Expanding Our Idea of What Reason Is

Yesterday when President Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor as his choice for replacing Supreme Court Justice David Souter, I was glad, finally, to hear that he was doing something I could really get behind.**** Naturally, then, that choice immediately came in for a barrage of nasty, even hateful attacks. Today, feminist theorist Linda Martín Alcoff has a piece on Common Dreams, Sotomayor's Reasoning, that addresses criticism of the nominee's forthright declaration that gender and ethnicity "may and will make a difference in our judging." As Alcoff notes, "Such views are widely held, but not widely expressed or defended. The difference with Judge Sotomayor is simply that she has put the view out there." Alcoff, by the way, addresses criticisms from both the right and the left, noting that many on the left are confused about identity and see any open articulation of it as susceptible to rigid stereotypical spinning. "Meanwhile," she notes,

people on the street know better. They know that identity is a rough guide to experience, and that experience affects how we see things, what we notice, how we gauge the plausibility of a story, or the credibility of a speaker. It also affects what background understanding we have at our disposal, such as what life is like for children in diverse families, or among those who live paycheck to paycheck, or without paychecks. And it affects what baseline information we happen to know without having to do any research, such as knowledge about the sterilization abuse inflicted by the United States on Puerto Rican women or the history of treaty violations with American Indian tribes.

Reasoning involves judgment calls, not deductive logic. The judgment of relevance, coherence, and plausibility can be more or less rational, but they are never axiomatic.

Alcoff refers back to the inability of the Senate Judiciary Committee to hear and understand Anita Hill's testimony during Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearing.

Judge Sotomayor has simply stated upfront what most of us know full well: identity affects experience, and experience makes a difference in our judgment. It is never absolute or foolproof: Clarence Thomas's own background did not lead him to the left, thus showing that no identities are flat or monochromatic. We each have to interpret on our own what our identities mean, and in what way our experience is, or is not, relevant to a given situation. Acknowledging the relevance of identity does not replace reason with politics; it simply expands our idea of what reason is, and makes it more reasonable.

Glenn Greenwald's Justice Samuel Alito on Empathy and Judging (originally appearing at Salon.com), considers the double-standard Judge Sotomayor faces, in comparison with the reception given Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. His piece begins:

As is true for any Supreme Court nominee, there are many legitimate questions to raise about Sonia Sotomayor, but the smear attacks on her as some sort of "identity politics" poster child -- which are still being justified largely if not entirely by the Jeffrey Rosen/TNR gossipy hit piece on her -- are nothing short of disgusting. As Anonymous Liberal put it: "Apparently, the only way to avoid 'identity politics' is to pick white men for every job." Both Adam Serwer and Daniel Larison note the glaring, obvious hypocrisy in simultaneously insisting that "empathy" has no place in the law while protesting Sotomayor's decision in Ricci on the completely law-free ground that what happened to the white firefighters is so "unfair." And Matt Yglesias writes that he is "really truly deeply and personally pissed off my the tenor of a lot of the commentary on Sonia Sotomayor" and, in a separate post, notes the wildly different treatment between Sotomayor and Sam Alito despite very similar records.

Do check out both of these pieces.

PS I hope to be doing some WisCon reporting soon.

****ETA Looks like I spoke too soon. I really can't get behind anyone who isn't clearly going to be supporting abortion rights-- as it now appears may be the case with Sonia Sotomayor.*****

*****ETA Although I probably did speak too soon, it looks as though my misgivings on abortion rights are misplaced. See Nancy's comment below.

Deletions

I just got back from Wiscon, where I talked to people both about Mammothfail and The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

I think I'm in over my head on both topics and have deleted the two posts I wrote.

I've Hit the Ground Running

I may be operating on an hour and a half of sleep, but I'm in Madison and have delivered a stack of What Remains (the GoH book by Ellen Klages and Geoff Ryman) to A Room of One's Own bookstore for this evening's reading and am feeling very happy to be here. Need I say that before I left the bookstore, I had assembled a stack of books of about comparable bulk that I just had to buy? & what a lift it gave me to find, as I browsed, all five volumes of the Marq'ssan on the shelf (taking up a hell of a lot of space in the science fiction section). Room, you see, is not just any bookstore. I fell in love with the place when I first discovered it in 1996. And so I get a thrill, finding my work stocked there.

I began bumping into WisCon people long before reaching the hotel, of course. The gate in the Minneapolis airport for the early afternoon flight to Madison fairly teemed with familiar folks, including Cynthia Gonsalves (who was fascinated to see the new volume of the WisCon Chronicles, which I'd been reading on the plane) and Bill Humphries. And on arrival in Madison, I discovered that Eileen Gunn and John Berry had been on the same plane out of Seattle with me, only I never noticed because they were seated way in the back, surrounded by a youth choral group and a high school champion volley ball team who were, even at 7 a.m., in high spirits. Eileen's still in a cast (she claimed she broke her finger skateboarding, but then admitted that she got so carried away looking at the cherry blossoms that she tripped and went sprawling). From her description of her accident, it sounds like the sort of thing that could happen to me.

So many people kept arriving at the airport that the hotel shuttles were unable to keep up with the demand. Oyceter, by the way, was among those riding sharing the shuttle with me; she entertained us all by describing a fantasy book that included every fantastical creature the author could thing of. "With her," Oyce said of the author (whose name I didn't catch), "More is more."

Next on the agenda, the reception at Room.

Do I sound as though I'm manic? Let's just say I'm a little excited.

PS Someone told me that Nisi is here, but I haven't seen her yet.

Aqueduct Goes to WisCon-- a preview

Once again, Aqueduct will be at WisCon. Kath has packed up her station wagon with Aqueduct books and party supplies and will be heading off on the long haul to Madison later today. Tom and I will fly in on Thursday. Fewer of our authors will be attending this year, but those who do will be helping us to celebrate our Fifth Anniversary. And, no small thing, Nisi Shawl will be accepting the Tiptree Award on Sunday night.

Besides me, the other Aqueduct authors will be attending: Eleanor Arnason, Eileen Gunn, Lesley Hall, Andrea Hairston, Liz Henry, Sylvia Kelso, Ellen Klages, Nancy Jane Moore, Geoff Ryman Nisi Shawl, and Anne Sheldon. In addition, some of the members of our blog who aren't authors will be attending, as well. Aqueduct will be in the Dealers Room beginning early Friday afternoon. Come and see us and admire our fabulous list of-- can you believe it?-- 42 titles.

We won't be putting our newest titles, What Remains by Ellen Klages and Geoff Ryman and the WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 3, ed. Liz Henry, onto Aqueduct's orders page until after WisCon. We'll be bringing 150 numbered copies of What Remains and be selling them for $8 apiece in the Dealers Room. Those that we don't sell will retail, after the con, for $12. That's because this little volume is intended to complement WisCon. If we sell out, we'll think about reprinting an unsigned, unnumbered edition, depending on demand. But I suspect this little book will be a one-off. And of course we'll have plenty of copies of the new volume of the WisCon Chronicles on hand.

