Monday, June 6, 2011
Quote of the day
Hope is a contraband passed from hand to hand, and story to story.---John Berger, Bento's Sketchbook
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Commemorating Joanna Russ at WisCon 35
As I mentioned in one of my early posts about WisCon 35, in addition to honoring Nisi Shawl, who was Guest of Honor, and celebrating Carol Emshwiller's life and work, this WisCon offered a special tribute to her, organized at the very last moment.
At the reception Thursday evening at Room of One's Own, Candra Gill gave a thrilling reading of "When It Changed."
On Saturday afternoon there was a panel on her work (which I couldn't attend, because it conflicted with the panel on Carol Emshwiller, to which I contributed).
And on Sunday evening, preceding Nisi's Guest of Honor speech, a statement about Russ's importance, sent by Farah Mendlesohn, who could not attend, was read, and Eileen Gunn, Amy Thomson, Geoff Ryman, Jeanne Gomoll, and I spoke about Joanna. I led off with the speech you can find below. Just as I arrived on the podium, Kate Schaefer handed me a vase of iris that had been culled from the yard of Joanna's house when she lived in Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle. This strangely undid me, and left me so choked up I could hardly deliver my speech. I didn't actually break down, but I was in such an emotional state when I left the podium that I forgot to introduce Eileen, who followed me. Eileen stressed Joanna's geekiness. Amy recounted the time when Joanna stood up in the audience at a panel on "Future Crime" at Norwescon, "tearing Afie Bester a new one" for "declaring that for every criminal who wanted to commit a crime, there would be someone who wanted to be a victim. If you wanted to commit a murder, they'd pair you up with a suicidal person. For every rapist, they'd find someone who wanted to be raped." Jeanne described her astonishment at discovering, as she was publicly reading her "Open Letter to Joanna Russ" to find Joanna in the audience, and her intense pleasure in spending hours talking with Joanna afterwards. Geoff spoke of the brilliance of We Who Are About To... and its compassionate exploration of its narrator's thoughts as she approaches death.
WisCon's tribute to Joanna mattered tremendously to me. I am so glad the folks at WisCon brought it about.
Here is my speech, which is an only slightly altered version of the appreciation I wrote for Locus (published, along with appreciations from Eileen and Amy, in the June issue).
When I first met Joanna Russ, she was younger than I am now, though she had already written all the novels she would publish in her lifetime. Because, at the time, she had a novel of which she had written 75 pages on hold (storing it in her freezer for safekeeping, which is what one did with typescripts), I expected that when she had finished the nonfiction book she was working on—what would eventually be published as What Are We Fighting For?—she would go on to finish that novel.
When I first met Joanna Russ, I regarded her as a goddess of wit and perspicacity whose feminist theorizing always seemed to articulate perfectly problems I'd been grappling with myself, a revered member of the pantheon of creative feminist writers who had made possible the person I was and would become. Reading her shapely, scathing litany—“She wrote it, but...”—I at once recognized its kinship with other canonical feminist work. In my heart, Joanna Russ was the Virginia Woolf of our day.
Joanna was a goddess, but all too human. A great advocate for consciousness-raising, she was the first person to raise my consciousness about ableism. When I first met Joanna Russ, she had recently recovered from a back injury that had immobilized her for months. To write, she stood at a tall table in her workroom. While sitting at her kitchen table, where we talked, she always occupied an ergonomic kneeling stool. She also suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. But it was depression that kept her from writing. She continually tried new drugs, each of which had horrible side-effects, including memory wipes that would result in her not remembering some of our conversations. One terrible December she spent two weeks in the psych ward of a hospital two blocks from my house. There's not much light in Seattle in December; when Joanna left the hospital, her talk about moving to the desert grew serious.
What I remember most vividly about Joanna was her powerful physical presence—her great height, her piercing gaze that maintained an extraordinary degree of eye-contact, her gleeful laughter and screeches of pleasure—and her particular personal qualities: lightning understanding and compassion and the sizzling power of her intellect—yes, even during her hospitalization for depression.
Though she had for several years declared herself “retired,” in her final letter to me, this last December, after alluding to the "long list of illnesses that've been getting in my way," she writes "But medicine has finally caught up with most of them and by the time I get back on to orthopedic OKness and fix a torn tendon in my left hand letter-writing will be much easier." The penultimate sentence was "In a few months I hope to be more ambulatory and type-competent." The tone of her letter was strikingly cheerful and energetic. It made me hope that she would begin writing again.
Joanna is gone, but her work remains, every bit of it still important and powerful. And we are all the richer for it.
ETA: Since seeing Amy Thomson's obituary in Locus, I've corrected the portion of my summary of her tribute characterizing Bester's declaration about murder and rape victims.
On Saturday afternoon there was a panel on her work (which I couldn't attend, because it conflicted with the panel on Carol Emshwiller, to which I contributed).
And on Sunday evening, preceding Nisi's Guest of Honor speech, a statement about Russ's importance, sent by Farah Mendlesohn, who could not attend, was read, and Eileen Gunn, Amy Thomson, Geoff Ryman, Jeanne Gomoll, and I spoke about Joanna. I led off with the speech you can find below. Just as I arrived on the podium, Kate Schaefer handed me a vase of iris that had been culled from the yard of Joanna's house when she lived in Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle. This strangely undid me, and left me so choked up I could hardly deliver my speech. I didn't actually break down, but I was in such an emotional state when I left the podium that I forgot to introduce Eileen, who followed me. Eileen stressed Joanna's geekiness. Amy recounted the time when Joanna stood up in the audience at a panel on "Future Crime" at Norwescon, "tearing Afie Bester a new one" for "declaring that for every criminal who wanted to commit a crime, there would be someone who wanted to be a victim. If you wanted to commit a murder, they'd pair you up with a suicidal person. For every rapist, they'd find someone who wanted to be raped." Jeanne described her astonishment at discovering, as she was publicly reading her "Open Letter to Joanna Russ" to find Joanna in the audience, and her intense pleasure in spending hours talking with Joanna afterwards. Geoff spoke of the brilliance of We Who Are About To... and its compassionate exploration of its narrator's thoughts as she approaches death.
WisCon's tribute to Joanna mattered tremendously to me. I am so glad the folks at WisCon brought it about.
Here is my speech, which is an only slightly altered version of the appreciation I wrote for Locus (published, along with appreciations from Eileen and Amy, in the June issue).
When I first met Joanna Russ, she was younger than I am now, though she had already written all the novels she would publish in her lifetime. Because, at the time, she had a novel of which she had written 75 pages on hold (storing it in her freezer for safekeeping, which is what one did with typescripts), I expected that when she had finished the nonfiction book she was working on—what would eventually be published as What Are We Fighting For?—she would go on to finish that novel.
When I first met Joanna Russ, I regarded her as a goddess of wit and perspicacity whose feminist theorizing always seemed to articulate perfectly problems I'd been grappling with myself, a revered member of the pantheon of creative feminist writers who had made possible the person I was and would become. Reading her shapely, scathing litany—“She wrote it, but...”—I at once recognized its kinship with other canonical feminist work. In my heart, Joanna Russ was the Virginia Woolf of our day.
Joanna was a goddess, but all too human. A great advocate for consciousness-raising, she was the first person to raise my consciousness about ableism. When I first met Joanna Russ, she had recently recovered from a back injury that had immobilized her for months. To write, she stood at a tall table in her workroom. While sitting at her kitchen table, where we talked, she always occupied an ergonomic kneeling stool. She also suffered from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. But it was depression that kept her from writing. She continually tried new drugs, each of which had horrible side-effects, including memory wipes that would result in her not remembering some of our conversations. One terrible December she spent two weeks in the psych ward of a hospital two blocks from my house. There's not much light in Seattle in December; when Joanna left the hospital, her talk about moving to the desert grew serious.
What I remember most vividly about Joanna was her powerful physical presence—her great height, her piercing gaze that maintained an extraordinary degree of eye-contact, her gleeful laughter and screeches of pleasure—and her particular personal qualities: lightning understanding and compassion and the sizzling power of her intellect—yes, even during her hospitalization for depression.
Though she had for several years declared herself “retired,” in her final letter to me, this last December, after alluding to the "long list of illnesses that've been getting in my way," she writes "But medicine has finally caught up with most of them and by the time I get back on to orthopedic OKness and fix a torn tendon in my left hand letter-writing will be much easier." The penultimate sentence was "In a few months I hope to be more ambulatory and type-competent." The tone of her letter was strikingly cheerful and energetic. It made me hope that she would begin writing again.
Joanna is gone, but her work remains, every bit of it still important and powerful. And we are all the richer for it.
ETA: Since seeing Amy Thomson's obituary in Locus, I've corrected the portion of my summary of her tribute characterizing Bester's declaration about murder and rape victims.
WisCon Chronicles, vol. 6 submission details
Over at Futures of Feminism and Fandom: The WisCon Chronicles Volume 6, Alexis Lothian has posted the submission details for the next volume of the WiCon Chronicles, which she is editing. If you're interested in contributing, you'll want to read the whole post. But here's the gist:
This year's theme, 'Futures of Feminism and Fandom,' is intended to focus on the ways that WisCon embodies movements toward a broader and more intersectional understanding of what feminism is and can be, as well as how changes in technology and communication affect our experience of fandom and of feminism. Panel reports, contemplations, and other thoughts (or images!) relating to this are all very welcome. If you have something you want to write about, an event at WisCon that you want to document, or a response to something that's happened online relating to the con, please write to me and/or submit even if it doesn't seem obviously related to the theme.
The initial deadline is August 1 2011. You are more than welcome to submit earlier––perhaps you want to start writing while WisCon is fresh in your memory? Send your submission as a Word or .rtf file to wischronicles @ gmail dot com. Lengths are flexible; aim for 2500 words if you aren't sure.
Differences conceptualizing "feminist sf"
Over at Torque Control, Niall Harrison has posted transcript of a BBC Woman's Hour segment that I (and perhaps others) have been having a difficult time trying to access, featuring a discussion by Gwyneth Jones, Karen Traviss, and Farah Mendlesohn about their take on the current situation of women writers and readers in science fiction. The discussion opens with Gwyneth voicing her regret at not having adopted a male pseudonym from the beginning of her career. I can understand that regret, since--providing she either disguised her physical appearnce or chose not to have a public life as a writer, which is, to say the least, difficult these days, given how important a public face is for selling one's work--she'd have been taken more seriously than she is now. (Arguably, she's taken more seriously than just about any other woman science fiction writer today than Ursula K. Le Guin. But she is also, I think, regretting the effect of the female name on her sales.)
But as I read on, I found her elaboration of her statement of regret fairly startling. Her reasoning, apparently, has nothing to do with the differential treatment accorded women writers (and not just by Naipaul), but, rather, centers on a dated, peculiarly narrow definition of "feminism" and "feminist science fiction":
For a US feminist, at least, this formulation of feminism might apply to 1970s cultural and liberal feminisms, but it never applied to, say, socialist feminism. Granted, for all of the 1970s socialist feminists struggled mightily in their efforts to fit two dualistic systems of political thought together (in what was commonly called "the marriage of feminism and socialism"), so that they would not have to choose between socialism and feminism, but by the late 1970s and early 1980s, when black feminists' theorizations of intersectionality began to gain traction with white feminists like me, the "battle of the sexes" orientation of feminism pretty much went the way of the dodo. Consider WisCon's Statement of Principles, written in late 2010 by Mikki Kendall, Debbie Notkin, and Victor Raymond, with input from Jeanne Gomoll, Cat Hanna, Liz Henry, Lou Hoffman, Jackie Lee, Kafryn Lieder, Karen Meisner, and Lisa Petriello. It offers, here, its sense of feminism:
What Gwyneth's narrow definition of feminism omits is both intersectionality and feminist process.
Mind, I don't mean to single Gwyneth out. I suspect this is a difference in conceptualization between US & UK sf circles. A few WisCons back I spoke briefly with Niall and afterwards, puzzling over our exchange, realized we had been talking (and thinking) at cross-purposes. My impression was that he didn't understand why feminist sf (in the US) even existed. (IIRC, he said that in the UK feminist sf did not exist and that there was no reason there for it to do so.) I suspect our conversation would be very different today because he's had so much more exposure to feminist sf since then.
