My Superpower: Tansy Rayner Roberts
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 Tansy Rayner Roberts to talk about how the power of Feminist Snark relates to Kaleidoscope. ————————————– My name is Tansy Rayner Roberts, and my superpower is Feminist Snark. Being a feminist with everyday access to the internet and a deep interest in superhero comics is pretty hard work at times. If it wasn’t for snark, I’d have set fire to my web browser long ago. But a sense of humour, sarcasm and an ability to communicate righteous fury through blogging can save the day. Luckily, I’m not the only one who harnesses my feminist snark for good rather than evil. When Starfire was turned into a personality-free sexbot in the New 52, David Willis of Shortpacked was there to make a point with a well-timed comic strip. When the idea of a female Thor rocketed through fandom (causing misogynist waves of disapproval in amongst the ‘hell yeahs’) Joss Whedon used the snarky hammer of sarcasm to cut through the nonsense. Gail Simone’s tweet stream, DC Women Kicking Ass on Tumblr, and the Mary Sue are all part of my support network. They are, in the words of Gail Simone, my She-vengers. The thing they all have in common? Feminist Snark as a superpower.
212. Lynne and Michael Damian Thomas (a.k.a. Ood-les of Fun) at CONvergence
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode212LynneAndMichaelThomas/SandF%20–%20Episode%20212%20–%20Lynne%20and%20Michael%20Thomas.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSSmooching time travelers, editorial ninjas, and the feels, oh my! Lynne Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas join Paul and Shaun at CONvergence to talk about Hugo nominations, Queers Dig Time Lords, Apex Magazine, editing, and their super special new project, Uncanny Magazine. There’s so much to love here! We hope you enjoy the episode! 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 212 — Download (MP3) Show Notes: Michael’s Website Michael’s Twitter Michael’s Work Lynne’s Website Lynne’s Twitter Lynne’s Work Uncanny Magazine (Kickstarter) DONATE (only $7K to go as of 8/5/2014) Uncanny Magazine (official webpage) Apex Magazine Also: please consider supporting the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation to help spread awareness. 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.
My Superpower: Max Gladstone
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 Max Gladstone to talk about how the power of Oblivion relates to Full Fathom Five. *** My writer superpower is Oblivion. Obliviousness to surrounding conditions may seem more a liability than a superpower — the kind of “gift” that gets you pancaked by a city bus because you tried to read a Buzzfeed listicle and cross the road at the same time. Obliviousness leads to working through lunch and dinner because you didn’t realize it was 7pm already, to bad plays in poker and go (oh, I didn’t realize there were two kings on the board), to sleep deprivation and household mess (what dust bunnies in which corners, now?). But it does help the writing. See, distraction is an enemy of word count. You know how the Force connects all things, carrying impulses and emotions from one end of the galaxy to the other? Imagine being a Jedi — I mean, a fully-realized one like Obi-Wan in A New Hope or Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back, so in tune with the Force that it’s a state of being, not an ability you turn on and off. Walk down a street, as a Jedi, and emotions overwhelm you. Imagine trying to get anything done in that environment! Sure, Yoda and Obi-Wan lived on barren colony worlds to hide from Imperial death squads, but it’s quite possible that a peaceful remote hermitage is just plain more comfortable for folks with low-level always-on psionics.
Listening To My Ancestors
Author’s note: This blog post will be a little bit different from the usual SFF in SEA variant. Recently, I was rocked by a wonderful and startling revelation from my dad about his grandmother. My great grandmother was a herbalist and a travelling physician. From his tone, I could tell my dad admired her. She had “ben shi”, ability, talent. She could do stuff. Yet, my grandmother, my great grandmother’s daughter, wasn’t that forthcoming. She let out her stories in weak spools. She didn’t talk about things that made her sad. According to my dad, she quarreled with her mother who forbade her to leave for Nanyang (the Chinese term for Southeast Asia). My grandmother left for Singapore soon after that. Imagine the wounds still unhealed, the words left unsaid, unvoiced. My grandmother passed away last year. My paternal grandparents came from Hui’ An, Fujian. Isolated from the mainland, Hui’ An still retains characteristics of a minority group in China: the women’s clothing are unique and more reminiscent of clothing from Indo-China. The Hui’ An people are nominally Han Chinese. They are a coastal people, fishing and harvesting/farming oysters as part of their livelihood. At the same time, the women folk work at granite mines. Still deeply patriarchal, Hui’An society has women working at the coast and at the workshops while men idle away at tea houses. As a result, the women are tough, resilient and innovative.
The World SF Blog — One Year Later
By the time this post goes up — at least in my part of the world — it will exactly be a year since the World SF Blog was retired. Its success, in my opinion, lies in the hands of the editor-in-chief of the site, Lavie Tidhar, and the efforts of the various contributors (the list would be too long…) from around the world. The Apex Book of World SF 3 has also been announced, so June is a special month for me (and because I had nothing to do with the anthology, I can read it with surprise and delight). Before I digress, I want to point out that the more I pondered the issue of World SF, the more I discovered how the term was problematic (which Is discussed in my essay “World SF: Our Possible Future”). Here’s the thing: no one owns or speaks for World SF. It’s too broad, too all encompassing, and it’s often defined by what it isn’t. It’s a reaction to the current status quo, of major publishers publishing books by US and UK authors, and those books becoming the canon in various parts of the world. It’s to rebel against cultural appropriation, to combat cultural stereotypes, and most of all, to not do a disservice to readers of various races, ethnicities, and backgrounds.
When Calls for Diversity Are Not Enough
As a writer and reader based in Southeast Asia, I’ve been pondering the term “diversity” — at least, in the context of it’s use on the Internet. First, it’s focused on the Western publishing industry. Filipino publishers publish Filipino-authored works for example (although our publishing industry has different issues of diversity). The same goes for publishers in Malaysia, China, South Africa, etc. I do think it’s important to focus on the Western publishing industry, because it’s usually a one-way street: books from the Philippines rarely go out of the Philippines, but books from the US or the UK gets distributed around the world. A novel like Moxyland by Lauren Beukes, published by both Jacana Media in South Africa and Angry Robot Books in the US/UK, is the exception to the norm. And in my case here in the Philippines, there are some Filipino books that might not have been picked up by a local publisher if it weren’t acquired by a US/UK publisher first. And for all the talk about diversity in the US publishing industry, we have conversations like the ones mentioned by Jennifer Pan & Sarah McCarry.