As I did last year, I'm posting here a list of most of the programming Aqueduct's writers and blog members will be doing:

Thursday

6:00 Reception and reading at Room of One's Own-- Ellen and Geoff will be giving short readings & everyone present will be celebrating the beginning of another WisCon

Friday

Writers' Workshop—Rachel Swirsky
Fri 9:00AM - 12:00PM Room 634
M: Rachel Virginia Swirsky

Cultural Appropriation 101 Workshop
Fri 2:30 - 3:45PM Assembly
E. Cabell Hankinson Gathman, Victor Jason Raymond, Nisi Shawl

Where Are the Minority Mad Scientists?
Fri 4:00 - 5:15PM 629
Moderator: Jessica Lynne Morris. Email Jessica Lynne Morris, Lesley Hall, Jenny Sessions, Betsy Urbik

We Do The Work
Fri 4:00 - 5:15PM Conference 4
M: Fred Schepartz, Eleanor A. Arnason, Chris Hill, Michael J. Lowrey, Diana Sherman

Urgent and Essential: The Role and Function of Science Fiction in the Societal Stabilizing the Converging Technologies/Romance of the Robot: From R.U.R & Metropolis to Wall-E
Fri 9:00 - 10:15PM Conference 3
Rosalyn Berne, Andrea D. Hairston

Turns Out This Is Your Dad’s SF/F
Fri 9:00 - 10:15PM Senate B
M: David D. Levine, Eileen Gunn, Chip Hitchcock, Brad Lyau, Pat Murphy

Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading
Fri. 10:30 PM Assembly
M: Nancy Jane Moore, J. Kathleen Cheney, Tina Connolly, Lori Devoti, Moondancer Drake, Gwynne Garfinkle, Kimberley Long-Ewing, Kathryn Sullivan, Katherine Mankiller, Morven Westfield, Phoebe Wray


Saturday

The Mismeasure of Man and the Rest of Us, Too: Science, Colonialism, Genocide and Science Fiction
Sat 10:00 - 11:15AM Senate B
M: Rachel Virginia Swirsky, Evelyn Browne, John H. Kim, Micole Iris Sudberg, K. Joyce Tsai

Book View Cafe: A New Venture in Online Publishing
Sat. 10 - 11:00 AM Conference 5
M: Nancy Jane Moore, Sylvia Kelso, Madeleine Robins, Jennifer K. Stevenson

Keeping Up with Science
Sat 1:00 - 2:15PM Capitol B
M: Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Sandra Ulbrich Almazan, Eleanor A. Arnason, Gary Kloster, Chris Stockdale

Feminism, Anarchism, & Power: The Marq'ssan Cycle
Sat 2:30 - 3:45PM Senate A
M: Kate Mason, Lesley Hall, Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Alexis Lothian

Ask A Pro
Sat 2:30 - 3:45PM Capitol A
M: Eileen Gunn, Shana Cohen, James Frenkel, Jack McDevitt, M Rickert, Geoff Ryman

Genuinely Multicultural Panel
Sat 4:00 - 5:15PM Wisconsin
M: Alan Bostick, Rachel Kronick, Isabel Schechter, Ekaterina G. Sedia, Nisi Shawl

The Treatment of Aging in SF and F
Sat 4:00 - 5:15PM Capitol A
M: Eleanor A. Arnason, Gerri Balter, Richard J. Chwedyk, Magenta Griffith, Diana Sherman

A New Paradigm: Reading by Book View Cafe Writers
Sat. 4 PM, Michelangelo's
Anne Harris, Sylvia Kelso, Nancy Jane Moore, Madeleine Robins, Jennifer K. Stevenson

The Fiction of Geoff Ryman
Sat 4:00 - 5:15PM Conference 5
M: Margaret McBride, Eileen Gunn, Sandra J. Lindow, Farah Mendlesohn, Steven E. Schwartz, Delia Sherman

Taboo II: Electric Bugaloo
Sat 4:00 - 5:15PM Conference 2
Vylar Kaftan, Ted A Kosmatka, Jennifer Pelland, Rachel Virginia Swirsky

Aqueduct Press/Carl Brandon Society party
9 p.m-- ?? Room 607


Sunday

Why You Should Write Book Reviews
Sun. 10:00 - 11:15 AM Senate A
M: L. Timmel Duchamp, John M Gamble, Steven H Silver, Gretchen Treu, Gary K. Wolfe

Andrea Smith's Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide
Sun 10:00 - 11:15AM Senate B
M: Micole Iris Sudberg, Andrea D. Hairston, Diantha Day Sprouse, K. Joyce Tsai

Something Is Wrong on the Internet!
Sun 10:00 - 11:15AM Capitol B
M: Vito Excalibur. Vito Excalibur, Piglet, Liz Henry, Julia Sparkymonster

"Going Native": Gender, Colonialism, and C.J. Cherryh
Sun 1:00 - 2:15PM Conference 4
Panelists M: Micole Iris Sudberg, Matthew H. Austern, Chip Hitchcock, Janine Ellen Young

Aqueduct Press Reading I
Sun 2:30 - 3:45PM Conference 2
Eileen Gunn, Liz Henry, Sylvia Kelso, Pat Murphy

Aqueduct Press Reading II
Sun 4:00 - 5:15PM Conference 2
Eleanor A. Arnason, L. Timmel Duchamp, Andrea D. Hairston, Nisi Shawl, Anne Lane Sheldon

The Anvil Chorus: Historical Fiction and Social Justice
Sun 4:00 - 5:15PM Wisconsin
M: Lesley Hall, Jane Acheson, Ellen Klages, Deepa D.

Birthing a Writer's Community
Sun. 4 PM Conference 4
M: Diane Silver, Stickshift Bear, Nancy Jane Moore, Michelle Murrain, Monica Valentinelli


Monday

Writing SF While Living in a SF Disaster Novel
Mon 8:30 - 9:45AM Senate A
M: Suzanne Allés Blom, John Joseph Adams, Eleanor A. Arnason

Not Enough Tricksters
Mon 10:00 - 11:15AM Senate B
M: Joell M. Smith-Borne, Charlie Anders, Lesley Hall, Julia Sparkymonster

Sign-Out
Mon 11:30AM - 12:45PM Capitol/Wisconsin
John Joseph Adams, Barth Anderson, Eleanor A. Arnason, Melodie Bolt, F. J. Bergmann, Alex Bledsoe, Suzy Charnas, Richard J. Chwedyk, Lori Devoti, Moondancer Drake, L. Timmel Duchamp, Carol F. Emshwiller, Eileen Gunn, Anne Harris, Deborah Lynn Jacobs, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Sylvia Kelso, Marianne Kirby, Ellen Klages, Naomi Kritzer, Ellen Kushner, Ann Leckie, David D. Levine, Kimberley Long-Ewing, Kelly McCullough, Sarah Monette, Nancy Jane Moore, Pat Murphy, Larissa N. Niec, Nnedi Nkemdili Okorafor, Jennifer Pelland, Sarah B. Prineas, Mary Robinette, Margaret Ronald, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Geoff Ryman, Fred Schepartz, David J. Schwartz, Ekaterina G. Sedia, Nisi Shawl, Delia Sherman, Kristine Smith, Jennifer K. Stevenson, Caroline Stevermer, Kathryn Sullivan, Catherynne M. Valente, Monica Valentinelli, Joan D. Vinge, Morven Westfield, Laurel Winter, Phoebe Wray, Patricia C Wrede, Doselle Young, Janine Ellen Young

The Green Country of Fantasy

This weekend's Los Angeles Times has a feature on Ursula Le Guin as well as a review of Cheek by Jowl by Kate Bernheimer." While I'm happy to see a piece like "Ursula Major" taking note of Le Guin's importance, I'm less than thrilled by its author's taking Thomas M. Disch's attack against her seriously. On the other hand, Kate Bernheimer's review, while on the brief side, offers a deeper perspective:

"Fantasy's green country is one that most of us enter with ease and pleasure, and it seems to be perfectly familiar to most children even if they've never been out of the city streets," writes Ursula K. Le Guin in "The Critics, The Monsters, and The Fantasists," which appears in her collection of essays "Cheek by Jowl," just published by the valiant, feminist press Aqueduct.

