wisb-Guardian-Express

I'm too lazy to offer a proper introduction, so I'm just going to dive in (give me a break; I walked over five miles today).  The only thing I will say is that most of these are preliminary, most-likely-haven't-read-it thoughts.  For the most part, I will have nothing to say about a work except why I didn't pick it up during hte year.  The sad truth is that most of the stuff I nominated this year (my first nominating year) didn't make it.

Here goes (Hugos):

Best Novel

• 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)
• Blackout by Mira Grant (Orbit)
• Captain Vorpatril's Alliance by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)
• Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas by John Scalzi (Tor)
• Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed (DAW)

Nothing I loved last year made it on the list.  The only book I'm particularly excited about is Ahmeds, but that's based on what others have said.  I haven't read anything on this list and probably won't read at least two of them (nothing interests me about Scalzi's nostalgic book and I just can't bring myself to read Mira Grant's novels, even though I probably should -- I blame that on people frequently telling me to read something, which turns me into a rebel).  But since I'll get copies of all these books in my Hugo voting package (right?), I'll probably read them anyway.

Overall, I'm sort of "meh" about this particular category, though.  It's too...familiar.

Best Novella

• After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall by Nancy Kress (Tachyon Publications)
• The Emperor's Soul by Brandon Sanderson (Tachyon Publications)
• On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard (Immersion Press)
• San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats by Mira Grant (Orbit)
• "The Stars Do Not Lie" by Jay Lake (Asimov's, Oct-Nov 2012)

I'm pleasantly surprised to see Nancy Kress on the list.  I quite like her work, though I must admit to having missed the work in this category.  I'm already rooting for her and Aliette de Bodard, who is another one of those really good writers currently, well, writing.  I'll profess complete ignorance about Lake's new story, though his recent work has greatly impressed me.  Grant and Sanderson?  The one thing going for Sanderson is that Tachyon published The Emperor's Soul.  I feel mostly the same about the Grant as I did in the previous category.

Best Novelette

• "The Boy Who Cast No Shadow" by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Postscripts: Unfit For Eden, PS Publications)
• "Fade To White" by Catherynne M. Valente (Clarkesworld, August 2012)
• "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi" by Pat Cadigan (Edge of Infinity, Solaris)
• "In Sea-Salt Tears" by Seanan McGuire (Self-published)
• "Rat-Catcher" by Seanan McGuire (A Fantasy Medley 2, Subterranean)

Aside from the excessive number of nominations for Seanan McGuire on this ballot (she is also Mira Grant), I quite like this list.  I've not heard of Heuvelt, but Postcripts is a damned good publication.  I've also quite liked some of Valente's work and I am pleasantly surprised to see Pat Cadigan making an appearance.

I should note that I don't actually have anything against Seanan McGuire.  I've not read most of her work.  I'll probably change my tune in a few months.  As a rule, though, I am skeptical about any author who appears more than twice on a ballot.  There is so much good work out there that I find it a little weird that one author could suck up so many votes in one nomination cycle.  But what do I know?  I'm a curmudgeon who likes to complain...

Best Short Story

• "Immersion" by Aliette de Bodard (Clarkesworld, June 2012)
• "Mantis Wives" by Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld, August 2012)
• "Mono no Aware" by Ken Liu (The Future is Japanese, VIZ Media LLC)

Now this is interesting!  I quite like Ken Liu's work, and I did nominate de Bodard's "Immersion" (happy).  I've not read Johnson's newest story, though I'm told by fellow literary curmudgeon Adam Callaway that it is one of her best.

I am, however, disappointed that the votes were so divided among various stories that these three were the only ones to pop out of the crowd.  It's not right...

