New Archive of 30 Years' Classic Sci-Fi Available For Free

Archive.org recently added a gigantic collection of the influential science fiction magazine Galaxy Science Fiction to its site that is free for anyone to read, worldwide. While it's not a complete collection of the magazine's run, there are many pieces of sci-fi history in the collection. Get the details after the jump.

Muslim World's History of Sci-Fi & Fantasy Fiction

Writing for Aeon, Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad delves into the long, rich tradition of speculative fiction in Muslim culture, including some of the first examples of feminist fiction in the early 1900s. As he points out, it's not really all that surprising when you consider the background it came from:

Western readers often overlook the Muslim world’s speculative fiction... Some of the first forays into the genre were the utopias dreamt up during the cultural flowering of the Golden Age. As the Islamic empire expanded from the Arabian peninsula to capture territories spanning from Spain to India, literature addressed the problem of how to integrate such a vast array of cultures and people...We also have the Muslim world to thank for one of the first works of feminist science fiction. 

He draws a line from the high fantasy tales of the Golden Age to the early 1800s to today, and it's a pretty interesting journal. And if that whets your appetite, you can find more at www.islamscifi.com .

Bringing Arrival To The Big Screen: Screenwriter Speaks

Ted Chiang's short story "Story of Your Life" stuck with screenwriter Eric Heiserer long after he put it down. Heiserer had written a number of successful horror screenplays, but said the the impact the story had on him made him want to pursue it as a movie. In a behind the scenes article for The Talkhouse, Heiserer talks about how he went from turning "The Story of Your Life" into the hit film Arrival. An excerpt:

I pleaded with the author to let me write the script on spec, which meant optioning the rights for an extended period of time. I pitched him my take, which felt akin to saying, “I’m borrowing your car. It may come back with some aftermarket stuff and a new paint job. Please, trust me.”
He did, and I spent the next year learning why science fiction is so difficult to get right. Here are some of the many lessons this script taught me. 

1. Sometimes the plain truth is more interesting than the beautiful lie. 

At some point, you embrace what kind of story your movie is, and lean into it. If it’s a martial arts action bonanza, your character and story moments happen in the framework of fight sequences. If it’s a musical, your subtext plays in song. This movie was about process — the process of cracking a new language and teaching our own.

Heiserer goes into 4 more important writing lessons his work on Arrival taught him ,as well as the elaborate technical hacks he had to pull off with his screenwriting software to make the script happen and explain the films ideas.

New Multimedia Short Story: Afrofuturist 419

Award-winning Author Nnedi Okafor and science fiction magazine Clarkesworld have teamed up to bring you "Afrofuturist 419". It's a story told in email forwards, a news report and a wonderfully voice-acted series of audio logs.

Afrofuturist refers to the Afrofuture movement that combined Afrocentrism, science fiction, magical realism, surrealism, black history and more into an artistic movement across sculpture, fiction, photography and music. The number "419" comes from Nigerian criminal law and refers to the number of an anti-fraud statute dealing with the advance fee scam emails that everyone with an email account EVER has gotten, and it is a similar email that starts off the story:

I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the cousin of Nigerian Astronaut, Air Force Major Abacha Tunde. He was the first African in space when he made a secret flight to the Salyut 6 space station in 1979. He was on a later Soviet spaceflight, Soyuz T-16Z to the secret Soviet military space station Salyut 8T in 1989. He was stranded there in 1990 when the Soviet Union was dissolved. His other Soviet crewmembers returned to Earth on the Soyuz T-16Z, but his place was taken up by return cargo. There have been occasional Progrez supply flights to keep him going since that time. He is in good humor, but wants to come home.

As it turns out, all of these themes are specifically addressed in the story by the main character in audio logs. As for how it develops, well... you should really experience the whole thing for yourself.

Spec Fic's Systemic Racism & What To Do About It

Text: Out of 2,039 stories published in 2015, 38 were written by black authors.

Speculative fiction can be a gateway for aspiring authors, above and beyond getting a pay-day or seeing your work in the SF/F anthology of your choice. It can also be the first step to greater access to agents, a fanbase, novel deals and more. Over the past few years, there has been an increased push for publishing a diversity of voices, but in a recent study, Fireside Fiction outlines that out of all of the speculative fiction stories that were published last year, only 1.9 percent of those stories were written by black authors. To put those odds in perspective, they do some math to point out that:

...the probability of the 1.9% average occurring by random chance is 3.21x 10^-76, or
0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000321%
For comparison’s sake, the odds of winning the New Jersey Pick Six lottery are 7.15x 10^-08, or 0.00000714%

Author Mikki Kendall wrote in a companion essay, "Opportunities Lost", that it's not a matter of talent or lack of stories, but a lack of initiative on the part of publishers:

Race matters at every step of the publishing process. Including who gets out of the slush pile and onto the page. The myth that Black people don’t read science fiction or fantasy has been thoroughly debunked. And despite any claims to the contrary, Black writers of speculative fiction have been producing amazing work since the genre’s inception. The real problem isn’t one of a lack of stories or a lack of talented writers, the problem is a lack of outlets willing to publish stories that don’t center white characters.

New York Times best-selling author Tobias S. Buckwell points out that this lopsided figure doesn't even reflect the current makeup of the United States in his essay "Boldly Going Nowhere":

I don’t remember the first time I was told there were plenty of diverse writers in the field, and had the same few names repeated to me over and over again... the same four names—“Hopkinson, Butler, Delany, Barnes”—as a list of writers of color when I would point out the whiteness of the science fiction field. With some 1,500–2,000 members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, in order for our field to just match the demographics of the USA that meant SFWA should have had at least 150–200 African-American writers because twelve percent of the US population was African-American. 
To match the U.S.A’s demographics, there should be about 200 members of SFWA who would choose African-American on a census bureau questionnaire. 90 who would choose Asian-American. 18 Native-American. 54 like me, who would choose two or more races on the census questionnaire.Basically, every time you go see a bunch of writers, in person or in print, about 30% of them should be something other than white. Just to reflect demographics.

