[links] Link salad heads into the daylight, blinking
Don’t forget the steampunk caption contest voting poll
A reader reacts to Green — Definitely did not like it.
Cthulhu’s Reign reviewed — Including my story “Such Bright and Risen Madness in Our Names”.
Judge a Book by Its Cover — The proverbial blog… A Softer World weighs in.
The Art of the Exhale — Cancer, coping and horses. (Via joycemocha.)
The Power Trip — Power corrupts. Absolute power is pretty nest. A piece on why nice people become sociopaths once they reach the top. (Via Scrivener’s Error.)
Vintage lunch boxes — There was a Kill Bill lunch box? Really?
Shenango of Fairport: 1909 — Look at that prop…
1978 Cryptosystem Resists Quantum Attack — Duuuude.
Disgust As a Guide to Morality — Interesting. I don’t agree with it all, and am especially troubled by this line: Though Haidt is a secular liberal, he cautions that you can’t just say that moral judgments made by drawing on the other three areas — Purity, Authority, and Loyalty — are illegitimate, unless you’re willing to privilege the point of view of secular Western liberals, and write off most of the human race.. Still, interesting.
Kilpatrickism — On the racist strain in American conservatism.
?otD: Where did you go? What did you do when you got there?
8/18/2010
Writing time yesterday: 2.5 hours (revisions, WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 4.25 (sleep fail!)
This morning’s weigh-in: 242.2
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Tags: Art, Books, Cancer, Cool, Culture, Funny, Green, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Publishing, reviews, stories, Tech
Posted: 5:48 am Wed August 18 2010 | Comments(1) |
[writing] Endurance, and what comes after
The cancer journey has been so overwhelming lately that I’ve hardly posted at all about my writing progress. Some quick updatery here on that topic.
I’ve been working through Endurance revisions, with notes from casacorona, arcaedia, mcurry and others. Also, my friend K— has kindly made me a map of Copper Downs based on reading Green, Endurance and the various bits of short fiction and collating all the named streets and location. This has been a great help. Likewise, my profound thanks to for actually tracking the weapons all the way through the book — there is much losing and gaining of knives.
My process at this point is what I’ve previously compared to lacquering. That is to say, going back through the manuscript over and over in multiple careful passes dealing with specific issues on each pass. Other than two significant inserted scenes, this revision has mostly been about errors of characterization, voice and continuity, so this incrementalist approach seems to me to be working well.
I suspect I’ll be done with the draft this weekend, if not, early next week. That means it has at least a chance of squeaking through one or two more readers before being turned back in.
Pending surgery, chemo and the maybe-trip to NZ/AUS, I have several other projects that must be done. I owe a short story almost immediately to an audio market — it is in draft, but needs a bit of revision. I have a tiny bit more to do on the recent Sekrit Projekt (which will be announced Real Soon Now, btw), though the core effort on the novella is all complete. I have another Sekrit Projekt due by October, a novelette in this case. I need to finalize the draft outline of Kalimpura, and then get cracking on the first draft of the book so I can have that in place before the next round of chemotherapy melts my brain too much. I’ll be revising Kalimpura next spring when I come off this chemotherapy. Also if time permits, I’d like to revise the lost colony steampunk religious novella, “The Stars Do Not Lie”, and get it out to market. Not to mention the collaborative novels with calendula_witch and with my Dad, which have languished in the face of my medical issues and my narrowed focus. And of course, a possible trip to the South Seas, another round of cancer surgery, and the six months of the aforementioned chemotherapy.
Originally, I had planned to be working on Sunspin this fall, having written Kaiimpura this summer. Cancer is cutting my productivity down by more than half. Yes, the above list is me running way underspeed and behind schedule. I refuse to surrender my expectations of myself in this regard, even when I have to seriously compromise them in the face of disease.
I am a writer, therefore I write. Fuck cancer.
Tags: Books, Cancer, Endurance, Green, health, Kalimpura, Process, stories, Sunspin, Writing
Posted: 4:58 am Fri August 13 2010 | Comments(3) |
[links] Link salad dreams of punk-ass rainbows
A luke-warm reader review of Green
Review: Jay Lake’s Mainspring — A reader reacts. They liked it.
A review of Extraordinary Engines — Which takes a fairly dim view of my story therein.
A new review of Is Anybody Out There? —
Death by Ham: Playing the Odds of Getting Published — Maggie Stiefvater on the odds of getting published. She’s even more pessimistic than I am, I had the base number about 1:20,000 for novels, she has it at 1:38,000. But she has a lot to say about how those numbers unfold, which I agree with.
The Junkers F.13 — a beautiful photo of an inter-war float plane.
Genes for Extreme Longevity — Scientists can predict who will live past 100 using a subset of 150 genetic variations.
