Monopoly and Appropriation
is there a support group for people who used to like the word “diversity” but now they want to burn it with fire — Sofia Samatar (@SofiaSamatar) September 3, 2014 While appropriation is a two-way street, it is not always equal. Filipinos, Singaporeans, and Indians, for example, have appropriated English as their own language, and […]
Book Review: SOFT APOCALYPSES by Lucy A. Snyder
Soft is a particularly ironic description for this collection of short fiction by Lucy A. Snyder. Brutal. Grisly. Unflinching. These are all words that are easier to associate with the dark nature of her stories. Indeed, a cover blurb by Seanan McGuire states that Snyder’s work “attacks the page with the raw, manic intensity of […]
Geekomancer Under Glass: Recent Comic Coolness, Sep. 2014
Hello, all! Today, we delve into the land of comics, one of my first narrative loves. I’ve been reading comics since I was a kid living in Brooklyn, taking the deposit from our cans and bottles down to the Friendly Local Comic Store and buying issues of X-Men and Spider-Man. I’ve been getting back into […]
Logic of Empire: Robert Jackson Bennett’s City of Stairs and Beyond
With superior power, technology, and a will to conquer, an empire uses that technological advantage to reach out and dominate/subjugate much of the world. The wealth of the world is plundered and bent to the service and the coffers of that empire. No dominance lasts forever, however, and the subjugated peoples learn how to fight […]
Indy Genre: Holy Motors (2012)
Over the past several years, I’ve come to the conclusion that independent film is the place to search for the weird, fantastic, and creative. You know: the stuff of our genre. This is where labors of love and concepts a little too off beat to soothe conservative investors end up, where storytelling gets pushed to […]
“Secret Option C: A More Inclusive World Fantasy Award Statue isn’t A Person At All” by Carrie Cuinn
Recently, author and activist Daniel Jose Older started a petition to change the World Fantasy Award statue from a bust of author H.P. Lovecraft to one of Octavia Butler. On the surface, this may seem to be a change from one distinct thing to an opposite one: moving from a white, male author who was […]