Best Related Work

• The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature Edited by Edward James & Farah Mendlesohn (Cambridge UP)
• Chicks Dig Comics: A Celebration of Comic Books by the Women Who Love Them Edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Sigrid Ellis (Mad Norwegian Press)
• Chicks Unravel Time: Women Journey Through Every Season of Doctor Who Edited by Deborah Stanish & L.M. Myles (Mad Norwegian Press)
• I Have an Idea for a Book… The Bibliography of Martin H. Greenberg Compiled by Martin H. Greenberg, edited by John Helfers (The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box)
• Writing Excuses Season Seven by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler and Jordan Sanderson

In order:
1) Cambridge Companion = wonderful!
2) Chicks Dig Comics (same folks who did that other one, I think)
3) Chicks Unravel Time (bored of Doctor Who appearing on everything; yeah, it's really great, but it's really not the greatest science fiction TV show EVER -- it just happens to be the only good one on the air right now, one which I happen to like, of course)
4) I Have an Idea for a Book (never heard of it; sounds interesting)
5) Writing Excuses (yeah, it belongs here and I'm happy to see it get nominated in the proper category)

What?  No VanderMeer or what not?  Pah!

Of course, I would laugh my toosh off if this list were dominated by academic books.  It will never happen, but my pretentious side is plotting and cackling...

Best Graphic Story

• Grandville Bête Noire written and illustrated by Bryan Talbot (Dark Horse Comics, Jonathan Cape)
• Locke & Key Volume 5: Clockworks written by Joe Hill, illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez (IDW)
• Saga, Volume One written by Brian K. Vaughn, illustrated by Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
• Schlock Mercenary: Random Access Memorabilia by Howard Tayler, colors by Travis Walton (Hypernode Media)
• Saucer Country, Volume 1: Run written by Paul Cornell, illustrated by Ryan Kelly, Jimmy Broxton and Goran Sudžuka (Vertigo)

Honestly, I don't follow comics enough to have any opinion on these.  So I'll pass...

Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form)

• The Avengers Screenplay & Directed by Joss Whedon (Marvel Studios, Disney, Paramount)
• The Cabin in the Woods Screenplay by Drew Goddard & Joss Whedon; Directed by Drew Goddard (Mutant Enemy, Lionsgate)
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Screenplay by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro, Directed by Peter Jackson (WingNut Films, New Line Cinema, MGM, Warner Bros)
• The Hunger Games Screenplay by Gary Ross & Suzanne Collins, Directed by Gary Ross (Lionsgate, Color Force)
• Looper Screenplay and Directed by Rian Johnson (FilmDistrict, EndGame Entertainment)

In order:
1) I nominated it.  It belongs here.  It's a shoe-in, methinks.
2) Again, it belongs here.  I'd call it a shoe-in if #1 weren't already there...
3) Oh come on...I know that this community has a massive hard-on for Tolkien and The Hobbit, but let's just admit that Lord of the Rings was better as a movie than this 2+ hour monstrosity.  It's bloated, confused, and mostly style over substance.  It's really not that good.  Watch it again.  It's like looking at what Michael Bay would have done if they'd given him the helm.  I love Peter Jackson, but he desperately needs someone to tell him "no."  He's becoming George Lucas...
4) Sure.  OK.
5) Eh, whatever.

I didn't honestly expect this community to nominate Cloud Atlas.  Most people didn't see it, and most of those who did pretty much didn't get it.  Not surprising, really.  But no Chronicle?  Whatever...

Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form)

• Doctor Who:"The Angels Take Manhattan" Written by Steven Moffat, Directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Wales)
• Doctor Who:"Asylum of the Daleks" Written by Steven Moffat; Directed by Nick Hurran (BBC Wales)
• Doctor Who:"The Snowmen" Written by Steven Moffat, Directed by Saul Metzstein (BBC Wales)
• Fringe:"Letters of Transit" Written by J.J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Akiva Goldsman, J.H.Wyman, Jeff Pinkner. Directed by Joe Chappelle (Fox)
• Game of Thrones:"Blackwater" Written by George R.R. Martin, Directed by Neil Marshall. Created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (HBO)

Completely predictable list.  Doctor Who dominates.  Yawn.  To be fair, I only nominated Game of Thrones stuff.  Not much to love in TV in 2012.  I think we should scrap the category and just nominate shows, and then promptly kick DW out into its own category.  The Annual Best Doctor Who Episode category.

Best Editor - Short Form

• John Joseph Adams
• Neil Clarke
• Stanley Schmidt
• Jonathan Strahan
• Sheila Williams

Good names.  I like it.

Best Editor - Long Form

• Lou Anders
• Sheila Gilbert
• Liz Gorinsky
• Patrick Nielsen Hayden
• Toni Weisskopf

Ditto.