Russian spy ring needed some serious IT help — I probably shouldn’t laugh at this, but it is funny. (Via my sister.)
More deadly than the male. — The Edge of the American West on the cultural narratives about female spies. I found this piece both fascinating and creepy. A bizarre angle on sexism, too.
The sting of poverty — What bees and dented cars can teach about what it means to be poor – and the flaws of economics. (Thanks to seventorches.)
Climategate’s death rattle — Unfortunately, the story will never die, because the same denialists who promoted and believed this in the first place will simply assume the truth has been suppressed by the liberal media. Amazing how hermetically circular counterfactual thinking can be once you discard evidence in favor of ideology in your foundational assumptions.
?otD: Can you describe your favorite color using sense-words that don’t include the visual?
7/2/2010
Writing time yesterday: n/a
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 (decent)
This morning’s weigh-in: 227.2
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 2/10
Currently (re)reading:
Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
Tags: Books, Culture, Green, healthcare, Links, Mainspring, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, reviews, Science, stories
Posted: 4:53 am Fri July 02 2010 | Comments(2) |
[links] Link salad sees a city in its mind
Criada reacts to The Specific Gravity of Grief — I was very touched by this one.
A reader reacts to Green — They really, really didn’t like it. My favorite part of the review: I should have bought an IT book or something. Best book diss EVAR.
Some thoughts on uniformity — Paul Jessup on story telling.
Engendering Utopia: From Amazons to Androgyny — A reprint of an old IROSF article by specficrider and me.
Okay, kids, play on my lawn — Roger Ebert on video games as art (again), with reference to Shakespeare and Clive Barker.
Science Historian Cracks the ‘Plato Code’ — This is cool. (Thanks to e_bourne.)
Get Fuzzy on kosher dolphins
The fanciful vehicular concept art of 1930s Japan — Very cool stuff from io9.com. The future that never was ours.
Inspiring vintage science fiction art — (Via Dark Roasted Blend.)
The First Photo of a Planet Outside Our Solar System — Wow. More from Centauri Dreams.
More on Research 2000 — Daily Kos on the invalidity of their own polling. This is a serious problem with process, accountability and accuracy. Probably not so much with underlying trending, as this piece points out. For example, Harris says: 45 percent of Republicans (25 percent overall) agree with the Birthers in their belief that Obama was “not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president” (Thanks to ericjamesstone for the nudge.)
Montana GOP seeks to ‘keep homosexual acts illegal.’ — As has the Texas GOP. This is keeping government out of private life, which was all the rage for conservatives during the HCR debate? Tell me again how the conservative movement isn’t grounded in bigotry.
?otD: Are you on the road to nowhere?
7/1/2010
Writing time yesterday: n/a
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.5 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 226.6
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 2/10
Currently (re)reading:
Children of Dune by Frank Herbert
Tags: Art, Books, Culture, Funny, games, gay, Green, Grief, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, reviews, Science
Posted: 4:51 am Thu July 01 2010 | Comments(8) |
[links] Link salad brushes up its language skills
New Fantasy Fiction Review, Green by Jay Lake
My problem with steampunk — This essay more or less aligns with something I’ve said for a while: that in print fiction at least, and movies as well, steampunk is an aesthetic, not a movement. It doesn’t have the sharply-defined themes or critical backbone that (for example) cyberpunk did/does. In fact, my forthcoming single-title novella The Baby Killers (from PS Publishing this summer) is my own attempt to address this, but I’m fairly certain I failed. Failed nobly and well, one hopes, but still… ETA: Updated to a more accessible link.
The Money Killers: 1917 — There’s something about the phrase “Destruction Committee. Maceration of old currency” that just rolls off the tongue.
Discovering the Soul of the Ringlings’ Circus — Classic circus photos.
Listening to (and Saving) the World’s Languages — Lost languages in New York City. As Huey Lewis asked, “Where else can you do a half a million things / All at a quarter to three?” (Via Language Log.)
Why don’t you learn German, Spanish, and French?? And Chinese and Arabic for good measure. — An essay about language acquisition, and how it plays into the immigration debate. Yes, Virginia, English is a darned hard language to learn. (Thanks to CH via .)
Strict Abortion Measures Enacted in Oklahoma — A second measure passed into law on Tuesday prevents women who have had a disabled baby from suing a doctor for withholding information about birth defects while the child was in the womb. Conservative America: an identity defined by persecuting pregnant women. Stay classy, guys. You do it so well.
The Party of No Credibility — This evidence accumulated over ten years shows a shameful but undeniable fact of American politics: our right wing now contains a lot more liars, and a lot more folks who spread lies out of gullibility or wishfulness, than our left wing. Also, this just in: the sun rose in the east this morning.
