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 .

Marvel vs. Limits of Diverse Representation

I've written before on the numerous times Marvel comics has tried and failed to grasp just how diversity works. Seriously, just search the marvel tag. However,  the example that sticks out for writer Paige Allen isn't Marvel's continuing mishandling of Captain America. Nor is it Marvel's VP of Sales blaming attempts at diverse casts of superheroes for hurting sales. According to Allen, the most egregious example is the writing of Marvel's Invincible Iron Man. Penned by Brian Michael Bendis, Invincible  that introduced the world to a new Iron Man – a young black teen by the name of Riri Williams. Writing for Geeks of Color, Allen points out that "...some fans were skeptical of Bendis writing the experiences of a young black girl, especially since Marvel had no black women writers on its staff when the series was first announced."

Bendis has also written also wrote about another black teen assuming the mantle of of Marvel franchise powerhouse-- Miles Morales as Spider-Man. Bendis has also talked about the research he's done as an author and the perspective that raising two of his adopted African-American children have given him. Allen points that while Bendis is able to write about the challenges and loss Riri Williams faces as a black girl, his knowledge is reflected in a very narrow focus of the Black experience:

Unfortunately, this knowledge is the overall problem Bendis has in his depiction of Riri Williams. He knows about black pain and the various micro- and macro- aggressions that black people face every day, especially during these particularly fraught times of racial hostility... Basically, Bendis is like your white classmate that took one Africana class and now believes himself to be the purveyor of all knowledge on black life. However, because he acquired his knowledge as an outsider to the culture, the only way he really knows how to depict blackness is through identifiable aspects of The Struggle – all the negative social realities of being black that you see reported on TV, lambasted on Twitter, and through quickly cruising through activist circles in search of easily transferable knowledge about racism without any nuanced understanding of how black people deal with it.

This came to a head when scans from a page of Invincible Iron Man #8 appeared online recently, where it shows Williams in class trying to actively seek out marginalization as a motivator.

Allen reflected:

Never in my wildest nightmares would I imagine a black child seeking out racism to fight against in the pursuit of their dreams. Racism isn’t a Sailor Moon villain that waits for us to level up before trying to kick our ass; we are always aware of it and are always affected by it, but one of the best traits that black people have is our ability to bypass that negativity and live our lives despite it, not to specifically spite it.

This isn't the first time Bendis' writing for a black character has been criticized. The Nerdist pointed out that Bendis and other white writers writing characters of color often come off as tone-deaf and run the risk of alienating the very fans they want to recruit.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the real key is to actually hire diverse creators to write diverse casts. Otherwise we're just slapping a Band-Aid on the issue:

Looking at a diversity initiative as the beginning and end of what's needed to help improve the state of comics is short-sighted and wrong-headed. Instead of just having the same white men tell stories with some characters of color here and there, there should be structure in place for minority writers and artists and creators to tell the stories they want to a mainstream audience. Diversity as the final and only goal is a hollow act that does nothing but reinforce whiteness and the status quo as the default. That's not the world we live in, so why should worlds we get to make up have to be that way? Free your mind, and the audience will follow.

Writing Diverse Characters & The Fear Of Doing It Wrong

Prolific author and blogger s.e. smith recently wrote about his thoughts about white people writing diverse characters and settings (smith is white himself), and it's pretty relevant right now. There have been increasing calls for more diverse representation in media. As smith points out, though, that push comes with a fear that many white authors are reluctant to discuss: the fear of getting it wrong, and the fear of being widely criticized. Could that be attributed to a sudden influx of angry fans? Smith says those discussions aren't really anything new:

One consequence of more open discussion about diversity is that nondiverse creators are forced to see that discussion. It’s not like diverse readers and creators just now started criticising works that have huge problems. Rather, those conversations were happening, often in the open, and no one cared or paid attention. Now, there’s enough momentum that they become highly visible, that it’s no longer possible to be insulated from them. Some nondiverse creators appear to be operating under the impression that there’s an army of mean people gearing up to descend on whatever they write to shred it to pieces as soon as it hits the shelves — or before. Often, that comes from a defensive position, because it hurts to hear that you did something wrong, or that something you worked on for months or years has major problems, and the instinctive reaction is to lash out to neutralize the criticism so you can go on with your life.

Smith goes into the difference between the fear of doing it wrong, and the fear of how you'll be perceived, and offers some pretty good advice. Another excellent resource are the annual "Writing The Other" workshops and classes offered by authors Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest Bradford.

Why Do Teen Dramas Keep Sidelining Black Characters?

