Black Sun Rising

My local library growing up was underground.  I’m an effort to save space and energy, the Walker Library was a street level parking lot, with the library underneath, accessed by stairs going ominously down, or a dingy elevator.  The stairs led to a roomful of books, so I was delighted. Here I encountered Taran Wanderer and David Eddings’ Elenium (I have no memory of the first, and read the second obsessively for years, in case you want an idea of my taste).  Here I read enough Encyclopedia Brown to learn what makes bookkeeper such a special word and how to cut fishing line with your bare hands.  Thanks to a very strange sample catalog search query, I grew up thinking there was a book called “Wuthering Heights OR How to Succeed In Business Without”.  I also found C. S. Friedman and Michael Whelan at the Walker.

Gerald Tarrant was gazing at me out of a big thick hardcover, with purple ropes of fae spilling all around him.  I couldn’t get Black Sun Rising checked out fast enough.  And then once I got past the vivisection, the world unrolled before me.  The visual appeal of the fae that practitioners see spilling throughout the world, and the spectacular light show of magical discharges in major cities.  The predatory rakh, guilty priest, and of course the tantalizing image of a world in which belief is enough to change reality. I had, and still have, a special place in my heart for any fantasy novel that treats institutional religion with more complexity than either fraudulent and corrupt on the one hand or simply literally true, with gods and magic made real on the other, and Black Sun Rising is one of the best examples I have read.  Over it all loomed Gerald Tarrant, the evil wizard drawn back towards humanity from the farthest reaches of darkness.  I have owned and discarded or given away more copies of Black Sun Rising than any book not about hobbits, and it is one of my most frequent rereads.

Friedman’s novel, first published in 1991, will be familiar to anyone who read fantasy of that era, even if they never discovered this particular book.  On what is revealed to be a far away planet colonized by people who left earth in a starship long ago, magic is real. The fae swirls around the planet, frothing to the surface during earthquakes, tidal confluence, and other moments of transformation.  Natives to the planet can use the fae, but only a few humans (adepts) have that power. Others can learn, including our apparent protagonist, Damien Vryce, but for the majority of humanity, the fae manifests our subconscious. Specifically, fears and hatred become demons, which manifest bodily and feed on humanity.  Erna may be beautiful, but it is also dangerous. Vryce, the mysterious (and evil) adept Gerald Tarrant, and Senzei Reese are thrown together with Ciani (an adept who has lost her power and her memory), and Hesseth, a rakh - one of Erna’s native inhabitants, in order to hunt down a greater evil. Adventures ensue, magic is performed, men strut and posture (the book at least has the grace to note this is what’s happening), good people die, secrets are revealed, hurdles are overcome, and goals are achieved, if not quite in the way the fellowship intended.  Black Sun Rising is a fine example of fantasy novels in the era before grimdark took over, and I recommend reading it if you haven’t yet.

I returned this year with an eye towards the fae, which makes real the fears and dark desires of the human intruders on the planet.  What would it be like, I wondered, to read about a power that manifests all our negative emotions in the midst of the 2018 news cycle?  Damien Vryce is a priest whose religion preaches turning away from the power (and danger) of the fae in favor of seeking to live like the legendary half-remembered Earth that colonized Erna.  Vryce, however, is part of a new initiative: a group of priests who learn to use the magic of the fae, trying to harness the power they wish ultimately to destroy. At a key moment, Vryce, who has previously described his faith as “a dream, -that I would die to uphold, or kill to defend” (p. 39), and that another character sees as a catalog of “Ghouls killed, demons dispatched, converts made.” (p. 66) is presented with a dream of a world without the fae, one where he cannot sense the people or world around him, and is unable to heal an injured companion.  “For the first time in his life, he knows the rank taste of terror … ‘It’s the dream you serve. A future the Church hopes to make possible.’” (p. 309-311) As metaphors go, it’s almost too on the nose.

But there’s little more to be extracted after literalizing the metaphor of manifesting our deepest fears.  People will make compromises with power, and will feel guilty about it, and these compromises will make their stated goals drift further away and having made those compromises they will keep compromising.  Friedman is telling and important truth in Damien’s relation to the fae, but after acknowledging that Damien is a compromised character in the opening chapters of the novel, there’s not much further to go with the uneasy assertion that even the people who think power is bad still pursue it.

The Walker Library has a Wikipedia page and at least one book about it: There Goes the Neighborhood: Ten Buildings People Love to Hate.  A dungeon full of books is less appealing to the adults who think that libraries should be able to serve as community gathering places than it was to me.  Also, the underground room was insufficiently waterproof, which meant that even the primary goal of “holding books” wasn’t something the library could do well (It has since been beautified and replaced.  I will miss it). There was a fundamental flaw at the heart of the building, and so eventually it crumbled.