Le Guin continues, "I will defend fantasy's green country. . . . Although the green country of fantasy seems to be entirely the invention of human imaginations, it verges on and partakes of actual realms in which humanity is not lord and master, is not central, is not even important."

She concludes her review:

Hundreds of writers still work today from fairy tales and for the green country in large part because of [Frank] Baum's popular [Oz] series. For more exploration of why fantasy and its astral-ecology is the Real Thing, Le Guin's "Cheek by Jowl" is the source.

Earlier this week, Publishers Weekly also reviewed Cheek by Jowl:

The work of poet and novelist Le Guin (Lavinia, The Left Hand of Darkness) spans genres, including science fiction, fantasy and kid lit, and here she collects scholarship and opinion on the importance of fantasy in every stage of our lives. Aside from taking on “the whole misbegotten procedure” of condemning a genre with the standards of another (why not “judge Moby Dick as science fiction” or “Pride and Prejudice as a Western”?), Le Guin delineates a number of intriguing points just by focusing on animal characters, and their relationships to humans, in her multi-part essay “Animals in Children's Literature”: Jack London’s White Fang, for example, uses the perspectives of canine and human characters to create a genuine understanding of the love between them. Le Guin’s most charged argument tackles the idea that fondness for fantasy equals lack of maturity; instead, Le Guin attests that fantasy is the only type of fiction that can be fully appreciated at any age, and is often involved in important poetry and unique imagery. This compact collection will stoke readers' affection and appreciation for fantasy by highlighting important but overlooked qualities in many familiar tales (such as the duplicity at work in Lewis Carroll) that prove its lasting value as literature. (May)

The First Mother's Day Proclamation, 1870

Mother's Day Proclamation

by Julia Ward Howe
(1819-1910)

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Why Is That So Hard?

One of the hot sf novels of the season, Neal Stephenson's Anathem, has been getting feminist scrutiny from Nic at Eve's Alexandria, who found the novel "heavy-going," and from Liz Henry at the Feminist SF blog, who writes "I love the book, I think it’s fabulous, I wallowed in it and couldn’t stop reading it" but was constantly jolted out of her enjoyment by the book's "unnecessary sexism." After looking at specific instances of this, Liz writes:

A general complaint, not directed in particular at Stephenson. I don’t ask that every book be all things. But this book tries to be so much, and it fails so notably at this thing which to me seems so simple. Just make women characters as human as the male characters. Why is that so hard? How can anyone so smart and cool write something that fails to do that simple thing? Why do we as female readers and geeks so often get left behind and disappointed in this way by male writers? I am haunted by these questions in general while reading science fiction. Men, and heterosexual ones who claim to love and appreciate women and who in their daily lives surely do just that, fail to be able to write STORIES where women have full human agency and are important in any way other than romantic symbols or sadly cardboard sops to “strong female hero”.

Yeah. What you said, Liz.

Both are insightful, incisive reviews worth checking out.

Gwyneth Jones's The Buonarotti Quartet

Aqueduct Press is pleased to announce the publication of The Buonaraotti Quartet by Gwyneth Jones, the twenty-fifth volume in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces series.

The man who'd given his handle as Drummer raised heavy eyes and spoke, sonorous as a prophet, from out of a full black beard. “We will be ordered to the transit chamber as we were ordered to this room; or drugged and carried by robots in our sleep. We will lie down in the Buonarotti capsules, and a code-self, the complex pattern of each human body and soul, will be split into two like a cell dividing. The copies will be sent flying around the torus, at half-light speed. You will collide with yourself and cease utterly to exist at these co-ordinates of space-time. The body and soul in the capsule will be annihilated, and know GOD no longer.”—from “The Voyage Out”

In Gwyneth Jones’s White Queen Trilogy, the reclusive female genius called Peenemunde Buonarotti invented the instantaneous transit device of the same name. In the four stories of The Buonaraotti Quartet, Gwyneth Jones shows us humans traveling via the device to alien worlds and situations. Some are diplomats, some are extreme travelers, some are prisoners. All are in for a rough, wild ride.

The volume is available now through Aqueduct's website here. (And just a reminder: Subscriptions of ten consecutive volumes (beginning with the volume of your choice) may also be purchased through the site for $80.)

Here are notes Gwyneth has written about the fiction in this volume:

The Buonarotti Transit

The Buonarotti Transit first appeared in White Queen, a novel about an alien invasion of Earth —in which human gender issues come up against another way of cutting up the world, and a mechanist global civilization is overcome by a non-mechanist, highly intuitive and devious crew of buccaneers. Meanwhile, reclusive genius Peenemunde Buonarotti has been researching a means of instantaneous interstellar transit. She’s been piggy-backing her experiments on the Big Science giant accelerator nearest to her place of work: translating herself into pure information, splitting the code and sending two code-versions of herself around the ring, to collide at lightspeed and reach fusion with the State of All States. Not quite ready to publish, she returns from her first successful landing on an alien planet, the night the (apparently) faster-than-light-powered Aleutians announce their presence. . . “That’s torn it,” says Peenemunde, robbed of her big moment.

The “Buonarotti Device” features in the next two episodes of the Aleutian story as a lost treasure, as proof that humans were not always colonized and inferior; and as the symbol of an Utopian future, in which Humans and Aleutians will share the freedom of the stars as equals.

"The Fulcrum"

It all seems so long ago. . . “The Fulcrum” is the first Buonarotti story I wrote, and the most loosely connected to the universe of Spirit, the novel for which all these stories are preparatory sketches. It was my contribution to a themed anthology called Constellations. Orion is my favorite constellation, so that choice was obvious. I already had a device that sent people across interstellar distances, with unpredictable results. I found out about the Bok Globule, the star nursery in the Orion Nebula (also the Osiris angle), and there I had my science/astronomy strand. The fiction is a pure spoof on post-cyberpunk sf noir —hyper-masculine playground for nihilist vigilantes, where ordinary people (whatever their sex) had better shut up, accept that violence rules, and keep off the streets. I like a little fantasy mayhem as much as the next fan, but I despaired at the message that the critically acclaimed sf of the new millennium was giving to women, especially young women, as genre readers and as writers . . . and my response was laughter.