Bianca Lawson as Kendra Young
from the second season of Buffy
The Vampire Slayer

Writing for Vulture, Angelica Jade Bastién, talks about hear love of teen dramas, starting as a teen watching The Craft and shows like Buffy The Vampire Slayer when she was a teenager herself. She's remained a fan up to the present day, but she's found that a problem she had with shows in her teens persists in shows today: it's really hard to find characters of color that get as much development in ensemble dramas as their white counterparts. djdjdjdj, :

[B]lack characters are often solely given an arc in relation to the white characters around them... In many films and TV shows, this is also used as a way to discuss racial politics...This may seem radical for the predominantly white filmmakers who work in this genre, but it’s important to remember that black girls’ lives aren’t solely defined by racism. We deal with romantic foibles, desires, and fears just as richly complex as the white leads this genre focuses on to the detriment of the black girls coloring the margins.

Bastién mentions the latest teen drama to start with a promising introduction, only to fall to some of the same problems: CW's Riverdale and the show's introduction of Josie and her bandmates The Pussycats:

K. J. Apa, who plays the remarkably befuddled (and ripped) Archie, is half Samoan. Veronica is Latina. Reggie is played by an Asian-American actor. And most notably, not one, but all of the members of Josie and the Pussycats are black, a change that eschews the tokenization previous iterations of the group have displayed. But as Riverdale approaches the end of its first season, it has reaffirmed some of the age-old problems within the genre... At the least, Riverdale’s Josie, Valerie, and Melody aren’t stereotypes, but they rest in the same troubling space that the black girls in films like Save the Last Dance occupy. They’re not characters so much as they are a vehicle for a Message. Josie and her fellow pussycats are positioned to communicate the message that Riverdale is more modern and inclusive than teen dramas of the past, even though it has yet to prove it beyond its casting.

Heck, in the comics and cartoons, Josie and The Pussycats were mystery solvers. Riverdale ended its season with a murder plotline that's been weaving in and out of the story all season, but Josie and company have been seemingly shunted aside. Bastién name drops The Craft, Buffy and Bring It On-- what ensemble shows do you think dropped the ball with characters of color? Did the writers fix it? What would you like to see, dear readers?

100 Must Read LGBTIA YA Novels

Signal-boosting a great resource that writer Casey Stepaniuk has compiled a very detailed list of 100 LGBT-focused young adult novels. While it's, by her own admission, not meant to be a complete list, it's certainly an extensive one. Each novel has link to purchase, a synopsis and review and details on its representation.

Regarding the list she compiled, Stepaniuk took care to be as thorough and as inclusive as possible:

As far as I know, I’ve included all the YA books with intersex and asexual content that exist (in English, anyway). I’ve omitted some trans YA written by cis authors that has been flagged by trans readers as problematic but I aimed to include every trans YA written by a trans author. One last thing: this list includes 36 books by and about people of color (there are additional ones that feature characters of color but are by white authors), all of which have an asterisk next to them so you can easily spot them. Those books were EXTRA hard to find. This is my call on the publishing industry to PLEASE consider intersectionality when publishing LGBTQIA books and to prioritize queer and trans authors of color telling their own stories!

Here's the full list.

Writers of Color & Craft: An Invisible Archive

Neil Atkin-- a great translator and poet in his own right-- writes about an amazing and sorely needed collection project that I wanted to signal boost:

A couple weeks ago I was thinking about how Junot Diaz often comments on the fact he’s almost never asked to speak about craft, and instead always is asked to talk about race, identity, and the immigrant experience. And it’s true — when I think about all the books on writing craft I’ve read or heard about over the years I’m struck by how few POC-authored books on writing I’ve seen. 

Are they really that rare? Or are the books and essays out there, but we don’t know where to find them? 

This list is an ongoing project to catalog what writing resources are out there.

You can check out the compilation he's assembled so far right here.

Localization Editor Withdraws Name Rather Than Give Up "KKK" Joke

Akiba's Beat Game Over Screen

On XSEED's official forum, localization editor Tom Lipschultz posted a list of changes made in the English version of game Akiba's Beat. In addition to things like changing names of characters to reflect puns in the original Japanese, there was one joke that Lipschultz was changed that he felt was a bridge too far-- changing a background sign that read "KKK Witches" in the original Japanese version :

The original was a parody of "NKK switches," a Japanese light switch manufacturer based out of Akihabara. I personally felt "KKK witches" was pretty funny for its shock value, but when I mentioned it to my coworkers, they... were not as amused. 