At first the gaps in Black Sun Rising were those I expected.  There are women central to the narrative, but the primary agents of the story are men.  Ciani is adored (and indeed is the reason both Damien and Tarrant compromise their principles), but exists primarily to motivate the men.  Hesseth gets in some good digs at the patriarchy - “‘I meant rakh men,’ she corrected. ‘Who knows what humans are good for?’” (p. 449), but she’s a woman acting within it without ever challenging the arrangements.  Moreover, Hesseth is a “native”, and her people are literally animals made more human-like by the fears and understanding of evolution that humans brought with them. Again, as a description of how colonialism works, the fae provides a powerful metaphor, but there’s still something inherently limiting in a native character overcoming her instincts to travel with civilized humans.  Black Sun Rising is, in the very predictable ways of many fantasy novels of the 1990s and even today, entrenched in a racist, colonialist, patriarchal worldview it can (at its best) notice, but never transcend.

As I got further into Black Sun Rising, I found myself pitying Damien, but as much for the world he is forced to inhabit as for the choices he makes.  The fae is a manifestation of human unconscious - of the darker impulses we keep bottled away. For all but a special few, the magic that sustains Erna literally relies on conflict between our emotional and rational sides to manifest.  The intensity of the fae, similarly, is driven by geologic activity. Stop earthquakes and you stop magic. Magic is given both its strength and its form by conflict. Is it any wonder that in this world there exists a priest of a religion seeking to banish the fae who learns to wield it?  The founder of Damien’s religion was an adept, naturally able to wield the fae, and condemned by the church he founded. Which, since human emotion is made real in this world, actually condemned him to an afterlife of damnation. The logic of Erna is inexorable. Reality is shaped by the conflict between desires and reason, and these cannot be brought into harmony.

Around the time I reread Black Sun Rising, I applied for membership at my local Quaker Meeting.  Credal statements are hard with Quakers, but seeking “that of God in everyone” is as close to a creed as many will get.  A corollary of this is the faith that “that of God” is within you, and one can (and should) try to live in harmony with that inner voice (depending on who you ask, this idea of Integrity is one of a handful of core Testimonies).  There may be views more antithetical to Quakerism than the inevitability of conflict between what we believe and what we want, but I can’t think of any offhand (conflict, generally, comes close: Peace is another of the core Testimonies)

Damien is unable to live in my world, and I would be unable to follow my faith in his.  By making manifest human unconscious, and giving that unconscious a demonic visage that feeds on humanity, Friedman makes real a world that has no place for a spark of transcendent goodness and connection within humans.  One cannot live with Integrity in the world of Black Sun Rising, or pursue Peace based on the recognition of a mutual connection.  Just as Tolkien’s Orcs make the lie of racism literally true in Middle-Earth, and so make it a smaller and less welcoming place, Friedman’s fae makes real one model of human identity, cutting off the existence of others.  Particularly in a novel where religious faith is treated with nuance and respect, this truncated identity increasingly felt like a fundamental flaw.

It was wonderful to return to Erna, and Ciani of Faraday, Hesseth the rakh, and the rest of Damien’s companions.  I continue to appreciate how aesthetically compelling the world is, and how powerfully Tarrant’s personality shapes the story and the companions gathered around him. I do enjoy Black Sun Rising, and I remain grateful to the author for treating faith as something more rich and complex than a longing to be manipulated by charismatic con men or the literal presence of magic.  I will reread Black Sun Rising, and I recommend it very much.

But I also felt sad as I came to the end of the book.  Sad for Damien and the others around him, and sad for the world they live in.  At best, if Damien’s faith is accomplished, he can hope to live in a deterministic universe where reality is unchanged and predictable.  The people he shares it with will have a thin veneer of civilization covering an unconscious that tends towards fear, anger and despair. If his faith is not borne out, and the status quo maintained, he will live in a world where fear and confusion give rise to demons that feast on humanity.  There is little room in Damien’s world for hope, or a connection between people that can be greater, or safer, than the sum of its parts. And that truth saddens me. Erna is a rich and compelling world, but for myself, I choose the fragile hopes and community that can be found here.

A Message, I suppose

I gave vocal ministry in my Meeting today, and in the giving also received it more clearly than I ever have.  So jotting a few notes here:

The seed that I was poking at when the Message settled on my came from Said's "Orientalism" and his observation that British colonial rulers of Egypt felt entirely comfortable speaking for "The Oriental" because they felt he (of course he!) was a classifiable and knowable sort.  Their knowledge served to give them authority (and their authority, knowledge) ... this kind of scientific knowledge was primarily a form of coercion.  (No, I can't fully articulate this, but I may come back to it as I read further in "Orientalism, and there are similar ideas in Foucault's "Discipline and Punish").  Knowledge, and particular Western, Scientific, Rational, knowledge, especially box-putting-into as forms of control.

Raised up against this I heard "Love your neighbor", and the question which prompted the Parable of the Good Samaritan: "Who is my neighbor?".  A story in response to a request for categories.

When I rose to speak, the examples of knowledge as category-making that sprang up were The Bechdel Test, and Brown v. Board.  Asking "can this movie/story imagine that half the world's population are complete people" is a useful question in understanding the ways that our world is unjust.  Asking "are Black people getting an equal education" is also a useful question in understanding justice and injustice.  But there are limitations to these questions.  They categorize, they box us in, and knowledge based on such categorizing is inherently also about a kind of control.  It may be useful but it is limited.  Compare "who is my neighbor", and the response via Parable, which among other things says "that person, right over there, who you are encountering, that is the person to whom you should show love.