If you’re fond of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, or rather the 1941 John Huston movie, you’ll spot liberally scattered references to this great and venerable “noir” in my plot, characters, and McGuffin. Orlando and Grace, besides being named for a (heterosexual, but conventional!) cat couple in a UK classic series of children’s picture books, are not aliens, they are humans with body-mods who like to call themselves aliens. Nice Eddie is the name of a character in Reservoir Dogs, another favorite old movie. Look out for what happens to the perfect (virtual) girlfriends: Sara Komensky, and “Annie-Mah.”

"Saving Tiamaat"

Every so often, science fiction futures need to be refreshed. New Space Opera is Space Opera updated, with the Cold War-ish scenario that’s been around since Star Trek I finally consigned to the recycle bin, the media taking their modern share in the making of governments, the megadeath weaponry refurbished, and sci-fi concepts like robotics, cyborgs, mind-control, total surveillance enhanced by contact with the actual technology. There was modern Space Opera before NSO (try C.J Cherryh’s Cyteen), but what’s really new is that in C21 the globalization of planet Earth is inescapable. If the proper study of science fiction is the present day, then right now NSO is the genre mirror of our world —a multi-state organization (choose your political flavor!) of diverse but basically similar peoples; struggling toward unity, beset by horrific genocidal wars, where the privileged few can cross staggering distances in no time, while the many casualties of the process are just moved from one internment camp to another. When I wrote “Saving Tiamaat,” my vague idea that I’d like to write a novel-length (new) Space Opera had become a firm intention, so this isn’t only a drama about a moral dilemma at a peace conference —and the mistake we still make (though we should know better!) when we assume that a woman will be nicer, more all-round civilized than a man. It’s also a sketch for “Speranza,” my interplanetary capital, the latest incarnation of a long-gone seedy space station called The Panhandle — the public architecture, the vast bureaucracy, the staffers’ breakfast bars; and the secret, ruthless shadow-self that every Utopian State conceals.

Physically (er, given that it’s inside a hollowed asteroid), Speranza is modeled on the EU glass and concrete hives of Strasbourg and Bruxelles: please substitute the majestic, allegedly good-willed super-government behemoth of your choice.

"The Voyage Out"

If the Buonarotti stories followed a fixed chronology (which they don’t, I never thought about it), “The Voyage Out” would come soon after “The Fulcrum.” The Panhandle has become a deep space Remand Center, where condemned prisoners wait to be transported to the unknown shore where they’ll serve life sentences. They don’t know if the Landfall planet even exists: maybe when they lie down in those couches they simply get vaporized; but they soon discover that the Buonarotti Torus, where the barrier between mind and matter is broken, makes spooky company. . .

When I wrote “Voyage” for Lynne Jamneck’s Periphery collection (it’s an anthology of Lesbian sf erotica), I'd been reading L.Timmel Duchamp's Alanya to Alanya. I think "Ruth Norman" is sideways-related to Timmi's "Kay Zeldin," a high-powered elite-academic in a similarly lawless yet oppressive future. A woman who has starved herself of pleasure so that she can live a life of principle; who has beaten herself up repeatedly, to keep her career (as a political activist, in this case) intact, but who has all kinds of longings and untapped potential. The secret life of nightdresses is a very ancient fantasy of mine, to do with a fairytale about some princesses who used to sneak out of bed at night and go dancing in fairyland. I used to spend a fair amount of time ill-in-bed when I was a little girl, and was devoted to my nightclothes. Much nicer than the clothes I had to wear in the waking world, where it was school uniform and other depressing outfits. The original Hilde was a girl at school with me, who had frizzy cinnamon braids and a beautiful smile. I always liked the look of her, but I never said anything, she was sporty, it was hopeless. I don't think I need to explain the Gruffaloes.

"The Tomb Wife"

Here’s the rationale, a C21 variation on a venerable sf trope: the material universe, in the final analysis, cannot be logically distinguished from the perceptions of the observer, the maps of firing neurons that light up when you see the stars or think about string theory. We can manipulate one of these sets of information, pretty much without limit: why not the other? Once you’ve broken the barrier between mind and matter (for instance using the Buonarotti method; there are more dangerous ways, outlined in a series called Bold As Love, but they’ve been outlawed) you can do just about anything. If you know the 4-space coordinates of your destination you can simply arrive there, by an act of will, and your informational self will take material form from the ambient chemistry it finds —not merely your body, but your survival gear; or even large hunks of ancient masonry, if you’ve had the proper neuro-training.

The catch is that what really happens is an equation of staggering complexity, a huge volume of information space resolved into a new pattern. Conscious travelers, (and some of the party must be conscious, or nobody’s going anywhere) experience this complexity as an intense, disturbing dream. In White Queen, Buonarotti’s lab rats didn’t know about this effect, which proved to be a bit of a nightmare. In “The Tomb Wife,” the last story I wrote before the new novel, the perils of non-duration travel have been tamed, to an extent. There’s a consensus reality (we’re on a starship). There’s a navigator, who knows exactly what she’s doing. But things can still go wrong.

There are genre stories that are only genre because a strand of the arbitrarily strange has been threaded into the everyday world. “The Tomb Wife,” on the other hand, is a sci-fi tale with added strangeness.

CFP: Race and Ethnicity in Fandom

Special issue: Race and Ethnicity in Fandom (Summer 2011)

Transformative Works and Cultures
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/
editor AT transformativeworks.org

SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS:

Sarah Gatson, Sociology, Texas A&M University, http://sociweb.tamu.edu/faculty.php?faculty_id=12
Gatson@tamu.edu

Robin Reid,  Literature and Languages, Texas A&M University-Commerce, http://www.tamu-commerce.edu/litlang/reid.asp?menuName=people&pageName=faculty Robin_Reid@tamu-commerce.edu


DESCRIPTION

Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC), an online-only, peer-reviewed journal focusing on media and fan studies, broadly conceived, invites contributions for a special issue on race and ethnicity to be published in summer 2011.

Academic scholarship on fan cultures and fan productions over the past few decades has focused primarily on gender as the sole category of analysis. There has been little published scholarship on fan cultures and productions that incorporates critical race theory or draws on the rich array of methodologies that have been developed during the past century in both activist and academic communities in order to incorporate analysis of the social constructions of race and ethnicities in fandoms.

In contrast, fan activism and fan scholarship (at cons, workshops, and on the Internet) has produced a growing body of work (personal narratives, essays, carnivals, and in recent months, a press) focusing on not only analyzing but also confronting hierarchies of race and
ethnicity and their relationship to gender, sexuality, class, and disability. Submissions by academics, acafans, fan scholars, and fans are encouraged. In all categories, people of color are especially encouraged to submit.

Topics might include but are not limited to:

*Online activism and the circulation of critical race theory and women of color feminisms in fan communities, in particular the relationship between fan online discourse and other online activist communities.

*Critical analysis of the instantiation and critique of racial hierarchies in fan communities and the surrounding cultural productions.

*Racist and antiracist issues in commercial transformative works (comics, film, mashups, remixes, machinima, etc.), especially recuperative race readings (e.g., Randall's The Wind Done Gone, Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea).