As many regular readers of this blog know, because I publish "feminist sf" I felt it necessary to publish my collection of four essays, The Grand Conversation, which explains my own conceptualization of "feminist sf." For me, only a narrow area of feminist sf concerns the Battle of the Sexes, and its an area I attend to only when outside forces make it impossible not to do so. Those who've read much of Aqueduct's list will of course already know this, since I doubt that even one of the books I've so far published could be characterized as "disentangling the battle of the sexes," not even the first two volumes in our Heirloom Series, which reprints materials from the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s (except, of course, through misreading, which people who haven't gone beyond Feminism 101 are heavily prone to do with feminist work). For me (and for many other readers), Gwyneth's novel Life (one of her "later" works of science fiction) is permeated with feminist issues. (I don't really see how anyone, feminist or not, can escape feminist issues when they set out to show a woman doing science, given the prevailing attitudes of the day.) Any author is free to characterize their work as they wish, but their view does not really carry much more weight than that of the most articulate of the book's readers.
Here's how I see it: Life is in critical conversation with other works of science fiction in general and other works of feminist science in particular. The former makes it science fiction, the latter makes it feminist science fiction. If books like Life become part of the broader conversation of the field, if female authors and their books are as commonly included in the field's conversation as male authors, feminist science fiction will go away as a sub-genre. At that point, Aqueduct Press would stop calling itself "feminist." It's that simple.
But as I read on, I found her elaboration of her statement of regret fairly startling. Her reasoning, apparently, has nothing to do with the differential treatment accorded women writers (and not just by Naipaul), but, rather, centers on a dated, peculiarly narrow definition of "feminism" and "feminist science fiction":
My later books, which are in my reading not at all feminist science fiction, although they have female characters — it would be strange if they didn’t — are now feminist. And I find that a disadvantage on two counts. First, because I know what feminist science fiction was about, it was about disentangling the battle of the sexes and I’m not doing that, and I don’t want my books to be read as feminist when they’re not addressing that agenda and second, yes, because the word feminist is poison to many sectors of the science fiction audience. And that’s a shame.
For a US feminist, at least, this formulation of feminism might apply to 1970s cultural and liberal feminisms, but it never applied to, say, socialist feminism. Granted, for all of the 1970s socialist feminists struggled mightily in their efforts to fit two dualistic systems of political thought together (in what was commonly called "the marriage of feminism and socialism"), so that they would not have to choose between socialism and feminism, but by the late 1970s and early 1980s, when black feminists' theorizations of intersectionality began to gain traction with white feminists like me, the "battle of the sexes" orientation of feminism pretty much went the way of the dodo. Consider WisCon's Statement of Principles, written in late 2010 by Mikki Kendall, Debbie Notkin, and Victor Raymond, with input from Jeanne Gomoll, Cat Hanna, Liz Henry, Lou Hoffman, Jackie Lee, Kafryn Lieder, Karen Meisner, and Lisa Petriello. It offers, here, its sense of feminism:
Our focus includes science fiction, fantasy, and speculative literature of all sorts. Science fiction itself has been critiqued as a colonialist and imperialist genre, and in many ways this is true. But many of those influenced by it are dedicated to changing the genre to more accurately reflect the field's vital role in our society: envisioning positive futures for all people. WisCon's focus on science fiction has played an important role in the exploration of feminist futures: futures where people of all colors, and backgrounds flourish, where women's rights and women's contributions are valued, where gender is not limited to one of two options, where no one is erased out of convenience, hidden discrimination, or outright bigotry.
Feminism, at its root, is the belief that women and men are equal, and the rejection of sexist beliefs and practices. We, as feminists, have come to realize that all forms of oppression are interrelated. Our practice of feminism is based on a belief in the social, political, and economic equality of all. Feminism is part of a larger constellation of movements seeking social, political and economic equality for all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, class, sex, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, creed, ability, status, or belief.
Feminism is vital to WisCon's identity. Feminism itself has grown and changed over the decades, and WisCon has worked to reflect those changes. Since its inception, WisCon has worked to create a space for feminism and its consideration within the science fiction community.
At base, we recognize that a commitment to feminism means a commitment to social justice of all sorts--we might not be able to focus equally on every issue, but still we cannot pick and choose which people deserve justice and which issues we are more comfortable with. We are called to be true to our principles, even (and especially) when they are unpopular.
WisCon's commitment to feminism is also reflected in our processes. Meetings, decision-making processes, program development, and guest of honor choice all reflect a commitment to feminist ideals of equality, respect for everyone's right to be heard, and the obligation to hold each other accountable for what we say. WisCon's commitment to feminist process means that we reject hierarchies of oppression, recognizing that "the need...to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive." (paraphrased from Audre Lorde's essay, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," which can be found in her collection Sister/Outsider.)
For 35 years, WisCon has aimed high. By our long existence and commitment to our goals, we have changed the face of science fiction and we will continue to do so. When we make mistakes, we keep working to improve. WisCon's commitment to feminist science fiction and feminist process is a commitment to ensuring that our future is not just for not just white, well-off, able-bodied, straight men, but rather includes everyone.
What Gwyneth's narrow definition of feminism omits is both intersectionality and feminist process.
Mind, I don't mean to single Gwyneth out. I suspect this is a difference in conceptualization between US & UK sf circles. A few WisCons back I spoke briefly with Niall and afterwards, puzzling over our exchange, realized we had been talking (and thinking) at cross-purposes. My impression was that he didn't understand why feminist sf (in the US) even existed. (IIRC, he said that in the UK feminist sf did not exist and that there was no reason there for it to do so.) I suspect our conversation would be very different today because he's had so much more exposure to feminist sf since then.
As many regular readers of this blog know, because I publish "feminist sf" I felt it necessary to publish my collection of four essays, The Grand Conversation, which explains my own conceptualization of "feminist sf." For me, only a narrow area of feminist sf concerns the Battle of the Sexes, and its an area I attend to only when outside forces make it impossible not to do so. Those who've read much of Aqueduct's list will of course already know this, since I doubt that even one of the books I've so far published could be characterized as "disentangling the battle of the sexes," not even the first two volumes in our Heirloom Series, which reprints materials from the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s (except, of course, through misreading, which people who haven't gone beyond Feminism 101 are heavily prone to do with feminist work). For me (and for many other readers), Gwyneth's novel Life (one of her "later" works of science fiction) is permeated with feminist issues. (I don't really see how anyone, feminist or not, can escape feminist issues when they set out to show a woman doing science, given the prevailing attitudes of the day.) Any author is free to characterize their work as they wish, but their view does not really carry much more weight than that of the most articulate of the book's readers.
Here's how I see it: Life is in critical conversation with other works of science fiction in general and other works of feminist science in particular. The former makes it science fiction, the latter makes it feminist science fiction. If books like Life become part of the broader conversation of the field, if female authors and their books are as commonly included in the field's conversation as male authors, feminist science fiction will go away as a sub-genre. At that point, Aqueduct Press would stop calling itself "feminist." It's that simple.
Capitol protest songs
Music has always been important to political protest. In connection with the WisCon panel "This Is What Democracy Looks Like: the Wisconsin Protests," Fred Schepartz, one of the panelists and a Madison activist, sent me the following list of Capitol Protest songs. Do check these out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPdhJHNef-M&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk3hBPyetwA&feature=youtube_gdata_player http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TiWKg0dpRo&feature=youtube_gdata_player http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygWgtFl06Xg&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhHA1V30xAs&feature=share http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1927493357292&oid=119299284814068&comments http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZT71DxLuM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOvFlUWtdBA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya9NK_D1Gy0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8CmvCNRXdA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHKL21xivJw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfxH0-4VT5w&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8_V-joa5po&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGc46S7el3U&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuLfPslVGb4&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_dHUXF2blE&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGuwfi05UAM&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AB2TVsyqCs&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN-vIdszY5w http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpuFUXYT3G0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gblWJyoA-_I&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=heVhxlEPefQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-odkc3UolJY&feature=player_embedded#at=43 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_4AQKHjQKo&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpuFUXYT3G0 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VdB-oCo4PE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9AoVjvsdKQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTuf826MQQs&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dclGgXl5pvM&feature=youtu.be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCNaBe2Sl10 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awf6UF5d0AM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOnxh-7QfM4
Saturday, June 4, 2011
So he tells himself he' s a better writer than Jane Austen. Or Virginia Woolf. Or... really, any woman
Just before boarding a flight taking me home to Seattle this afternoon, I read this.* For a moment, I felt the disorientation of someone who'd been flung back in time to 1970. But then the obnoxious voices of Airport CNN televisions blaring in stereo from each side of me (way to go, MSP!) battered their way into my consciousness, voices babbling of two alternate futures for the US (or was it the world) that US politicians would soon be choosing from (for us lesser folk, presumably, since we apparently don't get a say in such matters). And of course I knew, then, that it was really 2011, and it hadn't been I who'd ventured out of her time, but a certain delusional Nobel Laureate.
Now that I'm both home and safely back in the 21st century, I think I'm going to take a bath. The steller's jay in my cherry tree sounds as if it's laughing its head off.
________________
*Here's the choicest bit:
Now that I'm both home and safely back in the 21st century, I think I'm going to take a bath. The steller's jay in my cherry tree sounds as if it's laughing its head off.
________________
*Here's the choicest bit:
In an interview at the Royal Geographic Society on Tuesday about his career, Naipaul, who has been described as the "greatest living writer of English prose", was asked if he considered any woman writer his literary match. He replied: "I don't think so." Of Austen he said he "couldn't possibly share her sentimental ambitions, her sentimental sense of the world".
He felt that women writers were "quite different". He said: "I read a piece of writing and within a paragraph or two I know whether it is by a woman or not. I think [it is] unequal to me."
The author, who was born in Trinidad, said this was because of women's "sentimentality, the narrow view of the world". "And inevitably for a woman, she is not a complete master of a house, so that comes over in her writing too," he said.
He added: "My publisher, who was so good as a taster and editor, when she became a writer, lo and behold, it was all this feminine tosh. I don't mean this in any unkind way."
Friday, June 3, 2011
WisCon 35 Panel 65: "Class Issues in Science Fiction and Fantasy"
Preoccupied with my own upcoming panel, I didn't take many notes on this one, so I'll only offer a few recollections. Basically, I was left with a better impression than B.C. Holmes (but read her account of it: she's brilliant)—maybe because I had lower expectations: class panels, like disability panels, gang aft agley in my experience. So this is really Some of the Interesting Points Made on Panel 65.
Alexis Lothian said that her experience of the U.S. is that it's assumed that you're going to elevate your class if you go to college, whereas my experience of the U.K. is that you always maintain that you still belong to your class of origin, however well-off you are. Later, she asked in response to someone else's question, "What do you mean, 'Should people write about class?' How are you ever not going to? There certainly should be more writing about class from a Left perspective, and I'd also like to see more writing about the working class without Left assumptions about what feelings or views working class people should have." Jess Adams said she'd like to see more visibility: "Why am I reading about people who are not like me or who, if they seem to be like me, it turns out that they are secretly the King, which is not my experience in life." Most of the other panelists assured her that they were not secretly the King either.
Someone remarked that any kind of a social change movement deciding what people should think, should do, should demand, always works against the best interests of the people involved who are the least privileged, 'cause you don't know what someone else's circumstances are.
Eleanor Arnason asked why all the skilled trades disappear in SF? Is all the plumbing going to be done by robots? Plumbing is all about gravity [my notes actually read, "Plumbing is all about Patrick Arden Wood," but I think that's the person from whom Eleanor got her information concerning what plumbing's all about]: how does plumbing maintenance work in a large space station that's spinning? There's a huge part of our society now that doesn't appear in SF. The descendants of the Ripping Adventures for Manly Lads of the '30s and '40s either create a futuristic world where nobody does the work or a postapocalyptic world where it's all done by peasants. [Isn't there a Nicola Griffith novel about plumbing?] Carolyn Ives Gilman said that coming to Madison was like going to a different country: in Missouri, once you get out of the college towns, everybody you encounter thinks schoolteachers, nurses, et al are spoiled whiners who suck up taxpayer money.