The words that came to me at the end, and which I think were most directed at me in that moment were close to: "Understanding our world and its injustice is necessary, but insufficient, to live a life towards Justice, and Love".

I've been wondering for a while where to put the energy I have for social justice, or making life better for others, or whatever other words to use to say "I am concerned about the world and it's future and would like to improve it".  Along with the words that came at Meeting, I got a very strong sense that there are hungry people in my community right now.  They are near to me, and if I do not encounter them it is in part because I am choosing not to.  There are hungry people near me, and also a food bank where people work to help make sure that they're not as hungry.  That is a place I can go and help.

2017 Hugo Nominations

With the Hugo nominating deadlines just around the corner, I'm sharing my ballot (incomplete in plenty of areas), though while I hope you'll consider the various fancasts and related works I'm nominating, I'd otherwise recommend the Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom, Abigail Nussbaum's nominations, and ForestOfGlory's short fiction recommendations at LadyBusiness, since they're all more useful than mine, especially if you're looking for excellent short fiction to read.

Best Novel -
Underground Railroad, Everfair.

I have 2 Best Novel nominations.  Underground Railroad is fantastic, deserves to win any awards it's eligible for, and while it's marketed as a mainstream novel, is also very comfortably a genre novel.  Don't believe the nonsense that "the speculative element is the literalized Underground Railroad".  This book takes various approaches that White America has attempted towards African Americans (genocide, scientific exploitation, etc), and imagines their implementation on grand scales, solidly in the tradition of many science fiction novels.  Everfair is ambitious, made me cry in places, and does an excellent job of differentiating between the narrative perspective and the various sensibilities of characters in the novel.  I'd recommend this review from Strange Horizons as well as Abigail Nussbaum's quick review which notes some of the weaknesses of the scattershot approach the novel takes to covering its grand scale.

The next-best 2016 books I read were Obelisk Gate, Wall of Storms, and Ninefox Gambit.  I don't want to nominate book 2 of a series which I didn't think was as good as book 1 (which describes both Obelisk Gate and Wall of Storms), and I think Ninefox Gambit is a good Space Opera, but that was the extent of my reaction to it, and again I don't want to nominate "a good Space Opera".  I bounced hard off the narrative voice in All the Birds in the Sky, but if you're engaged by the first few chapters, I've heard good things.  I wish I'd made it to Cixin Liu's Death's End, Indra Das's The Devourers, The Winged Histories by Sofia Samatar, and Lavie Tidhar's Central Station, but I didn't.  (If you're looking for good novels, I'd also recommend checking out the Shadow Clarke Award discussions and reviews)

Best Novella -
Ballad of Black Tom, The Taste of Honey, Bethany.

I didn't read many novellas this year, but Victor LaValle's response to Lovecraft's Horror at Red Hook, Kai Ashante Wilson's heartbreaking The Taste of Honey (jeebus, I'm gonna read everything by Wilson ever), and Adam Roberts' Bethany were all excellent.

I didn't read any memorable Novelettes last year, sorry.

Best Short Story
(Again, go see ForestOfGlory's recommendations, and Abigail Nussbaum's, and check the Hugo Awards eligibility spreadsheet)
One Way Out (Ethan Robinson), Can't Beat Em (Nalo Hopkinson), Congruence (Jehanzeb Dar), The Banshee Behind Beamon's Bakery (Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali)

I really liked Ethan's self-published blog post, reviewed Congruence as part of my review of Islamicates vol 1 at Strange Horizons, and the other two just keep sticking in my head.  All worth a read.

Best Related Work -
#BlackSpecFic: the Fireside Fiction Report, Speculative Blackness, Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Octavia E Butler, Food and Horror, Dragonlance Reread

The #BlackSpecFic report from Fireside is an essential read and look at how our short story ecosystem is failing black authors.  Andre Carrington's Speculative Blackness was incredibly thought-provoking, and Gerry Canavan's book about Octavia E Butler gave great insight into both the author and her works.  I really enjoyed OJ Cade's Food and Horror series at BookSmugglers - whenever it dropped, I set aside time to read each post, and I'm waiting for a good opportunity to reread and savor the whole series.  I also quite liked Mahvesh & Jared's Dragonlance reread, which threaded the needle of both celebrating why this was such a beloved and essential series while also acknowledging it's weaknesses.

I'm nominating Clippng's Splendor and Misery for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form, because it's a really fascinating album with a good story about space travel, but otherwise I have no opinions on dramatic presentations, editors, artists or graphic novels.  Sorry.
Edit - I'm nominating Olalekan Jeyifous based on Cecily Kane's recommendation, because my goodness those cityscapes :)

Best Semiprozine -
Strange Horizons.
Yes, I'm a Strange Horizons fanboy who enjoys their reviews too much.  They're pointed at my (fascinated by academia, without being well-read or formally trained), sorry.

Best Fanzine -
Nerds of a Feather, Lady Business
I'm of the opinion that a fanzine should be a group effort, and these are the two group efforts I really enjoy.

Best Fancast -
Cabbages & Kings, Fangirl Happy Hour, Storyological, Flash Forward, Midnight in Karachi.
I overanalyzed fancast a while ago.

