Genre Grapevine for November 1, 2022
Note: This column was originally published on November 1, 2022, on my Patreon.
Some Good News
First, a selection of the goodness related to both the science fiction and fantasy genre and the larger book-loving world:
With Amazon having failed to significantly update Goodreads in nearly a decade, other apps are stepping forward to create new ways for readers to discover both books and authors. Copper aims to be a "social network that revolves around books, connecting authors and fans through in-app discussions and live events." And Tertulia aims to also connect readers with books by using "artificial intelligence and machine learning to scan conversations on Twitter, as well as articles about books, to see what people are talking about."
R.L. Stine's ever-popular kids horror book series Goosebumps turned 30 this year. It's wonderful news that a generation and a half of kids have grown up on a book series that continues to freak out adults.
Why fiction matters: John Wiswell's short story "Open House on Haunted Hill" won the 2021 Nebula Award and he then gave an acceptance speech for the ages. J.M. Franklin recently shared the story and speech with students and one of them "said that it made her want to write stories even though she's not a writer."
Hayao Miyazaki's new film How Do You Live? is nearly complete!
A judge has blocked the merger of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster on antitrust grounds in what's being called a major win for authors.
Finally, behold the perfect visual representation by Yoann Bourgeois on how "success isn't linear."
Musk/Twitter Update
A few updates to my post about how people in the SF/F genre are reacting to Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter.
Not long after the purchase Musk shared conspiracy theories on Twitter about the attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, which as Patrick S. Tomlinson said has got to thrill the advertisers Musk needs to keep the platform going.
Musk also appears to be pitching the idea of making people with the blue check pay for the notation on their accounts, generating a "hell no" response from many people including Stephen King. "$20 a month to keep my blue check?" King said. "Fuck that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I'm gone like Enron."
King's point is that Musk and Twitter are earning advertising money off his tweets, so should he pay for them? Especially when other platforms allow creators to earn money. As King later said, "It ain't the money, it's the principal of the thing."
Not that paying for a blue check would do much to help Twitter's finances, especially when the interest payments alone on Musk's deal will be $1 billion a year at a time when Twitter's ad revenue is dropping. As Nilay Patel said, "Welcome to hell, Elon."
And everyone knows it was Musk's idea to send himself to the bad place.
But that doesn’t mean leaving Twitter is a simple choice. As Diabolical Plots reminded people, the structure of Twitter "has been significantly more effective than others in trying to do small press work and with nothing equivalent I intend to stick around for now."
Michael Damian Thomas shared similar thoughts on the importance of Twitter for small publishers in a must-reads thread, saying "the death of Twitter would decimate the science fiction and fantasy short story ecosystem. Twitter is by far the most important tool all of us have to reach the readers of our online magazines. This is where folks discover the online stories. This is also where folks discover the ways to financially support the magazines (Patreon, Subscriptions, Crowdfunding)."
Which essentially explains why so many writers, creatives and publishers are unlikely to abandon the platform for now.
For now I'm sticking around and will keep using Twitter. But I'm also exploring alternatives, as described in my article. Because when Twitter eventually collapses it might implode really fast like a star going full black hole.
And a hattip to Chuck Wendig for this funny thread explaining how the next few weeks might go for Musk: "Fast forward three weeks, Musk'll be wandering the streets wide-eyed and panicked, trying to get you to say the word 'Twitter' so he can charge you five bucks for knowing the site exists. 'You said it! You said Twitter! You owe! For the, for the trademark! Five bucks! Don't run!'"
We Can Change Our Genre and World for the Better
Recently something astounding happened. Kiwi Farms, the Internet forum used to organize harassment against individuals and communities around the world – including taking aim at many people in the SF/F genre – was essentially shut down.
Kiwi Farms made the mistake of targeting transgender YouTuber and Twitch streamer Clara Sorrenti, who uses the name Keffals. Instead of following the old advice to ignore trolls, Keffals took the fight to Kiwi Farms, starting a movement to get the site kicked off Cloudflare and the other online services that supported the site.