Fireside Fiction is not above pointing out that they have failed at this goal as well, but editor Brian White posted an editorial that, among other things, showed he was willing to put his money where his mouth is:

• We’re working with the developer of our submissions system to add in an optional, anonymous form for people to self-report their demographic information when they submit to Fireside. This way, we can take a much closer look at what is going on in our submissions pile.

• We are going to change our submissions process. Once a year, we will still have one big submission period open to everyone. But several other times a year, we will have targeted submissions windows, each targeted toward a specific marginalized group. So black writers, writers of color generally, LGBTQA writers, women, writers with disabilities, etc. We’re still working out the details on this, but all the dates will be publicized well ahead of time, so that people who don’t have the leisure time to whip up a submission on short notice can get their work ready. 

• We also want to hear from the black writing and publishing community about what else we could do better. You can email me directly at brian@firesidefiction.com or talk to us on Twitter.

Readers, what else do you think can be done to fix this problem in spec fic? Sound off in the comments below.

Black Storm Troopers, White Washing & Spec Fiction

Description: In a still from "Star Wars: The Force Awakens"
a young black man in scuffed white storm trooper armor looks
off screen in disbelief.

Wendell Bernard Britt Jr. writes for medium.com just what John Boyega's casting in the much-anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens means not just to him personally as a fan of color, but the impact representation has on speculative fiction in particular:

I’ve been a Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories was watching a drive-in double feature showing of Disney’s The Lion King and Star Wars: A New Hope. My ideas of right and wrong, heroism, self-sacrifice and discipline all come from these movies... 

The first character in the trailer is a harried and exhausted looking John Boyega decked out in a Stormtrooper outfit, and I did all I could do to contain my glee. When I had heard that Boyega was cast to be in the movie, I had assumed it would be in a supporting role, much like Billy Dee Williams’ Lando Calrissian before him. Disney had just dropped 4.4 billion dollars on the franchise, and they only had 1:33 seconds to wow their entire fan-base. To waste those precious seconds on a bit character would be completely irresponsible. Then my brain caught up with what I was seeing. Was it possible that a black character is going to be the protagonist of Star Wars?

This leads him to wonder-- when black people make up 12 percent of the US population, and black people account for 13 percent of  all ticket sales nationwide, why are are there so few characters of color? What effect does that have on who's seen as a hero? What's the response? He goes on to explain that:

Occasionally an enterprising white writer will include black people in fantastical genres. When this happened white audiences tend to have explicitly negative reactions to them. Much like the general public’s reaction to a black person being cast as a Stormtrooper, Hunger Games fans took to Twitter outcrying the casting of Amandla Stenberg (black) as Rue (a character from the predominantly black 8th district from the books). 

For some Americans, understanding, empathizing with and even imagining a little black girl in a fantastical land was beyond possible. Not only did readers fail to register Rue’s blackness, they became upset when they were confronted with it on screen.

The entire article is an illuminating musing, both personal and professional, on what this split means to him, and is well worth a read.

Star Trek, Philosophy & the Kobayashi Maru

Description: Technical detail readout of  the Star Trek series'
starship & titular scenario, the Kobayashi Maru. 

In the Star Trek series, the Kobayashi Maru is both the name of a starship and a training simulation for Starfleet cadets. The scenario goes like this: trainees encounter a civilian ship calling for help, but to help the ship, you would have to choose to venture into a demilitarized zone and violate a wartime treaty. If the trainees choose to honor the treaty, the ship is at the mercy of the warlike Klingons. If you try to meet it halfway, your ship is attacked and boarded. In the movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the legendary James T. Kirk was the only cadet in Starfleet history to ever beat the Kobayashi Maru scenario... and he did so by reprogramming the simulation so that is was possible to win. Forbes-- yes, the vaunted business magazine & website-- looks at how this scenario informs and reflects the philosophy of both the science fiction series as a how, and popular philosophy in general.

Is the Kobayashi Maru a good test of leadership, and of the ethical decision-making that’s a part of it? And what should we make of the fact that Kirk seems to have “beat” the test by cheating? It’s good to question whether features of a situation that we take for granted really are fixed, rather than changeable. When faced with two bad choices, it’s good to try to find a third, or fourth, or fifth possible choice that is less obvious but that might be better all around. 

I think the optimism embodied in Kirk’s rejection of no-win scenarios is the sort of thing that can motivate creative thinking about how to do a better job sharing a universe (which, really, is what ethics is about). But I don’t think that’s what the Kobayashi Maru was intended to test.

You can read the rest of the article here. What do you think, readers? Are the larger ideas about grace under pressure, no-win scenarios and the like a useful intellectual exercise, or is it a few torpedoes shy of a spread?

The Real Winners & Losers of the 2015 Hugo Awards

Description: The official Hugo Award logo: a black &
gray stylized shape reminiscent of a rocket ship.

The Hugo Awards, nominated and voted on by science fiction fans have a tradition going back over 60 years. Winners are a who's-who of science fiction autnors, Ellison, Bradbury, Asimov, Clarke. Heinlein. Over the years, the sci-fi genre has expanded to include more of it passionate fans who become writers and storytellers-- women, people of color, gay and lesbian writers, and on and on-- which means the Hugos have changed, too.  Of course, this year has seen plenty of controversy as right wing and neo nazi hate groups have attempted to game the system under the Rabid Puppies (and companion group Sad Puppies)-- this blog has written about it here, here, here and here.

This weekend, at WorldCon, the 2015 Hugo Award winners were announced, and both who did win, and who didn't win are equally as important. Sad and Rabid Puppies slate pushers were able to steamroll a number of their favorites onto the ballot... but none of the Puppies-endorsed faves won any awards (which were chosen by the popular vote) with one exception-- "Guardians of the Galaxy"  won for best Long Form Drama. Considering that "Guardians of the Galaxy" was a mainstream blockbuster sucess and had no overt political agenda, it looks like the Puppies' crusade was a wash. In fact, it was less than a wash, it was a gap.