Best Fan Writer -
Abigail Nussbaum, Megan AM, Vajra Chandresekara, Charles Payseur
Again, I'm pretty sure I overanalyzed these a while back.
Edit: Filling this out with O. Westin of @Microsff

It seems odd to me that Jennifer Brissett is eligible for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, but I do not understand Hugo eligibility rules.  I dare you to check out her bibliography & tell me she's not deserving of an award.

I'm mostly not nominating in Best Series because a) I haven't been following many eligible series, and b) I think that Best Series is a silly category that may track the market but is really hard to participate in beyond nominating your favorite series if you're already following one.  But Kate Elliott's Court of Fives series is in the same world as her Crossroads trilogy and ongoing Black Wolves series, so I'm nominating it because I've loved many of those.  And because this is one of many examples of why the series category is dumb.

Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy

There was a moment near the end of reading Tressie McMillan Cottom's Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges In The New Economy where I had to stop and adjust my thinking.  I went into this book expecting to learn, but I also went in looking for good guys and bad guys.  It's easy enough to find bad guys in the for-profit infrastructure, and Lower Ed has stories (and data! The stories in this book carefully illustrate real data!) of aggressive marketing techniques, and references the financialization of the for-profit industry, so I'd been able to find villains, but Lower Ed wasn't leaving me with the sense of righteous vindication I'd hoped for.  Most of the people working for for-profit colleges profiled in Lower Ed are well-intentioned, and the students in Lower Ed are not simply low-information attendees who've been bilked by a system.  I cried at some of the stories, but Lower Ed rigorously insists that the students at for-profit colleges are making reasonable decisions while constrained by their circumstances (the intersections of race, class and gender are thoroughly explored throughout this book).  I'd fallen into a trap that Tressie points out in the book - my narrative of for-profit colleges was that "for-profit colleges designed and executed the biggest con (on a few million people) seen in quite some time."  It took me a while to come to the conclusion spelled out in the epilogue that this narrative takes agency away from the very real people who attend for-profit colleges, which prepared me for the story actually spelled out at the end of Lower Ed.

What's wonderful about Lower Ed is that almost immediately after realizing that the narrative I was expecting had some problems, the book began drawing out the connections between inequality, lack of employer development, and the fetishization of credentials and higher education degrees that trapped many of the millions of people who attended for-profit colleges.  At a structural level, the data in Lower Ed led me to a specific set of questions, then answered them, directing me to another set of questions, and finally to the account spelled out at the end of the book, that a whole series of economic, political, and ideological factors led to increasing inequality, "especially for women, minorities, and minority women".  That in the past we have responded to massive shifts in labor and economic prospects with political and social solutions, but in this case we have instead abdicated any responsibility to the market, which filled in gaps with for-profit colleges.  The colleges here are "more complicated than big, evil con artists.  They are an indicator of social and economic inequalities, and at the same time, are perpetuators of those inequalities."  To the extent that there are bad actors in this story, our collective inability to grapple with widening inequality and its predictable consequences and traditional colleges unwilling to adapt to students who need different educational support are implicated as much as the for-profit colleges that developed aggressive marketing techniques to enroll increasing numbers of students in an attempt to meet the insatiable demands of shareholders.

I storified a bunch of my early reactions to Lower Ed, which you can check here, or embedded at the bottom of this post.  If you're considering Lower Ed, I'd highly recommend it.  Three great strengths of the book are how well it situates the story of for-profit colleges in the broader events of the last decades - this is not a story told in the abstract, but embedded in our recent history.  Secondly, the analytic framework needed to follow along is clearly spelled out, as when the theory of credentialism is defined in order to illuminate "the arguably counterintuitive decisions people make."  Finally, the data and theories in Lower Ed are illustrated with the stories of individuals, sometimes heartbreaking but always illuminating, and (to borrow from Roxane Gay's blurb) "In Lower Ed, McMillan Cottom is at her very best - rigorous, incisive, empathetic, and witty".  It's impossible to read Lower Ed without remembering that for-profit colleges are attended by real people - the book is at it's best when humanizing the "poor and minority students disproportionately enrolled in for-profit colleges", and the choices that they have found themselves presented with in a time of widening inequality, reduced support from employers, increased emphasis on higher education credentials, and a lack of any coherent political or social response to these trends.

This not-a-review isn't particularly coherent, unlike Lower Ed, which is always carefully written at the level of sentences, chapters, and through the entire book.  If you're considering Lower Ed, or if you're at all interested in education, inequality, or the intersections of race, class and gender please go and read it.  I think I'm writing this as a reminder to myself (and any other potential readers), that if, like me, you approach the book wondering "why do people go to 'those' schools", you should be aware that the question is "so clunky, so laden with embedded assumptions, anxieties, and projections".  There are simple stories to be told about for-profit colleges and the students that attend them, and politicians can get themselves elected by offering solutions to those stories, while Wall Street executives keep making money.  But there's also a more nuanced story, one with more complicated solutions (though solutions that we all can, and probably must, participate in!), and understanding that story is a lot more likely to help the people trapped in the social, economic, and political trends spelled out in Lower Ed.  I'm incredibly grateful to Tressie McMillan Cottom for this book, the reminder that a simple story is more likely to serve someone's agenda than actually solve problems, and the reminder that the sometimes abstract numbers cited when making public policy represent real people and real stories.