Yeah, I can't imagine why a white guy going "LOL it says KKK roflcopter" would be a bad look or anything. Instead of pausing for a moment of self-reflection as to why the name of a domestic terrorist group was funny to him, or why a background joke might be worth changing, Lipschultz decided to double down.

 ...[XSEED was] insistent upon the name being changed. And of course, I fought this as best as I could, since I saw the forceful change of this as an act of censorship...

Yes, according to Lipschultz, changing a joke to avoid name-dropping the Ku Klux Klan is exactly the same thing as actively suppressing art! He was the lone brave white guy sticking up for the original intent. Like, what if the original Japanese developer really wanted to make the minor background company sign joke as some sort of statement about the USA right-wing hate group responsible for lynching about 3,500 black men over the course of its existence, right? Lipschultz continues:

In the end, however, it was Acquire themselves who voluntarily changed it to "ACQ witches"... [XSEED emailed the original Japanese developers] to let them know that the KKK is a well-known abbreviation for a hate group in America, and asking them if the name "KKK witches" had any specific meaning in Akiba's Beat... Acquire simply changed the sign text and sent us a new build. 

Oh. So since the original developers of the game made the change, this must mean they were cool with it. If the intent was to make some sort of political statement, they would have kept it. Censorship implies there's some sort of involuntary act, and Lipschultz himself said the original developers made this decision themselves. So that's why Lipschultz... asked for his name to be removed from the credits? Yep, he confirms it himself.

It is due to this change, and specifically due to my initial misconception that we'd directly asked the devs to change it, that I asked to have my name removed from the credits of Akiba's Beat... I feel it's a good symbolic gesture on my part, showing my commitment to my principles on this matter... I'm perfectly fine with being the "ninja localizer" of XSEED, fighting the good anti-censorship fight from the shadows. 

Yes, this is the hill Lipschultz chose to die on. This also means that per XSEED company policy, he will no longer be credited on any future work he does for the company, and he took this stand being fully aware of this company policy.

It turns out that Lipschultz has many misconceptions, from what censorship is, to what it means to be funny to what it means for something to be "very Japan". Not content to dig a hole for himself on the forums of the company he works for, Lipschultz took to the comments section of a Kotaku article about his decision in what I'm sure he thought was a noble and well-reasoned attempt to defend himself. Here, let's watch him go and dig himself deeper:

[The KKK acronym] doesn’t make me chuckle on its own, but in the context of appearing on a sign in a busy part of Tokyo, where the business in question obviously had NO IDEA what it meant? That’s pretty funny, if you’ve ever been to Japan. “Engrish” exists as a concept for a reason, and a sign that says “KKK witches” is so out there, so WRONG, that it appearing on a sign is definitely worthy of at LEAST a chuckle, for the absurdity alone. 

I guess the idea is, I believe it would be funny to the game’s target audience, those being Japanophiles. Because it really is very “Japan.”

You see, a KKK reference is funny because... racism! Non-native speakers being ridiculed for not understanding a language is funny because, um... also racism? People that like Japanese pop culture think racism is funny too? I guess?

Honestly, I'm surprised Lipschultz still has a job considering he seems to have no grasp of optics, humor, or what localization is supposed to be. Posting on the Neogaf boards, Lipschultz once had this to say in his defense of anime boobs and fan-service:

Even if you consider content in a game to be perverted and classless... let the classless perverts have it! They deserve to enjoy their games just as much as the rest of us. And to say that it "taints" the game for the rest of us is no different than saying having someone of a different race, or sexual orientation, taints the neighborhood.

Yes, just like his withdrawing his name from the credits of Akiba's Beat and all future XSEED games he works on was his attempted to channel Evelyn Beatrice Hall (no, REALLY, he said so right here), standing up for sexualized female characters created by men, for men, is like speaking out against discrimination of marginalized people. That's totally not gross at all!

I think the best way to explain translation vs transliteration is by using a musical analogy. When a violin repeats what a piano just has played, it can't make the exact same sounds. It can only approximate the same chords.The violin can, however, recognizably make the same "music" as a piano, but only when it's faithful to the logic and limitations of the violin as it is to the logic and limitations of the piano.

Languages are like that, too. Each has their own "sound" and their own logic.The process of rendering ideas from language to language is really more like a transposition than a translation-- translation implies that there are word-for-word equivalents that exist from one language boundary to another. That's like saying piano sounds exactly like the violin!