See, in 5 different categories, the overwhelming majority of voters actually chose "No Award" rather than award something to a category that had nothing but Sad/Rabid Puppy nominees. The most damning "No Award"award was when the Sad/Rabid Puppies slate put author and bipedal garbage can John C. Wright on the ballot for 3 different novellas at the same time and he still couldn't get a win.

Here are some standout winners:

• Cixin Liu's Chinese bestseller The Three Body Problem won in the Best Novel category
• Dutch author Thomas Olde Heuvelt won Best Novelette for The Day The World Turned Upside Down
• Ms. Marvel, a comic series I've covered previously here and here, won for its first collection,  "Vol. 1: No Normal" won the Best Graphic Story award
• Orphan Black won for Best Short-Form Dramatic Presentation, unseating perennial favorite Doctor Who

As I pointed out, the Sad and Rabid Puppies may have lost this orund, and they could try and do this again next year. But for now, it looks like this year's results are a pretty solid rebuke of the Puppies' agenda.

Angry White Guys Hacked The Hugos... And Could Do It Again

Description: Close up of of an angry white man telling at the viewer, mouth wide
open & revealing teeth, face contorted into a scowl.

I've previously written about the efforts by the Sad & Rabid Puppies to hijack the Hugo Awards here and here, and Ria Bridges of bibliotropic wrote an epic guest post taking down the Puppy slate and its goals here. Even Game of Thrones series author George R. R. Martin took to his blog to denounce the Puppies, the ideology, the complaints and their goals.

Having successfully gotten the awards slate loaded with their mediocre reactionary choices, these supporters are harassing authors at Worldcon and taking about how they plan to do this all over again next year. But can they? How did this all happen in the first place?

Writing for Yes Magazine,  Mike Schneiderman quotes an author as saying "The Hugo Award process has always been hackable, There was just never anyone narcissistic enough to hack it." and they seem on the money.

Charlie Jane Anders from Gawker's IO9 suggests the Puppies success in stuffing the nomination ballot this year in fact disproves their very basis for existing:

"The [Puppies strategy] only succeeds if all the other nominations are scattered and disorganized. And that kind of disorganization is exactly what we saw in most nominations. It appears that everybody except Beale’s crew simply nominated whatever stories they happened to enjoy in 2014. Had there been a secret left-wing bloc nominating its own stories in lockstep, then Beale’s strategy would have failed."

Could this happen again? Sadly, the answer appears to be yes-- for at least one more year. Commenter eriko on MetaFilter explains:

...unless the SP/RP faction gets bored this year, it'll all happen next year, because there can't be any changes to the nominating process. There are a number of proposals being mooted this year, but regardless of which (if any) pass, none of them will take effect next year because they'll require ratification by the next Worldcon. So, the Hugos will use the same nomination process next year.
What will almost certainly happen, though, is a lot more people will pay attention to nominations next year, for good or ill. 

It's always been known that you could stuff the nominations and easily get a work on the ballot, and with a little effort, take over the ballot. The primary control of this wasn't regulatory, it was social. You just didn't do that --- and for decades, that worked just fine. The social contract that one did not logroll for the Hugo was strong enough that there were fans who were against authors even posting a single "these are my eligible works this year" posts online. I am not one of them, but the moment you post two? You're logrolling and you've broken the contract, and I would not only not nominate you, I'd campaign against you. 

That broke down when the SP/RP came along. They didn't care about the social contract, they easily got enough nomination to take over the ballot, and they did. It did help that, for too long, too many people who claimed to care about the Hugos and who were eligible to nominate didn't. The favorite excuse was "I didn't read a lot" and I kept saying "Doesn't matter. If you read something that you thought was Hugo Worthy, nominate it. If you read more than 5 things in a category that were Hugo Worthy, then you have to choose. Otherwise, nominate just the things you read that you think are worthy. If enough people agree with you, it'll make the short list. If not, it won't -- the 5% rule will make sure of that."They didn't, so between not enough nominations and the SP/RPs, this happened. The nice thing about the old system was it was simple, open, and transparent. The systems being mooted range from minimally effective, like 4/6, to OMG complex -- so much so that it's basically impossible to know if they'll actually fix the problem, but they'll certainly make it fun to figure out the nominations. It's all very....fannish. 

So, again, next year will only be different in the sense that maybe a lot more people will nominate -- for good or for ill. You will be eligible to nominate if you are a member (supporting or attending) of this year's Worldcon, or next year's Worldcon (in KC) or the Worldcon after that (which we find out out where tonight) if you join before the end of this year (basically, if you join this year, this being the year they'd be awarding.) Only members of next years Worldcon (KC) will be able to vote on the final shortlist, but the nomination pool is much larger.

So, what is the Hugo awards committee to do? What about WorldCon attendees?

Why "I Don't See An Author's Race" Is BS

DescriptionL A young white man and a young black woman are facing one another, with the white man covering the black woman's eyes and the black woman covering the white man's eyes, preventing them from seeing each other.

Tumblr user theawesomersace (whom you might also know as part of The Awesome Sauce on BookRiot) discovered something interesting recently after two similar tweets were responded to in very different ways. The first tweet simply asked their followers to name their favorite science fiction or fantasy author of color. Later in the afternoon, they asked twitter to name their favorite white science fiction and fantasy authors, and the responses she got this time were altogether different and unexpected:

Some people thought I was being sarcastic. Others said that is was a terrible way to label an author. "I hope I’m never labeled that way"... “I don’t see color," "I just read good books," "I don’t know what color my favorite authors are," "What does an author’s race have to do with anything?...  people either didn’t like me labeling white authors as white or they thought race was unimportant when discussing authors or they didn’t like having to admit that they had a favorite white author.

I remember a bunch of similar responses a few years ago, when during the usual pre-game banter in my gaming group, I mentioned I noticed I hadn't been reading any authors of color without even realizing it, so I went looking for some and found some really great fantasy and sci-fi! Before I could even begin to talk about books themselves, others in my group (all white) had pretty much the same reaction. I see it all too often in discussing race in creative works, and I used to believe it too: "Oh, I just read stuff. I don't notice race. I'm colorblind."

