Black to the Future

Notes from Ferguson is the Future Conference at Princeton University Sept. 11-14, 2015

We are all time travelers.The past hasn’t gone anywhere.

America is a haunted house.The future is in every gesture we make.

Science fiction is about figuring out how to be different together.

Ferguson is the Future is/was/will be an on-going moment of magic, community, and brilliance organized by Moya Bailey, Ruha Benjamin, and Ayana Jamieson. These women have serious superpowers. They gathered writers, activists, scholars, musicians, DJs, filmmakers, scientists, and curious folk at Princeton University to activate our blackness, our multi-dimensional, time-traveling blackness. Moya, Ruha, and Ayana called us to celebrate Octavia Butler and the joy of our sci-fi, speculative existence. They also insisted we look for that way out of no way that allows us to survive on-going apocalypse. Moya, Ruha, and Ayana raised money, fed and housed us, and kept us on point as we talked to and with each other. We did not have to provide the context for our being, for our sensibility—it shimmered around us. Everyone agreed—it was a blast, a blessing, a revelation to be activists, artists, and scholars imagining the future we want. Nothing like dreaming and scheming for justice, pleasure, peace, and sustainable abundance.

Before the public conference, writers and activists Steven Barnes, Lisa Bolekaja, Adrienne Maree Brown, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, Walidah Imarisha, Nnedi Okorafor, Daniel José Older, Rasheedah Phillips, Sophia Samatar, Nisi Shawl, and me (Andrea Hairston) gathered for an activist/artist retreat. We were joined  by DJ Lynnée Denise, mixed media artist Soraya Jean-Louis McElroy, and musicians Be Steadwell and Taja Lindley & Jessica Valoris of Colored Girls Hustle . (I call out names, because dear reader, you should go look these folks up. Check out their art and brilliance. Buy what they make.)

Our retreat mission was to:

shake each other up

dream freely

explore craft

refuse the way it is as the way it has to be

skip racism and sexism 101

dance to the music

raise critical questions pertaining to afro-futurism

conjure solutions

support and challenge one another

spark new projects and possibilities

explore the impossible

We did all that and more in gatherings facilitated by Adrienne Maree Brown, and also in casual encounters sipping port and brandy in the library of Princeton’s guest house or walking down the avenue.

I rarely write blogs, but Timmi asked me. Writing fast (and doing all that I do) is difficult to impossible. I’m dyslexic. I actually don’t have time to write this blog, but that’s why I am writing it. Fast and furious Andrea, was made possible by Black to the Future Conference magic. Time travelers have all the time in the Universe!  

At our retreat sessions we discussed how some people are waiting for us to fail. Some people are eager to laugh at our writing. In Facebook-land and the Twitterverse there is bullying of “social justice warriors,” of POC and women writers. But we created a manifesto, a declaration of our freedom as artists. We don’t have to be perfect or silent, a million times better or silent, bullet proof or silent. We will live out loud and on line while being black, brown, disabled, queer… We will collaborate for each other’s success. We are poised to boost the signal on everybody’s work. We will be vulnerable and not always know what the hell we are doing. We won’t be realistic, we will try for the impossible.

On Monday, we were joined by scholars, Reynaldo Anderson, Netrice Gaskins, John Jennings, Alondra Nelson, Dorothy Roberts, activists and educators from Ferguson, Johnetta Elzie, Deray McKesson, Brittany Packnett, curators and filmmakers, Erin Christovale, M. Asli Dukan, Amir George, Dennis Leroy Kangalee, for an all-day speculative fiction jam. The weave of voices and disciplines, the polyrhythm of perspectives was astounding. Every day we got smarter, got activated. And Monday, nobody wanted to leave! 

With organizers Moya, Ruha, and Ayana, we created our visionary future, an alternative world in the haunted halls of Princeton University. The time together was heady and full-bodied. We carry new superpowers with us now. Change is upon us.

