Genre Grapevine for November 2023

Note: Apologies for being a day late with this column – life’s been rough lately. If anyone needs a Bluesky code, message me. And look for a new Genre Grapevine report on AI / machine learning systems next week. I’ll also be releasing a free e-book edition of all this year’s coverage related to machine learning systems later this month.

If you like my writings on genre issues, consider backing my Patreon or doing a paid subscription to my Substack.

Done with X-Twitter

What can we say about X-Twitter these days? Perhaps Reuters summed it up best: “Billionaire Elon Musk told advertisers that have fled his social media platform X over antisemitic content to ‘Go fuck yourself’ in a fiery Wednesday interview.”

Or perhaps this Slate headline says it best: "Twitter is worth more to Elon Musk dead than alive."

Either way, just over a year after Musk purchased the social media site a final wave of advertisers and users are now fleeing. And it appears many other people are simply no longer using X-Twitter. In the SF/F genre, a number of prominent people announced their departure from the site in recent weeks, including John Scalzi (see complete statement here), Gareth L. Powell, SFF180’s Thomas Wagner, and Gretchen Felker-Martin (although unsure if this last one is related to overall X-Twitter issues or with a Felker-Martin controversy covered later in this column).

Another person who left is Scott Edelman, who wrote an excellent and sad essay about what leaving X-Twitter means to him. As the essay describes, there’s a major downside to leaving, with downloads of Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic podcasts dropping by a third. “I know correlation isn't causation, yet I can't help but believe the loss of serendipitous discovery which would occur on Twitter is the reason. … All of that discoverability is gone, like tears in rain, and seemingly not replaced by the attention I'm getting from my (currently) 788 followers on Bluesky or 561 followers on Mastodon.”

Because of what Edelman points out about discoverability, it’s understandable why people keep using the platform. However, speaking for myself I have decided to no longer post or reply to people on X-Twitter.

I won’t be deleting my account because, for now, I still need access to the platform for news-gathering purposes. In addition, simply deleting your account allows others to take your handle and possibly impersonate you. As X-Twitter’s account center states, to keep your account active you must also “log in at least every 30 days. Accounts may be permanently removed due to prolonged inactivity.”

Because of this, I’ll keep my account open as a placeholder, for news-gathering, and in case someone can only direct message me through the platform. But I’m way done with posting and replying on X-Twitter because of what the platform has turned into.

Here’s my final tweet:

Goodness once found here
Was meeting people, talking
Not rich asshat hate

I’m curious what other people’s final message on X-Twitter will be? If you post one, message me with the link.

Endless Bland Variety

Ray Nayler published an excellent essay in Time titled “AI and the Rise of Mediocrity.” As Nayler wrote:

“The truth is that there is no such thing as ‘artificial intelligence.’ ChatGPT, Midjourney, and the like are not conscious, intelligent minds. As sophisticated as they are, they are only language and image models fed with the results of human innovation scraped and stolen from the internet. Having analyzed what we have written or depicted before, these programs then statistically anticipate what the next most likely word in a sentence should be, or what color the next pixel in an image should be. Because so much of our day-to-day behavior, including the things we write and say, is as predictable as the make, model, year, and color of my car or the brand of my shoes, these tools are effective when we need regurgitation of the commonplace.”

Nayler adds:

“Because they cannot truly innovate, everything that predictive language and image models will produce will be a sequel to what came before: not an original idea, but a mash-up of our old tropes, repackaged for our consumption. This was already a dominant tendency in our commercial industries—to simply take what has been done before, tweak it a little, rebrand it, and call it new. As a result, AI will fill the world with grindingly average texts, passable but derivative illustration and video, and unoriginal but functional new product designs.”

Read the entire essay. I agree with what Nayler is saying, which is why I believe these programs don’t overly threaten people who create original stories or art that only they can create.

But as Nayler rightly points out, so many aspects of human existence are not original. And the corporations that run our world are extremely adverse to true creativity and originality. In addition, many writers and artists make their living creating derivative works for companies and others. If AI systems steal that work, they may not have the ability to support themselves and craft their own original creations.

For an example of how corporations may use AI systems in the future, check out this article in The Economist about the big business of mining the literary estates of dead authors like Roald Dahl. As the article states, “Some (literary) heirs are flummoxed by the new corporate interest in their intellectual property. In effect, literary estates are a new kind of asset class. Managed well, they can provide steady income.”