They put forth the idea that this ideal that isn't really ideal is present in society at large which is why it "... so heavily influences our current publishing climate, is the belief that by default an author is white unless otherwise specified [and] why authors of color are shunted off to imprints and shelves marked "Certain Marginalized Group" Literature and why discussions of “quality” and “taste” center around a white, masculine narrative.  This is the key to why representation within publishing is so dismal: there are (white) authors and then there are all of the other special categories. And when we’ve checked a box in one of those other special categories, we’re done.

To be colorblind at this moment means that you aren’t willing to take any of that background into account when choosing something to read... White is not the default. And we all need to work better to make sure that is reflected in the media we consume. "

So, readers, what are your thoughts? What are you doing in your nedia and reading habits to change things, even if just for yourselves?

Review: Lost Dimension (PS3)

Lost Dimension - Playstation 3 Game Review

Keep Your Friends Close, Enemies Closer To Save The World

Lost Dimension starts off with the stakes as high as they seem they can get: a cartoonishly evil villain who calls himself The End has created a tower called "The Pillar". He launches a scattered nuclear strike and the death toll is 2 billion. The End announces to that he has more nukes pointed at the rest of the world's major cities and he'll launch them in just 13 hours unless someone can scale the tower and stop him. Conventional military weapons are useless, so the world's last hope is SEALED: an 11-member team with psychic powers.

There's a twist, though: 5 of your team members are secretly traitors. Before you can proceed to each level, your group is required vote to "erase" the traitor before you can continue. If you choose wrong, not only do you erase an innocent person, but you will have to fight the traitor AND the final boss.

Sho Kasugai  uses his powers to try and weed out suspects.

The team leader, Sho Kasugai, has the power to use psychic visions to read the vibes of those he leads in battle. This means that after each battle you can get vague impressions of the chosen squad members-- with three suspects per floor. You can use Sho's "Deep Vision" ability to delve further into a squad member's mind to find out if they are innocent or not. But the "Vision Points" that grant you this ability are a precious resource, only given out after 3 of the many battles on each floor. You can only use that Deep Vision on a squad member you've taken into battle recently.

The game manage to take the issues of suspicion, teamwork and trust and weave it into the core gameplay. The higher your teammates' trust levels are with you and with each other, the more likely they are to join in assist attacks-- free additional combination attacks on a target enemy in range. How do you build up trust? By taking them into battle with you. The more battles a character fights in, the weightier the vote is during the time to choose a traitor for erasure. Talk with teammates after battle and you increase camaraderie, which can lead to to the highest level of trust and a character exclusive subquest that offers more character insight and extra points to level up your skill tree.

The combat superficially resembles Valkyrie Profile-- combat is turn based, with circles measuring out your movement, your attack range and the enemy's range. In addition to ranged weapons and melee weapon attacks, each character has a unique set of psychic powers, both active and passive, that let you do everything from copy an ability to ignoring terrain height to turning enemies against each other. And when a traitor is erased, they leave behind "Materia"-- special items that let you assign your fallen comrades' abilities to others; this is also the only way to unlock special skills for each character. With so much flexibility in the battle system, abilities and combo setups, the combat is rock solid and fun to play, with all sorts of stackable strategies available to develop.

The story does start off like a typical "band together to save the world" quest, and the addition of a secret traitor in each section adds an extra level of tension to clearing each floor. Each character is broadly characterized, but display distinct personalities and issues that link the social aspects with the powers used in combat. Not only does this strengthen the character development in the story, it gives you a real punch in the gut if a character you like turns out to be a traitor. And the traitor is going to be different from floor to floor and from playthrough to playthrough. I don't just mean your playthrough would be different than mine. After you beat the game, you get a sort of "bad ending" and are then told that you must reach complete camaraderie with EVERY character to get the true ending, something impossible to do on one playthrough.

Whether this extends replay value or just artificially wastes your time depends on which side of the coin you fall on. I actually had to play through 3 times to max out all my friendships because one of the first-floor traitors in the second playthrough was one of the characters I hadn't gotten to max out friendship the first time around and you can't do character subquests until the 3rd floor. Lost Dimension really, REALLY makes you earn that happy ending! On subsequent playthroughs the dead-simple deep vision minigame gets a little repetitive. Some variety would have been nice. While the characters are strongly developed, the world building is pretty thin, leaving a lot of details to be filled in by reading game lore in standalone documents (confusingly categorized under "Tips"), which can leave you confused on character motivations for betrayal unless you track down some optional documents on the 2nd playthrough. Another issue I have to warn you about is that there was one battle on my first playthough (the "Alarm" battle) and one battle on my second playthrough (the first battle intro on the second floor) that consistently crashes or hangs, locking the console up too. Save often.

If you download this game from the PSN Store this week (either the Vita or PS3 version) you can also download $20 worth of free DLC for the game, from alternate costumes to mission packs. And while there are a few bumps in the climb upwards to save the world, the satisfying combat, intrigue and social dynamics system make Lost Dimension a worthwhile journey.


This review is based on the Playstation 3 version. The review was compensated with a download code for this game provided by Atlus.

Strange Horizons Is Sick Of Your Cliched, Crap Stories

Description: A wastebasket, overflowing with crumpled up pieces of paper and trash.

Strange Horizon is a online speculative fiction magazine that has released free, curated content and 51 issues a year for fifteen years. They've published a LOT of fiction... and read many, many more submissions. Of course, when you see so many, you start to notice certain ideas, trends, and plot devices that occur over and over... in Strange Horizon's case, they've seen so many they've compiled a list called called "Stories We've Seen Too Often". Here are some examples:

1. Weird things happen, but it turns out they're not real.
   1. In the end, it turns out it was all a dream.
   2. In the end, it turns out it was all in virtual reality.
   3. In the end, it turns out the protagonist is insane.
   4. In the end, it turns out the protagonist is writing a novel and the events we've seen are part of the novel.
2. An AI gets loose on the Net, but the author doesn't have a clear concept of what it means for software to be "loose on the Net." (For example, the computer it was on may not be connected to the Net.)