Turns out tech companies can totally deal with online hate speech and harassment when enough people push them to do so.
And then another change happened. As I've covered before, for years author Patrick S. Tomlinson has been the target of an organized harassment campaign. Despite myself and others trying to raise awareness about the life-threatening attacks on Tomlinson, the mainstream media avoided covering what was happening.
I suspect a big part of why the media didn't cover the attacks on Tomlinson is because too many journalists and publications were afraid of becoming the next target. I've even heard through the grapevine that several reporters started researching Tomlinson's story but stopped when they realized these trolls might come after them.
But after Kiwi Farms was taken down, it's like the dam broke. People realized you could stand up to this hate and win. Not long after all the news about Kiwi Farms being taken down, The Daily Beast did an in-depth report on all that Tomlinson has been through. Local TV stations also covered the numerous times trolls had swatted his home.
This doesn't mean the attacks on Tomlinson have ended. And the SF/F genre still has a big problem with tolerating harassment and abuse. But people can fight back against and win against the trolls and haters. Never forget that.
Book Bans Keep Spreading
The movement to ban books in the United States keeps growing. As PEN America said in a new report, "the large majority of book bans underway today are not spontaneous, organic expressions of citizen concern. Rather, they reflect the work of a growing number of advocacy organizations that have made demanding censorship of certain books and ideas in schools part of their mission."
The PEN report also noted that from July 2021 to June 2022, there were "2,532 instances of individual books being banned, affecting 1,648 unique book titles. The 1,648 titles are by 1,261 different authors, 290 illustrators, and 18 translators, impacting the literary, scholarly, and creative work of 1,553 people altogether."
And banning books isn't the only aim of this movement. Libraries have also been defunded because they wouldn't ban books and people have literally called the police after seeing a book on a library shelf.
For more, see this New Republic article that offers a disturbing look at the growing cross-religious alliance to ban LGBTQ books. And this Salon article notes a GOP candidate in Michigan wants to ban books featuring divorced candidates.
Financial Barriers Remain for International Authors and Creatives
Last year I wrote about the financial barriers faced by international authors and creatives. Sadly, these barriers remain, as demonstrated when Wise, one of the best ways to send money overseas, stopped allowing US dollar transfers to Nigeria as of today.
David Anierobi first raised awareness of what Wise planned to do, with the financial platform saying transfers to Nigeria hadn't "been as fast or reliable as we'd like." But that excuse is total BS. The Wise platform works great for countless authors and creatives in Nigeria. I've personally used the platform to send money to Nigeria and it's faster and has lower fees than any other alternative.
Wise's explanation is typical of the corporate double-speak used by many platforms and institutions to deny financial services to people around the world.
Awards
After each Worldcon, the Hugo Awards long list is released. However, S. Qiouyi Lu recently pointed out that translators, interior artists, colorists, letterers, and cover artists are not listed in these tabulations. Chicon 8 agreed that these people shouldn't be left off and released an updated long list.
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber's The House of Rust won the inaugural Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction. Finalists were How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu and The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente.
Deep Wheel Orcadia by Harry Josephine Giles won the 2022 Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Winners of the 2022 Prix Utopiales and Prix Utopiales Jeunesse.
"Children Always Come Home" by Saher Hasnain won the 2022 Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction.
"Eight Mile and the City" by Steven Harper won the 2022 Washington Science Fiction Association (WSFA) Small Press Award.
Nalo Hopkinson's "Broad Dutty Water: A Sunken Story" won the 2022 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.
Winners of the 2021 Kitschies Awards.
Winners of the 2022 Ditmar Awards.
Winners of the 2022 Premio Ignotus (PDF download)
Winners of Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors.
Winners of the Asimov's Readers' Awards.
Winners of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association's 2022 contest.
The 2021 Shirley Jackson Awards nominees. The awards were presented on Oct. 29 at Readercon but I haven't yet seen an official list of all the winners.