While The Economist article doesn’t mention AI systems, it’s easy to imagine literary heirs in the future using language and image models to create new works in the style of say Tom Clancy or Picasso. And doing so may flood the marketplace, making it harder for new writers and artists to find a foothold for original creations.

Related to all this, Colleen Lindsay recently posted something very interesting on Facebook, saying “I don't agree with everything in this NY Times interview with literary agent Andrew Wylie, but this snippet spoke volumes and points out a lot of the problems with publishers who put data over quality of writing and storytelling.”

Lindsay is referring to this interview, where Wylie says the following:

“I think that a number of publishing companies have brought in business people to help them in a futile effort to become more distinctly profitable. But it’s comical, because frequently these people don’t understand the difference between selling a widget and selling a good novel. The advantage that they bring to the publishing company is counteracted by the hilarious errors of judgment they make because they don’t know what they’re selling. It tends to be true that the best publishers are people who read books and whose primary understanding of the business comes from what they’ve read rather than from Harvard Business School.”

Every time I read those words, I sadly see the same thing being said a decade from now, only with the words “business people” replaced with AI.

Be a Prodigy No Matter Your Age

Rebecca F. Kuang wrote a must-read essay in Time about the trap of being a prodigy:

“I wrote my first novel, The Poppy War, when I was 19; it hit shelves days before I graduated college. I’ve experienced my share of media coverage more interested in my age than my artistry and heard all the skepticism that someone so young could have anything meaningful to say. I’ve tasted the highs of success much earlier than I thought I deserved. And I’ve sat down terrified and bewildered before the accusing blank page of a new manuscript, wondering if all that came before was lightning in a bottle that I’ll never capture again.

… “There’s so much freedom in the relentless pursuit of growth. If you refuse to be satisfied with what you’ve done, the apex remains on the horizon, ever out of reach. If you can accept that you’ll never repeat the glory days of the past (and that maybe those glory days were not so glorious, just filtered through nostalgia), you’re free to get weirder, wilder, and sharper with every successive project. Flop era, comeback era—may I be so lucky to ride those highs and lows. Crystallization is death, change means you’re alive, and no one’s crying themselves to sleep when there are exciting new challenges to tackle.”

Total agreement with Kuang’s words.

On Bluesky, Kameron Hurley responded to Kuang’s essay by saying “I suspect every creative fears this at some time or another. You can be a "hot new thing" in publishing at a far more advanced age than other careers (like, 40!), but you only debut once. The good news is that most writers get better over time.” Read Hurley’s entire thread.

Personally, I don’t believe you must achieve writing success by a certain age or have your success defined by others. C. L. Polk’s first novel Witchmark came out in their late 40s and won the World Fantasy Award, followed by The Midnight Bargain and Soulstar. And in 2023 their novella “Even Though I Knew the End” was a finalist for the Nebula and Hugo Awards.

Martha Wells, well known for the beloved and award-winning Murderbot series, published a number of stories and novels that were award finalists in the 1990s and early 2000s. But by the mid 2000s she thought her career was over because she couldn’t sell the books she was writing. Then a decade later came Murderbot.

There is no age limit on being a writer. Your success as a writer is defined by you and no one else. You can still create new and exciting stories as long as you have curiosity and try to see the world through “the eyes of a child,” to quote the famous phrase. One reason people think you have to be young to be creative is many people stop trying to truly see the world as they age. They fall into a rut and repeat the same patterns over and over in their life until they can only see what’s behind them, to parallel what Kuang said.

But you don’t have to live or write like that. And you don’t have to be young to create powerful stories. Seek your own path. Don’t let others tell you that your path should be any different than what it is, or that your path is wrong.

Awards

• Winners of the 2023 Prix Actusf de l’Uchronie.

• Nnedi Okorafor won the Arthur Clarke Imagination in Service to Society Award.

• Sara A Mueller’s The Bone Orchard won the Endeavour Award.

• Per File770, the Prix Utopiales 2023 Winners.

• In a major irritation, this year’s Hugo Award voting statistics still haven’t been released. Word is the stats may be released in January, but there’s no clear reason why it’s taking so long. The statistics are usually released the very night the Hugo Awards are announced.

• With regards to the Goodreads Choice Awards, Jelena Dunato rightly points out that both “nobody” and “absolutely nobody” asked Goodreads to drop award categories this year. Despite that, Goodreads response was essentially “Yeah, let's remove Children's, MG, Poetry and Graphic Novel categories in the attempt to become even more useless, obsolete and hostile to books, and chase superficial fads instead.”