*Race concerns in source texts (characters of color and their fannish reception, fandoms for work by authors of color, writing fannish original characters, etc.) and fannish responses (such as the Carl Brandon Society, Verb Noire, and other panfannish and professional
projects).

*Intersection of race and ethnicity with gender, sexuality, class, and ability in fannish contexts in fan works and fan communities (pre-Internet, Internet, conventions, vids, fan fiction, artwork, etc.).

SUBMISSIONS

Submit final papers directly to TWC by October 1, 2010. Please visit TWC's Web site (http://journal.transformativeworks.org/) for complete submission guidelines. Please contact the guest editors with questions or inquiries.

ARTICLE TYPES

Theory: Apply a conceptual focus or theoretical frame. Peer review. 5,000-8,000 words.

Praxis: Apply a specific theory to a formation or artifact; explicate fan practice; perform a detailed reading of a specific text; relate transformative phenomena to social, literary, technological, and/or historical frameworks. Peer review. 4,000-7,000 words.

Symposium: Provide insight into developments or debates surrounding fandom, transformative media, or cultures. Editorial review. 1,500-2,500 words.

"R.A.Lafferty...collaborating with Harlan Ellison"

Don D'Ammassa has posted a review of Rebecca Ore's Centuries Ago and Very Fast at Critical Mass:

I was struggling to think of something to which I could compare this slim but well written collection of very odd, related stories, and the closest I could come was R.A. Lafferty, although only if he was collaborating with Harlan Ellison. The common character is an immortal who was born in prehistory and is still around in the modern world. He has a series of encounters with typical and atypical characters, including rebellious college students, a drag queen, and others. The tone of the stories is a balancing act between the serious and the comic. One of the most difficult books to describe I’ve read recently, this should appeal to fans of literary SF, satire, and nifty prose, and it is almost certainly not going to be what you’re expecting. 4/22/09

Three Observations and a Dialogue: Round and About Feminist SF by Sylvia Kelso

Aqueduct Press is pleased to announce the publication of Three Observations and a Dialogue: Round and About SF by Sylvia Kelso, the twenty-fourth volume in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces series.

After WisCon 20, Sylvia Kelso engaged Lois McMaster Bujold in a rich, snappy correspondence about Bujold’s Vorkosigan novels. “You ... remark that ‘[my] post-modern despair is not [your] emergency’ over the failure of feminism to transform SF,” she wrote to Bujold. “My postmodern despair OUGHT to be your emergency, buen' amiga, because one of the reasons you are being ignored is that ... you don't fit the male canon either in the community or the critical industry; so unless you catch their eyes with a sand-blaster like The Left Hand of Darkness, the male academics are also gonna find you invisible...”

That correspondence became “Letterspace: In the Chinks Between Published Fiction and Published Criticism,” which is published here. Also included are “Third Person Peculiar: Reading between Academic and SF-Community Positions in (Feminist) SF,” a critical essay discussing the intricacies of an Australian feminist scholar writing about science fiction; “Tales of Earth: Terraforming in Recent Women’s SF,” which considers colonialism in science fiction by women; and “Loud Achievements: Lois McMaster Bujold’s Science Fiction through 1997,” which closely examines Bujold’s Vorkosigan novels.

The volume is available now through Aqueduct's website here. And just a reminder: Subscriptions of ten consecutive volumes (beginning with the volume of your choice) may also be purchased through the site for $80.

Trope

I had trouble understanding the essay which Cat Rambo recommends below, because I don't really understand what trope means. As SF writers and critics use it, it usually means a shtick, gimmick or cliche.

Per an online dictionary I just consulted, a trope is

any literary or rhetorical device, as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony, that consists in the use of words in other than their literal sense.

This sounds like the definition that Rae Bryant gives in the essay, but does not seem as if she then discusses literary or rhetorical devices.

As Delany pointed out years ago, it's hard to use words "in other than their literal sense" in SF, since SF describes a new reality, which needs -- usually -- to be described literally.

Some rhetorical forms are so well assimilated into the language that everyone uses them, and no one sees them as figures of speech any more. You can see this in spelling: "tow the line," "reign in." The underlying image has been lost.

These can used in science fiction.

*

I did not mean to post this. It was still a draft. But I did post it, and it got one comment, so I guess I am stuck with it.

*

Josh points out that trope can mean convention, which is not a cliche. I know the word from SF con panels, and most of the people using the word are not trained in literary criticism. So what they mean -- or maybe what I heard -- is more like gimmick than convention.

But it does seem to me that Rae Bryant is using the word to mean convention, which solves part of the problem for me in understanding the essay.

It seems obvious that SF is full of conventions of plot and character and device (consider FTL), but is not full of metaphoric language.

Speaking from 35+ years of experience, I will strongly recommend that SF writers stay away from irony. I have used it consistently, and it has consistently confused editors and readers. In SF it's a good rule to say what you mean and mean what you say.

Rae Bryant Writes About Taboos and Tropes For Fantasy Magazine

I wanted to point people at Rae Bryant's two part essay on Taboos and Tropes, the second part of which came out today in Fantasy Magazine, because I think they are interesting and I would like to see more discussion of this sort of topic. Part one is here and part two here.

Nisi Shawl and Patrick Ness win the Tiptree Award

The James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award Council announced that the 2008 Tiptree Award will be going to Patrick Ness's young adult novel The Knife of Never Letting Go and Nisi Shawl's Filter House, an Aqueduct Press book.

The Tiptree Award will be presented on Memorial Day weekend at WisCon in Madison, Wisconsin. Each winner will receive $1000 in prize money, an original artwork created specifically for the winning novel or story, and a confection, usually chocolate. (I've amended the wording of the press release because Nisi cannot eat chocolate, since it's a migraine trigger for her. And I distinctly recall that one winner was given something other than chocolate, because it was not a favorite with her.) The 2008 jurors were Gavin J. Grant (chair), K. Tempest Bradford, Leslie Howle, Roz Kaveney, and Catherynne M. Valente.

This year's Honor List is as follows:

• Christopher Barzak, The Love We Share Without Knowing (Bantam, 2008)
• Jenny Davidson, The Explosionist (HarperTeen, 2008)
• Gregory Frost, Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet: A Shadowbridge Novel (both published by Del Rey, 2008)
• Alison Goodman, Two Pearls of Wisdom (HarperCollins Australia 2008), published in the United States as Eon: Dragoneye Reborn (Viking 2008), also Eon: Rise of the Dragoneye in the United Kingdom
• John Kessel, “Pride or Prometheus” (Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2008)
• Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels (Knopf, 2008)
• Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia (Harcourt)
• John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In (Quercus (UK) 2007), original Swedish title Låt den rätte komma in (2004), first published in English as Let Me In, St. Martin's Press (2007), Translated by Ebba Segerberg)
• Paul Park, A Princess of Roumania (Tor, 2005), The Tourmaline (Tor, 2006), The White Tyger (Tor, 2007), The Hidden World(Tor, 2008)
• Ekaterina Sedia, The Alchemy of Stone (Prime Books)
• Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy (Canongate U.S., 2007)
• Ysabeau S. Wilce, Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) (Harcourt, 2008)

The press release also had this to say:

The Knife of Never Letting Go begins with a boy growing up in a village way off the grid. Jury chair Gavin J. Grant explains, “All the villagers can hear one another's thoughts (their 'noise') and all the villagers are men. The boy has never seen a woman or girl so when he meets one his world is infinitely expanded as he discovers the complications of gender relations. As he travels in this newly bi-gendered world, he also has to work out the definition of becoming and being a man.”