Best Professional Artist

• Vincent Chong
• Julie Dillon
• Dan Dos Santos
• Chris McGrath
• John Picacio

Sure, I like it.

Best Semiprozine 

• Apex Magazine edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Jason Sizemore and Michael Damian Thomas
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies edited by Scott H. Andrews
• Clarkesworld edited by Neil Clarke, Jason Heller, Sean Wallace and Kate Baker
• Lightspeed edited by John Joseph Adams and Stefan Rudnicki
• Strange Horizons edited by Niall Harrison, Jed Hartman, Brit Mandelo, An Owomoyela, Julia Rios, Abigail Nussbaum, Sonya Taaffe, Dave Nagdeman and Rebecca Cross

No Interzone.  Not happy.  Bored, in fact.  Clarkesworld deserves to win this year, though.

Best Fanzine

• Banana Wings edited by Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer
• The Drink Tank edited by Chris Garcia and James Bacon
• Elitist Book Reviews edited by Steven Diamond
• Journey Planet edited by James Bacon, Chris Garcia, Emma J. King, Helen J. Montgomery and Pete Young
• SF Signal edited by John DeNardo, JP Frantz, and Patrick Hester

Now this is interesting.  Three zines we expected, one blog we also expected, and one we didn't.  Well, I didn't, anyway.  Interesting.  To be fair, I still think this list is too much like the Dramatic Short Form.  Too...repetitive.  Such is life.

Best Fancast

• The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe
• Galactic Suburbia Podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Alexandra Pierce, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Presenters) and Andrew Finch (Producer)
• SF Signal Podcast, Patrick Hester, John DeNardo, and JP Frantz
• SF Squeecast, Elizabeth Bear, Paul Cornell, Seanan McGuire, Lynne M. Thomas, Catherynne M. Valente (Presenters) and David McHone-Chase (Technical Producer)
• StarShipSofa, Tony C. Smith

Coode Street should win.  That is all.  I'm just sort of bored with SF/F podcasts these days.  Popularity always beats quality.  Curmudgeon Shaun strikes again... (No, I'm not mad that I didn't make it on the list.  Disappointed?  Sure, but I didn't really expect us to receive enough votes to make the final ballot.  I just thought the field would look...different.  But it doesn't.)

Best Fan Writer

• James Bacon
• Christopher J Garcia
• Mark Oshiro
• Tansy Rayner Roberts
• Steven H Silver

Same problem as the previous few categories, though TRR is here, which is nice.

Best Fan Artist

• Galen Dara
• Brad W. Foster
• Spring Schoenhuth
• Maurine Starkey
• Steve Stiles

I know nothing about any of these people.  No comment.

John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer
(It's really just a Hugo Award and I'm sick and tired of people saying it isn't.  If it's not a Hugo Award, then give it a completely different ceremony.  Otherwise, let's get over ourselves and admit that whether the Campbell is officially a Hugo, it is a de facto Hugo.  We vote on it via the same exact form.  It is presented at the same awards.  It is, for all intensive purposes, a normal part of the whole process.  It's a Hugo.  Accept it and move on.)

• Zen Cho *
• Max Gladstone
• Mur Lafferty *
• Stina Leicht *
• Chuck Wendig *

I follow a bunch of genre-related blogs, but I always have this feeling that I'm missing something.  And so this post is about that.

What are your favorite SF/F and related blogs?  I want to know.  Leave a comment with links and maybe I'll find something new!

That's it.  Nothing more exciting than that!

You know the drill:  vote!

Long-time viewers of science fiction film will likely recognize Tim Burton's homage to 50s/60s SF cinema.  How could they not?  From the narrative undertones of the Cold War's nuclear fears to its borrowing and twisting of the narrative structure of H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds and its 1953 adaptation, which helped solidify a developing SF cinematic aesthetic (the Orson Welles radio drama certainly stuck Wells' terrifying tale of alien invasion in the public consciousness beforehand), the film is in every way a mockery of the 50s and 60s.*  But it's not simply the politics or the narrative that make the 1996 alien invasion comedy Mars Attacks! an amusing bedfellow of or foil to the 1950s (and 60s).  Rather, its visuals are an at times direct parody/assault on the material and social logic of the era, despite having no clear temporal placement of its own -- after all, the film is neither set in the 1950s, nor the 1990s, and instead
merges or maps the span of historical time over itself (a palimpsest).

