks a fine line in regards to their conduct, since a lot of what you describe as their modus operandi is sexual in nature. Were you concerned while writing the Bacchants that you might cross a line for many readers? 

Yeah, I'm not really one who appreciates play-by-play accounts of sexual encounters, because if I wanted that, I could go grab something out of the erotica section. I'm assuming that my readers would similarly appreciate a couple of sentences to paint a broad picture and then just leave it at that.

Hexed does deal with religion(s), and a good deal of emphasis is placed on "dead religions" and Christian faith. Was writing about such things a challenge, especially considering the potential for alienation your religious themes could have? 

Challenging, sure. But completely and utterly fun. By choosing to be inclusive (the Jewish faith, which is very much alive, is also featured prominently), I'm also choosing to be respectful of all those various faiths. Every one is portrayed as puissant and vital to those who believe in them. I don't go around dissing anyone, with the possible exception of Thor. So the only bone of contention I've heard is from people who are offended that I'm treating all religions with respect, as if their religion is the only one that matters. You can imagine how much I care for the opinions of such arrogant people.
All three of your Iron Druid novels came out in quick succession (Hounded in May, Hexed in June, and Hammered in July). What do you think are the benefits and pitfalls of such a quick publishing schedule?

The benefits greatly outweigh the pitfalls. I got plenty of attention and lots of fans who jumped into the series rather than waiting for it to end. In terms of pitfalls, the only downside is that I couldn't keep up with the publicity side of things; I couldn't write enough guest blogs and so on to keep up, and I was exhausted. Still, it was a good exhaustion, because everything I managed to find time to do paid some sort of dividend. And now I have practically no publicity going on, but the books are still doing well on word of mouth—which is the best publicity anyway.

What single piece of writing advice would you give to budding writers out there? What's your magic "secret"? 

Don't give up. If you have stories inside that need to get out, then keep writing them down until you write one the market is ready for. It took me 19 years of trying before I got published. Don't give up.

And, finally, a silly question: if you could hang out with any non-Abrahamic-religious-figure (no Jesus, God, etc.), who would you hang out with and why?

Goibhniu, one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. He brews an ale that keeps you young and healthy. I want to have a beer with THAT guy.

Kim Wright has an interesting article on The Million about why literary writers going out to write genre fiction. Here's a rather amusing set of paragraphs:

It will probably always be open to debate whether these innovations are the result of writers seeking creative expression and wider audiences or a calculated move on the part of publishers who are simply trying to sell more product, even if it means slightly misrepresenting a book to its potential audience. But either way, the future seems to be stories which combine the pacing and plots of genre with the themes and style of literary writing. 

In other words, this crappy market may actually end up producing better books. Because hybrids, bastards, and half-breeds tend to be heartier than those delicate offspring that result from too much careful inbreeding. Just ask the Tudors. The best commercial writers were moving toward this anyway, creating highly metaphorical fantasy works and socially-conscious mysteries, expanding the definition of their genres even before the ex-pat literary crew jumped on the bandwagon. “We’re going to see more blending as everyone attempts to grab a larger audience,” predicts Patriarche, “and the literary snobs are going to have to stop looking down on genre.”

Overall, the article is sound, but it does fall pray to an argument I've refuted before. Namely, that the whole cross-genre literary-genre fiction, and the literary authors who have crossed over to write the stuff, is new.  But it's been going on for a while.  The only new thing is that people are starting to pay attention to it. And the sad truth Wright reveals is that people are paying attention because of the money:

Scott Spencer, who has published ten novels dating back to the mid-1970s, was once able to live exclusively on the income from his books and “make this kind of old-fashioned writer’s life work.” But, noting the inherent contradiction between the ups and downs and further downs of literary writing and his need to make a living, he is publishing Breed

There are other examples in the article, including a moment when Wright points out that many literary authors are turning to commercial forms of writing, all of which seems to contradict a statement made by a quoted publisher in the article about how writers just want to write.

I don't want to suggest that wanting to make a living as a writer is a bad thing.  In fact, it's quite awesome to make a living doing what you love.  Rather, my issue is the continued colonization of genre history for the purposes of the literary elite.  All these literary genre books are following a tradition that has been around for nearly a hundred years, if not longer (though SF doesn't get codified as a genre as we understand it until the 1920s or so).  Literary writers who claim that switching to genre or including "literary tropes" into a work of genre is somehow "new" or part of an "emerging trend" are people who simply don't know the history of the genre they're appropriating in order to fill their pockets (though not all literary writers are like this, if we're being fair).

And quite honestly, this all tells me that some folks are doing a piss poor job of learning their literary history. I am a genre writer, reader, critic, and academic.  But I've taken the time to learn non-genre literary history precisely because I understand that the two forms inform one another.  SF/F does not exist without modernism, postmodernism, and the various literary movements that followed, preceded, or lived within those movements.