Juror Leslie Howle praises Ness’s skills as a writer: “Ness is a craftsman — the language, pacing, complications, plot - this story has all of the elements of great story-telling. It's a page-turner, and I continued to think about the story long after reading it. Todd's understanding of gender is constructed as the story progresses, making his perceptions feel fresh and new. It reminds me of the kind of SF I loved when I was growing up.”

In addition to the Tiptree Award, The Knife of Never Letting Go also won the 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize (U.K.), which celebrates contemporary fiction for teenagers, and the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize.

Publishers Weekly, which selected Filter House as one of the best books of 2008, described it as an “exquisitely rendered debut collection” that “ranges into the past and future to explore identity and belief in a dazzling variety of settings.” Tiptree jurors spotlight Shawl’s willingness to challenge the reader with her exploration of gender roles. Juror K. Tempest Bradford writes, “The stories in Filter House refuse to allow the reader the comfort of assuming that the men and women will act according to the assumptions mainstream readers/society/culture puts on them.”

Juror Catherynne M. Valente notes that most of Shawl’s protagonists in this collection are are “young women coming to terms with womanhood and what that means in terms of their culture, magic (almost always tribal, nuts and bolts, African-based magical systems, which is fascinating in itself), [and] technology.” In her comments, Valente points out some elements of stories that made this collection particularly appropriate for the Tiptree Award: ' “At the Huts of Ajala" struck me deeply as a critique of beauty and coming of age rituals. The final story, "The Beads of Ku," deals with marriage and motherhood and death. "Shiomah's Land" deals with the sexuality of a godlike race, and a young woman's liberation from it. "Wallamellon" is a heartbreaking story about the Blue Lady, the folkloric figure invented by Florida orphans, and a young girl pursuing the Blue Lady straight into a kind of urban priestess-hood.'

Ceremonies in Old White Men I

I was struck a few months ago by a Liz Henry lj entry (unlinked 'cause I don't know if she wants her real name associated with the lj in question) expressing apathy on the occasion of John Updike's death, saying something like "Which one was Updike? I get him confused with Irving and Roth." I don't: Updike, to me, is by far the most worthless of the three. From the imbecilic wife in Rabbit Run to the black characters in Rabbit Redux and The Coup, from his defense of the Vietnam War on Lutheran grounds to his argument that Desmond Morris was a more persuasive essayist than Carl Sagan, Updike exemplified --and in some ways invented-- the novelist for which the most important issue in the world is the inner life of a solipsistic lower-middle-class or professional white guy who meanders through the world thinking that he is thinking. Even Dan Green, averse as he is to political judgments of literature, has noted here and there that readers sensitive to misogyny might have problems with Updike. The guy wrote some lovely and acute descriptive passages, particularly of small town life, but he really missed the cluetrain. More frustrating to me than the man's values, however, are those of his worshippers: Chip McGrath has some interesting praise for Updike's strengths, but doesn't seem to grasp what could possibly have prompted Wallace to call him a "phallocrat"; similarly, McEwan is very informative; but his piece includes a scummy little attack on Updike's feminist detractors and a celebration of the man's famously mawkish descriptions of sex (vide, for a refreshing counterpoint, Francine Prose's "Scent of a Woman's Ink."). Bellow was his only peer, says McEwan? Thank God!

My beef with Philip Roth rests almost entirely on his outsized symbolic capital: that is, I think he's a talented writer of limited scope who is vastly overrated; and again, I'm really suspicious of his most zealous fans. They tend either to be phallocrats themselves or misandric women who say, "But all men really are like that!" Roth himself knows that his talents lie in the presentation of a certain kind of gynophobic male pov character (his attempts to write a woman's inner world in The Counterlife are so flat that I expect a lack of self-confidence is a factor in their failure). It's easiest to deal with that theme, for me, when the character in question is an inexperienced youth: hence I have no reservations about holding The Ghost Writer in high regard, and I was able to bracket most of the shortcomings of Goodbye, Columbus. If he had only been able to translate his insights on Jewish-American identity to address the experiences of other once-stigmatized groups seeking mainstream legitimation, The Human Stain could have been more than an entertaining conservative melodrama that really should have been published in Mass Market Paperback by Otto Penzler.

This is Part I of a diptych that, I hope, will go on to address John Irving and Donald Westlake.

Fascinating, informative and entertaining"

Rick Kleffel reviews Ursula K. Le Guin's Cheek by Jowl for the Agony Column. Here's a chunk of his review:

Ursula K. Leguin's 'Cheek by Jowl' (Aqueduct Press ; April 2009 ; $16) is an essential book of writing about writing and reading, particularly in the genres of fantasy and young adult fiction. If you either plan on reading or writing either, this book will be the magnifying glass and prescription eyeglasses that will make it all clear, bring it all into focus, heighten your vision. This is meta-reading.

'Cheek by Jowl'is an important book by any measure. Essays and non-fiction by one of today's most important literary figures are always welcome, but 'Cheek by Jowl' offers transcribed and expanded speeches from Ursula K. Le Guin, targeted at those who are interested in reading — and writing fantasy. And here's one the best aspects of this book; it's the product not of some castoff imprint of a mega-publisher, but the work of Aqueduct Press, a dedicated small press with an emphasis on genre fiction and women. At the moment, through May 1, they're offering a pre-release special of $12, making this book even more of a must-buy.

'Cheek by Jowl' includes 8 essays that you simply could not find collected anywhere else, and most of which you’d have been pretty hard-pressed to find in the first place. These include speeches and magazine articles, many of which have been altered and expanded for this publication. It's beautifully illustrated with a three-page list of the sources of the illustrations. It also includes an extensive bibliography for those who would read more.

Newspaper Reviews of F/SF

As you may have noticed, when newspapers aren't disappearing altogether, their book review sections more often than not are. To discuss this, Nisi Shawl, Michael Berry and other newspaper reviewers participated in A Book Reviewer Roundtable on "The Future of Newspapers and Book Coverage." Among the questions considered: What do readers lose when book coverage is cut? What does the newspaper lose? Is there anything gained? The participants are also asked to name "one of the most memorable science fiction/fantasy books reviewed during your career." Oh, and a couple of the comments on the roundtable are interesting, too.

The first review of Centuries Ago and Very Fast

Richard Labonte reviews Rebecca Ore's Centuries Ago and Very Fast here, characterizing the collection of linked stories as a "hugely imaginative fable." His review begins:

In his 15,000 years, gay immortal Vel has seen it all, from mastodons roaming the Earth in the Pleistocene era to the Stonewall riots in1969. He's had innumerable lovers, remaining young as they aged. He can trip through time, offering one boyfriend in the 20th century a handful of woolly mammoth fur snatched in a flash from thousands of years past....