2017 Hugo nominations - a rough cut

Here's my first draft of Hugo nominations, at least the ones I care about (read - the fan stuff, because as far as I'm concerned the saving grace of the Hugos is getting to cheer on the people who've made me a better reader).  I haven't yet gone through & reviewed the linkposts I did intermittently this year, the 25 or so links I have saved for future linkposts, or really looked at the Hugo Nom spreadsheet of Doom or Wiki (though I'll try to add some things to them soon, pending move and life and whatnot), so I reserve the right to change these.  I am, however, going to try to stick to 5, in the spirit of how Hugos actually work.

(This is technically also an award eligibility post, since I am nominating myself for the thing* I am eligible for)

Fancast -
Storyological is the best genre podcast out there.  The short story discussions are excellent, Chris and E. G. have great banter while staying close the the topic & getting in and out quickly.  I love it.

Fangirl Happy Hour is appointment listening for me, and I think Renay & Ana have hit their stride this year.  Their chemistry is great, I'm often surprised by the topics they come up with, and I am always delighted by the discussions.  Whether talking about a movie I half-remember, a comic I'm only vaguely aware of, or engaging with a book or story I've read (yes, these are my favorite segments, but I'm glad that they're sprinkled among many others, because I've learned to love and examine what I love by listening to Renay & Ana love and examine what they love), I genuinely enjoy their discussions.  The fangirls are enthusiastic about what they enjoy, honest and thoughtful in their criticism, and willing to examine their own biases.  I aspire to do half as well.

Flash Forward has been a little bit uneven this year as Rose Eveleth got herself a real job making other really good podcasts, but also it's an excellent podcast that shows why she got a real job making really good podcasts.  The imagined futures each episode are delightful & thought-provoking, and Rose always finds guests and angles that I wouldn't have expected to examine further implications.

Cabbages & Kings.  I'm pretty proud of my podcast this year, even if I didn't get out as many episodes as I'd hoped (sorry!).  I'd recommend the Clarke Award discussions, and my interview with Jenn Brissett, in which you can hear her explaining her book to me & me saying "oohhh ... now I get it!" right in the midst of the interview, because I'm a fan, not a professional.  What're your favorites?

Midnight in Karachi - Mahvesh remains the best author interviewer I've listened to.  Her discussion with Indra Das was excellent, if you need a place to start.  (Also, listen to Mahvesh be excited about interviewing Margaret freaking Atwood!) (Hugo neepery - as this is affiliated with tordotcom, it may not be eligible as a "fan" thing.  I think it should qualify, and I'm nominating it.  The judges can correct me if they'd like) (Further neepery - I'm *pretty sure* that the plain meaning** of fancast precludes fiction podcasts.  The community has seemed to agree in the past.  But last year a fiction podcast made the five finalists.  So maybe Podcastle & whatnot should be included and fancast can become a weird second best-editor-short-fiction category, since I'm sure the fiction podcasts would swamp anything else I've mentioned)

A few notes - I have a tendency to look at recommendation lists as white as this with a jaundiced eye, and wonder what wonders the recommender simply ignores.   I'm aware of at least three genres of fancasts that I'm more or less unaware of.  There are a bunch of blerd podcasts - I've enjoyed Nerds of Prey when I listened.  In general, these tend to be a bit longer & heavier on the "friends hanging out" dynamic than *I* like, which is why I don't stick with them.  Your mileage may vary, and I'd suggest trying them.  I don't watch youtube book review people (BookTubers, I think they call themselves), because really if you're watching TV it should be science experiments with kids, DS9 or Gilmore Girls, amirite?  I'm aware of Claire Rousseau and SFF180 because they are also on Twitter, you could start there.  I also don't really do TV recap/discussion shows, so no Down and Safe, no Game of Thrones or Westworld fan theories, no Star Trek discussions for me.  Again, if that's your cup of tea, I am a bad recommender.

Fan Writer -
Vajra Chandrasekara remains excellent.  Here are reviews of Binti & Ballad of Black Tom.

Abigail Nussbaum is also excellent (I'll *read* reviews of TV shows, just not listen).  Here's her reviews of the Clarke shortlist.

Megan of CouchToMoon is my favorite writer out there now, and definitely in the "fan" category.  Her reviews are biting where she's critical, thoughtful where warranted, and she's very good at picking out what she does like.  Plus, she's inspiring me to read much farther afield than I would have otherwise.  (And yes, that's exactly why I invited her on the podcast)

Charles Payseur does excellent and copious short fiction reviews (again, why I invited him to contribute to Cabbages & Kings), and is another who I think sits firmly & deservedly in the "Fan" category

OJ Cade - I'm recommending her based on the Food & Horror series (about which more below).  This may change, but that series was excellent, and I'd be delighted to nominate her on its strength alone.

Fanzine -
LadyBusiness is the best blog going right now.  They've got a strong group of contributors, regular installments that I appreciate, and individual essays and series that pop up & generally delight me.

Nerds of a Feather is also good, and seems to fall well within the "fan zine" intended meaning.