And the idea of word-for-word equivalents of a story, of a language's underlying feeling strikes me as false to the nature of story telling.The best a translator can do is hope for is to come close as possible not to the text's literal meaning-- it's nearly impossible to drag a sentence's meaning across one language barrier to another completely 100 percent intact. What is more important in preserving, intent... even at the expense of making four strings do the same notes as 88 keys (i.e.English from Japanese). A translator should work to preserve a story's essence, the total feeling of the complexities.Literal translations, as outlined in today's earlier piece on Persona 5, are stilted, awkward and can seem more like transcribing than translation,

When the original game developer of Akiba's Beat was contacted about what the KKK initials of the "off brand" light switch maker sign meant for a US audience, they changed the joke because they intended to just make a silly company name reference, not name-drop a US domestic terrorist group.

Basically, what Lipschultz has done is mixed up the right of people to not be suppressed by the government or societal coercion with the tension that is part and parcel of the act of translation. Instead of pausing and reflecting on why a minor joke with unintentional racist overtones was something he saw as so essential he'd be willing to throw away credit for his work, Lipschultz decided that not keeping "KKK witches" was the molehill to die on.

Persona 5 Puts the LOL in "Localization"

The latest game in Atlus' long-running Persona RPG series, Persona 5, was released recently. Plenty of reviews mention the stylish graphics, the eye-catching presentation and the entertaining in-game battles. What not many reviews mention is that the actual English dialogue in the game is, to put it politely, a hot mess.

An actual line from p5's first hour:
"A public transit bus was driven down an opposing lane with its customers still in it!"

— Anthony Burch, sorry (@_anthonyburch) April 4, 2017

This is especially surprising considering how much acclaim the localization and dialogue for Persona 4 received. Persona 5 boast 8 editors and 6 translators listed in the game's credits. So why is the dialogue so bad? Writing for Polygon, translator and Persona fan Molly Lee gives her best estimate:

Chances are high this localization was a rush job; a lot of the more egregiously bad lines read like an unedited first draft. It’s possible the localizers were doing everything in their power just to finish the scripts on time, and chewing on phrases and wording to make the script sound natural for English speakers takes time, and it’s possible they just didn’t have any.

The end result is that the localization ends up being worse than just bad... it's robotic. Nonsensical. Boring. As Lee explains, when it comes to localization, too many cooks spoil the soup:

The really good lines are overshadowed by the memory of the worst ones, and in a way, that actually makes it worse. The purpose of localization is to provide the best experience possible while maintaining a reasonably close approximation of the game the Japanese players enjoyed. But Persona 5’s localization is not that. Instead, it's amateurish, mechanical, and if it wasn't for the voice acting, it'd be almost entirely devoid of character voice. 

In fact, let's try a thought experiment. I'll provide some dialogue from the English version of the game, and you try to guess which main party members said them. Sound good? Okay, here we go: 

• "He healed himself...? Is it because he ate those inside there?" 

• "What kind of stupid phantom thief would use their real name!? I'm not down for that!" 

• "Why do I—the one who was just watching—know more about it than you two!?" 

• "I hope that she doesn't torment herself over this. When it comes down to it, women don't hesitate." 

• "Uhh ... Anyway, it can't be helped if that's the case. Time for you to go to hell." 

• "What nonsense that you used a mousetrap on me!"

Ready for the answers? 

All of those lines were said by Morgana.
From a story perspective, dialogue is supposed to clue the reader in as to each character's personality. So what kind of personality does Morgana have, exactly? Is Morgana relaxed enough to use curse words like "hell" and slang like "down for that"? Or is Morgana a bit of a tight-ass who uses stiff, dismissive language like "nonsense?”

If Atlus is going to ask us to invest $60 and dozens of hours of our time, then I think that they should at least take some pride in their releases.  Especially for a game that is so extremely dialog-heavy. Because really, who talks like this:

"At this rate, it's be pointless how much I contribute to this school."

Marvel Retcons All of World War II, Capt America Always Evil

Cover to Secret Empire #0. Art by Mark Brooks.

The latest ridiculous twist in the saga of Captain America penned by Nick Spencer has outdone all of Spencer's other "shocking" twists in both the breadth of its foolishness and its lack of respect for an iconic character's legacy.

First, a quick recap.

Last summer, comics fandom and the wider media fandom at large was shocked when Captain America, Marvel's staunch defender of liberty uttered the line "Hail Hydra", revealing himself as having been allied with the evil Hydra organization all along-- a group that in the Marvel universe originated with Nazi Germany, the very foes Captain America was supposed to have fought against! It seemed like a crass twist and super inconsistent with the character's real-world origins and legacy. Captain America was created by two Jewish creators, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. Captain America was born s wish fulfillment, to have an all-American hero punch Hitler and fight Nazis even before the US was involved in World War 2. Nick Spencer, the writer for that arc as well as the ongoing Sam Falcon, Captain America title promised all would be revealed in due time.