Alexis disagreed with Eleanor's generalization and invoked Delany and some authors whose "stuff is not in the U.S. pulp tradition." An audience member said they'd like to see, in a "medieval" adventure where the mercenary and the knight and the farmer and the barmaid all decide over dinner that they're going to go on a quest for a distant magical object, how they manage to take off work, to use the roads without getting arrested, to use swords without running afoul of the law, etc. Beth Plutchak, in the audience, said, "Obviously, I'm not a writer because I've never been punished . . . er, published . . . But I know from my attempts to write that it's just so easy to start with a cliché because that's what my head is full of . . . and each time we write about the Heroic Individualist fighting the Empire or the Corporation with his own ingenuity, we're not talking about the issue; we're just perpetuating it. I don't know how many people here know about Aqueduct Press, but I've followed it and Timmi Duchamp's essays and blog posts for a long time; and Timmi's mission is not just to get these books in our hands: it's to teach us how to read them." [Thank heaven, exposing and challenging the dominant narratives, and proferring alternatives, is not just "Timmi's mission." It's the kind of thing that's central to the missions of Professor Hairston and Karen Joy Fowler and Nick Mamatas and all sorts of groovy people—Ray's done a lot of it, IMHO; and check out the upcoming Paris Review interview with Chip Delany]
Mike Lowrey said people should also be aware of Erik Flint. Eleanor talked about the current economic catastrophe and the creative bookkeeping that keeps many of us unaware of its extent. Fred Schepartz suggested that much of SF proceeds from "An escapist notion that we don't want to read about ourselves." [I think that gives some readers too much credit: there are readers who really believe that they're Heinleinian superheroes or at least that they have more agency than the ordinary working-class person. Readers who didn't like Mission Child and Outlaw School tended to say, "The heroine is too passive. I would never let those things happen to me. I would transcend my situation!" And why didn't the Three Sisters just get up and go to Moscow, and why doesn't anybody in Blood Simple just communicate with each other?]
Alexis Lothian said that her experience of the U.S. is that it's assumed that you're going to elevate your class if you go to college, whereas my experience of the U.K. is that you always maintain that you still belong to your class of origin, however well-off you are. Later, she asked in response to someone else's question, "What do you mean, 'Should people write about class?' How are you ever not going to? There certainly should be more writing about class from a Left perspective, and I'd also like to see more writing about the working class without Left assumptions about what feelings or views working class people should have." Jess Adams said she'd like to see more visibility: "Why am I reading about people who are not like me or who, if they seem to be like me, it turns out that they are secretly the King, which is not my experience in life." Most of the other panelists assured her that they were not secretly the King either.
Someone remarked that any kind of a social change movement deciding what people should think, should do, should demand, always works against the best interests of the people involved who are the least privileged, 'cause you don't know what someone else's circumstances are.
Eleanor Arnason asked why all the skilled trades disappear in SF? Is all the plumbing going to be done by robots? Plumbing is all about gravity [my notes actually read, "Plumbing is all about Patrick Arden Wood," but I think that's the person from whom Eleanor got her information concerning what plumbing's all about]: how does plumbing maintenance work in a large space station that's spinning? There's a huge part of our society now that doesn't appear in SF. The descendants of the Ripping Adventures for Manly Lads of the '30s and '40s either create a futuristic world where nobody does the work or a postapocalyptic world where it's all done by peasants. [Isn't there a Nicola Griffith novel about plumbing?] Carolyn Ives Gilman said that coming to Madison was like going to a different country: in Missouri, once you get out of the college towns, everybody you encounter thinks schoolteachers, nurses, et al are spoiled whiners who suck up taxpayer money.
Alexis disagreed with Eleanor's generalization and invoked Delany and some authors whose "stuff is not in the U.S. pulp tradition." An audience member said they'd like to see, in a "medieval" adventure where the mercenary and the knight and the farmer and the barmaid all decide over dinner that they're going to go on a quest for a distant magical object, how they manage to take off work, to use the roads without getting arrested, to use swords without running afoul of the law, etc. Beth Plutchak, in the audience, said, "Obviously, I'm not a writer because I've never been punished . . . er, published . . . But I know from my attempts to write that it's just so easy to start with a cliché because that's what my head is full of . . . and each time we write about the Heroic Individualist fighting the Empire or the Corporation with his own ingenuity, we're not talking about the issue; we're just perpetuating it. I don't know how many people here know about Aqueduct Press, but I've followed it and Timmi Duchamp's essays and blog posts for a long time; and Timmi's mission is not just to get these books in our hands: it's to teach us how to read them." [Thank heaven, exposing and challenging the dominant narratives, and proferring alternatives, is not just "Timmi's mission." It's the kind of thing that's central to the missions of Professor Hairston and Karen Joy Fowler and Nick Mamatas and all sorts of groovy people—Ray's done a lot of it, IMHO; and check out the upcoming Paris Review interview with Chip Delany]
Mike Lowrey said people should also be aware of Erik Flint. Eleanor talked about the current economic catastrophe and the creative bookkeeping that keeps many of us unaware of its extent. Fred Schepartz suggested that much of SF proceeds from "An escapist notion that we don't want to read about ourselves." [I think that gives some readers too much credit: there are readers who really believe that they're Heinleinian superheroes or at least that they have more agency than the ordinary working-class person. Readers who didn't like Mission Child and Outlaw School tended to say, "The heroine is too passive. I would never let those things happen to me. I would transcend my situation!" And why didn't the Three Sisters just get up and go to Moscow, and why doesn't anybody in Blood Simple just communicate with each other?]
Thursday, June 2, 2011
WisCon 35 Panel 25: "Black Souls in White Clones: Swimming in Shawl's 'Deep End'"
This panel has already been blogged (lj'd? dreamwidthed?) expertly by coffeeandink and futuransky; indeed, I helped the former a little with the ending. Nonetheless, I know from WisCon Chronicles 3 that interesting things tend to come up when multiple auditors offer their perspectives.
Panel Description: This story (from Nisi's Filter House collection) challenges every boundary between the "true" self and the lived-in body. If we create a life in the edges of a prison culture, can we ever be free? If the only way to breathe air is in the jailer's clone, are we still ourselves? How can our lovers' unfamiliar bodies still enchant us? When the clone begins to decay, can we accept its limitations?
Panelists Eileen Gunn, Andrea Hairston, Nancy Jane Moore, Jef A. Smith. Smith was unable to appear because of his PM Press duties; but there was a Guest Panelist in the form of Nisi Shawl.
EILEEN delivered an awesome introduction and explanation of the structure of/plans for the discussion, ending with "As we unfold the story, maybe there'll be some surprises for the author." She then read a brief précis of the story Nisi'd written at the panel's request. NANCY remarked that the précis didn't indicate how the story describes the woman [protagonist] and her friends, who are first styled "criminals," then later "rebels." The criminals are people of color, the people who put them there are white, their new bodies are white. The AI in control of the ship carrying their disembodied intelligences represents itself as white. And as a benign doctor-figure who has your best interests at heart. EILEEN observed that Nisi never says just one thing, so you get three impression at once from each sentence. People are being downloaded into clones that are bred from the bodies of their oppressors. NANCY and ANDREA noted that the characters' questions are not the same as those of the reader.
EILEEN remarked that the central character's body seems to have some kind of neurological disorder, with ANDREA adding, "It seems like a whip lash." EILEEN noted that there are also gender issues: the question arises of whether people can switch into new genders when downloading, and the AI has a rule that you have to stick to your gender of origin. EILEEN explained that the characters have two states, corporeal and uploaded, which raises the question of how much of your body is you; ANDREA elaborated that the state without the body is called freespace.
NISI sought to clarify that the rebels were mostly but not exclusively people of color; just 'cause someone chose the name and identity "Robeson" in the rebellion doesn't assure us they're POC. NANCY sought to make sure everybody could hear the panelists, 'cause they were not using the microphone.
NANCY observed that this was the first story she'd ever read where minds were downloaded into clone bodies as punishment; usually, as in Lord of Light, it's framed as privilege. But here, the prisoners are being downloaded into the bodies of people who put them there —not specifically bodies identical to individuals in authority, but bodies cloned from members of the oppressing class. And there's a fear of ways in which this might backfire on the oppressors. Are they going to get what they're hoping to? ANDREA was struck by its being a really odd punishment. It stands in opposition to what we talk about when we say societies are "colonizing the mind" by imposing norms on us that make us hate our bodies. What kind of punishment is this? Mind and body aren't really distinct: you can't strip one from the other without trauma and without disease.
Audience member saw an analogy to slave ships and to the generations of slave rape that whitened the African-American population. NISI said that her model for the story was a penal colony like Australia, and the decision to ship minds and not bodies was a matter of economic efficiency. She was trying to invert the cyberpunk ideal of uploading ourselves all over the place. And to raise the issue of genetic content, with the rebels realizing, "We're going to have their babies." NANCY asked, "Who are those babies going to be?" and NISI replied that that uncertainty is the basis of Wayna's hope. And the idea of the body being destroyed in the process of uploading the consciousness seemed natural: ya gotta take the brain and slice it up. ANDREA said there's a lot going on with bodies that reminds her of the old Cyborg Manifesto, and she wonders whether this technology can, in the spirit of that essay, be used against the Empire. Timmi from the audience said, "That's why I wanted more stories in this world!" mely cited the film Sleep Dealer and explained, "It's the American Dream to have the work done without the workers." ANDREA added, "That's a project of Empire." An audience member observed that Australia was originally populated by people who live in a place called Dreamtime. ANDREA observed, "Wow, yeah." Another audience member compared the situation of having bodies and babies of the oppressors' phenotype with Prima Nocta in feudal times—the term, a couple of people explained, refers to the droit du seigneur thing in which the lord gets to sleep with his vasssals' brides on their wedding nights, so the commoners suffer the process of erasure while still being present.
Audience member observed that the rebels would perpetuate the gene pool of the oppressors, but the people who wouldn't opt into physical meat bodies would be the wrench in these societies. NANCY agreed that those who remain uploaded are going to be these children, and these children are not gonna be just what their bodies came from. ANDREA reminded us that the AI's are just in the trustees, not everybody; and the AI is rigid—they cannot have rules that accommodate whatever's going to happen on the planet; this situation is analogous to what happens in every colony.
NISI said that she just saw to the end of the story and that she writes a lot of stories where there's more that's going to happen and it's after the end of the story. ANDREA said she likes open endings. NISI acknowledged that she might reapply for a donation, which she'd done unsuccessfully six years ago, to get the novel done. She said that as time goes on, there's more and more people deciding not to download: you have to decide, "Which place do I have more control in?" Audience member asked whether you can really love and raise a child who's "the enemy, physically." Culturally, when you enslave someone, they get reified and their social identity from their own culture gets obliterated.
Recalling such issues as Wayna's disability, an audience member said, "If they're having so many errors in the clones, it's gonna be a problem" and asked whether the prisoners could hack the technology. NISI said she didn't think they could get any access to the technology—there's no way for them, say, to get spacesuits and go over to the AI's ship. ANDREA asked where the errors are from and returned to the mind/body issue: "It's not this easy interface wherein the body has a mind and the mind has a body: the body is not like a dvd player. To me [emphasizing her arm gestures], my hands are a big part of how I think: if I were to lose them, how would I form thoughts? How would I even talk?" An audience member explained that of course they use cheap cloning technology—you don't give your best to the prisoners. But it adds to the chaos. Beth was not hopeful that the cracks in the machine would somehow offer liberatory opportunities. She got a lot of despair from the story: the prisoners seemed to her very submissive and accepting of their situation and struggling just to feel their existence. The oppressors don't care that the people are unwell. It's not a reflection of a tool for subversion.
Concerning the multiplicity of interpretations that was developing, ANDREA said it's not just an open ending, but an open story. There are many, many mysteries and questions that the narrator's not asking. NANCY noted that the "benign but horrific," which I think an audience member had mentioned, is visible all around us. She just saw a roomful of intelligent people, mostly women, talking about health care in the U.S., and the question that they were addressing for days was just, "Who pays?" The AI is very much an example of the benign but horrific. They follow the rule, just as many Nazis must have.
EILEEN ate with Hiromi Goto, who feels that YA fiction demands a clear, easily-understandable plot. Nisi's work doesn't have that: it's as complex as life itself. Not just the one story, but everything in the book. ANDREA said it could easily spin into chaos if she didn't do it so well. EILEEN added that every sentence requires so much thought. NANCY acknowledged that people hope for an expansion of the story, but "As it is, we do all get to write our own novel." EILEEN asked Nisi directly, "Do you understand as you're writing that there's all these things you don't get to? Or do you only see that afterward?" NISI got some laughs by protesting, "When I'm writing, I don't think I'm leaving anything out. I thought it was a very simple, straightforward story." ANDREA took up that adjective and explained that "Simplistic is when you've reduced the complexity; simple is where you've represented the complexity. In those terms, simple is hard to do."
An audience member said that "benign but horrific" reminded her of the Xenogenesis stories, because she felt there she was in a colonized situation with the Oankali as loving oppressors. And U.S. slavery must have felt like that in the 1820s and 30s: there was no good solution imaginable. NISI argued that nobody is completely helpless: there are some solutions, or choices you can make. That's what she tries to put forth in her writing. ANDREA explained that you have a reduced amount of possibility, but you figure out the small thing (or the big thing) you can do—the oppressors aren't perfect, because nobody is. Nisi's characters are still rebels and are still trying. EILEEN suggested that the pessimistic audience member read the slave narratives, which show all kinds of attempts to have a small amount of control.