"The genre would have been very different without her": a notable centennial

Today is the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Alice Bradley Sheldon, aka James Tiptree Jr., aka Raccoona Sheldon (August 24, 1915 – May 19, 1987). Since the revelation in late 1976 that James Tiptree Jr. was a 5' 8" sixty-one-year old woman, Tiptree has been a figure of interest more for what Tiptree biographer Julie Phillips calls Sheldon's "double life" than for Tiptree's work. I'm always a little sad to re-discover that many people who know what the Tiptree Award is haven't actually read Tiptree's work. And so I'd like, on this occasion, to quote Jo Walton on that work:

Tiptree was constantly pushing the boundaries of science fiction. “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1973) prefigured cyberpunk—it’s one of the three precursor stories, with John M. Ford’s Web of Angels and John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider. “Love is the Plan, the Plan is Death” made a space for Octavia Butler’s later writing about aliens and sex and identity. “And I Awoke and Found me Here” did the same for Varley—-- for a lot of the writers who came into SF in the later seventies and the eighties Tiptree was part of their defining space, and the genre would have been very different without her. Science fiction is constantly a dialogue, and her voice was one of the strongest in the early seventies, when everything was changing. She wasn’t a New Wave writer, and in many ways she was very traditional, “And I Have Come Upon This Place” could have been written by Murray Leinster, except for the end. She wrote what she wrote and expanded the possibilities for all of us. Science fiction would be very different without her. (What Makes This Book So Great, p. 318.)

To mark the centennial of this great writer, Twelfth Planet Press is releasing Letters to Tiptree, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Alexandra Pierce.The volumes includes contributions from 35 persons (who, by the way, number several Aqueduct authors), archived letters from Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, and James Tiptree Jr./Alice Sheldon, excerpts from The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of Science Fiction Feminisms by Helen Merrick, an excerpt from The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction by Justine Larbalestier, and an essay by Michael Swanwick.

Armadillocon, with interview

Two weeks ago I attended Armadillocon 37, as the Editor Guest, in Austin, Texas. I had a wonderful, busy time and lots of interesting conversations. On Thursday evening, on arrival I was greeted with warm Texan hospitality and a delicious meal, met my fellow Guests, including Artist Guest Rocky Kelley (who designed the Program Book cover, from which the cool figures on our badges were taken), and was pleased to discover from some of the members a long-running Austin book club that they had read Alanya to Alanya earlier in the month. Friday started early for me, for the con takes their writing workshop, run by Marshall Ryan Maresca, very seriously, and devotes most of a day to it. All the Guests who were writers (Stina Leicht, Ken Liu, James Morrow, and myself) were instructors in the workshop, along with several other writers and critics. The workshop featured, in addition to the usual critique sessions conducted by two instructors and four or five students, three lively panel sessions in which all of the instructors discussed narrative structure, when to shift directions in or jettison writing projects, and, closing out the workshop, aspects of the business of writing.

On Friday evening, the con held its opening ceremonies, during which Toastmaster Stina Leicht introduced the other Guests and delivered a heartfelt speech on the importance of diversity for science fiction. Saturday, at noon, I joined Nancy Jane Moore, Cynthia Ward, and Jacob Weisman of Tachyon Publications in a panel titled "How to Sell a Book to Aqueduct Press"; the four of us talked a lot about independent-press publishing in general, as well as Aqueduct Press in specific. Saturday mid-afternoon, I participated in a game-show format pitting "Pros" against "Fans." I was certain the Fan team would wiped the floor with us--but no. To my astonishment, we routed them. As Stina, who hosted the game, warned us, our job was to guess the answers written on the surveys con-goers had filled out, which needn't actually be "correct." It was a weird experience, I can tell you, when for the category of "Feminist SF Writers," the number-one answer was...me. (Ursula Le Guin was number 2.) In my penultimate programming item, Chris Brown and Madeleine Rose Dimond interviewed me. (See below.) And on Sunday afternoon, I read a portion of "A Question of Grammar" from Never at Home and--because I'd been allotted an entire hour for my reading--had the pleasure of engaging in a fascinating conversation with my small audience.  