• Finally, this is the season of award eligibility posts, so check out social media posts from new and favorite authors to see what they recommend you read. And if you’re a member of SFWA, check out the Nebula Recommended Reading list, which is a great way to discover new works.

Other News and Info

• NaNoWriMo shut down their forums in the middle of November after one of their moderators evidently took part in inappropriate behavior on the site with children. As Jamie Francè stated in summarizing what happened, “The controversy started because one of the moderators of the young writers program was grooming teens basically abusing their power and interacting with them inappropriately.” News about this was mainly shared on TikTok. In particular, literary agent Pam Pho created a TikTok discussing what happened, as did editor Kourtney Spak.

• After The Guardian pulled its publication of an old letter from Osama bin Laden, Gretchen Felker-Martin stirred up controversy by tweeting “Can pretty safely state that bin Laden and I did not, uh, agree on much, but blowing up the World Trade Center is probably the most principled and defensible thing he did.” Felker-Martin later deleted the tweet and apologized, saying “The other day in a moment of distress I talked out my ass to play devil's advocate in a tasteless, needless way. I sincerely regret it, and I apologize to anyone hurt or offended by my thoughtless words.” However, this didn’t stop people from heavily criticizing her. As Sam Asher wrote in a tweet that includes a screenshot of Felker-Martin’s original comment, “Gretchen Felker-Martin has been saying absurd shit for a while, and I keep thinking 'But Manhunt was so good!' It's not *this* good.”

• As Mari Ness shared, “Ten years ago, World Fantasy Con was held at a wheelchair-inaccessible hotel in Brighton, UK. So I couldn't attend. In 2025, World Fantasy Con will return to this hotel, the Doubletree by Hilton Metropole in Brighton, UK. It's still inaccessible.” While Ness confirms that some accessibility issues at the hotel have been fixed, she states that “wheelchair users at World Fantasy 2025: 1. Cannot use the main entrance without assistance (and probably not even then) 2. Will have difficulty with one side entrance 3. cannot reach the top floor (stairs), 4. cannot reach the mezzanine level/rooms (where Registration was in 2013), because, again, stairs.” Read the entire thread. Karen Fishwick, the chair of 2025 World Fantasy Convention, responded to Ness’s comments on File770.

• Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki stated that “I won't be participating in any convention that continues to perpetuate the inequalities this industry is rife with, in 2023 by not honouring people from the global south who don't have passport/travel privileges. & I encourage others to boycott them. ... Seen cons that had to sort out visas, travel costs/arrangements for folks from the global south. That's highly commendable but doesn't have to be the standard due to economic realities. But if you have a virtual track already & still miss the opportunity, it's just wickedness.” Read the whole thread.

• Poet Anne Boyer resigned as New York Times Magazine poetry editor. Her resignation statement begins, “The Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone.”

• Literary Hub has pulled together an excellent list of books to read that “serve as a reminder of the precious individual stories and humanities of the Palestinian people, as well as an evergreen resource for all readers interested in engaging with the rich, vibrant tradition of Palestinian literature—both in this horrific moment and, hopefully, long after the current assault on Gaza has ended.”

• Following up on last month’s report, SF/F magazines continue to suffer from Amazon ending digital magazine subscriptions through its Kindle Newsstand platform. As Sean Wallace said, “Some straight talk when it comes to The Dark Magazine basically boils down to this: the early reports from Amazon for the KU subscription model are not looking good at all. I can’t go into details, not yet, but this is pretty cataclysmic.” Wallace followed up that X-Twitter thread with a more detailed Facebook post on November 14.

• Seven years after allegations were made against Sunil Patel over his conduct toward women, he has published a “Statement of Accountability for Harm Caused Within the SFF Writing Community (2013-2016).” Patel writes, “In October 2016, I was accused on Twitter of emotional abuse, gaslighting, manipulation, objectification, and grooming of young female writers in the science fiction and fantasy writing community. I issued a short apology on Twitter and removed myself from that community to, as I put it, ‘self-reflect and become a better person.’ I see now that apology then was insufficient, as it was made without a clear understanding of my actions and a framework for recognizing my own culpability.” You can read the complete statement here.

• According to File770, the Chengdu Worldcon committee is bringing Russian author Sergey Lukyanenko to China in December. While Lukyanenko was a guest of honor at this year’s Worldcon, he didn’t actually show up there, possibly so as to not embarrass the convention due to his extremist views related to Ukraine. But he’s now coming to China on tour a month after Worldcon. Interesting.