"Ore," he concludes, "a mainstream science fiction novelist and short story writer with James Tiptree, Jr. and Philip K. Dick nominations to her credit, has crafted a time-travel tale incorporating ancient religious rites, a tender gay love story, snapshots of historical attitudes about homosexuality - and earthy queer erotica."

A Tale of Two Plagiarisms

Like most people, I have long imagined that tenured faculty at major universities, when well-respected by their colleagues and appreciated by their students, are safe from summary, arbitrary dismissal from their jobs by administrators. Yesterday, I was shocked to hear about the case of Theresa Cameron, who was dismissed without notice-- completely out of the blue, without even a hearing or input from the colleagues in her own department-- from Arizona State University on a charge that can only be considered ignorant or malicious: that of writing a course syllabus that borrows from other instructors' syllabi (which as most people who teach at the university level know, is a common practice), which the administrator inappropriately calls "plagiarism." I had always assumed that tenured faculty at reputable institutions were assured of due process: that their tenure guaranteed them, at least, an opportunity to defend their jobs and reputations. (Needless to say, untenured faculty usually have no such rights.) That, I now see, was naive of me.

In the piece below, mathematician Neal Koblitz of the University of Washington lays out the facts of the case.

A TALE OF TWO PLAGIARISMS

by Neal Koblitz, Professor of Mathematics,

University of Washington, Seattle

Consider three scenarios:

(1) You're filling in for a colleague by teaching his course while he's on leave. Knowing that the topic is far from your expertise and the colleague has an excellent reputation as a teacher, you decide simply to use his syllabus from last year. You copy it, change the due dates and the instructor's name, contact information, and office hours, and distribute it to students.

(2) Following a general trend, you decide that you have to enlarge your syllabus by including details on expected academic and personal conduct by students. Not wanting to reinvent the wheel, you decide to simply copy the student conduct section from a colleague's syllabus.

(3) Returning from disability leave, you have a dispute with the dean of your school about your teaching assignment. Because your disability causes you to have much less energy in the afternoon, you ask for morning classes. The dean refuses, your appeals fail, and you end up with an afternoon class. By this time the start of classes is just a few days away. You hurriedly cobble together a syllabus by copying sections of syllabi that are available online and seem to cover roughly what will be in your course. You distribute this syllabus to students and explain to them that it's very rough and you'll probably announce major changes as the semester progresses.

Syllabi are not normally footnoted, and in none of the above scenarios do the syllabi include attributions to the sources of the copied material. Is this plagiarism? In most settings the answer would probably be No.

However, if your name is Theresa Cameron and you're a professor in the College of Architecture and Planning (CAP) at Arizona State University (ASU), then the answer is a resounding Yes. On September 7, 2007, ASU President Michael M. Crow, following the recommendation of CAP Dean Wellington Reiter, wrote Dr. Cameron a letter summarily revoking her tenure and dismissing her. The reasons given were "plagiarism of syllabi" and two other charges.

On April 22 and May 5, 2008, ASU's Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure heard Dr. Cameron's appeal of her firing. My wife Ann, who is a professor of Women and Gender Studies at ASU, and I attended as much of the hearing as we could. Dr. Cameron produced witnesses who refuted the two other charges, but she agreed that she had made up syllabi in ways similar to those described in the three scenarios above. After the administration's two other charges against her fell apart, the only remaining basis for dismissal was Dr. Cameron's "plagiarized" syllabi.

On May 5, Dean Reiter testified before the Committee. I heard him repeatedly and emphatically declare that copying material onto syllabi without attribution constituted "egregious plagiarism" and by itself was sufficient grounds for immediate dismissal of a tenured professor.

But wait a minute! Isn't ASU the same university that was at the center of the plagiarism scandal reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education on December 17, 2004? In that case ASU professor of plant biology Charles J. Arntzen took a published paper by a graduate student, copied large portions of it without permission or attribution, and published it under Arntzen's name as part of a longer book chapter. What did ASU President Crow do about Dr. Arntzen's blatant plagiarism? Nothing. Dr. Arntzen is currently Regents' Professor at Arizona State University.

So why was the ASU administration so lenient with Dr. Arntzen and so draconian with Dr. Cameron? The answer to this question is not hard to discern. Dr. Arntzen is a "good old boy" who gets along well with the powers-that-be. In contrast, Theresa Cameron is an African American woman who is intensely disliked by the dean of her school.

Dr. Cameron came to ASU in 1997 and enjoyed six happy and productive years at the university. She was granted tenure in 2000, and as recognition of her excellent teaching she was appointed a Faculty Fellow for 2000-2001. (That's how my wife Ann, who was also a Faculty Fellow that year, made her acquaintance.) Her first book was published in 2002.

But in 2003 Michael Crow became president of ASU and soon after brought in Wellington Reiter to head the CAP. Almost immediately Dr. Cameron's conditions got worse. Dean Reiter resented Cameron's complaints about an increasingly hostile environment for her, which included blatantly racist jokes and pranks. (One of the student witnesses supporting Cameron reported that one of the students who had complained about her was heard referring to Dr. Cameron with the "n" word.) And Dean Reiter appears to have been irritated by Cameron's attempts to get special accommodations for her disabilities. What has developed over the last five years has been a truly tragic situation -- not only for Dr. Cameron, whose medical condition has worsened during the years of constant stress and persecution -- but also for the broad university community.

If ASU were led by people of high intellectual and social principles, the university would be immensely proud to have Dr. Cameron on the faculty. Theresa Cameron overcame tremendous odds to become a scholar and teacher. Born in poverty and raised until adulthood in foster homes, at one point she doubted that she would even graduate from high school. This story is told in her acclaimed book Foster Care Odyssey.

Aside from her writings on the foster care system, Dr. Cameron's main research interests have concerned the human side of urban planning. For example, her research project with students when she was a Faculty Fellow was to investigate the history of the once-vibrant minority neighborhoods of Tempe that were displaced by ASU's expansion. Her work at the university has combined excellence in research, teaching, and community service -- exactly what any decent university wants to see in a faculty member.

We must support Dr. Cameron in her battle to correct the injustice inflicted on her by the ASU administration. If we don't, then all our pronouncements about our belief in the importance of diversity -- in gender, race, and socio-economic class -- become just empty words.

Help out a small press: good reading for sale at Electric Velocipede

It's been a long time since I posted here, but I thought this might be of interest to Aqueduct readers:

John Klima, the editor of Electric Velocipede, is having a little financial trouble.

Consequently, he's redoubling energies toward selling some of the back issues of Electric Velocipede, as well as some of the chapbooks that he's printed through his small press.

People who enjoy my work can find the original printing of my story "How the World Became Quiet: A Post-Human Creation Myth" (later printed at Escape Pod and in Best American Fantasy 2) in Electric Velocipede #13 for $5.

Though I haven't read it yet, I just ordered and am looking forward to "An Alternate History of the 21st Century", a chapbook of stories by William Shunn, whose story "Colin and Ishmael in the Dark" we featured on PodCastle this Halloween.