NISI told us that the "whip lash" neurological symptom was not symbolic in its origin but was something she'd actually suffered. And she went to her doctor and said she was crying every morning because she was in pain, and the doctor suggested Prozac! And she rejected that idea, and then her spiritual teacher suggested doing her nails and doing makeup—and it helped! 'Cause it was agency! It's not all she ended up doing for the problem, but it worked!
Alex asked, "Can we talk about the sex in freespace?" ANDREA wanted to understand, what is freespace? She liked that she didn't quite get it, that she was reaching for that . . . NANCY didn't want to be on one side or the other of the mind/body divide: she liked the idea that there's a choice, but she has a visceral reaction against that binary. An audience member talked about all the mind and the imagination can do, even influencing bodily sensation to the extent that, with imagination, you can give yourself an orgasm without touching yourself. ANDREA thinks of the theatre of the mind as being vast, but it requires experience before you get to that: virtual reality is so simplistic by comparison with all that your nerves and your muscles and your perception of the world and of your body provide you with. EILEEN observed that the more you look at contemporary neuroscience, the more the mind/body divide goes away. The mind does organize the experience of the body [here my note-taking hand ceased for a while to be the ready servant of my will: when it recovered, EILEEN was talking about the prisoners, saying that] although adults, they seem very innocent. ANDREA found that what they feel about the people who did this to them is very muted. NANCY suggested that eighty-odd years in space could have muted those feelings and focused them on the here and now of imprisonment. ANDREA noted that they had great sex and interesting relationships and connections.
An audience member was not sold on the captors' motivation to maintain freespace. What's the incentive to keep it goin'? NISI acknowledged that Wayna is aware of the uncertainty and the fact that they might cut it off. NANCY said the people who stay in freespace are deciding to risk that. mely asked about how the choice to be trapped in a defective body relates to disability issues and would anyone like to address those. ANDREA said that Nisi's experience of her doctor telling her, "You're fine, it's all in your head" is part of the more general problem of disabled people being told "Your troubles aren't real and we don't have to take you into account in the world when we design it."
I was so impressed by ANDREA's final insight that I complimented her on it when we spoke Saturday evening in the party corridor, and she added that the we're being told that the inaccessible built environment is "natural" and that if you can't negotiate it, you aren't real. Professor Hairston really "gets" disability—not everyone, however progressive and brilliant they may be in other respects, does.
Panel Description: This story (from Nisi's Filter House collection) challenges every boundary between the "true" self and the lived-in body. If we create a life in the edges of a prison culture, can we ever be free? If the only way to breathe air is in the jailer's clone, are we still ourselves? How can our lovers' unfamiliar bodies still enchant us? When the clone begins to decay, can we accept its limitations?
Panelists Eileen Gunn, Andrea Hairston, Nancy Jane Moore, Jef A. Smith. Smith was unable to appear because of his PM Press duties; but there was a Guest Panelist in the form of Nisi Shawl.
EILEEN delivered an awesome introduction and explanation of the structure of/plans for the discussion, ending with "As we unfold the story, maybe there'll be some surprises for the author." She then read a brief précis of the story Nisi'd written at the panel's request. NANCY remarked that the précis didn't indicate how the story describes the woman [protagonist] and her friends, who are first styled "criminals," then later "rebels." The criminals are people of color, the people who put them there are white, their new bodies are white. The AI in control of the ship carrying their disembodied intelligences represents itself as white. And as a benign doctor-figure who has your best interests at heart. EILEEN observed that Nisi never says just one thing, so you get three impression at once from each sentence. People are being downloaded into clones that are bred from the bodies of their oppressors. NANCY and ANDREA noted that the characters' questions are not the same as those of the reader.
EILEEN remarked that the central character's body seems to have some kind of neurological disorder, with ANDREA adding, "It seems like a whip lash." EILEEN noted that there are also gender issues: the question arises of whether people can switch into new genders when downloading, and the AI has a rule that you have to stick to your gender of origin. EILEEN explained that the characters have two states, corporeal and uploaded, which raises the question of how much of your body is you; ANDREA elaborated that the state without the body is called freespace.
NISI sought to clarify that the rebels were mostly but not exclusively people of color; just 'cause someone chose the name and identity "Robeson" in the rebellion doesn't assure us they're POC. NANCY sought to make sure everybody could hear the panelists, 'cause they were not using the microphone.
NANCY observed that this was the first story she'd ever read where minds were downloaded into clone bodies as punishment; usually, as in Lord of Light, it's framed as privilege. But here, the prisoners are being downloaded into the bodies of people who put them there —not specifically bodies identical to individuals in authority, but bodies cloned from members of the oppressing class. And there's a fear of ways in which this might backfire on the oppressors. Are they going to get what they're hoping to? ANDREA was struck by its being a really odd punishment. It stands in opposition to what we talk about when we say societies are "colonizing the mind" by imposing norms on us that make us hate our bodies. What kind of punishment is this? Mind and body aren't really distinct: you can't strip one from the other without trauma and without disease.
Audience member saw an analogy to slave ships and to the generations of slave rape that whitened the African-American population. NISI said that her model for the story was a penal colony like Australia, and the decision to ship minds and not bodies was a matter of economic efficiency. She was trying to invert the cyberpunk ideal of uploading ourselves all over the place. And to raise the issue of genetic content, with the rebels realizing, "We're going to have their babies." NANCY asked, "Who are those babies going to be?" and NISI replied that that uncertainty is the basis of Wayna's hope. And the idea of the body being destroyed in the process of uploading the consciousness seemed natural: ya gotta take the brain and slice it up. ANDREA said there's a lot going on with bodies that reminds her of the old Cyborg Manifesto, and she wonders whether this technology can, in the spirit of that essay, be used against the Empire. Timmi from the audience said, "That's why I wanted more stories in this world!" mely cited the film Sleep Dealer and explained, "It's the American Dream to have the work done without the workers." ANDREA added, "That's a project of Empire." An audience member observed that Australia was originally populated by people who live in a place called Dreamtime. ANDREA observed, "Wow, yeah." Another audience member compared the situation of having bodies and babies of the oppressors' phenotype with Prima Nocta in feudal times—the term, a couple of people explained, refers to the droit du seigneur thing in which the lord gets to sleep with his vasssals' brides on their wedding nights, so the commoners suffer the process of erasure while still being present.
Audience member observed that the rebels would perpetuate the gene pool of the oppressors, but the people who wouldn't opt into physical meat bodies would be the wrench in these societies. NANCY agreed that those who remain uploaded are going to be these children, and these children are not gonna be just what their bodies came from. ANDREA reminded us that the AI's are just in the trustees, not everybody; and the AI is rigid—they cannot have rules that accommodate whatever's going to happen on the planet; this situation is analogous to what happens in every colony.
NISI said that she just saw to the end of the story and that she writes a lot of stories where there's more that's going to happen and it's after the end of the story. ANDREA said she likes open endings. NISI acknowledged that she might reapply for a donation, which she'd done unsuccessfully six years ago, to get the novel done. She said that as time goes on, there's more and more people deciding not to download: you have to decide, "Which place do I have more control in?" Audience member asked whether you can really love and raise a child who's "the enemy, physically." Culturally, when you enslave someone, they get reified and their social identity from their own culture gets obliterated.
Recalling such issues as Wayna's disability, an audience member said, "If they're having so many errors in the clones, it's gonna be a problem" and asked whether the prisoners could hack the technology. NISI said she didn't think they could get any access to the technology—there's no way for them, say, to get spacesuits and go over to the AI's ship. ANDREA asked where the errors are from and returned to the mind/body issue: "It's not this easy interface wherein the body has a mind and the mind has a body: the body is not like a dvd player. To me [emphasizing her arm gestures], my hands are a big part of how I think: if I were to lose them, how would I form thoughts? How would I even talk?" An audience member explained that of course they use cheap cloning technology—you don't give your best to the prisoners. But it adds to the chaos. Beth was not hopeful that the cracks in the machine would somehow offer liberatory opportunities. She got a lot of despair from the story: the prisoners seemed to her very submissive and accepting of their situation and struggling just to feel their existence. The oppressors don't care that the people are unwell. It's not a reflection of a tool for subversion.
Concerning the multiplicity of interpretations that was developing, ANDREA said it's not just an open ending, but an open story. There are many, many mysteries and questions that the narrator's not asking. NANCY noted that the "benign but horrific," which I think an audience member had mentioned, is visible all around us. She just saw a roomful of intelligent people, mostly women, talking about health care in the U.S., and the question that they were addressing for days was just, "Who pays?" The AI is very much an example of the benign but horrific. They follow the rule, just as many Nazis must have.
EILEEN ate with Hiromi Goto, who feels that YA fiction demands a clear, easily-understandable plot. Nisi's work doesn't have that: it's as complex as life itself. Not just the one story, but everything in the book. ANDREA said it could easily spin into chaos if she didn't do it so well. EILEEN added that every sentence requires so much thought. NANCY acknowledged that people hope for an expansion of the story, but "As it is, we do all get to write our own novel." EILEEN asked Nisi directly, "Do you understand as you're writing that there's all these things you don't get to? Or do you only see that afterward?" NISI got some laughs by protesting, "When I'm writing, I don't think I'm leaving anything out. I thought it was a very simple, straightforward story." ANDREA took up that adjective and explained that "Simplistic is when you've reduced the complexity; simple is where you've represented the complexity. In those terms, simple is hard to do."
An audience member said that "benign but horrific" reminded her of the Xenogenesis stories, because she felt there she was in a colonized situation with the Oankali as loving oppressors. And U.S. slavery must have felt like that in the 1820s and 30s: there was no good solution imaginable. NISI argued that nobody is completely helpless: there are some solutions, or choices you can make. That's what she tries to put forth in her writing. ANDREA explained that you have a reduced amount of possibility, but you figure out the small thing (or the big thing) you can do—the oppressors aren't perfect, because nobody is. Nisi's characters are still rebels and are still trying. EILEEN suggested that the pessimistic audience member read the slave narratives, which show all kinds of attempts to have a small amount of control.
NISI told us that the "whip lash" neurological symptom was not symbolic in its origin but was something she'd actually suffered. And she went to her doctor and said she was crying every morning because she was in pain, and the doctor suggested Prozac! And she rejected that idea, and then her spiritual teacher suggested doing her nails and doing makeup—and it helped! 'Cause it was agency! It's not all she ended up doing for the problem, but it worked!
Alex asked, "Can we talk about the sex in freespace?" ANDREA wanted to understand, what is freespace? She liked that she didn't quite get it, that she was reaching for that . . . NANCY didn't want to be on one side or the other of the mind/body divide: she liked the idea that there's a choice, but she has a visceral reaction against that binary. An audience member talked about all the mind and the imagination can do, even influencing bodily sensation to the extent that, with imagination, you can give yourself an orgasm without touching yourself. ANDREA thinks of the theatre of the mind as being vast, but it requires experience before you get to that: virtual reality is so simplistic by comparison with all that your nerves and your muscles and your perception of the world and of your body provide you with. EILEEN observed that the more you look at contemporary neuroscience, the more the mind/body divide goes away. The mind does organize the experience of the body [here my note-taking hand ceased for a while to be the ready servant of my will: when it recovered, EILEEN was talking about the prisoners, saying that] although adults, they seem very innocent. ANDREA found that what they feel about the people who did this to them is very muted. NANCY suggested that eighty-odd years in space could have muted those feelings and focused them on the here and now of imprisonment. ANDREA noted that they had great sex and interesting relationships and connections.
An audience member was not sold on the captors' motivation to maintain freespace. What's the incentive to keep it goin'? NISI acknowledged that Wayna is aware of the uncertainty and the fact that they might cut it off. NANCY said the people who stay in freespace are deciding to risk that. mely asked about how the choice to be trapped in a defective body relates to disability issues and would anyone like to address those. ANDREA said that Nisi's experience of her doctor telling her, "You're fine, it's all in your head" is part of the more general problem of disabled people being told "Your troubles aren't real and we don't have to take you into account in the world when we design it."
I was so impressed by ANDREA's final insight that I complimented her on it when we spoke Saturday evening in the party corridor, and she added that the we're being told that the inaccessible built environment is "natural" and that if you can't negotiate it, you aren't real. Professor Hairston really "gets" disability—not everyone, however progressive and brilliant they may be in other respects, does.