The programming was rich in readings, I'm happy to say, even if most of those I attended didn't attract large audiences, not least because there were often two readings going on at the same time, in addition to panels. Of the panel programming, I was most interested in attending the panels on feminist sf (which were well attended)-- one on "classical feminist sf," another titled "Badass, Babe, or None of the Above; Are Women's Archetypes Evolving (or Not) in SF/F Literature?" and "New Feminist SF." In two of these Marguerite Reed adopted the role of contrarian, which nudged the discussion into unexpected places. I also especially enjoyed the panel on Alternate History, with Chris Brown, Madeleine Rose Dimond, C.J. Mills, Katharine Eliska Kimrbiel, and Howard Waldrop.

And of course, as always happens at cons, I enjoyed numerous conversations in the lobby, halls, dining room, con suite, and at the bar in the lobby, filling my head with thoughts I carried back with me to Seattle.  

Although I took notes on the panels I attended, when I got home I discovered I couldn't sufficiently decipher my own hurried scrawl to make sense of them. But, though I can't offer you cogent summaries of the panels I attended, I can offer you the recording Chris Brown made of my Editor Guest interview-- or, rather, a link to it. (Although it is easy to post videos on this blog, audio recordings are something else...) You can find the recording of the interview on my website, here: http://ltimmelduchamp.com/ltimmelduchamp.com/interview-Armalillocon.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone Vol. 5, 3

The Summer issue of the Cascadia Subduction Zone is out. This issue features an interview of Celeste Rita Baker by Amal El-Mohtar, discussing the uses of dialect in written fiction, poetry by Alicia Cole, Bogi Takács and Sonya Taaffe, an essay on Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17 by Tananrive Due, art work by Sharon Sutton, and reviews by Rachel Swirsky, Karen Burnham, and others.

In case you've forgotten or don't know, all but the last two issues are available for free download from the CSZ's archives. The new issue is available as a pdf for $3, or a print copy (in the US only) for $5. Subscriptions are $10 for the pdf edition and $16 (in the US only) for the print edition.

 Here's the new issue's table of contents:

 ol. 5 No. 3 — July 2015

Essay

The Importance of Dialect:
An Interview with Celeste Rita Baker
  by Amal El-Mohtar

Poems

Stream
   by Alicia Cole

Travel-charm
   by Bogi Takács 

The Drowning of the Doves
   by Sonya Taaffe

Grandmother Magma

Babel-17 by Samuel R. Delany
   by Tananarive Due

Reviews

Accessing the Future, edited by Djibril al-Ayad and Kathryn Allan
   reviewed by Rachel Swirsky

Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements, edited by adrienne marie brown and Walidah Imarisha
   reviewed by Maria Velazquez

Things We Found During the Autopsy, by Kuzhali Manickavel
  reviewed by Karen Burnham

Headstrong: 52 Women Who Changed Science & the World, by Rachel Swaby
  reviewed by Victoria Elisabeth Garcia

Persona, by Genevieve Valentine
  reviewed by Kristin King

 

Featured Artist

Sharon E. Sutton

Letters to Tiptree

 Today Twelfth Planet Press released the list of contributors to their forthcoming anthology, Letters to Tiptree, edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Alexandra Pierce, and The Los Angeles Review of Books published The Women You Didn't See: A Letter to Alice Sheldon by Nicola Griffith.You can check out the star-studded list and preorder the book at http://www.twelfthplanetpress.com/products/ebooks/letters-to-tiptree. The book is scheduled for release on the centenary of Sheldon's birth, August 24.

Photos from WisCon 39

I tend to forget to take photos at WisCon, except for those I've gotten in the habit of doing-- chiefly of the Aqueduct Press-organized readings. Partly this is because I don't like to take photos without first getting permission from those who will be clearly identifiable in the photo (which pretty much rules out most candid photos), partly because I tend to get so caught up in talking to people that I forget. On our first night at WisCon, I remembered to take a photo of the window of Room of One's Own (which I of course stared admiringly at before entering the store), and a photo of Kath, Arrate, Nisi Shawl, and Margaret McBride at dinner. (Tom was leaning in back in his chair, & so, like me, who was talking the photo, is invisible.)