They're up to 51 different types of stories, with several sub-types. And lest your consider your story that follows something on that list (or like some people I know, you thinking that list is actually a challenge):

We often receive stories that match items on this list but that have cover letters saying "This matches something on your list, but I've done something new and unique and different with it." Such stories almost always turn out to be very similar to other stories we've seen. If your story is a close match to one or more items on this list (especially if it's a close enough match that you feel the need to include a cover-letter disclaimer), you may want to consult some friends who are well-read in the genre before deciding that it's probably different from what we see all the time. (And by the way, we often don't read cover letters until after we've read the story.) One more thing: We know it's tempting to look at this list as a challenge. Please don't. In particular, please don't send us stories that intentionally incorporate one or more of these items.

The whole list is instructive, illuminating and also kind of awesome. Read the whole thing.

Good Representation of Africans in Tudor? Doctor Who!

For some reason, even though there were a fair number of Africans in England during the time of the Tudors and Elizabethan England, in popular representations of the Tudors period in modern days, you don't see any (the reason is white supremacy). However,  there's a pretty good representation from a surprising source: Doctor Who! Author Miranda explains:

The Shakespeare Code starred David Tennant as the Doctor, and Freema Agyeman as his companion Martha Jones. Agyeman is half Iranian and half Ghanaian, and this meant the writer, Gareth Roberts, had to consider how this would play out when she time travels to Elizabethan England. When Martha realises she has just arrived in London in 1599, she has the following exchange with the Doctor:
MARTHAOh, but hold on. Am I all right?  I’m not gonna get carted off as a slave, am I? 
THE DOCTORWhy would they do that? 
MARTHANot exactly white, in case you haven’t noticed. 
THE DOCTORI’m not even human. Just walk about like you own the place.  Works for me. Besides, you’d be surprised. Elizabethan England, not so different from your time.  

At this point, two African women walk past them. In a few moments, this scene makes two important points: 1) There was a black presence in Elizabethan London. 2) The Africans in Elizabethan London were not treated as slaves. These are two points I try to convey in my work. Africans can be found in the parish registers, tax returns, court records and letters of Elizabethan London. There was no law of slavery in England. Furthermore, Africans were paid wages, baptized, married, allowed to testify in court: all indicators of freedom.

It's a really fascinating article. Read the whole thing!





dddd

Discworld Series Will End This Fall

Terry Pratchett in 2011. Photograph: Tom Pilston
Courtesy of The Independent/REX

The last book in the Discworld series completed by the late Terry Pratchett last summer, "The Shepard's Crown", will be released September 10th of this year in the United Kingdom. According to Rhianna Pratchett, Terry's daughter and custodian of her father's works, it will also be the last Discworld novel ever, out of respect to her father's legacy, as she explained in a series:

To reiterate – No I don't intend on writing more Discworld novels, or giving anyone else permission to do so. They are sacred to dad. I will be involved with spin-offs, adaptations and tie-ins, but that's it. Discworld is his legacy. I shall make my own.— Rhianna Pratchett 

There were rumors that a follow-up to "Raising Steam", which Mr. Pratchett announced he was working on last year but did not complete before his death, would be finished by a co-writer like Stephen Baxter, his co-writer on the "Long Earth" series. Pratchett did finish his contributions to the latest "Long Earth" series, entitled "The Long Utopia", which will be published in the UK tomorrow, with a US release date planned soon after.

Guest Post: Puppies Crying Bitter Tears

Description: Screenshot of tweets with hashtag "New Hugo
Categories" from Foz &Arthur Chu: "Best UNcritical Use of
1950s Gender Roles In Story Set 2000 Years In Future", "Best
Non-White Protagonist Portrayed By White Model On Cover" &
"The Dan Simmons Award For Best Time Traveller From
Future Telling You All Your Political Opinions Are Right".

Friend of the blog Ria, of Bibliotropic, had a lot to say about the spate of what the Puppies rhetoric has meant for them  personally as well as the field of writing in general recently. The Code is proud to present the following guest post from Ria. I also stand by everything they say here. Warning: contans swears.

"I dislike the both Puppy litter ideologies. I talked a bit about why last year, long before this current Puppy debacle began, with a post about Correia's comments on diversity in SFF. For those who don't want to read a long post about it, in a nutshell, someone who is now very strongly identified with the Puppies said, a while back, that including nonbinary characters and other forms of diversity in SFF would make for bad fiction, because doing so would come across solely as message fiction and remove any entertainment value. I objected to that, since what that amounts to in a practical sense is to erase people like me from having representation in fiction. The insinuation is that people such as myself aren't of any real value to have our stories, nor does anyone want to actually read about us or have us around. It's insulting, and it's dehumanizing.

So when this round of Puppy problems started, I admit I was already pretty inclined to dislike them, given that my experience of one of their figureheads was that he thinks people like me shouldn't play a central role in his beloved genre. And the more I read about what they stood for, the more my hackles rose. Accusations that women, people of colour, QUILTBAG folk were only getting nominations for awards due to affirmative action are galling, since what they essentially say is that these people getting nominations aren't actually as good as that straight white male over there and are only getting nominated because of quotas that need filling. If it wasn't for those quotas, that nomination would rightfully go to a dude. Comments that because certain of their books or series were popular with a certain crowd and sold well, they should totally be eligible for more award nominations. (Because quantity equals quality, I guess.)

There may be no AWARD for such well-selling books, but there is a REWARD. It's called a paycheque. A paycheque you get for doing a thing you love, which is something many people don't get to experience in their lives. That isn't to say that people with well-selling books don't deserve more than a simple paycheque. It's awesome to have fans, fan experiences, interaction, the knowledge that you're doing something people enjoy. Maybe there ought to be an award for the SFF book that sells the most copies in a year, I dunno. (Then, I suspect, there'd be a cry-out about how books released toward the end of a year just didn't have a chance, and look how many they sold the next year, so they should totally have won that award after all. Nobody gets everything.)