Speculative Literature Foundation announces Older Writers Grant winner
Press Release #33
SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION
PO Box 1693
Dubuque, IA 52004-1693
info@speculativeliterature.org - http://www.speculativeliterature.org/
For Immediate Release: June 1, 2011
SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES OLDER WRITERS GRANT WINNER
The Speculative Literature Foundation is pleased to announce that its eighth annual Older Writers Grant is to be awarded to Shauna Roberts. The $750 grant is intended to assist writers who are fifty years of age or older at the time of the grant application, and who are just starting to work at a professional level.
Born in Dayton, Ohio, Roberts grew up in nearby Beavercreek. From childhood, she dreamed of writing fiction, but that dream took a back seat to her nonfiction writing career and other activities when her mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2000 and died soon after. With a keener sense of her own mortality, Roberts joined the New Orleans chapter of the Romance Writers of America and a critique group. There, she began squeezing in time between magazine articles to write short
stories and work on a novel.
In 2009, Roberts attended the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workshop. Just a couple of years later, she was accepted as an associate member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Recurring themes in her novels and short stories include loss, prejudice and tolerance, and social issues such as class, sex, and religion. Roberts also enjoys reworking old ballads and folk tales. A former Katrina refugee, Roberts has recently written several short stories set during the aftermath and failure of the federal levees in New Orleans. “Bosphorus Dreams,” which was Roberts’ entry for the
Older Writers Grant, will be the first of those stories to be published. Slated to appear in the anthology, A Quiet Shelter There, it is scheduled for publication in fall of 2011 by Hadley Rille Books. The anthology is edited by Gerri Leen and will benefit an animal shelter.
Grant Administrator Malon Edwards said of Roberts’ entry, “Bosphorus Dreams”: “Judith is an emotionally-fragile woman in the beginning of the story, but through curt and witty dialogue with cats and a gradual bolstering of her confidence, she gains emotional strength. By the end of the story, she’s more than just a grieving woman who has fled New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina for Istanbul. She’s a woman who has saved a city.”
Honorable Mentions for the Older Writers Grant go to Marcelle Dubé, Anne Pillsworth, Ada Milenkovic Brown, F.J. Bergmann, and Lou Antonelli for their intriguing and entertaining submissions, which made the selection of the winner a competitive but enjoyable process.
----------------
The Speculative Literature Foundation is a volunteer-run, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the interests of readers, writers, editors and publishers in the speculative literature community.
"Speculative literature" is a catch-all term meant to inclusively span the breadth of fantastic literature, encompassing literature ranging from hard and soft science fiction to epic fantasy to ghost stories to folk and fairy tales to slipstream to magical realism to modern mythmaking–any literature containing a fabulist or speculative element.
More information about the Speculative Literature Foundation is available from its web site (http://www.speculativeliterature.org/) or by writing to info@speculativeliterature.org.
SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION
PO Box 1693
Dubuque, IA 52004-1693
info@speculativeliterature.org - http://www.speculativeliterature.org/
For Immediate Release: June 1, 2011
SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES OLDER WRITERS GRANT WINNER
The Speculative Literature Foundation is pleased to announce that its eighth annual Older Writers Grant is to be awarded to Shauna Roberts. The $750 grant is intended to assist writers who are fifty years of age or older at the time of the grant application, and who are just starting to work at a professional level.
Born in Dayton, Ohio, Roberts grew up in nearby Beavercreek. From childhood, she dreamed of writing fiction, but that dream took a back seat to her nonfiction writing career and other activities when her mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2000 and died soon after. With a keener sense of her own mortality, Roberts joined the New Orleans chapter of the Romance Writers of America and a critique group. There, she began squeezing in time between magazine articles to write short
stories and work on a novel.
In 2009, Roberts attended the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers' Workshop. Just a couple of years later, she was accepted as an associate member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
Recurring themes in her novels and short stories include loss, prejudice and tolerance, and social issues such as class, sex, and religion. Roberts also enjoys reworking old ballads and folk tales. A former Katrina refugee, Roberts has recently written several short stories set during the aftermath and failure of the federal levees in New Orleans. “Bosphorus Dreams,” which was Roberts’ entry for the
Older Writers Grant, will be the first of those stories to be published. Slated to appear in the anthology, A Quiet Shelter There, it is scheduled for publication in fall of 2011 by Hadley Rille Books. The anthology is edited by Gerri Leen and will benefit an animal shelter.
Grant Administrator Malon Edwards said of Roberts’ entry, “Bosphorus Dreams”: “Judith is an emotionally-fragile woman in the beginning of the story, but through curt and witty dialogue with cats and a gradual bolstering of her confidence, she gains emotional strength. By the end of the story, she’s more than just a grieving woman who has fled New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina for Istanbul. She’s a woman who has saved a city.”
Honorable Mentions for the Older Writers Grant go to Marcelle Dubé, Anne Pillsworth, Ada Milenkovic Brown, F.J. Bergmann, and Lou Antonelli for their intriguing and entertaining submissions, which made the selection of the winner a competitive but enjoyable process.
----------------
The Speculative Literature Foundation is a volunteer-run, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the interests of readers, writers, editors and publishers in the speculative literature community.
"Speculative literature" is a catch-all term meant to inclusively span the breadth of fantastic literature, encompassing literature ranging from hard and soft science fiction to epic fantasy to ghost stories to folk and fairy tales to slipstream to magical realism to modern mythmaking–any literature containing a fabulist or speculative element.
More information about the Speculative Literature Foundation is available from its web site (http://www.speculativeliterature.org/) or by writing to info@speculativeliterature.org.
"Are writers who are women allowed...?"
Ed Champion recently interviewed Lynne Tillman for his Bat Segundo Show . (The interview can be downloaded as a podcast, from iTunes.) In the interview, Tillman talks, among other things, about striving, in her fiction, to marry emotion to intellect.
At one point in the interview, Tillman discusses a rejection of an essay-like short fiction from an editor who, Tillman thought, would never have said what she said to Tillman to a male writer. The editor, Tillman, says, “exposed her bias.” “I just thought it was disgusting, frankly.” The question the rejection poses for Tillman is: "Are writers who are women allowed to play with ideas the way men writers are-- writers like Nicholson Baker, for instance-- are they allowed to do that?"
Ed Champion then wonders if creating a neurotic female narrator is not allowed-- the way a male neurotic narrator, as in Moby Dick, is.
"Allowed," in this conversation, references a gender double standard that, I think, attaches to itself unspoken, unstated, and thus very powerful rules resulting from what I think of as the issues surrounding intelligibility, in which the View from Nowhere strikes again.
Later, Tillman asks “What do we read for?” And she and Champion discuss that. She also observes a cultural shift since the 1980s-- “a disappearance of shame”-- driven by an idea(l) of openness, in which individuals attempt to tell everybody about everything, while often not knowing the full implications of what they're saying. (I flashed, during this part of the discussion, on a certain episode of House.)
At one point in the interview, Tillman discusses a rejection of an essay-like short fiction from an editor who, Tillman thought, would never have said what she said to Tillman to a male writer. The editor, Tillman, says, “exposed her bias.” “I just thought it was disgusting, frankly.” The question the rejection poses for Tillman is: "Are writers who are women allowed to play with ideas the way men writers are-- writers like Nicholson Baker, for instance-- are they allowed to do that?"
Ed Champion then wonders if creating a neurotic female narrator is not allowed-- the way a male neurotic narrator, as in Moby Dick, is.
"Allowed," in this conversation, references a gender double standard that, I think, attaches to itself unspoken, unstated, and thus very powerful rules resulting from what I think of as the issues surrounding intelligibility, in which the View from Nowhere strikes again.
Later, Tillman asks “What do we read for?” And she and Champion discuss that. She also observes a cultural shift since the 1980s-- “a disappearance of shame”-- driven by an idea(l) of openness, in which individuals attempt to tell everybody about everything, while often not knowing the full implications of what they're saying. (I flashed, during this part of the discussion, on a certain episode of House.)
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Taxonomy of a Wiscon Photo Album III
Photos of Liz Henry in Four Different Moods:
Photos of Two Attendees Dressing for Their First-Ever Panel Appearances:
Photo of the Authors of Writing the Other:
Photo of the Authors of Writing the Other:
Photo 3: with Tom Duchamp and, I believe, Kath Wilham's legs. Photo 4: with L. Timmel Duchamp, Tom, and Kath's feet. Photo 5: Josh Lukin. Photo 6: Ann Keefer. Photo 7: Nisi Shawl and Cindy Ward. In an attempt to comply with post-2008 WisCon rules, all photos were taken with subjects' knowledge that they were being photographed and by whom, and, whenever possible, explicit consent; just lemme know if you are in one and want it taken down.
More documentation, more numbers, more "explanations"
Last Saturday, Nicola Griffith posted A shocking UK sf 'favorites' score: men 500, women 18. She begins:
I was bemused to see a post in response to Nicola's on the Guardian's blog yesterday: The incredible shrinking presence of women SF Writers.
The “thoughts” that follow, in the comments, range mostly from abominable to dense, and so I read only a handful of them. I wonder how much this is due to the blog author's (the post seems to be unsigned-- I couldn't find a byline on the page) suggestion that it's the fault of the fan-base...
One commenter did point to Cheryl Morgan's post on the subject Female Invisibility Bingo. In her post, after reflecting on Nicola's apt citation of How to Suppress Women's Writing, Cheryl makes this suggestion:
And the beat goes on...
Yesterday, in the Guardian, Damien G. Walter asked readers to list their favourite sf. And they did. In a follow-up blog piece, Walter estimates that more than 500 books were mentioned. I scanned the Guardian comments--yes, all of them--and counted only 18 women's names. Eighteen. Out of more than five hundred.
I admit, I could have missed one or two. For the sake of argument, let's say there were exactly 500 novels mentioned. Let's say 20 of them were by women. (Yes, some respondents mentioned titles, some author names. Apples and oranges. Sue me. Or, better, take the time to parse the comments yourself and then share.)
The ratio of women to men is 1:24. About 4%. I'm quite aware of gender bias in literature (see, for example "Hard Takes Soft" and "Girl Cooties") but this ratio, frankly, shocked me.She then takes notes of some of the “explanations” for the disparity, and remarks:
Or, as Joanna Russ might have put it:
"She didn't write it."
"She wrote it but she wrote only one of it."
"She wrote it, but she isn't really an artist (sf writer), and it isn't really art (sf)."
"She wrote it, but she's an anomaly."
These are just a few of the classic arguments, so beautifully exposed by Russ, used by critics to suppress women's writing. (If you haven't read How to Suppress Women's Writing, your education awaits.)
Clearly, women's sf is being suppressed in the UK. Oh, not intentionally. But that's how bias works: it's unconscious. And of course sometimes it's beyond a reader's power to change: you can't buy a book that's not on the shelf. You can't shelve something the publisher hasn't printed. You can't publish something an agent doesn't send you. You can't represent something a writer doesn't submit. Etc.You'll want to read all of Nicola's post, for she goes on to offer a list of Things to Be Done to correct the situation.
I was bemused to see a post in response to Nicola's on the Guardian's blog yesterday: The incredible shrinking presence of women SF Writers.
Is it the industry itself that is sexist? High-profile women in major UK publishing houses working in the genre – including, but not limited, to Anna Gregson, Anne Clarke and Bella Pagan at Orbit, Julie Crisp at Pan Macmillan and Jane Johnson at Voyager – would suggest that the glass ceiling doesn't exist at the business end.
Nor is there a shortage of women writers troubling the SF/Fantasy/Horror bestseller lists – Jaine Fenn, Sarah Pinborough, Marianne de Pierres, Justina Robson, Stephanie Swainston, Cherie Priest, Tricia Sullivan ... it would take more space than is available here to list every woman writer active in the genre today.
Which means, if we're looking for a culprit, that suspicion must fall on the genre's very active fanbase: as this Guardian poll suggests, if there is sexism in the SF world, it may well be a matter of representation by the readership. It's difficult to legislate for equality in an online poll such as the Guardian's: the results are what they are. With no shortage of women working in the industry, the question must be asked why the people who offer their opinions – be it in a survey, or by way of compiling a book or magazine supplement – are putting forward a demonstrably male bias.
Perhaps the received wisdom that SF really is just for boys is true. Or maybe it's just that those who take part in online polls are mainly white, middle-class men, and a very, very vocal minority out of a much wider and more representative readership. Thoughts?
The “thoughts” that follow, in the comments, range mostly from abominable to dense, and so I read only a handful of them. I wonder how much this is due to the blog author's (the post seems to be unsigned-- I couldn't find a byline on the page) suggestion that it's the fault of the fan-base...
