Great Things I've Been Reading, June 2017 Edition

Nebulas: Done!

4th Street Fantasy: Done!

College Reunion: Done!

The blitz of Spring turning into Summer is almost over. I just have one convention left - Readercon, ironically the only place I won't be doing panels or hosting. As much as I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, I'm equally anticipating all the sleep I get to catch up on afterward. Plus Spoonbenders and Little Witch Academia are calling my name.

Over June, I read some brilliant short fiction and rattling non-fiction. It's a great way to keep the mind sharp in a bunch of airports. As always, everything linked here is free to read in full. Simply click the link in the title of each piece and away you'll go.

Fiction

"Small Changes Over Long Periods in Time" by K.M. Szpara at Uncanny Magazine
-"My attacker holds me like he did on the dance floor" is one of those lines that tightens your guts. Immediately after learning that our narrator was once attacked and turned into a vampire in an alley, we learn it was by their date. The story uses the tropes of vampire fiction to take us through the criminally less-exposed trans experience, including our narrator getting socked by the politics of the Federal Vampire Commission for having an "atypical body." It all builds up to an absolutely beautiful final exchange with their attacker, in which metaphor and power structures get grabbed by the neck.

"The Existentialist Men" by Gwendolyn Clare at Diabolical Plots
-Come for the play on comic book titles, stay for a sweet profiles of people with odd powers (or equally odd absences of powers). Clare swiftly gives you a sense of the community between the people, even if their powers made it difficult for them to always coexist. My favorite is the shortest entry: "Julie could disappear, but only once. We all miss Julie."

"Water Like Air" by Lora Gray at Flash Fiction Online
-Tom Hatcher doesn't believe in ghosts, but something stranger than the average haunting comes dripping to his doorstep. The story opens with Elodia, a mysterious woman, being covered in slime and heaving her way out of the lake. It's all part of her coming home - to Tom. This is one of those creeping flash fictions that only gives you full context after you've gotten goosebumps. The flood inside Tom is calling to her.

Great Things I've Been Reading, May 2017 Edition

May kicked off my busy summer, as I finished a novel and visited the Nebula Awards for the first time. This travel is wiping me out, but it's a pleasure to see so many people on the road. Editing has severely eaten my reading time, but I still have some flash, short stories, and non-fiction that I positively have to share.

As always, everything linked here is free to read with no paywall. Just click the title of any piece that interests you. If you like what you read, please consider subscribing to the zine or the author's Patreon.

As never before, there's also this fish. The fish make more sense later.

Fiction
"Carbon Dating" by Effie Seiberg and Spencer Ellsworth at Galaxy's Edge
-No focus group could have honed a story more precisely for me. The Internet becomes self-aware, searches itself to decide it must become happy, and then goes about trying to find true love. But dating sites aren't so wieldy for the incorporeal lovers of this world, and love isn't so rational thing. Thusly, The Internet winds up in love with a mountain has a comely array of glaciers. It is, as our authors put it, "a rocky relationship." It's whimsical, weird, and unlike anything else I've read this year. It makes an off appeal to anthropomorphism, because our internet might well become self-aware (or sprout several self-awarenesses), making this not quite implausible - just that it's an unusual idea for the direction self-awareness might take it. Really, it's among the nicer directions such an event could go.

I Was Reading a Classic Last Night, And...

I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution. I was troubled: a mist came over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me; but I was quickly restored by the cold gale of plummeting ratings. All of us at CNN perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom we had created. I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait for its approach, and then close with him in mortal combat. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitterness, anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt.

"Devil," I editorialized, "do you dare approach me? and do not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head? Begone, vile insect! or rather, stay, that I may trample you to dust! and, oh! that I could, with the extinction of your miserable presidency, restore those victims whom you have so diabolically murdered!"

"I expected this reception," said Trump. "All media hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You propose to slander me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends."

"Abhorred monster! fiend that thou art! the tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! you reproach me with your creation; come on, then, that I may extinguish the spark which I so negligently bestowed."

My rage was without bounds; I sprang on him, impelled by all the feelings which can arm one being against the existence of another.

He easily eluded me, and said --

"Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine; my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, CNN, be not equitable to every other, and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember that I am thy creature; I ought to be thy Adam, the best Adam. Sad! Apologize!”