The problem I see with most of the Puppy stuff is that their message seems very unclear. First it appeared to be, "The Hugos are a stupid award full of politics I disagree with and all given to books I don't want to write or read. ...So how come I never win one?" Then it started to be about affirmative action accusations, about women and non-white and non-straight people swooping in and stealing awards that should go to more deserving folk. Then the hypocrisies really started coming to light, where Puppies would insult authors they disagreed with, very personally, but as soon as there was any retaliation against even their politics they'd cry defamation and abuse. At the end of it all, what I can see is that the Puppies stand for only the Puppies, and to hell with anything else. And by "to hell with," I mean largely that they'll insult and threaten people who don't toe the Puppy party line. it's fine and dandy for someone to come in and defend the Puppies and say, "Look, all they're saying is that they think their works should be judged as being just as valid as anyone else's, and that people are free to do as they please so long as he can do the same."

Sounds good on paper. And utterly out of context.

Because major Puppy authors are being allowed to write and publish the books they do. They're not being blocked from selling them. They may not qualify for awards, but hell, so do the vast majority of books published in a year. Big damn deal. The idea that everyone should have an award is a very liberal thing, and given that the Puppies seem to have a beef with politically liberal things, you'd think they'd be a bit more on board with a meritocracy. Nobody is imposing their ideals on the Puppies. The world can, amazingly, have multiple things in it, some of which by default disagree with other things. But the accusations made by them are harmful. Painful. Dismissive. And are largely focused on gender issues, sexuality, race, and a whole load of other things that make people say yes, there's some godsdamn bigotry happening here.

People love to say that so-and-so can't possibly be racist because they have black friends. Okay, so, by that logic, no heterosexual man can be sexist if they're married to a woman. Oh, wait, LOGIC DOES NOT COMPUTE! Someone can have black friends and still be racist. And since what a person writes and what a person believes aren't always walking along hand-in-hand, a person can also write about a black woman being just as kick-ass as a white man, but when they throw out n-word jokes at parties, sorry, that's still being racist.

I think some of the major Puppy supporters miss what a lot of people miss about prejudice. They hear the word sexism and assume that sexism comes in only one form: overt. You're only really sexist if you state that women are inferior to men and they shouldn't be allowed to do man things and should stay at home and quietly raise the kids. If you don't believe that, then you're totes not sexist. Except that sexism can also come in the form of believing that a woman only got an award nomination because she's a woman, which has the unspoken opinion that she didn't get it because she did something worthwhile. And since gender is brought into it, what's also unspoken is that she didn't do something as well as a man. Which means the award should rightfully go to men.

Sometimes bigotry is about what you don't say. It's about what you don't even think consciously. Sometimes this shit is so ingrained in you, thanks to a hundred and one different factors, that you don't even realise you're denigrating someone. Likewise, with racism and thinking you're only a racist if you want to bring back lynchings and banning black people from being around white people. There's no other way to be racist. Except that there is, and many of the Puppy opinions about race are very damn racist.

Surely there's going to be someone who wants to jump in and say, "Oh, fine, so you think all straight white men are worthless and wrong all the time, then." And no, I don't. And it's just a little bit ridiculous to say so. It's a bizarre extrapolation from my arguments. The fact that some straight white men have done some shitty-ass things doesn't make them wrong about everything. Just in the same way that I'm transgender doesn't make me right about everything. Including things involving gender politics.

Changing the subject a little, another thing that weirds me out about Puppy stuff? The way they seem to think that the Hugos have this liberal bias toward books that only talk about what liberals want talked about, and how nobody's actually reading these books. And how the voters at Worldcon are some elite subgroup of liberals who earned their voting privileges by, I dunno, helping an elderly Asian woman across the street to get to her ACA-funded doctor's appointment or something. That stuff straight-up ignores facts that are easily corrected. 30 seconds on Google will net you dozens of reviews for these books, showing that yes, people are reading them. Got the money to go to Worldcon? Great, here are your rights to vote on the Hugos and make your voice heard. It's not like you have to pass a liberal test or something in order to get these things. You pay money. And you read books. So the idea that books are winning a prestigious award when nobody's reading them because they suck so bad is just a touch ridiculous.

People have pointed this out before. I'm not the first. But this info seems to slide off people on the Puppy side of the fence because it doesn't mesh with what they see. It's not a flawless system. No system is. But some accusations are very easily refutable, and I'm not even sure where they came from beyond, "I'm not winning this award, so it must be a conspiracy against my politics." At the end of all this, I want the whole damn thing to be over. I want people to stop insulting each other for daring to like a different subset of SFF than they do. There's room for a lot of opinions here. A lot.

And that includes both conservative "men doing manly things" fiction AND fiction involving nonbinary people in stories that look like they can right out of a liberal buzzword dictionary. Doesn't make either of them good or bad by default. That's the trick for the author to manage. You can make a terrible idea into a good story, and a great idea into a terrible story. So yeah, I dislike the Puppies on both a personal and political level, because they're largely insulting, ignorant, and seem like they'd be a lot happier if people like me shut our mouths and let them get on with doing what they do unopposed, but damn, am I ever eager for this bullshit to stop!"

Ria is an agender ex-pat Brit currently living on the east coast of Canada, along with 5 cats and a glorified budgie named Albert. When not reading and reviewing books on bibliotropic.net, Ria can often be found obsessively playing video games, being an amateur photographer, or experimenting with various fibre arts.

Mad Max: Fury Road In 60 Seconds

Hey all, I've been a little under the weather this weekend I'll be a bit busy the next day or so assisting my Roommate To Be in getting up the new apartment,so posting might be a little light. In the meantime,please enjoy this excellent fan video which gives a succinct summation of Mad Max: Fury Road in just under a minute:



That's it. That's the movie, folks!

How Tor Books Threw Its Women Employees Under The Bus

Description: Drawing of a hand with index finger raised
and other fingers clenched in a fist. Text beneath it reads "That
finger's wagging at you.