Part of the reason I am mashing the 50s and 60s together here is because Mars Attacks! is never fixed to a specific decade.  It is, in a sense, trapped in the limbo of transition between two cultures we like to think as distinct, but which bleed into one another.  The Beehive (B-52) hairstyle, after all, didn't gain popular momentum until the 60s, despite existing as early as 1954.  There are times when the film veers a hard right into 60s territory (most notably through cars and the flashy fashion of Vegas that conjures images of a somewhat neutered, caricatured Hunter S. Thompson), but it frequently bounces back, merging the two periods -- both understandably important to SF cinema -- into one incoherent mishmash.  I'll refer to this as the 50s Transition to save space (roughly the late 50s to the early 60s).

A primary example of this assault on 50s Transition culture is the aptly named Martian Girl played by Lisa Marie (seen in the above image).  Her swaying, robotic walking style, her absurd hair style (a greatly exaggerated B-52), and her eye-catching pointed breasts are all digs on the visual culture of the 1950s Transition.  She is at once a clone of the era and a play on the sex symbol of the era:  Marilyn Monroe (minus the hair).
Or, perhaps, a mix of Monroe and another female icon of the time:  Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany's.
The exaggeration of the Martian Girl's features -- to the point of perfect exaggeration, even -- seems, in my mind, to make light of the hyper-commercialized culture that arose at the turn of the century and solidified after WW2, one which hyper-sexualized certain "ideal" forms of women, fashion, etc. (or, to put it another way, created a specific set of images for the era that were hyper-sexualized).  After all, she is, in every way, a "perfect" 50s Transition girl.  Except that she isn't.  She's a grotesque perfection that draws attention to the fact that she isn't real.  Her features are too perfect.  Too exaggerated.  Blame it on the aliens for translating their own genetic monoculture onto our own.

Much of the film's fashion aesthetics draw upon the transitional era, almost to comedic effect, sometimes by exaggeration and sometimes by simply cloning things that already existed.  Some of this is deliberate.  Annette Bening, for example, modeled her performance as Barbara Land on Ann Margret from Viva Las Vegas.  The resemblance is clear.  This shouldn't surprise us, of course, because the mish mash was intended by the writers and Burton himself, who imagined Mars Attacks! as an homage to 50s scifi flicks, with a heavy dose of mockery.  Whether they intended to critique the culture of the 50s Transition is hard to say.  I like to think this was an unintended consequence of transplanting a cultural period into a different cinematic paradigm.  Rather than stare with nostalgic eyes at a bygone era, we are compelled to think about what made the 50s Transition fascinating and thankfully dead at the same time.

I could probably say more about this topic, but I won't.  That would require tracing all the ways Mars Attacks! explores 50s SF and the 50s Transition period (as mockery, parody, or direct homage).  Maybe for another time!


*The 1953 adaptation of War of the Worlds was nominated for three Academy Awards and has since been included in the Library of Congress catalogue.

If you haven't already heart, Chinua Achebe passed away last Thursday (March 21st).  While not a genre writer, Achebe various works have had a profound impact on English-language literature.  He is probably best known for Things Fall Apart, which appears from time to time on American high school English curriculum.  However, he also wrote four other novels, numerous short story and poetry collections, and a number of essays.  If you've never read anything by him before, I recommend you do.

My first introduction to his work was in a graduate-level course on African literature.  And, as per usual, the work in question was Things Fall Apart.  Since then, I've read short stories, poems, and other novels by Achebe.  Most of them I have enjoyed immensely.
He was a great writer, to say the least.  And he will be missed immensely.

You can read more about Achebe and his death here and here.

Two things:

1. I am presenting at this year's ICFA (International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts).  That means I will be rather busy this week with, well, paper stuff, conference stuff, and stuff stuff.  However, if you are attending ICFA and would like to get together, send me an email or leave a message or something.  Should be fun!
   
   (FYI:  I'm presenting a paper on the adaptation of Cloud Atlas.  I'm also creating a list which will include that film.  Mwahaha.)
   
