A few weeks ago, I read Joanna Russ’s 1975 review of the movie A Boy and His Dog, which had originally been published in Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies. I hadn’t intended to, and wasn’t deliberately seeking it out. I just came upon it the way one often does online, clicking through from link to link, and eventually ending up somewhere unexpected but necessary.

It’s a wonderful piece, and deserves your attention, as all of her work does, but the passage that intrigued me the most was a paraphrase of something Chip Delany once wrote:

According to Samuel Delany, a literary characterization proceeds by means of three kinds of actions: gratuitous, purposeful, and habitual, and well-written characters perform all three. (This classification certainly applies to realistic fiction, and I suspect it applies to all fiction, however stylized.) Sexist literature produces two kinds of female characters, both imperfect: the Heroine, whose actions are all gratuitious, and the Villainess, whose actions are all purposeful. Neither performs habitual actions.

This stood out for me because, being a writer, I immediately wanted to understand more fully exactly what Delany meant by these three classifications. I could tell the concept would be helpful to my own writing. And as I thought, hmmm, how will I ever track down the source, I suddenly remembered that due to this connected world in which we live, I could simply ask the source directly, since Chip and I are friends on Facebook. So I reached out to query where I could find his full essay explicating this idea.

It turns out the essay “Letter to the Symposium on Women In Science Fiction” originally appeared in an issue of Khatru, and was then reprinted in his non-fiction collection The Jewel-Hinged Jaw. But not, unfortunately, my copy of The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, as it’s a first edition. It can be found in the current expanded edition, though. I decided I’d pick up a copy at this year’s Readercon, where I could get him to autograph it, and then thought nothing more. (more…)

There was no Instagram back in 2004—but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from Instagramming the 2004 Nebula Awards weekend!

Early tomorrow morning, I leave for San Jose to attend the 2014 Nebula Awards weekend. So what better time than now to take a few peeks at the same event held a decade ago in Seattle.

Slightly younger Robert Silverberg meets much younger Robert Silverberg

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Something unexpected popped into my head while reading some recent eloquent commentary on SFWA’s current culture war. (To which I won’t be adding an essay of my own, because others have been expressing what’s in my heart and on my mind much better than I ever could, so I’ll just say that I’m all set to enlist in John and Mary‘s Insect Army and leave it at that.)

The memory that showed up to surprise me was of this artifact from one of the most divisive moments in science fiction history, this ad—two ads really—from the June 1968 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. (I’ve smirched the image from Marooned.)

In the ad, opposing camps of SF writers either “believe the United States must remain in Vietnam to fulfill its responsibilities to the people of that country” or “oppose the participation of the United States in the War in Vietnam.” Yes, I was only 13 when these ads was published, a fan not yet a pro privy to the inner workings of the field, and no, this was not officially related to SFWA, but rather a project generated by Kate Wilhelm and Judith Merril that only coincidentally overlapped with the names of many SFWA members, but still, the contentiousness created by the public choosing of sides seems familiar.

And even though it was painful at the time for the participants to live through, you’ll forgive me if I say that from this distance, colored by time and perhaps my naiveté, these two lists of names and the statements to which they’re appended seem quaint and reserved, especially when compared to the incendiary language of Dave Truesdale’s recent petition (to which, interestingly, a few of the same writers have appended their names).

I don’t think any of us will look back with nostalgia 46 years from now at the current culture war the way I do now for 1968’s. But maybe, by then, if we work really, really hard, and we’re really, really lucky, we won’t still be fighting this one.

Back in 1993, once readers had digested a few issues of Science Fiction Age, we wanted to find out what they thought of it. (And we also, as you’ll see, wanted to at the same time nudge them to re-up their subscriptions.)

So out went a questionnaire …

… resulting in a suggestion with which no one could disagree. (more…)

If you’ll be at Capclave over in Gaithersburg, Maryland next month—and are into late-night after-dinner programming—here are three panels on which you’ll be able to find me pontificating.