Irene Gallo is the creative director of  science-fiction publisher Tor Books, as well the associate publisher of its sister website Tor.com. Tor.com has been praised for its diversity and its depth of authors featured and its breadth of stories,articles and other material, and a lot of that can be attributed to her at the helm. I have alluded to another science fiction group:the self-described "Sad Puppies" and the "Rabid Puppies".

Those were two groups (one of them led by a hack white surpremicist) that felt that "social justice warriors" were flooding Hugo Award nominations with nominations and crowding out deserving writers, so the groups' counter-action was... to abuse nomination rules to push a slate of nominations and crowd out deserving writers, up to and including recruiting GamerGaters.

Irene Gallo made a statement on her personal Facebook page when asked for her take on the Puppies: “There are two extreme right-wing to neo-nazi groups, called the Sad Puppies and the Rabid Puppies respectively, that are calling for the end of social justice in science fiction and fantasy. They are unrepentantly racist, sexist and homophobic. A noisy few but they’ve been able to gather some Gamergate folks around them and elect a slate of bad-to-reprehensible works on this year’s Hugo ballot.”

So the Rabid and Sad Puppies supporters flooded her boss, the publisher of Tor, Tom Doherty. So he felt the need to address the remarks made on her personal Facebook page by... throwing her under the bus and apologizing to the spurned Puppies. Don't read the comments unless you like wading through crap.

There are two paragraphs in his official statement as publisher of Tor that stand out:

“In short, we seek out and publish a diverse and wide ranging group of books. We are in the business of finding great stories and promoting literature and are not about promoting a political agenda... Tor employees, including Ms. Gallo, have been reminded that they are required to clarify when they are speaking for Tor and when they are speaking for themselves. We apologize for any confusion Ms. Gallo’s comments may have caused. 

Let me reiterate: the views expressed by Ms. Gallo are not those of Tor as an organization and are not my own views. Rest assured, Tor remains committed to bringing readers the finest in science fiction – on a broad range of topics, from a broad range of authors.”

What's odd is that Editor at Tor Books Patrick Neilsen Hayden called the Sad Puppies evil. Best aelling author John Scalzi-- yes the same John Scalzi that signed a 10 year deal with Tor Books for 3.4 million-- has publicly feuded with Vox Day (the white supremacist behind the Rabid Puppies slate) and called him a bigot. Neither of these high profile men had these actions or statements repudiated in public statements from Tom Doherty.

In fact,Tom Doherty's been quiet about a lot of things done by men at Tor. It’s also worth noting that Jim Frenkel, who sexually harassed and assaulted multiple women - including authors, fans, SF community members and editors got to keep his job, even though high-level people at Tor knew about his harassment. In fact, it took Elise Matthesen going public with her account of being harassed by Frenkel at WisCon, for Tor do anything...and that "anything" was allowing Frenkel to resign instead of being fired.Tom Doherty never released any statements on the matter.

Author K. Tempest Bradford weighs in on the matter, also pointing out that:

One thing I forgot and Mary Kowal reminded me of this morning: a Tor employee in the contracts department attacked and harassed her online over SFWA stuff a year or so ago. He backed off after what was assumed a talk from the Tor legal department, but that was only assumed. Did Tom Doherty issue a blog post about how Tor employees are supposed to act and how they need to make it clear that they are not speaking for Tor at that point? No, he did not. Even though the employee in question mentioned that he worked at Tor in contracts and had to grit his teeth or something every time he had to deal with hers. Because Mary is a goddamned Tor author... How is this supposed to make Tor authors feel? What kind of workplace/professional atmosphere is Doherty creating with this nonsense?

It seems to me that he wants women working for Tor to be seen and not heard.

Sherlock, Watson & Chainmail Bikinis

Description: A red-haired woman warrior locked in combat
with a lizard monster taller than she is. She holds a shield
to defend against attacks, sword ready to strike.  The armor
she is wearing is a chain mail bikini, leaving much of her body
exposed to attack.

There are two terms in literary criticism that have been used in the wider world of media fandom and fiction critiques: Watsonian and Doylian. Watsonian means looking at something from an in-universe perspective. For example: "Sherlock Holmes died in that story because he fell off a cliff," would be a Watsonian explanation. "Sherlock Holmes died because the author was sick of writing stories about the detective and wanted to start something new," would be a Doylian perspective, named after the author of the Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first used on a Bujold-Master fan discussion list and spread from there. It's basically making a difference between talking about something a character says or does and how it fits with the character's fictional world, and why or how the writer's choices fit into our real life life culture, society and circumstances.

There can be a bit of a problem in discussions of fiction when a Watsonian (in-universe) perspective is used to dismiss a Doylian (real world) criticism, and nowhere is that more apparent in both tabletop and gaming circles than the trope of the Warrior Woman Who Fights In A Chainmail Bikini.

The chainmail bikini has been a staple of pulp fantasy art since the 1930s, and has appeared in one form or another in the art and character designs of fantasy novels,tabletop games and video games ever since. Take the cover art for Runequest up there. An in-universe explanation for why the character chooses to wear a chainmail bikini because she feels powerful, almost invincible in battle, and doesn't think she really needs to wear practical armor, so what's the big deal? That would be a Watsonian view.

Description: Video game renders of characters in
armor.On the left,a woman wears armor that covers
armor covering her hands, feet, legs& shoulders while
barely covering her crotch and breasts & exposed
midriff. At right, a male character in armor leaving
nothing exposed but his head.

But the artist or character designer choosing to draw her or portray her that way isn't a value-neutral choice when you look at it in a Doylist (real world) sense. Sure, in the fictional world the story takes place she's Druscilla the Invincible and her bikini symbolizes her fearlessness. But the character also exists as part of a whole trope of chainmail bikini women in fantasy battlefields that have the men warriors decked out in armor from head to toe. And THAT exists among a tradition and media landscape showing women dressed like that merely acting as decoration for men who look like the traditional badass power fantasy. In-universe, the chainmail bikini could represent the character's choice to show fearlessness. In the real world, it is the artist who is choosing to create this look for a character, and those depictions mean something else entirely.