One commenter did point to Cheryl Morgan's post on the subject Female Invisibility Bingo. In her post, after reflecting on Nicola's apt citation of How to Suppress Women's Writing, Cheryl makes this suggestion:
There should be a bingo card, and we can add to it some of the reasons I saw given this morning as to why women shouldn’t care about exclusion from things like “best of” lists.
1a. Women shouldn’t complain about exclusion because their books are more popular than men’s.
1b. Women shouldn’t complain because the lists reflect popular taste.
2a. Women shouldn’t complain because it is only critics talking and who cares what they think?
2b. Women shouldn’t complain because it is only fans talking and who cares what they think?
And the beat goes on...
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Celebrating Nisi Shawl
This year Nisi Shawl was WisCon's Guest of Honor. So in addition to featuring celebrations of Carol Emshwiller, in honor of her 90th birthday, the James Tiptree Jr Award, in honor of its 20th birthday, and the memory of Joanna Russ, to commemorate her recent death, WisCon 35 also celebrated Nisi Shawl.
Nisi read at a Room of One's Own on Thursday evening, from her story “Pataki,” which is one of the pieces Aqueduct published in this year's GoH chapbook, Something More and More*, along with the previously unpublished “Something More,” three essays, and a new interview with Eileen Gunn. I have heard that she read from “Something More” at her GoH reading, which I wasn't able to attend, alas.
I also did not get to attend any of Nisi's panels, except for the one discussing her short story, “The Deep End,” titled “Black Souls in White Clones: Swimming in Shawl's Deep End.” This was a deeply satisfying panel, though it became clear by the end of it that the panelists hadn't discussed everything in it that interested them and their audience. The panelists were Eileen Gunn, Nancy Jane Moore, and Andrea Hairston. Jef A. Smith, who proposed the panel, was unable to attend. Nisi Shawl sat with the panelists, and commented by request. Coffee & Ink, and Lila Futuransky have partial (non-verbatim, summary) transcripts that convey some of the flavor of the discussion. It quickly emerged, during the discussion, that Nisi believed she had written a fairly simple, even transparent story, while every panelist (and several people in the audience) had discovered its sentences saturated with a density of information and allusive possibilities that seem only to expand with every additional reading of the story.
Nisi's Guest of Honor speech, which both began and ended with a beautifully delivered song, offered a brilliant reworking of the traditionally male, individualistic concept of Genius that has been with us since the 18th century. Nisi insisted on going back to the older notion of genius loci-- the spirit (a god or other supernatural entity) attached to a particular place in the world (think volcano or spring). The extraordinary, vivid image she used to illuminate her notion of Genius is that of an extension cord-- one that is infinitely long and has an infinite number of sockets into which others can plug in. Rather than being all about the individual, Genius, for Nisi, involves multitudes and is manifested in multiplicity. Anyone who has been reading my posts and essays over the years will know just how appealing this reconceptualization is to me.
I am eager to read the speech when it's available in print. It went by so quickly, in its moment, that I'm sure I missed many of its fine details and nuances.
_______________
*Aqueduct will be making this book available for sale in mid-June.
ETA: Coffee & Ink has also posted panel notes on another panel Nisi Shawl participated in, Yearning from the Threshold: Magic Realism and Diaspora Literature; the panel is moderated by Mary Anne Mohanraj, and panelists include, in addition to Nisi, Hiromi Goto, Sheree Renée Thomas, and Ibi Aanu Zoboi.
Nisi read at a Room of One's Own on Thursday evening, from her story “Pataki,” which is one of the pieces Aqueduct published in this year's GoH chapbook, Something More and More*, along with the previously unpublished “Something More,” three essays, and a new interview with Eileen Gunn. I have heard that she read from “Something More” at her GoH reading, which I wasn't able to attend, alas.
I also did not get to attend any of Nisi's panels, except for the one discussing her short story, “The Deep End,” titled “Black Souls in White Clones: Swimming in Shawl's Deep End.” This was a deeply satisfying panel, though it became clear by the end of it that the panelists hadn't discussed everything in it that interested them and their audience. The panelists were Eileen Gunn, Nancy Jane Moore, and Andrea Hairston. Jef A. Smith, who proposed the panel, was unable to attend. Nisi Shawl sat with the panelists, and commented by request. Coffee & Ink, and Lila Futuransky have partial (non-verbatim, summary) transcripts that convey some of the flavor of the discussion. It quickly emerged, during the discussion, that Nisi believed she had written a fairly simple, even transparent story, while every panelist (and several people in the audience) had discovered its sentences saturated with a density of information and allusive possibilities that seem only to expand with every additional reading of the story.
Nisi's Guest of Honor speech, which both began and ended with a beautifully delivered song, offered a brilliant reworking of the traditionally male, individualistic concept of Genius that has been with us since the 18th century. Nisi insisted on going back to the older notion of genius loci-- the spirit (a god or other supernatural entity) attached to a particular place in the world (think volcano or spring). The extraordinary, vivid image she used to illuminate her notion of Genius is that of an extension cord-- one that is infinitely long and has an infinite number of sockets into which others can plug in. Rather than being all about the individual, Genius, for Nisi, involves multitudes and is manifested in multiplicity. Anyone who has been reading my posts and essays over the years will know just how appealing this reconceptualization is to me.
I am eager to read the speech when it's available in print. It went by so quickly, in its moment, that I'm sure I missed many of its fine details and nuances.
_______________
*Aqueduct will be making this book available for sale in mid-June.
ETA: Coffee & Ink has also posted panel notes on another panel Nisi Shawl participated in, Yearning from the Threshold: Magic Realism and Diaspora Literature; the panel is moderated by Mary Anne Mohanraj, and panelists include, in addition to Nisi, Hiromi Goto, Sheree Renée Thomas, and Ibi Aanu Zoboi.
Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the James Tiptree Jr Award
I hear that there are lots of people who, beginning their journeys home from WisCon, now find themselves in stranded travel situations, meaning they're spending hour upon hour in airports, waiting. My sympathies to you all. (This seems to happen more frequently every year, doesn't it?)
At this year's WisCon, the Tiptree Award celebrated its 20th birthday. In addition to holding the wildly popular annual auction conducted by the inimitable Ellen Klages (and this year assisted manfully by Geoff Ryman)and announcing this year's winners and Honor List as is usually done after the Guest of Honor speech(es), the Tiptree Award Motherboard threw a party. (Was it Friday night? I think so, but the days, the nights, at WisCon have rather blurred together in my memory.) The party featured not only the usual alluring refreshments to be found at WisCon parties, but also a splendid cake by Georgie Schnobrich. Matt Austern photographed the cake and graciously sent it to me:
As Pat Murphy noted before introducing Penny Hill, who chaired last year's jury, from the Tiptree Award's inception, WisCon has been key. Pat also announced that the Tiptree Motherboard had been awarded SFRA's 2011 Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service. She said that when she and Karen Joy Fowler were making their travel arrangements, Karen had some hesitation about spending the money necessary for them to travel to Poland (where the SFRA held their annual conference this year), only to be reminded that the Tiptree Award is about "World Domination." (Originally through bake sales, granted...)
At this year's WisCon, the Tiptree Award celebrated its 20th birthday. In addition to holding the wildly popular annual auction conducted by the inimitable Ellen Klages (and this year assisted manfully by Geoff Ryman)and announcing this year's winners and Honor List as is usually done after the Guest of Honor speech(es), the Tiptree Award Motherboard threw a party. (Was it Friday night? I think so, but the days, the nights, at WisCon have rather blurred together in my memory.) The party featured not only the usual alluring refreshments to be found at WisCon parties, but also a splendid cake by Georgie Schnobrich. Matt Austern photographed the cake and graciously sent it to me:
As Pat Murphy noted before introducing Penny Hill, who chaired last year's jury, from the Tiptree Award's inception, WisCon has been key. Pat also announced that the Tiptree Motherboard had been awarded SFRA's 2011 Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service. She said that when she and Karen Joy Fowler were making their travel arrangements, Karen had some hesitation about spending the money necessary for them to travel to Poland (where the SFRA held their annual conference this year), only to be reminded that the Tiptree Award is about "World Domination." (Originally through bake sales, granted...)
Celebrating Carol Emshwiller
A sign of just how overloaded at WisCon I was: I left behind a pair of jeans and several tee-shirts in a drawer of my hotel room (and now find myself, in Minneapolis, with few dress options). I just discovered this a few minutes ago, and am somewhat appalled. I've never done such a thing before. (I also lost my nanopod somewhere on the road between Minneapolis and Madison, last Thursday afternoon.) Mind you, I was the kind of kid who could lose mittens attached by clips to her coat sleeves. But really, I had gotten a lot better as an adult...
I'm anticipating a lot of posts in the wake of WisCon from other members of this blog. I myself have a slew of things I want to mention, some of them a few days old. I'll probably put them up a piecemeal. The first I want to mention is that it's Carol Emshwiller week at Strange Horizons. The timing of this, for me, is really lovely. WisCon featured a panel and a set of readings celebrating Carol's work (see the previous post, for Josh's photos of them); I had the pleasure of participating in the panel, as well as a breakfast with the other panelists-- Carol herself, Eileen Gunn, Karen Joy Fowler, and Pat Murphy--which primed the pump of our discussion, rather than rehearsing it. And as we've done for the last few years, Carol, Andrea Hairston, and I sat together at the Sign-Out, chatting and laughing and loving it all.
What you will find at Strange Horizons this week:
"Perfectly Herself: A discussion of the work of Carol Emshwiller" by Ursula K. Le Guin, Helen Merrick, Pat Murphy, and Gary K. Wolfe
"The Emshwillerians" by Karen Joy Fowler
"Introduction to 'After All'" by Gavin Grant
"After All" by Carol Emshwiller
Reviews:
L. Timmel Duchamp: The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1
Paul Kincaid: Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller
Maureen Kincaid Speller: Ledoyt and Leaping Man Hill
I'm anticipating a lot of posts in the wake of WisCon from other members of this blog. I myself have a slew of things I want to mention, some of them a few days old. I'll probably put them up a piecemeal. The first I want to mention is that it's Carol Emshwiller week at Strange Horizons. The timing of this, for me, is really lovely. WisCon featured a panel and a set of readings celebrating Carol's work (see the previous post, for Josh's photos of them); I had the pleasure of participating in the panel, as well as a breakfast with the other panelists-- Carol herself, Eileen Gunn, Karen Joy Fowler, and Pat Murphy--which primed the pump of our discussion, rather than rehearsing it. And as we've done for the last few years, Carol, Andrea Hairston, and I sat together at the Sign-Out, chatting and laughing and loving it all.
What you will find at Strange Horizons this week:
"Perfectly Herself: A discussion of the work of Carol Emshwiller" by Ursula K. Le Guin, Helen Merrick, Pat Murphy, and Gary K. Wolfe
"The Emshwillerians" by Karen Joy Fowler
"Introduction to 'After All'" by Gavin Grant
"After All" by Carol Emshwiller
Reviews:
L. Timmel Duchamp: The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Vol. 1
Paul Kincaid: Carmen Dog by Carol Emshwiller
Maureen Kincaid Speller: Ledoyt and Leaping Man Hill
Taxonomy of a Wiscon Photo Album II
Photos of Neat Hotel Lobby Signs:
Photos Containing Eleanor Arnason:
Photos with Even More Party Hats:
Photo 1: what places are represented at WisCon. Photo 2: an accessibility "sign." Photo 3: with Ann Keefer and an AccessCraft sign. Photo 4: with Carolyn Ives Gilman and . . . and . . . y'know, that guy? Photos 5 and 7: at the Aqueduct Press table, old friends Timmi Duchamp, Josh Lukin, Kath Wilham. Photo 6: Ann explains how things are at Temple University with Kath looking on.
Photo 1: what places are represented at WisCon. Photo 2: an accessibility "sign." Photo 3: with Ann Keefer and an AccessCraft sign. Photo 4: with Carolyn Ives Gilman and . . . and . . . y'know, that guy? Photos 5 and 7: at the Aqueduct Press table, old friends Timmi Duchamp, Josh Lukin, Kath Wilham. Photo 6: Ann explains how things are at Temple University with Kath looking on.
Monday, May 30, 2011
Taxonomy of a Wiscon Photo Album I
Photos Containing Andrea Hairston:
Photos of Carol Emshwiller Celebrations:
Photo Taken of Mike and Rachel Swirsky:
Photo 1: with Nisi Shawl and Diane Williams. Photo 3: with Victor Raymond and, I believe, K. Tempest Bradford. Photo 4: with Pat Murphy, Eileen Gunn, Karen Joy In Our Cause Fowler, and L. Timmel Duchamp. Photo 5: with Richard Butner, Eileen, Karen, and Pat. Photo 6: with Timmi and Pat.