SF In Translation from Rachel Cordasco popped up this year, and I'm finding it really useful as I try to stretch my reading.  There's an essay from Linda Holmes that I think about frequently about what you build and how that can be seen in who and what come out of it.  A host of regular contributors to SFSignal have gone on to other great things, and this is one that I've been particularly pleased to see grow.

I dunno, what else? (I object to File770 for various reasons that have been litigated plenty on Twitter, but otherwise I'm open to suggestions)

Best Related Work -
Speculative Blackness took my understanding of what Science Fiction is, how black authors and artists fit within it, and turned it at a sharp angle in a really helpful way.  Plus, it demonstrated really useful reading techniques that I'm still trying to incorporate into my own thoughts.  I need to reread this and follow up both on the art professor Carrington recommended and the reading methods he encourages.

Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Octavia E Butler.  Gerry Canavan's book is excellent. It's readable, and follows Butler's biography and bibliography, along with insights from the copious journals, rough drafts, and revisions newly available at the Huntington Library.  Nuanced without ever feeling voyeuristic, this made me re-evaluate my picture of Butler and her works, as well as inspiring me to read those I haven't encountered yet.

Food and Horror: This sequence at Book Smugglers by OJ Cade was amazing.  Thorough and thoughtful, Cade has inspired me to want to read horror, and to bring a clearer understanding of the impact of the stories.

Nothing Beside Remains - Jonathon McCalmont's history of the New Weird is really interesting even as I'm mostly oblivious to what the New Weird is/was.  I'd particularly recommend the conclusion, and his ideas about what it means to identify literary movements either in hindsight or as they coalesce.

I'm undecided beyond that.  Maybe Kate Elliott's "Writing Women Characters into Epic Fantasy Without Quotas" or Sarah Gailey's series at tordotcom, or Jared & Mahvesh's reread of Dragonlance? Help me out here people - there must be something better!

I'm still hopelessly at sea for fiction.  "One Way Out", the blog entry is going in my short story ballot.  Ballad of Black Tom, A Taste of Honey, and Bethany will probably all be on my novella ballot.  (briefly on Bethany - it's Adam Roberts writing about traveling back to the time of Christ.  If you're familiar with Adam Roberts, that will tell you whether you'll enjoy this immensely as I did.  If you've not read him yet, I can personally vouch for Jack Glass, and have heard only good things about The Thing Itself).  I liked Obelisk Gate and Wall of Storms.  Neither quite as much as their predecessors, but both of those were on my ballot last year, and these probably will be this year, and I'd guess Everfair will join them.  I didn't read all that many 2016 novels.  Here's my reading log so far if you're so inclined.

Strange Horizons will be on my semiprozine ballot.

I'll leave graphic novels, movies, and TV shows to other people.  I'd nominate series if any of the series that I'm following were long enough, but until then, I'll ignore the category because that's far too much effort to invest for Hugo nomination purposes. I also reserve the right to change everything up there as I'm reminded of or pointed to other good works.  Leave me a note in the comments, or stop by the Cabbages & Kings Imzy page to discuss further!

*I am technically eligible in fanzine because I have text - namely the transcripts, and as a fan writer because I wrote words about SFF in the last year, but whatever nominations I get'll be in fancast. Last year I did not make the longlist of nominated podcasts, a result I don't expect to change, but that's mostly beside the point.

**Section 3.3.13 of the constitution which I can only find here as an ugly PDF says "and that does not qualify as a dramatic presentation." and 3.3.7 & 3.3.8 specify Dramatic Presentation as "Any television program or other production, with a complete running time of 90 minutes or less, in any medium of dramatized science fiction, fantasy or related subjects" which I think should exclude fiction podcasts, except Tales to Terrify was a finalist, so what do I know?

Best Fancast

I've been reminded that in 2 weeks, Kansas City hosts WorldCon, an annual Science Fiction/Fantasy convention where (among other things), the Hugo awards will be handed out.  During WorldCon, the WSFSBM (World Science Fiction Society Business Meeting) will happen, and among other things, the group will decide whether or not to retain the Best Fancast category for the Hugo awards.  (This is small potatoes compared to other business, but I care a little bit about podcasts because I listen to them a lot and make one).

tl;dr - There are a lot of good fancasts worth of being recognized.  I'm not sure the award text, admins, or community are well suited to doing that, but that's par for the course with the Hugos.

I've had a little rant about Best Fancast building for a while, so I'm just going to spit it out here rather than clogging Twitter timelines.  I have a bit of a dog in the fight, since I host a podcast (apologies for the summer hiatus) that is eligible for Best Fancast, but I think the odds of being nominated are pretty slim, and I'll be happy with Cabbages & Kings with or without a Hugo nod.

So - on its surface I think that Best Fancast is a remarkably excellent and forward-looking award.  We're possibly in the midst of a podcast boom, and there are still niches being carved out specifically oriented around speculative fiction: there's the old guard - some SFF-focused friends sitting and chatting (last year's winners Galactic Suburbia, The Cooode St Podcast, and Fangirl Happy Hour, among others), the person or people interviewing guests (often authors on book tour, but we'll try not to hold that against them) (Skiffy & Fanty, Cooking the Books, and Tea & Jeopardy come to mind, along with Midnight in Karachi, which to my mind is the best of the bunch) (Cabbages & Kings kind of fits here), there are comics-adjacent friends chatting, and a whole slew of blerd podcasts that often touch on SFF stuff (shout out to Nerds of Prey, though I admit that in general these are too rambly for my tastes).  There are some difficult to categorize podcasts finding their own way (Flash Forward pod is the best, but also Imaginary Worlds, a part of the Panoply network), and I don't even know about Booktube, the various show recap/discussion podcasts, behemoths like The Incomparable network, and I'm sure many others.  It's a good time for fan podcasts, broadly defined.