?otD: How many languages do you speak?
4/30/2010
Writing time yesterday: none (chemo brain)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.0 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 232.0
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 4/10 (fatigue)
Currently (re)reading:
Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett
Tags: Books, Culture, Green, Language, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, reviews
Posted: 5:00 am Fri April 30 2010 | Comments(6) |
[links] Link salad remembers being link cole slaw
3 Newbie Mistakes I Nixxed — A discussion of writing errors, with Green held up as an example of one.
The science of genius — A much more cogent statement of my theory of psychotic persistence.
Biometric wallet — What could possibly go wrong? (Thanks to my dad.)
The Enigma of Contact — Centauri Dreams on Stephen Hawking and First Contact.
Atheistic liberals ARE smarter, but for a funny reason — Why are intelligent people more likely to be atheistic liberals? I have no idea if this argument holds water, but I find it funny. (Via .)
The Tea Party’s Toxic Take on History — Repeat after me. Opinions are not substitutable for facts. Even more so ill-informed opinions.
Antonin Scalia, Affirmative Action Pick. — Ah, good old conservative double standards. Principled consistency ‘r them.
Untethered — Conservative commentator Daniel Larison on the Right’s reliance on closed media messaging, political self-awareness, and policy criticism. More dangerously, being “untethered” means that producing actual evidence for an increasingly bizarre view of the world matters less and less. Assertion becomes more important than proof. Got it in one. Shorter Daniel Larison: opinions are not facts.
?otD: What is the craziest thing you’ve ever done?
4/27/2010
Writing time yesterday: none (chemo brain)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 4.0 (very sleepless)
This morning’s weigh-in: 231.8
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 5/10 (fatigue)
Currently (re)reading:
Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett
Tags: Books, Culture, Green, Links, Personal, Politics, Process, Religion, reviews, Science, Tech, Writing
Posted: 5:40 am Tue April 27 2010 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad moves slowly on a Sunday morning
with a very good review of Green — They read it pretty much as I intended it to be read.
A reader reacts to Green — Mixed, and largely negative.
Birtherism, socialism, and craziness — Language Log on what real socialism is, versus the Right wing American scare word. I do disagree with their conclusions about polysemy, since the repurposing of the term is a cynical propaganda ploy as opposed to a genuine shift in meaning, but I am probably in the wrong here.
Doonesbury on right wing hate speech — For those of you who foolishly persist in thinking there’s some kind of equivalency in left-right rhetoric in this country.
Priming Christian Religious Concepts Increases Racial Prejudice — Positive correlations have been found between several self-report measures of religiousness and racial prejudice; however, no experiment has yet examined the direct effect of religion on racial attitudes. Hmm. Is this a function of reinforcing one’s tribalism? In my observation most churches (and religions) are very heavily racially segregated. Or am I wrong?
“Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black” – Tim Wise — Yep, no racism here. Just good, honest Real Americans standing up for their rights.
?otD: What’s your favorite comfort (re)reading?
4/25/2010
Writing time yesterday: none (chemo brain)
Body movement: brief suburban walk later
Hours slept: 9.0 (interruoted)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a (scale is out of batteries)
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 7/10 (fatigue, on the pump)
Currently (re)reading:
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett
Tags: Books, Green, Language, Links, Personal, Politics, Religion, reviews
Posted: 7:30 am Sun April 25 2010 | Comments(3) |
[links] Link salad counts bindings
A reader reacts to Green — with a very personal take.
Reading by ARC Light — Andrew Wheeler on the sticky business of book reviews. Interesting stuff.
APOD with a lovely photo of the ISS and the crescent Earth
SMBC explains Christianism in one easy lesson
Massa’s Gone, Ensign’s a Sitting Senator — Your Liberal Media, hounding Democrats, protecting Republicans.
Except for blacks. And women. And natives. And … uh, never mind. — The past is a golden country, when you’re an idiot.
The Ghost of Bobby Lee — An excellent piece by Ta-Nehisi Coates. For those of you who like to pretend the Civil War wasn’t about slavery, the Southern states in their own words. It wasn’t a noble cause, it was a vile cause, and I say this as son of the South.
?otD: How many books do you own today?
4/14/2010
Writing time yesterday: 2 hours
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
Hours slept: 7.5 (interrupted)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 4/10 (fatigue)
Currently reading: [between books]
Tags: Books, Green, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, Religion, reviews
Posted: 5:29 am Wed April 14 2010 | Comments(1) |
[sale] Two new sales
French rights to Green have sold to Bibliothéque Interdite, via .
Short story “The Women Who Ate Stone Squid” has been accepted for Love and Rockets.