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
What democracy doesn't look like
Nothing, but nothing about Republican rule can surprise me anymore. This is the latest:
And Mary Bottari's report on Walker's legislative moves to take the vote away from young people, old people, and African Americans from voting in the upcoming recall elections and--nifty concomitant--end public financing of elections at the same time:
In a stunningly heartless move, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) put strings on emergency relief for the victims of the killer Joplin tornado, saying that other government services would have to be cut to offset aid spending. Yesterday afternoon, the House Appropriations Committee passed an amendment by Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) to add $1 billion in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster relief fund, offset by cutting $1.5 billion from the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program at the Department of Energy.Though of course, because of the "This Is What Democracy Looks Like" panel I'll be moderating on Saturday, my attention is a bit more focused on Scott Walker's horror show at the moment. I recently saw this:
May 18, 2011--The Wisconsin bill stripping public workers of their collective bargaining rights garnered such huge opposition that another radical measure signed into law at the same time got less attention than it deserves. The Wisconsin Omnibus Tort Reform Act places huge "burdens on individuals who would sue businesses, which almost always enjoy a financial advantage," writes Lou Dubose in The Washington Spectator.
One of the most drastic reforms puts state records of abuse or neglect in nursing homes off limits to attorneys representing individuals suing nursing homes.
Wausau lawyer Christine Bremer Muggli [explained] that state investigations of abuse in nursing homes often begin with reports filed by aides who takes care of residents: "An aide who takes care of grandma returns from vacation and finds that grandma hasn't been rolled over for two days, or hasn't been changed for days, or has bruises on her."
The aide files a report, which by law is submitted to a state agency that follows up with an investigation. With the passage of the tort-reform bill, Wisconsin becomes the first state in the nation to deny attorneys access to state records that document abuse of their clients.
"The reports are now inadmissible as evidence," Bremer Muggli said.
Jeffrey Pitman sues nursing homes on behalf of residents who have suffered injury or neglect. He said he cannot recall a case in which he did not rely on an incident report. "Every one of my cases, I get the incident report and it has vital information not found anywhere else in a patient's medical record," Pitman said.
Restricting access to nursing home reports--opposed by AARP, the Wisconsin Alzheimer's Association, Disability Rights Wisconsin and a long list of advocacy groups--is a carve-out for an industry on the cusp of explosive growth, as baby boomers move into assisted living residences.
Incident reports have also been placed beyond the reach of the Wisconsin Department of Justice, which conducts criminal investigations and prosecutions of nursing homes and assisted living centers.
"This is payback time," Bremer Muggli said. "The governor is settling the score with trial lawyers who didn't support him. And he's taking care of his donors, the for-profit nursing home operators, especially the big ones like Kindred." (Kindred Healthcare is a Fortune 500 company that operates almost 700 health-care facilities across the United States.)*
And Mary Bottari's report on Walker's legislative moves to take the vote away from young people, old people, and African Americans from voting in the upcoming recall elections and--nifty concomitant--end public financing of elections at the same time:
The legislation would allow a narrow list of IDs for voting, including drivers licenses and state issued ID cards. According to a 2005 UW-Milwaukee study, about 177,000 Wisconsinites aged 65 and older do not have state-issued IDs. Statewide, the percent of Wisconsin residents with a valid drivers license is 80 percent for males and 81 percent for females. For African-Americans, only 45 percent of males and 51 percent of females have a valid drivers license.Welcome to administered reality, folks. This is what democracy doesn't look like.
The bill makes it particularly burdensome for college students to vote, a group who overwhelmingly supported Obama in 2008. Student IDs have to be issued from an accredited public or private college, include a student's signature and have a two-year expiration date. The 182,000 thousand students in the UW system and 300,000 in state technical colleges currently do not meet this requirement.
Many analysts think the bill was implemented in a rush in order to have an impact on the Wisconsin Senate recall elections scheduled for July 12th. “Many voters will understandably be confused and will think that they cannot vote in the recall elections without the photo voter ID -- which is likely the intent of the bill's proponents,” says [Jay] Heck [of Wisconsin Common Cause].
Another Wisconsin Tradition Destroyed
Wisconsin has provided some degree of public financing for campaigns since 1977. The idea was to foster a debate over ideas, not a race for the money. As a consequence, many candidates were able to run that otherwise would never have been able to and candidates of both political parties regularly took public financing. This year, a little-known candidate named Joanne Kloppenburg was able to run for Supreme Court because of a public finance system for judicial races implemented two years ago. Kloppenburg came from behind to almost knock off a ten-year incumbent conservative Supreme Court Justice.
Perhaps this is exactly the type of democracy that the WI GOP is worried about. The money raided from the public financing system -- $1.8 million -- is insufficient to pay for the Voter ID bill, which is anticipated to cost $6 million over the next two years.
To Heck the tragedy is the destruction of another important Wisconsin tradition. “We were one of the first states in the nation to provide public financing for campaigns. We were held up as a model for the nation, passing public financing, open meetings laws, open records laws and the establishment of a state elections board and state ethics board after the Watergate scandal.”
“What the Walker administration has done in just four months, has been to unravel decades of good government and progressive reform designed to inspire citizen confidence in state government. The whole post-Watergate reform effort has been swept away in just a few months. It’s astonishing,” says Heck.
Aqueduct Is En Route to WisCon!
In case you had any doubts-- perhaps because I haven't been able to scrape together the time to post about it before now-- Aqueduct Press is indeed coming to WisCon this year. We'll be arriving tomorrow. Kath is driving in from Seattle, hauling many boxes of books. She was caught in the terrible rain in Montana, though, and because a seventy-mile stretch of I-90 was closed due to flooding, has been forced to detour north, to I-94, which will make reaching Madison in good time a bit more challenging. I'm in Minneapolis right now (where I've discovered there is a street named "18 1/2 St," the first numbered street name I've ever encountered with a fraction in its name) and will be driving to Madison tomorrow with Tom. (The only books we're hauling is a carton of Never at Home, which we had shipped directly from Thomson-Shore, our printer in Michigan, so that they'd be sure to reach us in time for WisCon.)
This year you'll find Aqueduct authors and editors galore at WisCon: Eleanor Arnason, Suzy McKee Charnas, L. Timmel Duchamp, Karen Joy Fowler, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Theodora Goss, Eileen Gunn, Andrea Hairston, Lesley Hall, Liz Henry, Gwyneth Jones, Ellen Klages, Claire Light, Kristin Livdahl, Josh Lukin, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Nancy Jane Moore, Debbie Notkin, Nnedi Okorafor, Geoff Ryman, Anne Sheldon, Nisi Shawl, Rachel Swirsky, Sheree Renee Thomas, and Cynthia Ward. Nisi Shawl, of course, is the Guest of Honor, so you'll be seeing a lot of her.
In past years I've tried to list all the programming Aqueduct's authors have been scheduled for, but I just couldn't manage to do that this year. I will mention, however, readings being given by Aqueduct authors, as well as other programming that I'm involved in. Nisi Shawl will be reading at Room of One's Own on Thursday evening, and Saturday afternoon at 2:30 in Wisconsin. (Right after a panel in that room that I'll be moderating.) Carolyn Ives Gilman, Eileen Gunn, Claire Light, Mary Anne Mohanraj, and Nancy Jane Moore will be reading Sunday morning at Michelangelo's ("Blood and Chocolate: We read it and eat!). Andrea Hairston and Sheree Renee Thomas will be reading with Beyon'Dusa: Wild Wimmin Rehearsing the Impossible in Conference Room 2 on Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m. And immediately after Beyon'Dusa, The Aqueductistas--Eleanor Arnason, Timmi Duchamp, Ellen Klages, Kristin Livdahl, and Anne Sheldon-- will be reading in that same room. I'll be moderating "This Is What Democracy Looks Like: The Wisconsin Protests" in Wisconsin at 1 p.m. on Saturday and participating in "The Self-Reflective Revolutionary," a panel which includes Josh Lukin, at 2:30 on Saturday in Conference Room 5, and another panel at 4 p.m., with Eileen Gunn, "Happy Ninetieth Birthday Carol Emshwiller!"-- which is supposedly in Senate A, but not on the schedule. (WTF?) Another panel seems to be scheduled at the same time in the same place... Hmmm... Guess I need to look into that.
Anyway, I may be a bit stressed this year, but I'm really looking forward to seeing all my friends and acquaintances attending. WisCon may have become a bit hectic for me in the last few years, but I love it as much as I ever have.
This year you'll find Aqueduct authors and editors galore at WisCon: Eleanor Arnason, Suzy McKee Charnas, L. Timmel Duchamp, Karen Joy Fowler, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Theodora Goss, Eileen Gunn, Andrea Hairston, Lesley Hall, Liz Henry, Gwyneth Jones, Ellen Klages, Claire Light, Kristin Livdahl, Josh Lukin, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Nancy Jane Moore, Debbie Notkin, Nnedi Okorafor, Geoff Ryman, Anne Sheldon, Nisi Shawl, Rachel Swirsky, Sheree Renee Thomas, and Cynthia Ward. Nisi Shawl, of course, is the Guest of Honor, so you'll be seeing a lot of her.
In past years I've tried to list all the programming Aqueduct's authors have been scheduled for, but I just couldn't manage to do that this year. I will mention, however, readings being given by Aqueduct authors, as well as other programming that I'm involved in. Nisi Shawl will be reading at Room of One's Own on Thursday evening, and Saturday afternoon at 2:30 in Wisconsin. (Right after a panel in that room that I'll be moderating.) Carolyn Ives Gilman, Eileen Gunn, Claire Light, Mary Anne Mohanraj, and Nancy Jane Moore will be reading Sunday morning at Michelangelo's ("Blood and Chocolate: We read it and eat!). Andrea Hairston and Sheree Renee Thomas will be reading with Beyon'Dusa: Wild Wimmin Rehearsing the Impossible in Conference Room 2 on Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m. And immediately after Beyon'Dusa, The Aqueductistas--Eleanor Arnason, Timmi Duchamp, Ellen Klages, Kristin Livdahl, and Anne Sheldon-- will be reading in that same room. I'll be moderating "This Is What Democracy Looks Like: The Wisconsin Protests" in Wisconsin at 1 p.m. on Saturday and participating in "The Self-Reflective Revolutionary," a panel which includes Josh Lukin, at 2:30 on Saturday in Conference Room 5, and another panel at 4 p.m., with Eileen Gunn, "Happy Ninetieth Birthday Carol Emshwiller!"-- which is supposedly in Senate A, but not on the schedule. (WTF?) Another panel seems to be scheduled at the same time in the same place... Hmmm... Guess I need to look into that.
Anyway, I may be a bit stressed this year, but I'm really looking forward to seeing all my friends and acquaintances attending. WisCon may have become a bit hectic for me in the last few years, but I love it as much as I ever have.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Twenty-Five Commemorations of Joanna Russ
. . . just to have the best in one place.
Matt Cheney's is the one that comes closest to expressing my own feelings. Here's what he wrote on the subject just before and after that fine obit.
wordweaverlynn on being saved by Russ.
Cramer on being Russ's student.
Christopher Priest at The Guardian, doing a better job than
Margalit Fox's NYT piece.
Annalee Newitz's appreciation.
The Nielsen Haydens commemorate, reminisce, and find an old photo.
Professor Burt, because he's writing for the Beacon Press site, has to emphasize The Female Man; but he has things to say about the importance of Russ's other work.
Rose Fox is at a loss for words, but manages to come up with a few moving ones nonetheless.
What Arthur Hlavaty is grateful for.
Metafilter has a good entry and a good discussion thread.
Michael Swanwick on the effect of her presence in the SF field.
Nic Clarke on "her eloquent anger."
Liz Henry on why How to Suppress Women's Writing rocked her world.
John H. Stevens on the standards, tools, and possibilities Russ's work opened his eyes to.
Stephen B of Bad Reputation explains the power of Russ's work and then muses on transphobia in The Female Man; Cheryl Morgan and her commenters also think about that issue.
If you are unmoved by Timmi Duchamp's memorial, check to see whether there is something wrong with you.
Laughingrat recalls a HtSWW moment in the library.
The ever-provocative Paul Kincaid thinks about what we need to see addressed further in Russ criticism.
Debbie Notkin on first looking into The Female Man.
Aqueductistas Nancy Jane Moore and Sue Lange explain how the caliber of Russ's prose makes all the difference.