Luckily, my reading occurs at a far more civilized time …

Friday, Oct. 11, 9:00 pm (Salons CDE)
J. K. Rowling Wrote an Adult Mystery
Why do authors switch genres or markets and how does it affect their career? Do they need a different pen name for each new genre? Is it better to focus on getting good at writing one genre or experiment? What are the reasons authors write outside the areas for which they are best known?
with Catherine Asaro, Betsy A. Riley, Darrell Schweitzer, Jon Skovron

Saturday, Oct. 12, 12:30 pm (Frederick)
Reading

Saturday, Oct. 12, 10:00 pm (Rockville/Potomac)
Name Drop and Quote Panel
Nothing but bragging rights here as the panelists drop names and share quotes as they discuss the best experiences, novels, stories, and conventions they have ever seen. Or not.
with Andrew Fox, Steve Stiles, Ian Randal Strock

Saturday, Oct. 12, 11:00 pm (Rockville/Potomac)
Grumpy Old Pharts Panel
Back in my day… experienced curmudgeons square off. And get off my lawn!
with D. Douglas Fratz, Darrell Schweitzer

Hope to see you there!

The Nebulas Awards banquet was held last night in San Jose, and usually, I’d have been there. But this year, I wanted to attend the the March George Formby Society Convention in Blackpool, and so something had to give—which meant the Nebulas as well as this year’s World Horror Convention in New Orleans were out.

So I amused myself this weekend by looking back two years to my photos from 2003 Nebula Awards weekend and sharing them on Twitter, but thought I should gather them together here as well.

So get ready to flashback to a gentler, more innocent time …

Scott Edelman (with butterfly) and Bill Shunn

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The Boston manhunt is over, and my thoughts continue to be with the victims of the initial blasts, as well as the shootings which followed. I have little to contribute save my sadness. But this tragedy, thanks to social media, does bring to mind another tragedy from exactly 18 years ago …

Assuming we’re not being hoaxed, Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, aka suspect #2, had a Twitter account. If real, I’m sure pundits will analyze it the hopes of finding a reason why Tsarnaev took the path he did. I don’t believe they’ll find one there. But what stood out to me (for reasons which will shortly become clear) is that he watched Breaking Bad …

… as well as The Walking Dead …

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Angel Arango, one of the founding fathers of Cuban science fiction, died recently at age 86. We met in 2002, when I was lucky enough to attend Cubaficción in Havana. He’d been publishing science fiction since the ’60s, and seemed a piece of living history.

I took to him immediately, and looking back on it now, I suspect that, as he was the Jack Williamson of Cuba, my love for Jack bled over a bit into my feelings for Angel, which is what caused, I think, that instant connection. He’d seen a lot over his decades writing science fiction in that country, and I wanted to learn what his time had been like.

I’m not fully conversant with the details of his life—I’ll leave the telling of those to others—but I did want to note his passing, and to make sure you took a moment to think of him as well.

So I’d like to share what’s perhaps his most famous short story, “El planeta negro,” originally published in his 1966 collection of the same name. I’ve scanned the version below from the 1983 anthology Cuentros Cubanos de Ciencia Ficcion, a copy of which I picked up at a book stall during my time in Havana.
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One of the unexpected pleasures of last weekend’s Immortal ConFusion was that someone had dumped several decades worth of Locus back issues on the freebie table, which meant I was able to dig though copies from the ’80s and ’90s and sit round with my friends who were there remarking about how much our absent friends had changed.

One article that amused me contained the results of the annual Locus poll, and what made it especially amusing was that in 1991, the editors decided to be more playful than usual. In addition to being asked which novels, magazines, etc., we most liked, we were also asked, “Which author would you most like to meet, marry, publish or murder?”

While the “meet” and “publish” results were mildly interesting, it’s the “marry” and “murder” answers that appeared in the September 1991 issue that were the most fun.

And the author Locus readers most wanted to marry 22 years ago was …

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I got back home from my Chicago Worldcon trip after midnight last night—or should I say, this morning—and while I’d love to write up right now how much fun I had, both at the con and elsewhere (like at Alinea!), it’s unlikely I’ll be able to compose my thoughts until the weekend.

After all, I did return from my trip to something like 5,000 emails!

So let these eight photos, one for each day I was away, stand in for the posts to come.

Wednesday
A note left on our table at the start of Next restaurant’s Sicilian meal

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