2. Due to #1 and to some PhD stuff I need to finish, I am putting the blog on a temporary hiatus.  And I mean temporary.  At most, I'll post nothing new until the end of next week.  However, I strongly suspect I'll be back at my old games on Sunday or Monday.  In any case, that means all the stuff I had planned to post this week is getting moved until later, including the Retro Nostalgia feature.  I just don't have the time to put my heart into it right now (PhD stuff, conference stuff, and teaching stuff = super busy Shaun).
   
   Again, this is temporary.  I am not disappearing.  This blog will fill up with my nonsense before the end of the month.  Promise.

Apparently A.J. Dalton doesn't care for J.R.R. Tolkien or George R.R. Martin.  Here's the moment when I stopped reading:

They have both come to dominate the genre in which I write, that’s what. All fantasy gets compared to them. They are the standard. They are the definition of fantasy. Anything too different to them doesn’t get recognised as fantasy, as it doesn’t contain enough of the required motifs and conventions.

Anyone who can make that argument with any seriousness has no idea what they are talking about.  Really?  Anything that doesn't look like Martin or Tolkien isn't considered fantasy anymore?  Really?  So apparently N.K. Jemisin doesn't write fantasy.  Good to know.  Diana
Rowland doesn't write fantasy.  Good to know.  In fact, all those authors who are shelved in the fantasy section who aren't writing anything that directly mimics Martin or Tolkien are just magically shelved in the wrong place in some grand conspiracy to get people to mistakenly believe they are fantasy writers...Huh?

All fantasy doesn't get compared to Martin or Tolkien, fella.  That's absurd.  A lot of fantasy does, but not all.  They are also not the definition of fantasy.  Only a moron thinks that Martin or Tolkien are all that fantasy has to offer (or that the fantasy market only demands derivative work).

Meh.


Alright, so it's not true that I stopped reading there.  I decided to read a little more of his argument just so I could say I did so.  And that's when I discovered this:

A quick example. I published Empire of the Saviours, an epic fantasy, with Gollancz last year. The book starts modestly enough with a boy growing up in a village in a remote corner of the empire in question. Several influential online reviewers refused to read it, saying they’d heard it all before, no matter the book’s purported humour and contemporary social and religious considerations. Hadn’t I heard how Mr Feist’s Magician and Mr Paolini’s Eragon opened with the selfsame premise, and besides weren’t they just versions of Bilbo in his burrow at the start of The Hobbit? An Australian newspaper then reviewed the book with the statement that Tolkien had ‘a lot to answer for’. Sheesh.

Now it's all starting to make sense.  Dalton isn't upset that Tolkien and Martin are the standards.  He's upset because someone thought he sort of wrote like them, and then refused to read his work.  Author is sad or something.  Makes sense, right?

Wait, no it doesn't.  Dalton just said that you can't write fantasy without writing like Martin and Tolkien.  That's the only way to get recognition.  Now he's saying that if you write like Martin and Tolkien, nobody will love you.  Signals crossed, I guess.

I get it.  Tolkien and Martin do define much of the genre.  That's bad for diversity, since much of what readers of fantasy want is stuff similar to what they've already read.  But let's not pretend that fantasy is ONLY stuff that looks like Tolkien and Martin.  Let's not pretend that nobody reads anything that is different, or that people don't read things that are similar.  That's absurd.  Derivative fantasy exists.  It sells.  Different fantasy exists too.  It sells too.

This isn't rocket science...

I've got nothing to say about Liz Bourke's recent post on the topic in the title -- at least, not right now (maybe later).  However, I do think she's raising a damned important question:  why aren't more male writers dealing with the sexual abuse/rape of male characters in epic fantasies (especially when the sexual abuse/rape of female characters is somewhat common)?

Head on over and read what she's got to say.  That is all.

First, I'd like to request that nobody shoot me for this list.  I know I left some stuff out.  I know I missed things.  Some of that is my fault, but I also blame it on a ridiculous work schedule (teaching five classes is insane).  So, you know, don't shoot me -- do leave a comment, if you are so inclined.