Maybe I'm just rambling and acting the fool here, but it's high time people start acknowledging that genre has been an active participant in the development of our literary and general culture since its inception.  That's not me saying that science fiction deserves to be loved by everyone.  Rather, it's me saying that genre forms are inseparable from the cultural history in which we live, in which writers write, and so forth.  The same is true of non-genre forms too.

I haven't watched the latest episode of Doctor Who yet.  It's not because I live in the U.S. and can't afford cable.  In fact, I have the episode sitting there and waiting for me.  Rather, I haven't watched the episode because I've lost interest.  Not entirely, mind you.  I know I'll watch the episode eventually, but it won't be tomorrow or the day after.  It may not happen next week.  Who knows?  I might end up with all the episodes from the final half of this season sitting on my computer before I decide to watch them.

Okay, so that worst case scenario is unlikely to happen, but it is true that the excitement I once held for the new season has waned.  The new season isn't a bad one, so I know it has little to do with the quality.*  Rather, I think it has to do with the three month gap between episode seven and eight.  A similar thing happened with Stargate Universe.  I spent the first half of the first season watching every episode (at the time playing catchup, and then doing the week-by-week thing).  But then the episodes dried up and I had to wait months before the rest of the season would play.  By
the time those episodes appeared, I didn't care about SGU anymore -- at least, not as much as I used to.    I'd moved on, or I'd simply forgotten a lot of what had already happened and couldn't be bothered to watch the episodes again to put everything into proper context.  I still wanted to watch the show, but I never did...

And that's where I'm at with Doctor Who.  Episode seven left us on a cliffhanger.  At the time, I really wanted to know what was going to happen, but as time passed, other things flew into my life -- new shows took DW's place to fill the gap, life got in the way a whole lot, and so on.  Now that DW has started up again, I'm sort of apathetic about it.  I've lost all of the rabid excitement I had when April rolled around and the new season hit the airwaves (or digital stream, if you will).  I can't help thinking it has to do with the time gap, this despite the massive gap between the Christmas Special (A Christmas Carol -- which was amazing) and the new season.

I've never understood why producers and T.V. people insert the gap in the first place.  First, it's unreasonable to assume that your entire audience will have access to digital copies (sometimes those digital versions are only around for a short while before they are replaced and a lot of the time there aren't any digital copies at all -- this, of course, is changing).  But more importantly, it's disruptive.  It tears the narrative cohesion by breaking the traditional T.V. season model and filling it with emptiness.  It's a terrible model, and one that isn't all that new to DW.**
To me, the traditional T.V. season model works because the gaps between seasons are book-ended by a reboot structure.  The new season of Castle will likely include a first episode which offers something new to the existing narrative in order to draw us back into things.  Mid-season breaks, however, don't do this (at least, not in my experience).  They are little more than continuations of the previous story, which works when you only have 7 days between episodes, but falls apart when you insert an enormous gap.  Think of it as memory fatigue (or brain fatigue or something like that).  The longer you draw out the wait, the more likely it is that members of your audience will get bored and move on.  That's a quick way to kill a T.V. show.

I say this knowing full well that DW isn't going to disappear.  It will retain a large enough audience regardless.  But it will bleed viewers.  Those folks will likely not be super fans, but no T.V. show can survive the long term on the backs of super fans.  It doesn't work.  You need the average fans and moderately interested too.

But maybe DW is a bad example, since its viewer-base is filled with super fans (or appears to be).  It's a show that survives because so many people love it to do, both because the new show snatched them up and because a whole bunch of people have been fans of DW since the early days.  Yet I can't help thinking that the gaps aren't helping it.  DW has lost a sizable chunk of its viewers already (more likely because the tone/vision of the show has changed -- for the better, overall, I think) and I wouldn't be surprised to discover that many folks simply didn't come back to DW for the latest episode.  Not because they don't like the show, but because they've moved on.  For me, the gaps are nothing but bad.  I lose interest.  I lose my love.  I move on.  And I don't want that.  I want to feel like I have to watch the new episode right away or my brain will explode.  The nostalgia of that feeling is necessary -- desirable.  It's the same feeling I had when the Star Wars prequels appeared in theaters.  The same feeling I have for Castle and, in the past, for Battlestar Galactica.  Three month gaps and annoying life are taking that away from me for DW, a show I consider to be the last good science fiction show worth watching on TV (re-runs of BSG don't count).  There's no viable replacement, and the void is deafening.

What do you think?  Do you dislike the gaps, or am I just being silly by blogging about this?


*I think the new season has a lot of flaws, but that it still reaches for and acquires the spirit of DW we've come to love in the years prior.

**I started watching the show when Tennant entered his final season of DW, and caught up by the end of his tenure as the Doctor