Matt Cheney's is the one that comes closest to expressing my own feelings. Here's what he wrote on the subject just before and after that fine obit.
wordweaverlynn on being saved by Russ.
Cramer on being Russ's student.
Christopher Priest at The Guardian, doing a better job than
Margalit Fox's NYT piece.
Annalee Newitz's appreciation.
The Nielsen Haydens commemorate, reminisce, and find an old photo.
Professor Burt, because he's writing for the Beacon Press site, has to emphasize The Female Man; but he has things to say about the importance of Russ's other work.
Rose Fox is at a loss for words, but manages to come up with a few moving ones nonetheless.
What Arthur Hlavaty is grateful for.
Metafilter has a good entry and a good discussion thread.
Michael Swanwick on the effect of her presence in the SF field.
Nic Clarke on "her eloquent anger."
Liz Henry on why How to Suppress Women's Writing rocked her world.
John H. Stevens on the standards, tools, and possibilities Russ's work opened his eyes to.
Stephen B of Bad Reputation explains the power of Russ's work and then muses on transphobia in The Female Man; Cheryl Morgan and her commenters also think about that issue.
If you are unmoved by Timmi Duchamp's memorial, check to see whether there is something wrong with you.
Laughingrat recalls a HtSWW moment in the library.
The ever-provocative Paul Kincaid thinks about what we need to see addressed further in Russ criticism.
Debbie Notkin on first looking into The Female Man.
Aqueductistas Nancy Jane Moore and Sue Lange explain how the caliber of Russ's prose makes all the difference.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Aqueductista Wins Nebula
SWIRSKY! SWIRSKY! SWIRSK . . . ah, Barry beat me to it. Congratulations, Rachel!
ETA: Swirsky in the WaPo.
ETA: Swirsky in the WaPo.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Andrea Hairston Reads & Signs Thursday at the University Bookstore in Seattle
Just a reminder for all of you who live in the Seattle metropolitan area: Andrea Hairston and Pan Morigan will be performing and signing tomorrow night at the University Bookstore at 7 p.m. I've no doubt it will be a dynamic occasion. I will be there myself, and probably a gaggle of other writers whose work you're likely familiar with as well. So please come out for the event.
The University Bookstore is located at 4326 University Way NE. It provides free parking with even a modest purchase in the parking lot behind the store.
2010 Galyactic Spectrum Awards
Brit Mandelo has posted the 2010 Gaylactic Spectrum Awards over at Tor.com:
Best Novel Winner: The Steel Remains - Richard Morgan (Del Rey)
Best Novel Short-List:
Best Short Fiction Winner(s):
“The Behold of the Eye” by Hal Duncan, from Lone Star Stories. Reprinted in Wilde Stories 2009 (edited by Steve Berman).
“The Rocky Side of the Sky” by Melissa Scott, from Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures (edited by Lynne Jamneck).
Best Short Fiction Short-List:
Best Other Works:
I see a couple of Aqueductistas on the short lists.
Best Novel Winner: The Steel Remains - Richard Morgan (Del Rey)
Best Novel Short-List:
- Ash - Malinda Lo (Little, Brown)
- By the Mountain Bound - Elizabeth Bear (Tor)
- Centuries Ago and Very Fast - Rebecca Ore (Aqueduct Press)
- The Enchantment Emporium - Tanya Huff (DAW)
- Naamah’s Kiss - Jacqueline Carey (Grand Central)
- Palimpsest - Catherynne Valente (Bantam Spectra)
- The Red Tree - Caitlin Kiernan (Roc)
- Seven for a Secret - Elizabeth Bear (Subterranean Press)
- Strange Fortune - Josh Lanyon (Blind Eye)
Best Short Fiction Winner(s):
“The Behold of the Eye” by Hal Duncan, from Lone Star Stories. Reprinted in Wilde Stories 2009 (edited by Steve Berman).
“The Rocky Side of the Sky” by Melissa Scott, from Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures (edited by Lynne Jamneck).
Best Short Fiction Short-List:
- “Angels Alone” by Carolyn Ives Gilman in Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures
- “Behind the Curtain” by Joel Lane in Dark Horizons, Issue 22, reprinted in Wilde Stories 2009
- “The Bloomsbury Nudes” by Jameson Currier in Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (edited by Vince Liaguno and Chad Helder), reprinted in Wilde Stories 2009
- “City of the Dead” by Kate Welsh in Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories (edited by Catherine Lundoff)
- “Firooz and his Brother” by Alex Jeffers in the May 2008 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, reprinted in Wilde Stories 2009
- “Here Lies the Last Lesbian Rental in East Vancouver” by Amber Dawn in Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire (edited by Amber Dawn)
- “I’m Your Violence” by Lee Thomas in Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet
- “In Circles” by Aurelia T. Evans in Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire
- “In the Night Street Baths” by Chaz Brenchley in Lace and Blade (edited by Deborah J. Ross)
- “One Horse Town” by Melissa Scott in Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories
- “Parts” by Kal Cobalt in Wired Hard 4 (Edited by Lauren Burka and Cecilia Tan)
- “Remember” by Astrid Amara in Tangle (edited by Nicole Kimberling)
- “The Succession Knoorikios Khnum” by Zachary Jernigan in Wired Hard 4
- “Waiting Tables and Time” by Lyn McConchie in Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories
Best Other Works:
- Were the World Mine, a film by Tom Gustafson.
- Haunted Hearths and Sapphic Shades: Lesbian Ghost Stories (edited by Catherine Lundoff)
- Periphery: Erotic Lesbian Futures (edited by Lynne Jamneck)
- Unspeakable Horror: From the Shadows of the Closet (edited by Vince Liaguno and Chad Helder)
- Wilde Stories 2009 (edited by Steve Berman)
I see a couple of Aqueductistas on the short lists.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Pre-Con Call: ideas, proposals, suggestions?
Alexis Lothian, who will be publishing the sixth volume of the WisCon Chronicles, has issued this pre-con call for proposals and suggestions at a Dreamwidth page she's dedicated to the volume:
I will be editing this year’s volume of The WisCon Chronicles, to be published as usual by Aqueduct Press. You can see previous years’ here: Volume One, Volume Two, Volume Three, Volume Four, and Volume Five will be coming out at WisCon 35.
Every editor chooses a theme for the book. This year’s Chronicles has a working title of “Futures of Feminism and Fandom.” I chose this partly in order to acknowledge the way that upheavals surrounding the WisCon 35 Guest of Honor (1) highlighted some conflicts and contradictions in how WisCon's feminism has been defined (and led to the con's mission being crystallized in the new Statement of Principles) and (2) demonstrated the ways fannish and activist community comes together (with online activity replacing the centrality of books and face to face gatherings for many––one reason why I’m not waiting until after the con itself to suggest people think about chronicling it).
But those events should overshadow neither the con itself (I am sure they won’t!) nor its Chronicles. After all, definitions of feminism and fandom at WisCon are always in flux. In recent years, the limitations of a feminism focused purely on gender has become ever more evident and intersectionality has moved front and center. At the same time, many of the fans that come together at WisCon are joined by a shared love not only of literary science fiction but also increasingly of media and of transformative works. And the meaning of a face-to-face con is being changed by the way fannishness increasingly assumes we live on the internet. How do all these changes affect one another and affect what WisCon means to all of us? There is always a danger, when rushing toward a new and shiny future, of leaving behind what was valuable about the past. If feminism, fandom, and WisCon are changing, what parts of our history is it most vital to hold on to?
I will be inviting lots of people to contribute at WisCon; this post is my encouragement for you to think about whether you might have something to contribute before the con begins. I’m keen to hear your ideas for reflections on the history and future of feminism, science fiction, and fandom: personal, historical, theoretical, fictional. I am also, of course, looking for accounts of panels and other events at WisCon 35. If you know you’re planning to attend a particular panel, whether or not you’re on it, and you’d like to write a report for the volume, drop me a line. I’m also interested in reflections that may not connect directly to a panel at WisCon but that may emerge from WisCon-related discussions and events in fandom; after all, the con remains significant to many people in many places for many reasons, even for those who have never attended. If WisCon’s virtual presence is important to you and you have something to say about it, I’m interested in your contribution too.
I am particularly keen to have people write about the following things:
- the ways class, disability, and other elements like religion and location intersect with gender, sexuality and race.
- forms of fannishness, on and offline. There have been panels about internet drama and social change, about how to be wrong online and about how to engage in debate; let’s have some reflection and analysis of that.
- non-western forms of media and fandom. I’m thinking particularly of anime and manga, about which there has been a good deal of discussion at WisCon, but submissions on other forms would be very welcome.
- transformative fanworks. WisCon’s vid party is in its second year and fan fiction panels are well established; what has that meant for you?
Finally, one of feminism and science fiction’s great writers and thinkers, Joanna Russ, passed away this year. Her work included early and deep engagement with intersectionality and some of the earliest printed discussions of transformative fanworks, and she was also willing to acknowledge when her earlier definitions of feminist politics had been proven wrong. This WisCon Chronicles should honor her memory, and I’d like to gather some reflections and memories about what she meant to fans.
Of course, the Chronicles can’t really be planned before the con; I look forward to all the events and discussions and ideas I can’t possibly anticipate.
If you'd like to propose a contribution, share an idea, or make a suggestion, please leave a comment here, send me a message, or email wischronicles@gmail.com.
I will be editing this year’s volume of The WisCon Chronicles, to be published as usual by Aqueduct Press. You can see previous years’ here: Volume One, Volume Two, Volume Three, Volume Four, and Volume Five will be coming out at WisCon 35.
Every editor chooses a theme for the book. This year’s Chronicles has a working title of “Futures of Feminism and Fandom.” I chose this partly in order to acknowledge the way that upheavals surrounding the WisCon 35 Guest of Honor (1) highlighted some conflicts and contradictions in how WisCon's feminism has been defined (and led to the con's mission being crystallized in the new Statement of Principles) and (2) demonstrated the ways fannish and activist community comes together (with online activity replacing the centrality of books and face to face gatherings for many––one reason why I’m not waiting until after the con itself to suggest people think about chronicling it).
But those events should overshadow neither the con itself (I am sure they won’t!) nor its Chronicles. After all, definitions of feminism and fandom at WisCon are always in flux. In recent years, the limitations of a feminism focused purely on gender has become ever more evident and intersectionality has moved front and center. At the same time, many of the fans that come together at WisCon are joined by a shared love not only of literary science fiction but also increasingly of media and of transformative works. And the meaning of a face-to-face con is being changed by the way fannishness increasingly assumes we live on the internet. How do all these changes affect one another and affect what WisCon means to all of us? There is always a danger, when rushing toward a new and shiny future, of leaving behind what was valuable about the past. If feminism, fandom, and WisCon are changing, what parts of our history is it most vital to hold on to?
I will be inviting lots of people to contribute at WisCon; this post is my encouragement for you to think about whether you might have something to contribute before the con begins. I’m keen to hear your ideas for reflections on the history and future of feminism, science fiction, and fandom: personal, historical, theoretical, fictional. I am also, of course, looking for accounts of panels and other events at WisCon 35. If you know you’re planning to attend a particular panel, whether or not you’re on it, and you’d like to write a report for the volume, drop me a line. I’m also interested in reflections that may not connect directly to a panel at WisCon but that may emerge from WisCon-related discussions and events in fandom; after all, the con remains significant to many people in many places for many reasons, even for those who have never attended. If WisCon’s virtual presence is important to you and you have something to say about it, I’m interested in your contribution too.
I am particularly keen to have people write about the following things:
- the ways class, disability, and other elements like religion and location intersect with gender, sexuality and race.
- forms of fannishness, on and offline. There have been panels about internet drama and social change, about how to be wrong online and about how to engage in debate; let’s have some reflection and analysis of that.
- non-western forms of media and fandom. I’m thinking particularly of anime and manga, about which there has been a good deal of discussion at WisCon, but submissions on other forms would be very welcome.
- transformative fanworks. WisCon’s vid party is in its second year and fan fiction panels are well established; what has that meant for you?
Finally, one of feminism and science fiction’s great writers and thinkers, Joanna Russ, passed away this year. Her work included early and deep engagement with intersectionality and some of the earliest printed discussions of transformative fanworks, and she was also willing to acknowledge when her earlier definitions of feminist politics had been proven wrong. This WisCon Chronicles should honor her memory, and I’d like to gather some reflections and memories about what she meant to fans.
Of course, the Chronicles can’t really be planned before the con; I look forward to all the events and discussions and ideas I can’t possibly anticipate.
If you'd like to propose a contribution, share an idea, or make a suggestion, please leave a comment here, send me a message, or email wischronicles@gmail.com.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)