Other News and Info
Russian SF/F author Sergei Lukyanenko, who is the 2023 Chengdu Worldcon guest of honor, took part in an discussion on Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT where the host said Ukrainian children who considered Russians as occupiers should have been drowned. Lukyanenko didn't contradict the host, instead saying that "Traditionally in Russia, they used the rod for that." Video with translation can be seen here. After the host was fired, Lukyanenko pushed back on criticism of himself by saying the host was trying to speak "provocatively" and that such statements shouldn't be allowed. Lukyanenko has supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine, claimed there is no such thing as Ukraine and also hailed attacks on civilian targets in the country. The recent Chicago Worldcon even passed a resolution condemning Lukyanenko for his numerous anti-Ukraine statements and views. Besides Lukyanenko, the other guests of honor for the 2023 Worldcon are Liu Cixin and Robert J. Sawyer.
On a related note, the Russian government declared science fiction author Dmitry Glukhovsky a "foreign agent" and a court there convicted him in absentia. His crime? Criticizing Russia's war against Ukraine.
With just under a week before the start of the World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans, the con organizers sent an email to attendees saying the mask mandate would be dropped. As Carrie Finch said, "dropping mask policy on a friday afternoon in an email six days before the con is like shady as hell." Many others echoed Finch's assessment and, after complaints, WFC reversed itself and said the mask mandate would stand.
Vox Day crowdfunded over one million dollars from supporters to finance a movie about a right-wing superhero character who wears a Confederate flag bustier. But then it turned out the company VD placed the money in escrow with scammed him out of all the funds. For more on all this see Camestros Felapton's report, who noted that "Day appears to have lost nothing (and according to the financial statements of the company was paid for a script) but his fans lost their investment after being encouraged by him to invest." Finally, as the Daily Beast reported VD isn't one to let the loss of a million in cash stop his cinematic dreams. He's already working on a script for "antisemitic former comedian Owen Benjamin. In this new movie, Beale plans to cast Benjamin—who believes the moon landing was faked—as the head of NASA."
Paranormal romance author Zoe Chant had her books banned by Amazon, which also took all her money despite her providing KDP requested proof of publishing rights. As what happened generated outrage on social media, Amazon restored the account. But as Chant noted, "Authors who publish on Amazon, watch out. I suspect that Amazon has turned over book review to AIs - we were never able to speak to a human, and the communications we received were nonsensical."
Parker Foye wins for best comment about all the recent issues in the United Kingdom: "strange women in ponds distributing swords as a basis of government suddenly looking sensible again."
R. K. Duncan wrote a must-read essay about how the science fiction and fantasy genre has a bad problem with fatphobia.
Jeff VanderMeer dropped a couple of fascinating tweets about David Eddings. VanderMeer shared the brochure Eddings "forced his publishers to send to us World Fantasy Award judges back in 2005 or 06 to lobby to win the lifetime achievement award, while also arguing his wife who contributed to his books should not be included." A follow-up tweet from VanderMeer gives more details. As a reminder, David and Leigh Eddings did some truly horrible crimes that fandom only learned about after their deaths.
Cecilia Tan tweeted about receiving a "vague and sketchy email" from EC Publishing offering to exhibit books at a big book fair. In response EC Publishing sent messages threatening to sue. Tan shared all the messages and details.
Last week Matthew J. Barbeler saw the trailer for the upcoming Australian horror film Carnifex and noticed similarities with his own novel Carnifex: A Novel of Outback Terror. Both the film and novel appear to focus on the extinct carnivorous marsupial Thylacoleo Carnifex. "I did NOT sell the rights to my Australian Horror novel Carnifex," Barbeler said. Reports in Australian media point to the producers not being aware of the novel when they created their film, suggesting this was a case of creators coming up with their own similar due to the same inspiration. Barbeler later said, "If the film makers came to this idea themselves, fantastic. I can't wait to watch the movie and see their interpretation of an absolutely magnificent and terrifying Australian beast that needs more love."
Sales of print books fell 4.8% during the first nine months of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021. However, adult fiction books saw sales jump "38.5% over the third quarter of 2021, leading to a 9.2% sales increase through the first nine months of the year. … The only other major category to post an increase in sales besides adult fiction was young adult fiction, where sales inched up 0.4%, helped by a good third quarter."