• Good advice from Alex Woodroe: “Here's one cool free thing all writers can do to support our cover artist colleagues: Do due diligence before reacting on a cover reveal. Check, look, scan, ask, verify. Artists are getting exhausted and demoralized by our unwillingness to educate ourselves. Let's do better.”

• Ask a Manager created an excellent primer on how to protect your local library. Don't forget, the book bans and attacks on libraries around the country are being driven by a tiny minority of extremists, as the primer details. You can make a difference to your local library by speaking up and following these tips.

• The book Famous Composers by Nathan Haskell Dole was checked out of the St. Paul Public Library in 1919 and returned earlier this year. The St. Paul Library no longer charges fines for late books, but if they did the late fee “would have been a penny a day,” resulting in a $36,000 fine.”

• As the Mary Sue points out some hypocrisy: “Box office projections set Aquaman 2 as having a ‘successful’ $50 or $60 million dollar opening weekend. But only recently, The Marvels’ projections of a $75-$80 million opening were deemed a failure.” Gee, I wonder why those films are being given different expectations?

• Gabino Iglesias is the new horror columnist for The New York Times. “It's a dream come true. Can't wait to bring you all the horror goodness starting in January. Long live horror.”

• Oops. “Entangled Publishing said in a statement that it’s working to correct misprints in the new Rebecca Yarros novel Iron Flame, published on November 7. “Entangled reportedly indicated the book sold more than half a million copies on its release day, and some of the copies had irregularities including damaged pages, missing pages, upside down pages, and more, which readers catalogued on TikTok.”

• In announcing X-Twitter's ChatGPT clone, which is named Grok, Musk said he was inspired to create it by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. As Slate noted, this “tribute” suggests Musk is yet another CEO who either missed the point of their favorite science fiction books or haven’t read them. And as Chris Wolff pointed out on Bluesky, of all the Hitchhiker characters Musk most closely resembles a Vogon who wants “to destroy the earth to build a hyperspace bypass and wants to read you his bad poetry.”

• Interesting observation from Fonda Lee: “I've noticed publishers requesting blurbs with tighter and tighter deadlines, which is frustrating because it serves no one! Authors are usually behind schedule and drowning in reading material already, so if you send me an ARC with a deadline of 2-3 weeks, it's not happening.”

• Fusion Fragment magazine tweeted “To celebrate Black Friday, the FF store is offering up some huge deals! You can download every single issue FOR FREE! Plus earn intangible but very real gratitude points, which can be applied to your soul as a reward for supporting short SFF!” Even though Fusion Fragment is always free and the tweet was a joke, a good number of people responded by downloading every single issue.

• Imagine if instead of Netflix giving an unproven director $55 million for a science fiction series, only to have said director blow the money “on rolls-royces, crypto, and dodgy stock bets,” Netflix had instead given a hundred SF writers a half million each to create stories they could have then adapted. Netflix would have still saved money.

• Warner Bros. tried to can the completed film Coyote vs. Acme to gain a $30 million tax break, but reversed the decision after being heavily criticized (and threatened with a Federal investigation). Now the studio's CEO David Zaslav is saying it took “real courage” to try and keep anyone from seeing the film. You can’t make this shit up.

• Speaking of Coyote vs. Acme, check out the film’s wonderful music. I didn’t know until now that I needed to hear a choir singing ““Meep Meep” over and over.

• Fascinating thread about Gertrude Zeehandelaar, who published ads about the "Cat Book Center" in many vintage cat magazines from 1968 to 1969. I wish I could have visited her Cat Book Center.

Opportunities

• The Comics Advocacy Group is offering 30 mini grants of $500 to US residents who write and/or draw comics. Deadline January 15, 2024. Details>>

• Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki is accepting submissions for Indopantheology: Stories from the Spiritual Margins. Deadline March 31, 2024. Details>>

• Ekpeki is also accepting submissions for The Passage To Caribbean Pantheology. Deadline February 11, 2024. Details>>

• RiverFlow is seeking foreign articles about the recent Worldcon for Zero Gravity, which won the 2023 Hugo Award For Best Fanzine. Deadline December 16. Details>>

• Hexagon SF Magazine is open for submissions until November 7 for fiction between 1-10,000 words and comics between 1-5 pages. Details>>

• Baffling will open to submissions from December 1 to 15 for queer speculative flash fiction under 1,200 words. Details>>

• Nightmare Magazine will open to submissions in January “for the first time in over a year!” Submission dates are January 14-20, 2024, with an extended submissions window for BIPOC-identifying writers running from January 21-27. Details>>