Tags: Books, Green, Publishing, Sale, stories, Writing
Posted: 3:31 am Tue April 13 2010 | Comments(3) |
[personal] Fear, self-censorship, and facing into it
This is a difficult post. When I found myself afraid to make it this morning, I realized I had to do so. My response to fear, once I get past whatever initial panic might be involved, is to step towards whatever scares me.
The so-called “Race Fail” last year was very troublesome for me. I found myself being vilified by total strangers based on other people’s interpretations of a few words of mine in a blog post. I found myself being held up as an example of ignorant, arrogant white privilege. I found a lot of things being said about me that were flatly untrue, grossly misinterpreted, or simply assumptions based on my skin color and gender as portrayed in my blog’s icons — in that last case, flatly stated as such.
I was told during the course of “Race Fail” that growing up in nonwhite countries (primarily Taiwan and Nigeria, for reference) did not give me any perspective on race. In other words, my white-ness trumps any possibility that my life experience might influence my development or perceptions.
I was told during the course of “Race Fail” that parenting a non-white daughter ( is adopted from China) did not give me any perspective on race. In other words, my white-ness trumps any possibility that my child’s life experience might influence my development or perceptions.
Since then, I’ve self-censored almost completely on issues of race and gender here on my blog. Not in my fiction — go read Green if you want to see me talking about those subjects — but here in my daily musings about life, fiction, politics, cancer, parenting and whatnot. It simply hasn’t been worth the trouble of defending myself every time I open my mouth, of having to laboriously re-establish my credentials and standing to even express an opinion on race or gender.
Am I complaining about being a white man? No. I am keenly aware of my privilege in society, even in the smallest ways. If I step up to a mobbed deli counter without a line numbering system, I’m often the next one called, ahead of people waiting far longer than I. I always defer to the people around me, precisely because I am aware. My paycheck every two weeks reminds me of my privilege. My occasional conversations with law enforcement remind me of my privilege. My nice house in the suburbs, my spiffy convertible, my pile of tech gear, my current standard of medical care in the face of recurring cancer — they are all privilege.
Ironically, one of the few places where white privilege isn’t overwhelmingly woven into the baseline of society is fiction. I say this as someone who’s edited numerous open anthologies, and submitted to something like a hundred markets. Manuscripts don’t have gender or race. As an editor, I stopped looking at by-lines years ago, given how many people write psuedonymously. And speaking as someone who often writes characters who are not what I am (white, middle-aged, male, Anglo-Saxon), I long ago stopped assuming anything about the author’s identity from their characters or settings.
All of which is to say, a commentor questioned why I’d linked to a recent review of Mainspring that took me to task through the lens of white privilege. My answer, likewise in comments, I have decided to repost here, because I think it’s important.
I firmly believe the story belongs to the reader. Whether that reader is fan, a reviewer, or some random gal from Dubuque.
I also firmly believe the writer is not the story.
I also know that I am neither a racist nor a sexist, unless the reader subscribes to the theory that all white men are racists and sexists. In which case there’s not much I can do about that reader’s perception, since they’re already prejudiced against me and anything I might have to say.
Finally, there’s absolutely no point in arguing with reviewers, with the very narrow potential exception of errors-of-fact. Arguing with perceptions is futile. The words really do need to speak for themselves, even if the reader is hearing things I didn’t put in them.
As far my personal place in this, anybody that’s read more than a few words of my fiction or my commentary would know pretty damn well where I stand on issues of race, culture and gender as a strong liberal-progressive. If they haven’t, then they’re judging me based on their own misperceptions, and that’s too bad for them.
I should have said two things differently. “Even if the reader is hearing things I didn’t put in them” should not have been an “if” statement. By definition, readers find things I didn’t put in the text. That’s them bringing their own experience to the work. Writing is only half the job of telling a story, after all. Reading is the other half.
The other thing I should have said differently is to note that of course I am racist and sexist. I am a human being. We all distrust the other. It’s hardwired into us. My responsibility as a human being, as a parent, a writer, a citizen, is to manage those impulses in such a way as to overcome them. Yes, I’m racist and sexist, every bit as much as someone who judges my words or dismisses my opinions because I am a white male is racist and sexist. As a white male at the top of the power curve, I bear additional responsibility for overcoming those tendencies.
That last is something I’ve been keenly aware of since about the age of 19, and worked diligently on all my life. Which you’d never know from looking at my face or my name, would you? You’d only know by listening to me, or reading my words.
So here’s me, facing my fear of speaking up, and trying to end my self-censorship. Because I find the self-imposed censorship has only stoked my resentments, and that’s less healthy than shutting up. Much less healthy.
Tags: Books, Child, Culture, family, gender, Green, Mainspring, Nigeria, Personal, Process, race, Taiwan, Writing
Posted: 4:59 am Mon April 05 2010 | Comments(5) |
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