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My Superpower: Cassandra Rose Clarke

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My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Cassandra Rose Clarke to talk about how the power of making time for TV (psst:  and organization) relates to The Wizard’s Promise. ——————————– Let us consider Wolverine. His superpower appears to be the ability to retract claws out of his knuckles like a cat, and indeed, for many years as a child I thought that was his superpower and wondered how such a weirdly specific mutation could come to be. But at some point I learned that Wolverine’s actual superpower is regeneration. It allows him to retract claws out of his knuckles like a cat and do other wonders as well — but mostly the cat claw thing. My writerly superpower is the same way.

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

201. The Hugo Awards (A Discussion w/ Justin Landon and Natalie Luhrs)

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode201TheHugoAwardsWJustinLandonAndNatalieLuhrs/SandF%20–%20Episode%20201%20–%20The%20Hugo%20Awards%20w%20Justin%20Landon%20and%20Natalie%20Luhrs.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSControversies, award changes, and the Hugos, oh my!  Justin Landon and Natalie Luhrs join Shaun, Paul, and Jen to discuss the recently announced Hugo Award nominees — the good, the bad, and the awesome. We hope you enjoy the episode! (Please support our efforts to bring the Skiffy and Fanty Show and the World SF Tour to Worldcon!  Every little bit helps.) Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below): Episode 201 — Download (MP3) Show Notes: The Hugo Award Nominees Staffer’s Book Review Justin’s Twitter Radish Reviews Natalie’s Twitter Trading Rosemary by Octavia Cade You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone. Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0). That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

Blog Posts

IDIC and the problem with gatekeepers

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When I started writing what I loved (science fiction) in about 2007, I didn’t have the impression that science fiction was US-centric. In fact, I thought that science fiction was like Star Trek’s philosophy of IDIC. Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. Wasn’t science fiction supposed to be like that? I mean, I did submit stories before and one even got published. That was in 2000, when I was fresh out of university, armed with a postgraduate degree. So, when I started writing in 2007, I thought it was still peachy, and a writer like me — a writer from Southeast Asia — would be easily accepted. My steampunk story “A Matter of Possession” was published by Crossed Genres in 2010 in their issue on alternate history. It was my first entry into an interesting scene (I couldn’t use ‘community’ — didn’t feel much of it, though). I realized, to my shock, that people like me, people living outside the United States, had (still have) difficulty getting their stories published. The gatekeepers of serious science fiction were standing at the gate and barring entry to those trying to find their way in. Often, the accepted stories were written by white men. I wondered who made the gatekeepers gatekeepers? Who had set the rules and regulations? Is science fiction going to be a pub where unwanted and unwelcome folk are kept outside the window, desperately staring in while the accepted cliques mingle, laugh and have fun? Who chooses who will write our future(s)?

Blog Posts

Book Review: The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch

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It’s a pleasure to re-read (or re-listen) to an old favorite. In an age where readers (including myself) look for new books, new authors, new perspectives, and new good stuff, I appreciate having the chance to revisit something, even from 7 years ago, that, if anything, holds up better for me now than it did when I read it. Camorr. A Venetian-style fantasy city, complete with canals, a strong mercantile sector that drives the rest of the city and the region around it. A city where the Duke rules, the Dons reign, the Bankers cash in and the ordinary person is caught between them and the nest of thieves who infest the city. By the command of Capa Barsavi, the lord of thieves, who has made a bargain with the duke’s spymaster, the thieves do not touch the Duke, or the Dons, but all others are fair game. And what game they are.

Blog Posts

Cultural Tourists (Part 2): Publishing and Representation

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Wendy Xu has a brilliant and critical assessment of racism in Eleanor and Park, and it’s tempered by Mike Jung’s post on how he can experience both love and be troubled by the novel. The latter is one of the complicated experiences of a reader is who is not privileged, who constantly struggles to find themselves in the literature they read and who sometimes settles for any representation. If in Part 1 I talked about the behavior of cultural tourists, let’s look at the larger implications of that here. In the Philippines for example, we have several talented authors like Eliza Victoria, Ian Rosales Casocot, and Dean Francis Alfar. Unfortunately, their readership is dwarfed by the number of fans of Western authors like Robert Jordan, J.K. Rowling, and George R. R. Martin. If our authors aren’t being read in our own country, how much better will they fare overseas? And this isn’t a scenario unique to the Philippines. It happens to a lot of countries affected by colonialism or imperialism (or both).

The Skiffy and Fanty Show Podcasts

200. We’re 200! (Hugos, World SF, and Trivia w/ the ENTIRE Crew)

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http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode200HugosWorldSFAndTrivia/SandF%20–%20Episode%20200%20–%20Hugos%2C%20World%20SF%2C%20and%20Trivia.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSS200 freaking episodes!  Holy moly on toast!  For our special 200th episode, the entire gang got together on Google+ to talk about being nominated for a Hugo Award, the importance of world sf, listener questions, and more.  Plus, we break out the first ever Skiffy and Fanty Trivia Game! I’ve included the mp3 and a YouTube video of our recording in this post; choose your poison! We hope you enjoy the episode! (Please support our efforts to bring the Skiffy and Fanty Show and the World SF Tour to Worldcon!  Every little bit helps.) Note:  If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below): Episode 200 — Download (MP3) (The actual episode starts at 3:22 in the video.) You can also support this podcast by signing up for a one month free trial at Audible.  Doing so helps us, gives you a change to try out Audible’s service, and brings joy to everyone. Our new intro music is “Time Flux” by Revolution Void (CC BY 3.0). That’s all, folks!  Thanks for listening.  See you next week.

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