"Captain America wasn't brainwashed," Nick Spencer said. He also said that the Cap that declared "Hail Hydra" wasn't an alien body double or a robot duplicate. It was the actual Steve Rogers, the real Captain America had done this. But be patient, Spencer urged. It would all make sense. Recently it was revealed that the pieces of the Cosmic Cube- an artifact powerful enough to rewrite reality itself- had somehow taken the form of Kobi, a small naive child unaware of the reality-altering powers she had within her. Kobi, in turn, influenced by the super-villian Red Skull-- Captain America's longtime Nazi arch-nemesis since World War II. It was the Red Skull who influenced Kobi to give Captain America the memories of being a Hydra sleeper agent. So, see, it wasn't technically brainwashing, right?

That's not the most foolish part. See, as asinine as that revelation was, that gives you the hope that Captain America still had some good in him, right? That even though at this point Captain America has sold out the Earth to invading aliens, allied himself with super powered Nazis and was setting himself up to become dictator for life of the United States, that there was maybe still some good in him somewhere. The Marvel Universe had a glimmer of hope.

With the release of Secret Empire #0 two days ago, Nick Spencer reveals his biggest, most asinine twist yet: The Allies actually lost World War II and used the Cosmic Cube to re-write reality so that the Nazis were defeated and Captain America was the world-saving good guy. In the Marvel Universe, Germany was actually the winner, and always was. Steve Rogers really was an agent for Hydra all along, and those memories added by Red Skull were actually restoring Captain America to his "true self", Spencer ret-conned actual world history to take a symbol of the US created by two Jewish men during World War II and said nope, Captain America was supposed to really be an evil bad guy and it was only a reality-rewrite that made him good.

This is especially egregious tone-deafness because two days ago-- April 19th-- was the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was the largest Jewish revolt during World War II, and also has the distinction of being the first urban uprising against the Nazis that happened in Nazi-occupied Europe.The Nazis attempted to completely wipe out the Jews living in Warsaw on the eve of Passover. Instead, the Jews held out against occupied forces for nearly a month, using whatever they had on hand to fight back. Their bravery inspired Jews across Europe, including those already in the camps, to organize and revolt.

In fact, that's another odd thing about the whole "Allies used the Cosmic Cube to re-write history so the Nazis would lose instead of win like they were supposed to"-- why didn't the Allies cosmically re-write it so that the Holocaust never happened?

Marvel is doubling down on the doubling down, too, rebranding its websites with Hydra iconography, and even asking brick and mortar comic book shops to have employees wear Hydra t-shirts this month.

We've also been asked to change our store logos to Hydra symbols. My staff are LGBTQ, Jewish, or both. We are no longer hand-selling Marvel. https://t.co/gQnBfBZC8L

— Glamour Toad 🌈🐸🌈 (@NickiColey) April 20, 2017

Nick Spencer took to twitter with all the class you'd expect:

Haters upon seeing the advance reviews for SECRET EMPIRE 0 pic.twitter.com/lFU0RStBd6

— Nick Spencer (@nickspencer) March 23, 2017

Then again, for a dude making his living writing super heroes, Nick Spencer doesn't seem to have the greatest grasp of them. Like when he rushed to twitter to give his hot take on Nazis getting punched in public:

@nickspencer Nick....you just described what a superhero is.

— ANTHONY OLIVEIRA (@meakoopa) April 17, 2017

Last week, I talked about how Marvel's VP of Sales tried to blame "diversity" for poor comic book sales, and how that assertion is utter bullshit. itch.io user spacetwinks was pretty pissed off about that assertion too, and put together a thorough and damning analysis and response, as described thus:

This did not sit well with others, the idea that retailers and Marvel would blame these books for low sales - and it didn't sit well with me, either. So I've hunkered down and put in the hours researching sales data reaching back over a decade in Marvel, and looked for what could possibly be the true culprit in their sales problems.
"Shut The Fuck Up, Marvel" is a nearly 30k long essay, a spiritual sequel to The Problems With Comics, a deep dive into the true issues with Marvel's economics and business - and how an obsession with short term profit, the constant renumbering and relaunches and events, all compounded by a complete inability to understand basic marketing techniques or outside audiences, has absolutely destroyed the sales stability of many of their former best selling books, all as they condescend to those who criticize them on their stories, or on how they try to sell comics.