Someone masterfully replaced all the dragons in Skyrim with the state of Ohio.
There was yet another "discourse" about how listening to audiobooks didn't count as actually reading a book. There were many responses to the original tweet, far more than it deserved. As Chuck Wendig said, "We already know this, but audiobooks are books, e-books are books, print books are books, comic books are books, books are books are books; the story container is less important than the story it contains." And as C.L. Polk said, "i wonder if people who assert that listening to audiobooks isn't actually reading the book got read to as children or if they were just handed books and told to be quiet."
Great thread from C.L. Polk on query letters, which as Polk says are "a piece of persuasive writing designed to show the reader why someone would go to a bricks and mortar bookstore and take *this book* to the cash register and pay 25 dollars for it." Read and bookmark the entire thread. I know I'll be referring to it in the future.
As Sam J. Miller said, "ok NO, fiction doesn't NEED sex scenes, but also... we don't NEED fight scenes either. But we want them! Because they're awesome, when they're done well, and they provide a window into character."
Literary agent and author Eric Smith welcomed everyone to Scorpio season: "Write a whole novel because someone said you couldn't! Name the villain after someone who wronged you a decade ago! Support your fellow writers to the death and then be furiously jealous of their success!" As a Scorpio myself, I laughed at this before feeling really weird for doing so, which is par for the course for those born at this time of year.
It appears self-driving cars will forever be just in the future, in a similar way to how flying cars were back in the 20th century. The problem? As Cory Doctorow points out in a good thread, "What's worse than a tool that doesn't work? One that *does* work, *nearly* perfectly, except when it fails in unpredictable and subtle ways."
Trains also don't appear to be impressed with their so-called pending obsolescence, with this one making a clear statement about the future of robot deliveries.
Fascinating interview with a haunted house cast member with details about the good and bad aspects of the work. Also includes memorable quotes about how scared people can get.
In honor of Halloween, an actual up-close picture of an ant's face. It's the stuff of nightmares.
Erin Hahn's parents sent her flowers to honor the release of her book with the note "Congratulations on your first hot adult romance." As the florist told Hahn, "I was very confused by your mom's message over the phone… but now that I'm here, I remember you're the author!"
This is why I need Twitter. Where else am I going to see a post by Tade Thompson saying "When you teach a wolf to meditate, he becomes AWARE WOLF."
Why do witches have covens? As Sarah Andersen explains, covens allow them to practice the most powerful magic of all.
Be careful not to stray into the "bad publishing district."
People can celebrate a true Die Hard Christmas this year by having Hans Gruber fall off Nakatomi Plaza for 25 straight days!
In honor of Halloween, here are the utterly horrifying things that can happen in a book-lover's life.
Beautiful photos and video of a 1,400-year-old ginkgo tree at Guanyin Temple in Xi'an supposedly planted by Emperor Taizong Li Shimin.
Opportunities
According to a press release published by File770, next year's North American Science Fiction Convention, Pemmi-Con, has created a First Nations Travel Fund. The convention will "reserve 10% of their Adult Attending memberships, or CAD $4,000, whichever is greater, to assist indigenous science fiction and fantasy fans to travel to Winnipeg to attend Pemmi-Con. This fund will be under the direction of indigenous groups who will contact Pemmi-Con to request funds for individuals whom they believe should be assisted to travel." Details on how to apply haven't yet been released.
FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction is accepting unthemed submissions from Black writers until the end of the year. Details>>
PodCastle is accepting fantasy submissions until November 30. Details>>
The Future Worlds Prize for unpublished SF/F writers of colour in the UK is accepting submissions through February 6. Details>>
The IAFA Imagining Indigenous Futurisms Award "recognizes emerging authors who use science fiction to address issues of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination." Deadline December 1. Details>>
Hexagon SF Magazine is currently open to submissions through November 30. Details>>
Underland Arcana seeks submissions of short fiction that veers into the numinous, the esoteric, the supernatural, and the weird. Details>>