While Many of You were at a Serious Literary Con...

...I was at home, doing this: "Story Time: Live-Blogging 'Taken By the Gay Unicorn Biker.'"

Bitter Empire has promised me business cards that say: "Reading weird erotica, so you don't have to."

Seriously, a very important conference is happening in town right now, the AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs) is happening. I will tell you that I looked at their off-site events schedule (here's today's) and I know none of the people doing readings. I don't think they invited the spec fic community, though I might be wrong about that.

So, yeah, I stayed home and read unicorn porn, out loud (rather: on-line) instead.

Also, after yesterday (wherein I got a surprising amount of attention for what I thought was a very 101 Hugo's post), I feel the need to post this:



For the most part, I have to say, I remain lucky. If people are saying vile things about me because I compared the puppies to Nazis (possibly an unwise hyperbole, though the fascist stuff is very much connected to the rabid pups and I linked to my source in the article), I'm not really hearing it to my face. I had one troll come on my FB feed to say "How many lies can you print in one article?" to which I have to confess my first response was going to be "ALL OF THEM" (but I feared I might be taken seriously or out of context), so instead I asked for clarification, got it, and refuted it.

I also pointed out that the blog was not an article, but an opinion piece, which had been clearly labeled as such.

Kittens and unicorn sex. The only antidote, IMHO.

Of Science Fiction and Puppies

Possibly there were more qualified (and snappier) writers to sum up the Hugo shenanigans for the mundanes, but my editor asked and I answered with "Why Are All my Science Fiction Friends Screaming About Sad Puppies?"

If you're a long time fan and have been following along even tangentially, I say nothing new here. Mostly it's a link salad to some of the more awful things known about Vox Day and his Rabid Puppies (the more stridently vocal right wing of the already right-of-center Sad Puppies). My only new insight is that I, too, have never really felt the Hugos were "all that" in terms of pointing out what was the best in my field, but I have long used the nominee list to get a good sense of "what is trending" in science fiction/fantasy.

I will say here (as I do there) that I do think they're worth fighting.

If it were true that the Sad Puppies actually promoted the idea of fun-loving, non-navel-gazing science fiction, I might be one of them. Ironically (perhaps), yesterday I posted my review of The Girl in the Road in which I make some very snarky comments about what I call "NPR science fiction."

I like my science fiction to have a lot of vim and vigor. I'm very much uninterested in novels that are ONLY explorations of inner spaces. My favorite stuff (and the very best, IMHO,) is when you have high action AND deep thinking. Human beings are political creatures. To imagine a book that was apolitical sounds dreadful to me. Also it sounds impossible. I just read a book The Way Inn by Will Wiles which is basically about how plastic and empty hotels are and how literally soul-sucking they can be. Even that book had a thematic/political point: banality is evil. When you find comfort in emptiness, you probably should consider the value in spending a bit more time naval gazing. That's what this book was ultimately kind of about.

But that's not REALLY what this conversation is about. If it were, the puppies wouldn't complain about the Hugo's NEVER going to their sort. Lois McMaster Bujold has a few of these coveted rockets, and I don't see how she's not exactly what they should be excited about: action-oriented, fun, and... oh, right, she talks a lot about GLBT issues and gender and ability. Never mind she's published by Baen (their supposed favorite publisher). Lois doesn't count because her epic space battles have girl/queer cooties on them.

Ah, I could go on, but, ultimately, all this has been said already. Over and over. By smarter people than me.

It's really interesting the culture of backlash, though, of which the Hugo malarky is clearly part of. I mean, we're living in very weird times. On one hand there's so much moving forward. On the other, there's Indiana.

Guest Blogging About Failure

My own personal failure, not the fail culture of SF, that is.  You can read it over at Kurtis Scaletta's blog:  "My Biggest Failure: Letting the B-st-rds Get me Down."