It's offered as a pay what you want download, and is a very insightful read. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Update: Wow, this post is starting to blow up! My hosting is getting slammed! So if you liked this article and want to see more, you can help support it by pledging a buck or more to my Patreon or by tossing some spare change in the virtual tip jar to the right. Thanks!

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.

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.

The Road To Silkpunk

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you've probably heard of steampunk. I've also covered steamfunk. Author Ken Liu talks about his latest novel, and just what Silkpunk means:

Like steampunk, silkpunk is a blend of science fiction and fantasy. But while steampunk takes as its inspiration the chrome-brass-glass technology aesthetic of the Victorian era, silkpunk draws inspiration from classical East Asian antiquity. My novel is filled with technologies like soaring battle kites that lift duelists into the air, bamboo-and-silk airships propelled by giant feathered oars, underwater boats that swim like whales driven by primitive steam engines, and tunnel-digging machines enhanced with herbal lore, as well as fantasy elements like gods who bicker and manipulate, magical books that tell us what is in our hearts, giant water beasts that bring storms and guide sailors safely to shores, and illusionists who manipulate smoke to peer into opponents’ minds. 

The silkpunk technology vocabulary is based on organic materials historically important to East Asia (bamboo, paper, silk) and seafaring cultures of the Pacific (coconut, feathers, coral), and the technology grammar follows biomechanical principles like the inventions in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The overall aesthetic is one of suppleness and flexibility, expressive of the cultures that inhabit the islands. 

A lot of my ideas about this alternate technology aesthetic were inspired by W. Brian Arthur’s theories about technology, especially the notion of treating engineering as a creative art that solves problems by recombining existing machines into a new machine that achieves a new purpose — in a sense, engineering is very much like poetry.

Liu's novel, The Grace of Kings, was released to critical acclaim. I've started reading it myself, and whole-heartedly recommend it.

True Tales From The Video Game Writers' Bullpen!

from left: Clank, Ratchet. Not pictured: boxing glove.

As the adage goes, "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard" and while that was coined to describe the challenge of comedy on the big screen, it's especially true when writing for the small screen, including video games. As TJ Fixon, a writer on Ratchet and Clank details to Gamasutra:

“I wrote this joke, where Ratchet and Clank are in a ship together and the designers wanted them to fall asleep so they could wake up in a new environment,“ he explained. "So this gas comes out, Ratchet goes, ‘ah cryosleep gas, I’m not gonna fall asleep!’ And of course he falls asleep. And Clank says 'oh it’s good that gas doesn’t work on robots!’ and a boxing glove pops out and knocks him out.” 

“They just started peppering me with, 'Why is this funny? What Is the joke? Where does this fall in the hero’s journey? Is this the save the cat moment?’ I’m wide-eyed and going ‘I thought, I thought it was funny I’m so sorry.’ That’s what I realized, as a game writer, you think you have this freedom, but you don’t. There are so many constraints and so many moving pieces, and from then on out I was hyper-aware that any time you write anything in a script, that changes the game for 20 different departments.” 

What dialogue do the writers interviewed say they dreaded having to write the most? Believe it or not, it was ambient dialogue:

Druckmann, seeing Krawczyk’s putting a finger gun to her head at the mention of ambient dialogue, asked all three to share the most difficult part of their writing process, and for all three, the biggest nightmare was bark dialogue, (ambient dialogue enemies shout to alert players to gameplay clues), and expository directives (characters muttering to themselves something like “I need to go through that door!”)

The entire article is an entertaining and illuminating read, so I encourage you to check it out!

What Designers Really Need To Learn From Metroid

Metroid for the NES and Super Metroid for the Super NES are two of the most influential video games ever made.

The games' non-linear progression, solo exploration and action based gameplay have, along with Konami's Castlevania series, influenced so many action-platformer games that therm term "Metroidvania" was coined in video game reviews to describe the genre. The Internet is chock-a-block with all sorts of indie game plaftformers that display their Metroid influence proudly. But, as Maddy Meyers explain, just because you can count Metroid as an influence doesn't mean your game is automatically as good:

Take Shadow Complex, for example, a “metroidvania” that is obsessively similar to Super Metroid in terms of play-style—except that it’s 2.5D instead of 2D, so the world feels a bit more layered and packed out with compelling new surfaces to scale. That said, for a game that supposedly takes its influence from Metroid, Shadow Complex falls wildly short in terms of aesthetics, narrative and nuance. The plot follows Jason, a bland-as-a-plain-bagel man whose girlfriend gets kidnapped right out of the gate by shadowy soldiers. The game’s artists gave Jason a far more boring existence than Samus Aran’s, overall. Instead of beautifully designed, vibrant, unique armor and towering, glorious alien architecture, Jason gets black-and-gray suits and bland warehouse crates and hallways. (He doesn’t even strip down to a bright red swimsuit at the end of the game, either.)