And on that note, here's the finalized list:
Best Novel
In the Lion's Mouth by Michael Flynn
Lost Everything by Brian Francis Slattery
Arctic Rising by Tobias S. Buckell
And Blue Skies From Pain by Stina Leicht
Ink by Sabrina Vourvoulias

Best Novella
Nothing (I just didn't read enough stuff to justify nominating anything in this category)

Best Novelette
Nothing (same as above)

Best Short Story
"The Magic of Dark and Hollow Places" by Adam Callaway
"Scattered Along the River of Heaven" by Aliette de Bodard
"Immersion" by Aliette de Bodard
"The Bookmaking Habits of Selected Species" by Ken Liu
"The Performance Artist" by Lettie Prell

Best Related Work
StarTalk Radio w/ Neil deGrasse Tyson
LabLit.com
Steampunk 3 edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (correction:  Ann VanderMeer edited this on her own; my apologies for the mistake)

Best Graphic Story
Worm World Saga by Daniel Lieske

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
Cloud Atlas
The Avengers
Chronicle
Cabin in the Woods
Skyfall

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
"Blackwater" from Game of Thrones
"The Ghost of Harrenhal" from Game of Thrones
"Valar Morghulis" from Game of Thrones

Best Editor, Short Form
Andy Cox
Sean Wallace
Scott Andrews

Best Editor, Long Form
Liz Gorinsky
Lee Harris
Simon Spanton

Best Professional Artist
Stephan Martiniere
Kekai Kotaki
Daniel Dociu
Min Yum
Jonas Dero

Best Fan Artist
Pavel (artbypavel.com)

Best Semi-Prozine
Interzone
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
Shimmer
Cross Genres
Clarkesworld

Best Fanzine
The World SF Blog
The Weird Fiction Review

Best Fancast
The Coode Street Podcast
The Agony Column

Best Fan Writer
Liz Bourke
Abigail Nussbaum
N.K. Jemisin
John H. Stevens
Paul Weimer

John W. Campbell
Stina Leicht
Myke Cole

(This is a ramble.  Expect ramble-ness.  Note:  there aren't many comments on this blog (you can fix that if you like), but some of my Google+ followers opened the flood gates here.)

No joke.  We hear about them all the time.  But what do we mean when we say "strong female character"?  I ask this because I've read so many different definitions, and none of them seem to offer a valid justification for inventing a special category to describe characters.  When you think about it, we almost never say "strong male character" -- granted, there are so many male characters anyway, and I suspect I'm right when I attribute "strong female character" (SFC) to a community response against the relative shortage of, well, SFCs.  Implicitly, this is a binary.  There are "weak female characters" (WFC) too, but their weakness derives from their portrayal -- a frequently sexist one -- rather than any assessment of their "strength" (broadly defined).  Identifying a WFC means exposing the ways in which writers fall prey to gender stereotypes in a way that doesn't challenge those stereotypes (or, in other words, at least exploring what it means to be a woman in a more powerless position)(I'm not convinced this is actually a good definition, though).

Personally, I find the term SFC slightly offensive -- and I'm not the only one.  In 2009, Anna at Genre Reviews opened her critique with the following:

You know what's a problem? Strong female characters. First of all, why do we have to specify "strong" when referring to "female characters?" Why is this not a given? The default for male is not "strong" or "wusstastic," so why do we have to be so specific about the chicks?

You can find similar stuff at the Geek Feminism wiki.  There are also plenty of posts about why some SFCs are not actually SFCs (such as this one from Stuff Geeks Love and this one from Over Thinking It).

I pretty much agree with all of these folks.  There is something sinister about labeling certain "types" of female characters with the "strong" modifier.  It's a buzzword that has the unfortunate effect of essentializing one type of female behavior as somehow different from the rest.  But women, in my experience, do not demonstrate their strength via some set of character standards.  It is possible to write a character in an inferior social position (such as someone living in a vastly more patriarchal culture than our own) as "strong," just as it is possible to insert heroines who are complex, literally strong, determined and bold into our fantasy worlds.  These aren't mutually exclusive, nor is it necessary to identify one or both as "strong" when we're really just dealing with "female characters."  Not stereotypes.  Not objects.  People who happen to be female.  People who respond to stress in a variety of ways.  There are no standards for how women deal with heroism, trauma, stress, love, exploration, discovery, etc.

