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San Diego Comic Con

Le’ me ‘splain. No, no, no, there is too much; le’ me sum up. Last weekend I was at San Diego Comic Con as a Special Guest of the convention. I’ve been to New York Comic Con before, but… there’s really no comparison. NYCC has a different character — more corporate, somehow; less eclectic. And it doesn’t take over the whole damn city. SDCC is a city. Guesstimates (this is from one of the con staffers assigned to me as a “handler”) were that 140,000 people were at this one. The convention center’s capacity, note, is 130,000 — but I […]

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My Comic Con Schedule

Next week I’ll be a Special Guest at San Diego Comic Con. Now, I’ve been to New York’s Comic Con several times, but SDCC is its bigger, meaner older brother, and I have to confess that I’ve been a little intimidated by the idea of the whole thing. Still, it’s hard not to get excited, ’cause holy crap see what I’ll be doing: Thursday, July 12: Racebending.com: Creating Diverse Spaces for Diverse Representations I was excited about this already, because I think the folks at Racebending are doing a hero’s work, poking Hollywood with a stick to get it to

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HAMILTON

I got a surprise opportunity to go see Hamilton last weekend — friend of mine got lucky with the ticket lottery, so there we were on the FRONT ROW, literally looking up the actors’ noses and screaming our heads off in squeeful delight. It was fully as amazing as everyone says. So amazing, in fact, that I needed a few days to process it, because otherwise the only thing I could’ve managed to say about it would’ve been AAAAAAAMYGODWHATISTHISIT’SSOHOLYSHITASDFJKL;WHAAARGARBL, which really wouldn’t have been any use to anyone. There are an astronomical number’s worth of analyses and reviews of this

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Tricking readers into acceptance

OK, to start this post off, I have to say that it is only for people who have already read The Fifth Season. Haven’t read it yet? This post is not for you. No, seriously. If you haven’t read TFS, scram. Oh, so you wanna be hard headed. OK. But I am not responsible for any damage done to your reading experience, if you continue. And if I may say, TFS is a lot more fun with its surprises unspoiled. But from here forth I’m going to assume you’ve read it.

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Wiscon 38 Guest of Honor Speech

[ETA 3/28/14: Added markup; text is still the same. Also, please note a discussion here about a line in the Delany quote that concerned some people.] Thanks to all the WisCon volunteers, members, and other supporters, who have given me the opportunity to speak to you now. Trigger warning: I’m going to refer to rape, harassment, racism, and other forms of bigotry and abuse in this speech. Also, profanity warning. That’s sort of standard with me. I’m going to start this off with a quote from Chip Delany, writing in the essay “Racism and Science Fiction” which was published in

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Concern trolling and “gratuitous diversity”

I really wasn’t planning to engage with this semicoherent muddle by Felicity Savage over at Amazing Stories. Half my Twitter feed has been laughing at this article for days — it’s usually amusing when people who don’t understand a thing attempt to critique it — but I don’t find it funny, just sadly exemplary of the kind of cluelessness that abounds within this genre, and Anglophone society as a whole. But it got pointed out to me that Steve Davidson, the AS editor, has jumped into the discussion to try and clarify the muddle. It hasn’t helped much, but I

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How Long ’til Black Future Month?

In celebration of Janelle Monae’s new album, which I’ve bought but haven’t listened to yet since I’m holding it as a carrot/reward for meeting certain writing goals over the next few weeks… here’s an essay that I wrote for Jonathan Wright’s ADVENTURE ROCKETSHIP! Let’s All Go To The Science Fiction Disco anthology. If you haven’t done so yet, check out both! Note: this is the not-fully-proofed not-final draft of the essay. How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? The Toxins of Speculative Fiction, and the Antidote that is Janelle Monae

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Beasts of the Southern Wild

You guys! You gotta see this movie. I’ve said this before and will say it again: New Orleans is the only city besides New York to ever win my heart. There’s something different about that place — something indefinable and liminal. Everyone who lives there for long feels it. I’ve tried to capture that sense of magic myself in fiction, and I don’t know if I succeeded because it’s hard to encapsulate something like that in a narrative. I’ve seen lots of other books and visual media attempt this and fail. But now, for the first time in quite a

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But, but, but — WHY does magic have to make sense?

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science. -Agatha Heterodyne (Girl Genius) by way of Larry Niven by way of Clarke La la la can’t hear you. -Me This is a whine, not a rant. I rant when I’m angry; right now I’m just frustrated and annoyed. It’s hard out here for a fantasy writer, after all; there’s all these rules I’m supposed to follow, or the Fantasy Police might come and make me do hard labor in the Cold Iron Mines. For example: I keep hearing that magic

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SHINY AWESOME THINGS

Looky! Another entry in the “I get the best fans, ya’ll” category of Awesome, this one’s from Neondragonart, who sent it to me and gave me permission to post. Isn’t it amazing? She’s also done some kickass fanart of Martha Wells’ Raksura books, which I loved too. Go tell Neon how awesome she is! Other shinies: I forgot to post here about it, but The Killing Moon got a starred review from Library Journal! And if you missed me squeeing about it all over Twitter last night, io9 liked TKM too!

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