My Superpower: Kameron Hurley
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 Kameron Hurley to talk about how the power of preternatural calm relates to The Mirror Empire. —————————————– My mom and I share a similar superpower – the ability to stay preternaturally calm during times of great stress and turmoil. Grievous injury, car accidents, difficult births… if something horrible happens, we’ll calmly bind wounds, give the injured a soothing pep talk, call 911 and do the shit that needs to get done, with no shaking or screaming or crying or fuss. This response to times of great stress has made nearly every movie where folks scream and seize up and flail in the face of terror difficult for me to watch; I never find it terribly believable. Yes, of course, you startle for a minute, but then you center yourself, you go cold, right? You move through it. Breakdown later, when you have the time. In truth, this calm in the face of extreme stress has gotten me called all sorts of names over the years: unfeeling, inhuman, monstrous. What many folks don’t understand about this stress response is that it’s not that I don’t feel things – it’s that I simply delay feeling them. When the stressor has passed and everyone is cared for and there is nothing more to do, I crash. I’ve used this response to trauma a few times in building characters in my novels, too, most notably in the character of Lilia, the protagonist of my novel The Mirror Empire, whose ability to push through horror makes her one of the few people in her country who can adjust to the coming war of attrition thrust upon her pacifist people.
Tobias Buckell on the (New) Art of The Xenowealth Saga
In 2006, I came out with my first novel in the US, a somewhat hard-to-categorize (I’m told, I think it makes perfect sense, I wrote it after all) science fiction novel with Caribbean peoples settled on an alien world that have long since lost touch with their home world. That was Crystal Rain. I alternated between calling it Caribbean steampunk (a few years early, I think, for steampunk) and Caribbean SF. It had a cover I adored — created by the amazing Todd Lockwood, a well known fantasy artist who’s work is amazing. I have a print of the art framed on my wall: an airship above a verdant forest being chased by another distant ship. But when the novel came out, booksellers emailed me to say that the cover looked like the book was a fantasy, creating confusion among casual browsers. Core SF readers didn’t want to pick up the book. Fantasy readers put it down when they realized what it was.
Write101x: University of Queensland Free Writing Course!
Marianne de Pierres recently brought this course to our attention. Run by Dr. Roslyn Petelin, the course aims to provide an introduction to grammar, syntax, and style in the English language. Anyone can audit the course for free, meaning you can get access to all of the course’s materials. If you’re interested in improving your writing, this is a great way to do it from the safety of your home! Full details about the course can be found here. If you do take the course, let us know how it goes!
My Superpower: Tim Lees
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 Tim Lees to talk about how the power of Obstinancy relates to The God Hunter. —————————————————- Iron Man is “The Invincible”, the Hulk is “The Incredible”, and I am “The Obstinate”. This quality is also, according to my wife, my greatest weakness. Or at least my most annoying trait. No doubt Superman annoys people as well. Let’s hope he isn’t married to them. On the face of it, obstinacy is not a pro-survival feature. It’s a failure to adapt, an inability to respond to changing conditions. When the lungfish tells you that the pond is drying up and you should drop your gills and join him, you say loudly, “No it’s not,” and attempt to wallow in your last few micrometers of water. Obstinacy is a label many people go to great lengths to avoid. Obstinate politicians recast themselves as “principled” while their enemies call them “bloody-minded”. Obstinate actors become “difficult” or “driven”, implying they possess some special vision their directors somehow failed to share. And so on. I, however, am just obstinate.
English as the Center and Its Privileges
Daniel José Older recently uploaded an appropriate video titled Why We Don’t Italicize Spanish: This incited reactions from several people, including Bryan Thao Worra: [View the story “Bryan Thao Worra Reacts to Why We Don’t Italicize Spanish” on Storify] Previously, I once asked an editor why we italicize Filipino words. “Charles, there’s a difference between away in a manger from away in a manger.” (Away being the Filipino word for fighting.) There is, of course, context: readers should be able to immediately distinguish if people are moving away from the manger, as opposed to a fight taking place in a manger, if such a sentence was used in a story. But I doubt if the style guides of various publishers (including the one I work for) will be changing anytime soon.
My Superpower: LJ Cohen
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 LJ Cohen to talk about how the power of Ninja Time Wasting relates to Derelict. —————————————– If you ask my family, they will tell you I have several superpowers. One is to fight parking tickets. But that is another story for another time (and in case you’re interested, I eventually won. Because I was right and also more stubborn than our city hall). Another is to adopt strays. This includes animals as well as people. But that’s also not relevant to my creative process. No, the superpower I want to talk about today is one that, unfortunately, hampers more than helps my creativity. I can appear to be busy and productive even as I waste time. I am a stealth ninja at wasting time.