Hmm. Actually, you can see Tom's arm, the napkin in his lap. The food was Peruvian, and we were all in an exuberant mood and rejoicing at being all together again and attending another WisCon.

Friday, I took a picture of our tables in the Dealers Room. Kim Nash took the photo so that all four of us could be in the photo: this is what it the center part of the table looked like before the doors to the Dealers Room were opened:

Reading on Saturday were Anne Sheldon (who read several poems and an excerpt from Adventures of the Faithful Counselor, Mary Anne Mohanraj (who read from the introduction of The WisCon Chronicles Vol 9: Intersections and Alliances, Jackie Hatton (who read from Flesh and Wires, which Aqueduct Press will be releasing later this year), Andrea Hairston (who read from a novella), and me (who read a portion of "The Forbidden Words of Margaret A., which has just been reprinted in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's Sisters of the Revolution):

And reading on Sunday were Eleanor Arnason (who read from The Daughter of the Bear King, which Aqueduct recently released in an ebook edition), Nancy Jane Moore (who read from The Weave), Therese Pieczynski (not an Aqueduct author, but one who writes very much in the spirit of Aqueduct and who read a teaser from a story that had everyone on the edge of their seat), and Lisa Shapter (who read from her novella A Day in Deep Freeze, which Aqueduct published this spring, and who prefers not to be photographed).

I want to sing Jacques Brel and read you a passage of lesbian steampunk romance adventure from my forthcoming novel, Everfair.  All you have to do is show up at Gay City in Seattle on Thursday, July 2, 7 p.m. and listen.

Here are the details.

The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 10-- Call for materials

 Call for Materials

 The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 10:  Social Justice (Redux), will be edited by Margaret McBride. She has issued the following call for materials:

"One thing I admire in Ursula K. LeGuin's writing is her willingness to publicly examine and change her way of seeing the world and her fiction (as in Tehanu, published almost 20 years after The Earthsea Trilogy or the 1976 "Is Gender Necessary?" followed by the 1989 "Redux" version of that essay). I hope The WisCon Chronicles 10 Social Justice (Redux) authors will have the same attitude, for we seem to bring up problems of social injustice so often.  Mary Anne Mohanraj, who edited The WisCon Chronicles 9,  focused on social justice issues in her introduction, as did several included essays. The fiction and WisCon 39 guest-of-honor speeches by Alaya Dawn Johnson and Kim Stanley Robinson focused on multiple aspects of social justice: environmental collapse, need for reduced population, and climate change; violence against women; racial inequality in publishing and elsewhere; gender issues, including reproductive rights; inequality of income and power; etc. Yet current newspapers or blogs about Ferguson or gay marriage or our own science fiction community show that we must continue to address such issues in fiction and elsewhere (I hope in WisCon Chronicles 10!). The "redux" aspect of the volume might include essays on how terms used in debates about social justice could be problematic.

"I am particularly interested in how science fiction is addressing social justice, especially the idea that environmental programs need to include equality for women and minorities. Essays examining the fiction of any past guest of honor at WisCon or Tiptree Award winner or any science fiction that looks at environmental concerns or diversity issues would be appropriate, also. 2016 will be the 40th year for WisCon, so personal memories from guests of honor, committee members, and also people new or long-time to WisCon will be considered, even if not linked directly to social justice issues.

"Please submit essays, personal remembrances, poetry, short fiction for consideration by September 30, 2015 to mcbride@uoregon.edu."