So yes, you can totally appreciate and acknowledge just how awesome Druscilla is in her story
setting. You can't, however, make the context for her portrayal and her appearance vanish or ignore it just because you happen to like her story or her character. So if someone points out how that portrayal in the wider world is sexist, and you counter with "This armor has a practical advantage and it's the character herself choosing to wear it!" you are trying to counter a Doylian crtique with a Watsonian explanation, and that doesn't quite work. Someone pointing out the inherent sexism in chainmail bikini art and representation is also about everything else in fiction in specific and society in general that that bikini can represent. If you're bombarded with those images and these portrayals amongst the constant sea of objectification of women, and you're a woman, you can't just not exists in the world you're living in and you can't just un-see it.


When someone points out issues with sexism in a game, it doesn't make the people who play it bad people. It doesn't make the artists or writers bad people either (though it might show them to be making lazy decisions). Critiquing elements of a game isn't an attack on the game or an attack on people playing it. Criticism of something you like isn't an attack on you. And this isn't just limited to video games.As recently as 2013, the The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's (SFWA) magazine The Bulletin generated controversy with its cheesecake cover of a woman in a chainmail bikini...on the heels of editorials and columns written talking about "lady editors" and rating women solely on attractiveness and how Barbie should be a role model to women in sci-fi and fantasy because she was "dignified".

Most people protesting what they see as gratuitous elements don't want to see things banned and certainly aren't trying to censor anybody (besides, censorship is something only a government body can do)-- they'd just like it to not be the default. It would be cool to have the default be something other that just skimpy or revealing attire. It'd be nice to get a break from the constant objectification. And these critiques can open up the door to considering other things we take for granted. Why not a lithe man calling himself Dru the Invincible wading into battle in naught but a thong? Does that seem silly to you, but not so much if it were Drucilla in her chainmail bikini? Why not?

WisCon: Your Microaggresions Aren't Welcome Here

photo via BuzzFeed

WisCon, first started in 1977, a sci-fiction and fantasy convention that bills itself as the leading feminist science-fiction convention in the world. The convention as a whole, and it attendee and convention committee members in particular, have been paying special consideration in recent years towards creating a safer convention space more inclusive of people of color, marginalized identities, those with disabilities, even as the convention itself has some ups and downs.

Author, tech writer and blogger K. Tempest Bradford, (who's also been the organizer for the safer space for people of color at the convention and is also a committee member) recently posted about how microagressions are everywhere (inappropriate comments, touching of hair, questioning of disabilities, accommodation, etc) and how she wasn't sure what she could do:

Thee most obvious one for me is to be that person that calls folks out when I witness such situations and encourage others to do so as well. That’s only workable so long as there are people willing and around. You can’t be everywhere. And while that could eventually grow and grow into awareness for everyone, that could take time. And while that’s happening some people still won’t feel welcome at the con. 

What didn’t occur to me is that WisCon the organization could do something to address this behavior. As of this year, we are. The Safety chairs made it clear that con goers should, if they felt comfortable doing so, report such behavior (labeled microaggressions) to Safety, and that the on duty staff as well as appropriate department or con chairs would take steps to address the problem with the involved parties. That could mean having a discussion with someone about their inappropriate words/behavior and giving them guidelines around further contact with the person who filed the complaint (such as: do not approach them again), as happened this year. 

That’s not the only recourse. The idea is to make WisCon a safer space for everyone, not just some certain kinds of people. To make WisCon the type of con where you are not required to let things roll off your back and ignore or laugh off microaggressions and othering so you don’t disrupt everyone else’s good time

The outline of what WisCon is doing in particular ends with a powerful exhortation to fandom to make this something that becomes part of fandom and community at large:

As a community, can we make it clear that othering is not okay? That microagressions are not appropriate? Can we make it our problem to address as a community and not only a burden individuals have to deal with? Can we agree that allowing this crap to drive people away (and it does) is untenable?

Social Justice Warriors In Lit: Not Really A Thing

Picture via twitter user @chiparoo

Author & poet Alexandra Erin, who's been skewering the self-proclaimed "Sad/Rabid Puppies" nominees-- a successful slate of this year's nominees made to the Hugo awards by a voting bloc convinced that nefarious political agendas are at work and wanted to counteract it by making sure authors with an agenda that matched their own were nominated-- expanded on a comment she made on the chief sci-fi writer behind the "puppies" movement, Brad R. Torgerson. She explains that while some people use the term "social justice warrior" (also shortened to "SJW") as some sort of pejorative, it's a label that is pretty much only ever made up by its detractors and actually isn't even really a serious thing:

That’s not a thing people called themselves. It’s a pejorative made up to dismiss people, a la calling someone “PC patrol” or “feminazi” or “thought police”. Some people have taken it as an ironic badge of honor or made geeky riffs on it (like “Social Justice Paladin” or “Social Justice Bard”), but by and large, you’re chiding people for not living up to the standards of a label that was foisted upon them in the first place. Which is actually part of the function of the label. Most of the people I have seen getting slapped with the “SJW” label not only don’t describe themselves as social justice warriors, they don’t describe themselves as activists. They’re just people, living their lives, dealing with their own problems, and acting their consciences.

In fact, as she points out, both the "SJW"s and their detractors would seem to agree on base ideas!

We all have different life experiences, which means different things will ring hollow to us... Now imagine a book full of things that are all just “off” by that same amount. Well, you probably don’t have to. You’ve probably read books that are like that, in their treatment of men, or Christians, or the military. And it didn’t just strike you as insulting, but also as bad writing. Right? Your ability to enjoy the story suffered, because while disagreeing with a writer’s politics is one thing, seeing yourself replaced by caricatures page after page is another.

So then, at its heart, when the Puppy-gaters are talking about "removing politics from writing" what they're really advocating for is to not be engaged, not to critically think about things, and to ignore something that affects you-- which sounds like the antithesis of what an engaged reader should do. Read the whole post here.