But ... (of course there's a but, actually a few).

Here's the text of the amendment:

3.3.14: Best Fancast. Any generally available non-professional audio or video periodical devoted to science fiction, fantasy, or related subjects that by the close of the previous calendar year has released four (4) or more episodes, at least one (1) of which appeared in the previous calendar year, and that does not qualify as a dramatic presentation.

The fan community has generally assumed that "does not qualify as a dramatic presentation" means no fiction podcasts (no Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, or Uncanny, to name a few magazines that are often up for Hugos in one way or another).  This means that many of the podcasts that people love to listen to (the above, plus things like Black Tapes, Limetown, Escape Pod, or Glittership) are out.  Which kinda makes sense in terms of not awarding the same thing many times, but doesn't make a lot of sense in terms of how people think about podcasts.  Lots of podcast fans listen to fiction podcasts.  Many listen only to fiction podcasts.  And then they can't nominate their favorite podcasts, which is dumb.  Especially since this year's nominees include Tales to Terrify, which seems to be a fiction podcast.  Maybe next year Lightspeed, Clarkesworld and Uncanny can duke it out here, too.  Or maybe the admins just made a mistake?

Then there's the "non-professional", which I think was an attempt to make sure that Geeks Guide to the Galaxy didn't win everything (have you listened? their production values are not professional), but then ends up (maybe? probably? no way to ask the admins) excluding Writing Excuses, Rocket Talk (which is often interested in fandom writ large), and one of my favorites Midnight in Karachi.  It's not clear to me that there are professional podcasts with an unfair advantage in the Hugos that need excluding.  It's pretty clear that there are some which seem to be pretty fannish that seem to be excluded.

So the award text isn't great.  And I'm not sure it's being administered well.  Then there's the actual people nominating for hugos.  Even setting aside the current puppy debacle, it's not clear that the big exciting picture I painted of new podcasts and genres popping up is being seen by the folks who nominate for hugos.  I try to keep my ear out for good new podcasts, and while I see a lot of interest in various fiction podcasts that appear, I don't see a lot of nonfiction/discussion podcasts being mentioned.  Or YouTube channels being cheered.  It's not clear to me that the community that's voting for their favorite blogs & best novels/short stories has enough overlap with podcast listeners to meaningfully award this category.  It's dumb when because of their voting community Locus puts up "best of" award nominees that look like men write SF, women write fantasy, and Joe Abercrombie writes YA.  If the Hugo voting group isn't interested enough in the variety of speculative fiction podcasts out there to come up with a good list of nominees, then maybe the award isn't well served by the fans.  The Parsecs exist, after all. (Though I know very little about them)

Every objection there (that the category is not well-defined to meet the actual way people are consuming media these days, that the administration doesn't seem clear, and that the voting community might not know enough to hand out a representative award) could almost certainly be applied to just about every other Hugo Award category, of course.

So in two weeks, the World Science Fiction Society Business Meeting will vote (among other things), on whether to keep best Fancast.  I honestly don't much care which way they vote, and I'm not sure which way I'd vote if I were there.  A feature of the Hugos is that the award categories are such that they can be endlessly argued.  Might as well keep around one more to argue about, I guess? Or maybe this should be the hill to die on where fans valiantly take a stand and say an award's not worth handing out if we can't do it pretty well?  (Though I think YA is the category that keeps ending up on that hill, and I think the gendered aspects of that market explain that pretty damn well).

Rachel Acks will probably be liveblogging.  Galen Charlton may be tweeting again.  I'll be paying attention.  Yay impending WSFSBM!

Fans, criticism, hugos

I was reading Miss Rumphius to Tadpole tonight, and because of Ann Leckie’s recent blog post, I started thinking about the omniscient narrator - the young niece relating her great-aunt’s story who appears at the very beginning and end of the book.  Because of Kate Schapira, I wondered about planting Lupines everywhere. Is this a native species? What’s the impact of an extra five bushels of seeds in a localized area?

I started engaging with SFF books and blogs on Twitter a few years ago, and a watershed moment was tweeting & blogging Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History.  I wrote a bit about Marigolds, and how the ending seemed a bit pat and happy. And Leonicka pointed out how uncommon it is to find sex workers with agency and happiness in fiction.  And other people taught me about the Tragic Queer trope, and how comforting it is not to read that.

For the last couple years, I've not only had the pleasure of reading amazing stories (short and long), but also reading and listening to the voices of authors and fans engaging with the stories I love.  A list is by necessity incomplete, but it is Kate Elliott who makes me asks where the groups of women are, and Renay and the editors of Lady Business who make me ask why the story I'm reading is important, and which stories are being ignored to tell this one.  Troy Wiggins & Daniel José Older have made me ask myself why dialect or a turn of phrase makes me uncomfortable, rather than blaming the author. A whole series of posts have me wondering what Science Fiction is and how it differs from Fantasy and how things all fit together.

