Yesterday at Tor.com I nattered on about what it takes to create better magazines. Was at work when it went up, so I didn’t get a chance to post about it. The conversation in comments is actually interesting, though there does seem to be one person determined to make me out as a person who hates white people! Or something.
Also, Mike Ashley STILL hasn’t answered my open letter! Sadness.
Though I am not fond of WorldCon, I do wish I could be there tonight to party with the Hugo winners. Many people I know and love to pieces won tonight:
I seriously don’t think I’ve ever seen a Hugo winner list made of more win. Special congrats to Weird Tales for breaking the million-year Locus winning streak and to my main man, John Klima, for his fanzine win. I am dancing in my living room and singing at the top of my lungs in praise of all y’all.
Dear Sir,
Though you have taken time to give a poor explanation of why there are no women in your anthology, I have yet to see you give any explanation as to why there are no writers of color in it, either. If you could please kindly provide this answer, as many of us would like to know, I would be grateful.
All the best,
Tempest
Or: why the Male Only Table of Contents issue is about both Gender and Race
So over on Marguerite’s blog editor Mike Ashley of the Mammoth Book of White Men Fail Mindbowing SF explains that the stories he was looking for, those that blew his mind with science, aren’t usually written by women, and therefore that’s why he couldn’t find any to include. Women are writing about people, you see, not necessarily science. Whatever. But, as I pointed out there, even if this was a valid excuse for an all-male TOC, that does not explain the lack of POC. A white male friend then pinged me, privately, to say: but isn’t that confusing the issue? Are you criticising him for having only men or no POC? And the answer is: both. And, not surprisingly, the two issues are intertwined.
To wit: when anthologies like this hit the Internets and we look at the TOC it’s very easy to notice that there are no women. It is therefore very easy to comment on and get angry about this fact. It is also easy for editors to come along and address only this exclusion, usually by saying “I didn’t pay attention to the bylines” and “women don’t write the kind of stories I was looking for” or “I don’t want to include them just as tokens”. Because at that point editors can pass it off as taste, and not even one based on gender, but on types of fiction.
But.
When one notices that these anthologies also don’t include any writers of color, either male or female, that complicates the issue, doesn’t it? It’s no longer just about whether men write these kinds of stories and women don’t. Because men of color write science fiction, too. Are we then going to even begin to say that they write more about people and not about science? Of course not. Stupid people are more likely to whip out, “But their stories are about race and only black people care about race!” Those people are wrong on both counts.
The same mindset is at work in both cases. It’s not “women/POC don’t write the kind of stories I was looking for,” it’s: I only like/read/understand/connect to/care for stories about white, male concerns.
That is a problem. Because SF, be it mammoth or mindblowing or sciencey, is not just about white, male concerns. And any anthology of SF or fantasy or horror that essentially posits the white male concerns as representative, normal, baseline, or default is an anthology made of fail. Because that is not what the genre is right now. Maybe 20 years ago. Hell, maybe 10 years ago. But not now. Not in the future.
As I said at Readercon, the future of this genre is women, people of color, people of different classes, people outside of the default American culture, people outside of America, period. When people ignore or suppress or marginalize this truth, be it intentionally or through laziness of mind, as appears to be the case here, you are In The Wrong in every way imaginable.
Understood?
These two things have nothing to do with each other, I just happen to be posting about them at the same time.
1 — io9 reviewed Federations and Charlie Jane liked it quite a lot. She had nice things to say about my story specifically:
There are also a few delightfully snarky stories which deconstruct, and in some cases satirize outright, the idea of a civilization made up of civilizations, and these are among the book’s standout stories. … K. Tempest Bradford’s “Different Day” imagines the Earth being contacted by not just one, but three different alien races within the same interstellar group, each with its own agenda.
I think I will make a button that says “delightfully snarky.”
2 — Also, the World Fantasy nominees have been announced and you should just click here to see, because the awesome on this list is very strong. I will call out some things I’m particularly happy to see: Filter House, Paper Cities, and “A Buyer’s Guide to Maps of Antarctica”. Yay for Nisi and Ekaterina and Catherynne, but they are not the only ones. The special awards pro and non-pro have some really, really extraordinary names competing.
This ballot is something to get excited about, unlike certain others I could name.
And… that’s it!
To make my life easier, I created a form that people can fill out to alert me of short fiction by people of color. That form will then feed into a merge thingy which is supposed to auto-generate lists for me. We’ll see.
And just so this post consists of more than one line, check out how the 2008 list of fiction is growing. Yay! 2009 has a few extra entries, too. Read the fiction available to you then head over to the CBS awards nomination form and let them know which stories or books you thnk deserve some recogniton.
I’ve seen a few more people make this mistake lately, thus I wanted to clear things up. A lot of people seem to think that I’m one of the founders of the indie press Verb Noire. But actually I am not.
I think this misconception arose because Karnythia, who is one of the bloggers at ABW, posted about it there, and there are a lot of people who still assume every ABW post = me. But indeed, I have three regular guest bloggers now (nojojojo and unusualmusic are the other two) and many occasional guest bloggers.
This is not to say that I am unhappy about being associated with Verb Noire. On the contrary, I think it’s the awesomest awesome that ever awesomed. And I do what I can to support the venture by promotion, spreading the word, etc. This is a Credit Where Credit Is Due thing. Karnithia and thwayoftheid are working their butts off to make it happen. I don’t want there to be any doubt who the fabulous black women are behind the project.
Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been made aware of several people saying things about my stories but haven’t had the time to mention it here due to some other stuff taking up my time. Heh. Anyway, here it all is in simple list form.
There’s more to that last review but it’s a bit spoilery. Obviously you should read the story right now so you can then read the whole review ;)
I feel like I must have mentioned this before, but looking back it seems maybe not. Anyway, this month I’ve been guest blogging at the Carl Brandon Society blog. I think this is going to become a regular thing as it seems like they’re very pleased with the lists of POC fiction I’ve been posting.
By the way, if you’re POC and have short fiction coming out in 2009, please let me know so I can include you in future lists. Instructions at this link. If you already had something come out in 2009 and missed my announcement before, you can add your story yourself to the Carl Brandon wiki. There’s also a 2008 short fiction entry.
At some point I’d like to start listing novels on the wiki. But it may take someone other than me starting that project. Though if I continue blogging at CBS, then another thing I want to start doing is mini author interviews whenever a writer of color has a book coming out. Something similar to the author spotlights I did at Fantasy Magazine. A 4 – 6 stock questions that hopefully elicit interesting answers. It’ll be a quick and easy way to start keeping a list of who’s publishing what and when. Plus, promotion!
And finally, if you will all please head over to this post about artists of color in SF/F — I’m trying to create a list. I hope it will also go up on the wiki someday. I only have two comments, sad! I know there are many artists of color out there. Please add your favorites or add yourself.
And yay for that. I’m working on a post about tone which may also meld into a post I have about how two people saying the same things can garner different reactions based on their gender. Oh yes, it came up.
But first, I would like to point out that Realms publisher Warren Lapine made an appearance on the original thread yesterday. Interested parties may want to take note of the difference between his appearance and Doug’s. There are still some issues to address, mind, but there is an appearance of willingness to listen that I’m taking on face value.
Anyway, I think this is the end of my Realms-specific postings. I’m kind of impressed with the range of dialogue that’s been generated about fantasy art — it’s more than I hoped for and I’m really glad to see the issue being discussed.
Also, much love for the people in this thread.