Other available magazines feature work by authors like Cory Doctorow, Karen Joy Fowler, Jeffrey Ford, and Hal Duncan.

Electric Velocipede has a reputation for publishing the quirkiest available in science fiction, fantasy, and other fiction of the weird. John Klima likes to publish the weird and wonderful, stuff that you won't find anywhere else.

John Klima has a strong, unique editing voice. Check out his catalog and see if anything strikes your fancy.

Amazonfail: It's Not Over Yet

Amazon has fixed some though by no means all of the problems encompassed by "amazonfail."

But as to amazonfail's being caused by a "glitch"? Unless "amazonfail" is only narrowly defined in terms of its having affected works of mainstream literature or scholarship that management probably didn't intend to censor, I profoundly doubt it. After reading Francine Saint Marie's Amazon's "Glitch" Myth Debunked, I really don't think it's possible to go on giving Amazon the benefit of the doubt. Her post begins

I am the author of the LAMBDA Notable Book, The Secret Keeping, as well as The Secret Trilogy, Girl Trouble, and several other popular LGBT paperbacks sold on Amazon.com.

All of my novels have been aggressively censored by Amazon since (at least) January of 2008, when they were first released as Kindle editions and promptly rigged in the Kindle store so as not to register any sales ranks and bestselling categories, or to show up properly in Amazon search results. I have also experienced mysterious "sourcing fees" applied by Amazon to the list prices of my LGBT paperbacks, as well as the deletion of five-star customer reviews of them, the removal of their "in stock" status, and a host of other handicapping techniques which are still in effect today.

She relates a Kafkaesque tale anyone who's tried to penetrate the shrouds of corporate bureaucracy will appreciate.

Manufacturing Boredom

Aqueductista Vandana Singh has an insightful post-- On Why People Don't Like Science, Especially Physics-- on her blog. Go read it now!

Just for You

In case you missed it, check out Sarah Warn's stylish satire Amazon.com announces Lesbian Kindle. According to Warn, Amazon wants "to show our gay and lesbian customers we truly have our ham-handed fist on the pulse of gay America." The Lesbian Kindle comes with a choice of white tank top cover, flannel cover, and leather-bound L word Cover. How can you resist? Available only through afterellen.com.

(Link thanks to Ide Cyan on the Feminist SF Blog.)

Ursula K. Le Guin's Cheek by Jowl-- hot off the press!

Aqueduct Press is pleased to announce the release of Cheek by Jowl, a collection of talks and essays on how and why fantasy matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin. In these essays, Le Guin argues passionately that the homogenization of our world makes the work of fantasy essential for helping us break through what she calls "the reality trap." Le Guin writes not only of the pleasures of her own childhood reading, but also about what fantasy means for all of us living in the global twenty-first century.

The monstrous homogenization of our world has now almost destroyed the map, any map, by making every place on it exactly like every other place, and leaving no blanks….As in the Mandelbrot fractal set, the enormously large and the infinitesimally small are exactly the same, and the same leads always to the same again; there is no other; there is no escape, because there is nowhere else.

In reinventing the world of intense, unreproducible, local knowledge, seemingly by a denial or evasion of current reality, fantasists are perhaps trying to assert and explore a larger reality than we now allow ourselves. They are trying to restore the sense - to regain the knowledge - that there is somewhere else, anywhere else, where other people may live another kind of life.

The literature of imagination, even when tragic, is reassuring, not necessarily in the sense of offering nostalgic comfort, but because it offers a world large enough to contain alternatives and therefore offers hope.
— from Cheek by Jowl

"I had many a-ha moments as I was reading the various essays-places where Le Guin articulated something I understood, or believed, but hadn't put into words… [Le Guin] is smart and erudite and never talks down to the reader, but never makes her arguments too hard to follow, either. She's good with facts, but she allows emotional content, something you don't always get in the same package. I highly recommend this book." — Charles de Lint, Magazine of Fantasy and Sciente Fiction June/July 2009

"Ursula K. Le Guin may be on the short list of great writers to emerge from our little corner of the map, but she's also something of a skirmisher… and she continues to ask the questions here, mostly in the context of children's and YA literature, with the unflagging passion and clarity we've come to expect from her critical writing."
— Gary K. Wolfe, Locus April 2009

Since Aqueduct has taken delivery of several boxes of Cheek by Jowl and the official release date is April 30, we'll be selling the book at a $4 discount until May 1 through our site. You can order your copy here.

Lessons from Amazonfail

I've seen some excellent posts on amazonfail over the last couple of days. I'd like to draw your attention to two in particular that address the ethical issues that can't be dismissed by attributing amazonfail entirely to a misfortunate typo (which an undisclosed source inside Amazon.com apparently claims was made by a French employee). At TechCrunch, technologist Mary Hodder's Why Amazon Didn't Just Have A Glitch discusses algorithms and institutional bias as illuminated by amazonfail.

The issue with #AmazonFail isn’t that a French Employee pressed the wrong button or could affect the system by changing “false” to “true” in filtering certain “adult” classified items, it’s that Amazon’s system has assumptions such as: sexual orientation is part of “adult”. And “gay” is part of “adult.” In other words, #AmazonFail is about the subconscious assumptions of people built into algorithms and classification that contain discriminatory ideas. When other employees use the system, whether they themselves agree with the underlying assumptions of the algorithms and classification system, or even realize the system has these point’s of view built in, they can put those assumptions into force, as the Amazon France Employee apparently did according to Amazon.

As Hodder observes,

The ethical issue with algorithms and information systems generally is that they make choices about what information to use, or display or hide, and this makes them very powerful. These choices are never made in a vacuum and reflect both the conscious and subconscious assumptions and ideas of their creators.

The ethics bar in creating algorithms and classification systems should be very high. In fact I would suggest that companies with power in the marketplace, both commercial and ideas, should consider outside review of these systems’ assumptions and points of view so the results are fair.

Algorithms are often invisible, and difficult to detect by design, because technologies that use them are designed not to share the methods for providing information. This is mainly because users are focused on the tasks at hand in information systems, and given good information, they don’t need to know everything under the system’s hood, and because technology makers like to keep the ’secret sauce” hidden from competitors, not to mention people who would game systems for their own devices such as spammers or other bad actors.

A post on the Equal Justice Society blog extends Hodder's discussion: How the Amazon "Glitch" Relates to Structural Discrimination and Racism. The author of the post, Keith, writes

In both the Amazon glitch and structural social groups, the impact of system-driven automatic choices is often irrefutable: a category of books and a category of people suffer from discrimination that has a clear negative impact on their opportunity to succeed.

In both cases, the causes of the problem are constructs - one technological, one sociological - a creation by human beings that have no inherent malice, but result in discrimination because bias seeds the way the systems make choices.

Some of the reactions to Hodder’s analysis also sing the same tunes to those we hear when we present the notion that unconscious bias, even in the absence of conscious discrimination, impedes opportunity.

(Links thanks to Michelle Murrain.)

And by the way, just so you know: the Aqueduct book struck by amazonfail, Centuries Ago and Very Fast, is now available at Powells.com.