Metamorphosis by Alaya Dawn Johnson and Kim Stanley Robinson

I'm pleased to announce the release of Metamorphosis, a little paperback book that Aqueduct Press issued in conjunction with WisCon 39. Metamorphosis offers a taste of work from WisCon 39 Guests of Honor Alaya Dawn Johnson and Kim Stanley Robinson, as well as an interview of Johnson by Justine Larbalestier and an interview of Robinson by Jeanne Gomoll. In Johnson's "Love Will Tear Us Apart," the narrator, who regards humans (their brains, especially) as a primary food source, must cope with conflicting impulses when one of the most appetizing humans he's ever met is also really, really hot. In "A Song to Greet the Sun," a family reels when a father puts honor before love. Robinson's "The Lunatics," deprived of memories, toiling for their truncated lives deep below the surface, walk in the nerves of the moon, tearing out promethium under the lash of the foremen. While in "Zürich," the narrator's desire to be the first Ausländer to make an impression on an inspector notorious for not refunding cleaning deposits leads to extraordinary effects on the city he is preparing to leave.

Metamorphosis was printed in a limited, numbered run of 150; but this year, in response to popular demand, we've also issued an e-book edition of the book. You can purchase it here.

The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 9: Intersections and Alliances

I'm pleased to announce the release of The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 9: Intersections and Alliances, edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj. As with the seventh volume of the Chronicles, the electronic edition of Vol. 9 includes a good deal more material than the print edition, and will be available gratis to everyone who purchases the print edition. 

"In this volume of the WisCon Chronicles, we find ourselves considering what it means to live at the intersections of various identities, some of them more privileged than others. We ask how we can function as good allies to each other in often challenging situations. We're living through an intense time of social change, and a variety of questions arise as we have these often difficult conversations about feminism, race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and more. Among them are questions about what leads to positive social change and how best to effect such change in our communities."
 —from the Introduction by Mary Anne Mohanraj

The WisCon Chronicles, Vol. 9: Intersections and Alliances, edited by Mary Anne Mohanraj, includes a mix of essays, fiction, poetry, and roundtable discussion by Nisi Shawl, Samuel R. Delany, Vandana Singh, Kelley Eskridge, Sheree R. Thomas, Michi Trota, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Tobias Buckell, and others.You can purchase it now from Aqueduct's website.

Nancy Jane Moore's The Weave

I'm pleased to announce Aqueduct's publication of The Weave, a debut novel by Nancy Jane Moore. The Weave brings us a first-contact story in which humans, seeking to exploit the much-needed resources of a system inhabited by creatures they assume are "primitive" and defenceless, discover their mistake the hard way. Human Caty Sanjuro, a seasoned marine and dedicated xenologist, and native Sundown, a determined astronomer, struggle to establish communication across the many barriers that divide their species, at first because they share a passionate interest in alien species, but finally because they know that only they can bridge the differences across species threatening catastrophe for both sides.

Vonda N. McIntyre, author of Dreamsnake and The Moon and the Sun, writes of The Weave: "Unique protagonists. Unique aliens. Unique war. Nancy Jane Moore's remarkable first novel drew me in and kept me reading and left me, at the end, knowing that Caty Sanjuro and Sundown the Cibolan continue their work and their lives and their friendship. My favorite kind of novel."

Michael Bishop, author of A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire, writes, "In this accomplished first novel, Nancy Jane Moore dramatizes at least three great speculative themes: first contact, telepathic communication, and earthlings and aliens at war. In so doing, Moore narrates the compelling struggle of a brave human xenologist, Caty Sanjuro, to wring interspecies harmony from the chaos of interspecies misunderstanding and mistrust. Like Ursula Le Guin, Moore never settles for pat or clichéd extrapolations. Further, she treats each of her archetypal themes with adult thought-experiment thoroughness and all her characters, human and alien, with insight, respect, and compassion. Aficionados of real science fiction will love and celebrate this remarkable debut."

"Moore (Changeling) effortlessly weaves together first contact, corporate exploitation, and space adventure on a planet 40 light-years from Earth in this anticolonialist science fiction fable.... Moore realistically and enjoyably describes the excitement of scientific exploration, corporate greed, conspiracy, telepathic conflict, and the desperation of natives determined to defend their home against invasion.--Publishers Weekly

The Weave is available now through Aqueduct's site in both print and e-book editions. It will be officially released on July 1, when it will be available elsewhere.