So what makes Metroid stand out? Why is it so important as a game?

The reason why Metroid and Super Metroid work, at least in part, is because they evoke a fearful feeling of exploring and surviving, as well as a sensation of not-belonging, of being lost, and of rebuilding oneself piece by piece. Samus fights a cyclical, endless war on familiar battlegrounds; she goes on unglamorous, personal quests, often with little institutional support (in contrast to heroes like Master Chief or Marcus Fenix, who spend their campaigns being loudly lauded and supported.) Metroid is dark, and not in a cheesy way—in a mournful, slow, deliberate way. 

The fact that Samus is a woman matters, and it has always mattered, but that’s not the only element missing from contemporary Metroid imitators. The other missing pieces are even sadder: the lack of emotional nuance and depth, the shying away from the grit of loneliness, the dark existential depth of outer space, and the murky waters of motherhood (incidentally, videogames already do dads plenty—but only Metroid and Portal have even come close to tackling “mommy issues”.)

Meyers also goes into a very insightful breakdown of the movies Alien, Aliens, and Terminator 2 and how Metroid is the video game that comes closest to capturing the sci-fi feel of these movies.

Have you played a game that lives up to the Metroid legacy? Is it even possible? Sound off below.

YA Books & The John Green Problem

Fiction for young adults is seemingly booming. YA lit sections in chain bookstores seem to keep increasing in size, the number of eager readers grow yearly, and YA writer John Green's novel The Fault In Our Stars was adapted into a box-office success in a movie adaption of the same name. As the Daily Dot pointed out earlier this year though, he's endemic of a larger genre-wide problem:

On Twitter, Green has 2 million followers. Compared to the rest of the leaders in Young Adult fiction, that number is staggering. To approach even half the Twitter influence of John Green all by himself, you need an entire army of YA women. Anderson, Blume,Dessen, Veronica Roth, Cassandra Clare, Richelle Mead, Margaret Stohl, Kami Garcia,Rainbow Rowell, Maureen Johnson, Malinda Lo, Holly Black, LJ Smith, Ellen Hopkins,Shannon Hale, Lauren Myracle, Libba Bray, Melissa Marr, and Leigh Bardugo: As a group these women only have about 1.2 million followers on Twitter. That’s the voice of one man outweighing several decades of women who have had major successes, critical acclaim, and cultural influence. 

The problem of the cultural influence his books have created is not Green’s fault, but it’s created a frustrating situation for female writers and readers. Book blogger Rhiannon K. Thomas issued a sweeping takedown of the way the NYT bestseller list is stacked against female authors, many of whom write series, which are automatically moved to the “Children’s Series” list, out of the YA category altogether. She also pointed out that when men like Green aren’t writing YA, the media perception of it suddenly changes. Instead of being high literature, it suddenly becomes a shallow, frivolous genre that only silly teenagers and unfulfilled housewives participate in—just like the romance genre sans Sparks.

While John green himself has also done loads of things that are actually harmful to the audience he's writing for-- like reducing the death of Anne Frank to a mere prop, or taking a teenage girl's post discussing how the author's online presence makes her feel uncomfortable to mean he was accused of being a pedophile-- I think it's part of a larger systematic inequality. 

Whether you look at books, comic books, film or television, women are under-represented and outmatched. This is especially troubling because it leads to the FALSE idea that not only are there no women writers, creators or taste-makers, but that half the planet can just be ignored or dismissed and wouldn't want to see themselves represented anyhow.

Multicultural Steampunk Anthology Wants YOU!

Steampunk WORLD ANTHOLOGY COVER

Sarah Hans, editor behind the award-winning anthology Steampunk World, is currently looking for short fiction for its follow-up, Steampunk Universe.

According to her website, the type of work she's looking for:

Your story should take place in a non-Western culture. I’d love to have a variety of stories that take place in the diverse cultures of Central/South America, Asia, and Africa.

Your story should contain a character with at least one exceptionality. It should be a major element of the story, providing the character with extra challenges but maybe also special insight or abilities. I want to explore how steampunk technology changes the lives of people with exceptionalities, for better or for worse.  I’d love to see characters who are also members of other marginalized groups (such as LGBTQ characters).

Your story should contain steampunk elements. I get a lot of submissions with steampunk exoskeletons and dirigibles, but not many with spaceships or submarines. I’d really like authors to stretch themselves and instead of just writing alternate history, set the story in a parallel universe or on another planet. Read Tobias Buckell’s excellent story “Love Comes to Abyssal City” for an example.