And the thing is that each story is it’s own thing.  I can reread it (and I love rereading, which we’ll discuss another time), but I can’t read an amalgam of Black Wolves and City of Roses (nor, I think, would I want to).  But all the criticism accretes. It’s in the air and having imbibed it I take it with me to every new story.  (Even if I want to put it aside, so as to avoid being punched in the face when I come across something like Dark Orbit that forgets empathy for its blind characters by the end).

Once a year, a bunch of the people I talk to about science fiction and fantasy get together as part of a larger group and we talk about the best of last year.  And that gets published as The Hugo Awards (first finalists, then winner).  The finalists are announced at noon on Tuesday.  And I have a lot of negative feelings.  

But once a year I have an excuse to celebrate and thank the people who have contributed to the joy and meaning I've taken from every story I've read recently.  I look to the Nebulas and Kitschies for interesting fiction nominations (and maybe the Clarke Awards which’ll be announced Wednesday!), but the Hugos are my chance to talk about fan writing and criticism and podcasts.

To that end, some writing, writers, and podcasters I bring to your attention:

Vajra and CouchToMoon on Military SF

Vajra again, on Binti.

Phenderson Djèlí Clark on Prince

John Clute on The Buried Giant and Maureen Speller in Cabbages & Kings (they both talked about the narrator at least glancingly, reminding me of Ann Leckie's post above) (yes, I'm sneaking in references to my own podcast)

Kip again, on prose style.

I don't like everything about Adam Whitehead’s History of Epic Fantasy blog series, but I like that he made it & made me want to quibble with some of it.

I think that BookSmugglers publish a lot of fascinating stuff - I’d particularly recommend Octavia Cade’s series and the now completed tour through the Newberry’s

Abigail Nussbaum is excellent.  Batman V Superman is just one example of why

I really like the editors of LadyBusiness.  I'll particularly mention the Xena rewatch and Jodie’s short fiction discussions.  I often disagree with her overall assessments of the story, but always find what she has to say really interesting.

Speaking of short fiction, I cannot recommend Storyological, which dissects 2 short stories/week in a reasonable timeframe, highly enough.

And speaking of joyful romps through past media, Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin have been rereading the Dragonlance chronicles.  (I think they’re also going to bring us stories of Djinn sometime in the future)

And since I have begun talking about podcasts, let me unleash the floodgates: Mahvesh is the best author interviewer out there, The Coode Street podcast has blind spots big enough to drive a truck through but also strong perspectives and a deep knowledge of the history of the genre.  Rocket Talk ranges from random hanging out with friends to some of the best SFF/Industry discussion out there, with a few odd trips along the way. (Did I just link to both of Justin's episodes with Kate Elliott? Of course I did.  She's a brilliant podcast guest.)  Emma Newman’s blend of fiction and author interview on Tea & Jeopardy is delightful, and the ladies of Fangirl Happy Hour have strong perspectives, many interests, and nearly always leave me smiling in delight.  For movie and comics fans, the ladies of Nerds of Preycast are also worth a listen.  I will never be unhappy to hear the jingle of the Three Hoarsemen in my earbuds.

I would especially mention Flash Forward Pod.  Rose Eveleth is making something special. She’s thinking deeply and bringing an amazing set of perspectives for a podcast hosted by a single person.  Every two weeks, she blends a fictional future with very relevant real-world stories to connect how we are living now to the world we are creating for ourselves out somewhere in the future.

Kate Schapira does something similar with her #climateanxieties blog.

And Ebony Elizabeth Thomas thinks about children’s literature and the world we are making for our children with each and every story we tell.

Leslie Light is out there searching for and reviewing the fiction she wants to see written and spotlighted. Charles Payseur does yeoman’s work reviewing all the short fiction fit to pixelize.  Nerds-Feather (where he contributes) called him the definition of a fan writer, and I couldn’t agree more.  Meanwhile @MicroSFF is off writing even more short fiction (though sadly I don’t think this is one of the venues Charles reviews)

The hugo finalists will be out soon.  A few years ago, it was exciting to see my interests converging with the larger nominating group.  This year, I don’t expect that.  And frankly, as my interests move around, I’m not sure there will ever be such a convergence again.  I’m finding myself increasingly aware that there are important differences between Science Fiction and Fantasy, and curious about the genre I didn’t read as much.  I just finished Speculative Blackness, and I find myself wanting more long-form criticism (a relief - I was worried Twitter had broken me forever).  Hopefully this list a year from now will have more books (Ebony Thomas has one coming, I believe!), names like Paul Kincaid, Edward Said, and Samuel Delany, who I’ve always *meant* to read but never gotten around to.  The Rhetorics of Fantasy is on my to-read, but that list of SF critics I’ve heard of is suspiciously devoid of women.  I get to discover them!

I want to be better, this year, about thanking and praising these writers as and when I meet them.  I’m also going to put as many of them as I can on my nominating ballot next year.  And most of them won’t appear in the list of 5 finalists. Which is fine.  They will, each and every one of them, inform everything I’m reading going forward.  For that, I’m deeply grateful.