But a term like SFC implies that there are specific standards which only certain women meet for inclusion into a "better" category of woman.  That's bullshit.  The problem with female characters isn't that they're not strong; the problem is that they are so frequently written (frequently by men, of course) as 2-dimensional objects.  They're chairs.  And I mean that in the most offensive way.  The problem with so many female characters?  They're not weak or strong -- they're just not characters.  They are set pieces (often of the pretty variety) put in place for plot convenience.  They are, and I'll said it again, chairs.

Personally, I think we should stop calling bad female characters WFCs and good ones SFCs.  We should stop calling fake SFCs by that name too.  We should just rip them for not being real characters and spend more time writing and discovering female characters who fit the bill.

Anywhoodles.  That's what I've got to say on that.  Feel free to rip me a new one in the comments.


P.S.:  Does Sam's mother in Transformers count as a proper character?  I always liked her as a character, but she spends so little time on screen...

If it's not already obvious, I've dropped some of the stuff I planned to write each week, in part because of time constraints.  I figured something like that would happen, since I'm a PhD student who is supposed to doing PhD work.  I may come back to some of those topics again in the future (as regular columns or otherwise).

Today, however, I'm going to change the schedule in a more public fashion.  Everything originally planning for Mondays and Wednesdays will now drop on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  The reason?  I'm now teaching from 9 AM to 6:30 PM, with additional time to travel to and from campus.  It'll be easier for me to switch things around.

So...consider things changed.  New "Literary Explorations" column coming tomorrow!

(You can find the first part here.)

Where were we?  Oh, right.  The last time I talked about my cancer diagnosis, I had covered all the symptoms leading up to my hospitalization and getting over my fear of needles.  A fast heart rate, asthma symptoms, and some weird crap in my x-rays pretty much made that mandatory.

Here's the run-down of what happened after hospitalization:

Something must be said for the fact that my mother pretty much stuck by my side in the hospital, sleeping in what I can only describe as the most uncomfortable chairs and "beds" the hospital torture division could come up with.  She stayed there with me while I proceeded to freak out internally over the fact that things were going terribly wrong.  There I was, thinking I had asthma and that some nice drugs and high quality breathing treatments would put it all to rest and I could
go back to my silly life.  But the x-rays made that impossible, and the subsequent CT scans pretty much confirmed what the doctors must have assumed:  there  was some really nasty shit in my body.

I don't think the doctors ever said "tumor" directly to me.  They might have said as much to my mother.  Honestly, I've never asked her if there were things she learned from my medical records that she kept from me.  I was 19 and not at all ready for the world -- immature, still living at home, directionless, jobless, and feeling rather pissed on (losing a job over something that wasn't your fault and totaling your car in the same year doesn't help one's confidence).  So it's likely she learned a lot of scary things that nobody dared say to my face at the time.  That's not to say that I didn't know what was going on, of course, but being able to watch TV and read lots of Alan Gardner books in the hospital certainly helped me escape just a little.

In any case, eventually the doctors had to tell me that they'd found growths around my aorta, trachea, and lungs, each of which were contributing to my various symptoms.  They didn't have to say "it's cancer," but I pretty much knew by that point (this after a few days in the hospital, with lots of blood tests, bad food, and medicine).  You don't have to tell a 19-year-old kid that he has cancer for him to figure out that he probably has cancer.  And being as immature as I was, I didn't really know what that meant.  Cancer = death.  Little did I know...

It was at that point that my general practitioner had to tell me that in order to figure out what was eating away at my insides, they might have to do exploratory surgery.  In other words:  they were going to have to crack my chest, dig around in there, and hopefully pull out a sample while trying not to kill me.  And this wasn't a normal procedure.  My doctor more or less indicated that most surgeons wouldn't even try it.  If thinking I might have cancer didn't scare the shit out of me (it did), then imagining myself as a giant game of Operation did.  Up until that point, I hadn't had anything approaching major surgery.  Jumping from "I hate needles" to "I hate them, but you can stick them in me because I don't want to die" to "holy fuck, you're going to crack me open and dig around inside me" in a matter of days is understandably terrifying.  I remember breaking down at some point and having a total freak-out.  You know the type.  You just start blubbering and saying things that sound like intelligent words, but really you're just crying and saying shit that doesn't make any sense to whoever will listen because you don't want to die, etc. etc. etc.  Somewhere in all this, a male nurse came in and comforted me.  I have no idea what he said (probably something like, "be strong, this isn't the end, you'll survive, you're strong, etc. etc. etc.").  All I know is that he did calm me down a bit, which is why I will forever love nurses (and those few male nurses out there -- Paul Genesse is the only one I know personally).