All submissions are due by June 1st of next year, More info can be found  here.

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.

Strange Fruit: When Writing Black Experience For A White Audience Goes Wrong

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

-"Strange Fruit", by Billie Holiday and Abel Meeropol

"Strange Fruit" is one of Billie Holiday's most haunting and iconic songs, a haunting and moving metaphor for lynching in particular and racism in general.  The Library of Congress put the song in the National Recording Registry. It's been declared as one of the most important songs of the 20th century. So if you're going to release a comic invoking a name with that weighty a legacy, about an issue as volatile as racism, you want to make sure that you do things right. But even having the best of intentions doesn't mean you can't royally screw things up as comic critic and culture analyst J.A. Micheline writes in "The White Privilege, White Audacity, and White Priorities of STRANGE FRUIT #1":

Writing about Strange Fruit #1 has been a long time coming... since it was announced on February 20th — Dwayne McDuffie’s birthday. For readers who are unaware, Dwayne McDuffie was one of the most prominent black comics writers and, arguably, one of the most prominent black activists working within the industry. He is one of the few faces that looks like mine whose work specifically aimed to promote other faces like mine in the comics — on the page and off it — and for that alone, he represents a lot. And his birthday was the day BOOM! Studios elected to announce that two white men would be writing and drawing a title about the racist South called Strange Fruit.
...No, seriously, stop a second and look at this constellation of events. This comic, announced on Dwayne McDuffie’s birthday, about racism in the South by two white men is being marketed as a “deeply personal passion project.” Do I need to go into why I have some questions about why a story about racism is deeply personal to white people? Do I need to explain why I think that marketing choice was tone-deaf and perhaps even toeing the line into disrespect? Do I need to air my concerns about what that indicates about who this book is being marketed to and why I suspect it is not people who look like me?

The entire article is a great read and review of the comic itself.

I want to add to it that there’s already a comic called “Strange Fruit,” about black history, written and illustrated by black men. http://www.amazon.com/Strange-Fruit-Volume-Uncelebrated-Narratives/dp/1938486293. 

Tumblr user spikedrewthis did a rundown of some of her favorite comics written and illustrated by marginalized people and you can check it out starting with this tweet:
https://twitter.com/Iron_Spike/status/618844573436133376 

And here’s a list of webcomics by black creators: http://pastebin.com/Mh7RV5YY .

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.

Second Quest-ions: New Comic Examines Game Culture

In 2013, the FPS BioShock Infinite was released to widespread accolades and high reviews at nearly every major gaming website and publication. Many of the reviews talked about how Bioshock Infinite not just met, but exceeded expectations for a sequel... without really asking questions about what shaped those expectation in the first place. Tevi Thompson published a piece called "On Videogame Reviews" where he used the accolades and acclaim the game was given in reviews to function as a jumping off point for a critique of gaming culture, video game narratives, and the culture in society in general and gaming in particular and the narratives they present at large. Near the midpoint, he observes that:

“The straight white male gamers so untroubled by BioShock Infinite, whose ideology and privilege are in fact perfectly reflected in it, are just not up to the task of reviewing on their own. Their subjectivities betray complicity. It’s a dead end, the good old boys speaking to their bros, and only by diversifying in every way possible can the review community thrive... This means more women, more people of color, more queer and transgender folks, more reviewers from diverse social, economic, and cultural backgrounds that don’t neatly fit the lifelong gamer mold. Not simply because we need reviewers to match the shifting demographics of those playing games, but because diversity is of clear and obvious value to any community and any discourse.”

These are obviously questions and observations that stuck with Thompson, and it's evident in his comic Second Quest, which combines Thompson's writing with the art of video game Braid and the webcomic "A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible" David Hellman. It's a love letter to the Legend of Zelda mythos, with lush visuals and writing that makes some sharp insights, too. The narrative arc of the comic tells a story that also asks us to reflect on What is the how being told that the hero is a guy rescuing a girl, how the hero is always just, how systems perpetuate themselves even as they try and follow a world narrative. As they put it, Second Quest aims to be a "...tale of enchanting surfaces and not-so-secret darkness, one that questions the common legends we tell about our kingdoms, our people, ourselves".

It was crowdfunded successfully and released recently and between the engaging story and the evocative art, is definitely a recommended read-- whether you're into video games, Zelda, sociological narratives or even just really well-drawn comic art. You can read samples, find out more about the comic, and buy it here.

What do you think, readers?