I'm wandering a bit here.  The following day, the surgeon who had agreed to crack me open like a Christmas present came in to check me out and go over the details.  In my imagination, he stood seven feet tall with the build of a White Walker, though I suspect he was only a little over six feet and probably pretty average in real life.  When he arrived, he started feeling around my chest and neck and discovered that the lymph nodes in my neck had magically grown to the size of golf balls overnight.  Relief + terror = conflict.  On the one hand, that meant he wouldn't have to chop into me like a kid dissecting a frog for science class; on the other, that meant whatever was wreaking havoc on my body was moving at a rapid pace, like genetic rabbits in heat.  But that meant having a far less dangerous surgery to get some actual material to work with for testing.

Of course, I was still terrified out of my freaking mind.  Even a less dangerous surgery sounded like a horror film to little 19-year-old me.  When the day came to put me under, I probably shook like crazy while my mother sat there telling me it was going to be okay.  And then they took me into the room, someone asked me what kind of music I'd like to listen to (I have no idea what I said -- probably classical), and then I did that whole countdown thing where they tell you to start from 100, but you know you're not going to make it further than 96, and so you count anyway because it distracts you from the fact that they're going to shove stuff inside you...and then you wake up later and supposedly you're OK, only you feel like a bus hit you and you realize "hey, they just cut into my neck and I probably shouldn't move it"...when the attendant pops over and says, "Hi there, you're awake.  Where are you?  How do you feel?" and all you can say is, "Unheeegzzzzaghlee errspital," and that seems good enough to them, so they go away and eventually wheel you out to a room somewhere and let you see your family, when all you really want to do is turn on the TV, take some really good drugs, and pass out.  And then they send you home, like you didn't just get your neck hacked up or anything.  Oh, but they don't really send you home, of course.  They send you to a prison of your own mind, because you spend that week or two of recovery wondering what they'll find in the golf ball they took out of your neck (and if you're really morbid, you wonder if you can request the piece of flash back in a jar of formaldehyde, because it's yours, after all).

And that's how I found myself in a recliner some four feet from the TV, watching garbage daytime television (we didn't have cable upstairs) and snoozing.  Two weeks later?  We got a call.  Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  We'd need to see an oncologist to determine treatment.  By that point, I'd already pretty much accepted that I had cancer.  I wasn't over the fear just yet, but at least I knew where we had to go next.  At least we had answers.

This is where I'll stop.  There's more weird experiences to talk about later -- some scary, some humorous, some bizarre, and some just plain sad.  Until another day...

You know the drill!  Vote!

preservation of course.  Throughout this somewhat dystopian plot -- aliens telling us we have to shape up or die is hardly utopian, after all -- we are gifted with several reminders that the scientists are the true "rational" ones on Earth (hang in there -- I'll critique this later).  There are two perfectly solid examples of this, which I'll approach in semi-chronological order.

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

In case you didn't know, I am currently on vacation, which might explain the lack of activity on this blog between last Friday and Monday the 11th.  That means no Retro Nostalgia feature, no Literature Explorations, and not a whole lot of random stuff in-between.

Regular programming will (mostly) resume after I return!

In other news:  how are you?

I've never voted for the Hugos before, which means this year is a huge "first."  Regardless, I've always had a problem filling out some of the categories, sometimes because I'm not familiar with the field (comics, for example).  This is where you all come in.  Below is the list of all the categories in which my nominations are either entirely absent or not firm.  What would you recommend I check out to help me fill the gaps?

Best Novella
Best Novelette
Best Related Work (I've got four ideas, but maybe I missed something you all know about?)
Best Graphic Story
Best Dramatic Presentation (minus Game of Thrones, as I've already seen it)
Best Fan Artist
Best Fanzine (I have ideas, but only one standout thus far)
Best Fancast (ditto)

Have at it!