Great Things I've Been Reading (December/January Combo Edition)

December ended busily with Books of the Year and Games of the Year posts, so I couldn't fit my normal short story/non-fiction round-up. January is now in our rear-view mirrors, so I figured I'd lump the two months together now.

As always, the rule is that whatever I link is free-to-read with no paywall. The selection will be bigger for this post, but it still feels too short, mostly for the December stories that melted from my memory with the pressure of deadlines and the holidays.

Bathroom Monologue: War Reporter with a Night Light

"It was only after people started shooting at me that I started using a nightlight. I didn't grow up with one; we didn't have reliable electricity in my home town. Back then, if you saw a light, it was a fire and you had to haul ass out of the house. That probably prepared me for a life of covering Sri Lanka and Iraq. And Chicago and Oakland, before you start thinking the foreigners are so violent. I took two bullets to the shoulder in Oakland on a police ride-along. The bullets went right through, like I wasn't even there. I was.

"Whoever had my hospital had owned a nightlight. It was orange, a jack o'lantern, way out of season. It had to have been a kid's. There was something about the orange glow amid the nurses saying it could have been way worse a few inches over here, and the doctor with all his eye contact, and the pain pills. I was profoundly lucky to be alive with that little light.

"I left it, hoped its kid owner would retrieve it. I bought my own on the way home, and plugged it into the bathroom with the door ajar. They made me stay home for two weeks while I became a bigger story than the beat I'd been trying to cover. It was a fog of frustration, of phony friends asking for quotes, of barely being able to leave the apartment. By the time I was clear, I just loved my nightlight. This one was jade.

"It stays home. When I went to cover Egypt last month, it shone on an empty apartment. No nightlights at work, no privilege of safety. Not until I got home. Then I slept with it on. Jade. Green light, go home."

Bathroom Monologue: Like a Silver Bullet?

The official story was that the priest simply lost his mind. While there’s no science to support, it’s long been believed that people are more likely to act violent, to commit crimes, and to go mad at the full of the moon. It’s why “luna” is in our word “lunatic.”

Police arrived to find what the children had described to 911. The priest was dead on their living room floor, near the shattered window. He had wounds on his abdomen consistent with their story that he’d broken in through it. The wounds were graver because he was only wearing the ragged remains of a pair of pants. They were stretched to odd proportions. Forensics found traces of feces, swamp mud and dog or wolf hairs on them, and presumed he had been out in the swamp for a long time before the attack.

The children’s uncle confirmed their story and handed over the revolver that killed him. There were no bullets in the revolver, which was registered to the uncle. The suspect had a single bullet wound, and autopsy retrieved smashed remains of the bullet from his skull. Retrieval was difficult because the bullet was not made from typical armament metals, but rather silver. The uncle said the children had it forged as part of a game for Halloween. Tragic they had to use it. Doubtless the holiday will not have any joy for them.

Their uncle was treated for a concussion and related injuries. He had been thrown through a cabinet, where he dislocated his shoulder and sustained several gruesome diagonal scrapes on his chest. Officers on the scene did not feel the need to photograph them.

On full moons, one of those officers will occasionally wish he photographed the injuries. If you get him drunk, he will paw at his own chest, and if you get him especially drunk, he will explain how much they looked like the claws of a giant paw. But you’ll have to get him especially drunk. Otherwise, the officer will conclude what everyone else did – that the priest simply losing his mind one full moon is the only rational explanation. The poor lunatic didn’t even have a history of mental illness, but it can happen to anyone.

Bathroom Monologue: South Korea Bans/Teaches Evolution

A stunning reversal this morning as South Korea announced it will continue teaching the theory of evolution in its schools, but ban evolution itself from nature. If any life form is discovered to be changing over a course of generations, it will be gassed. If it evolves against the gas, men with heavy boots will be dispatched. Children will be given meal vouchers and a copy of Jurassic Park.

The teaching of evolution has been a controversy for some years in South Korea, which boasts Asia’s largest per capita Christian demographic. The practice of evolution has been less controversial, its tide more or less halted by concrete and Lysol.

Archaeopteryx. Confirmed dead.

Sources disagree over how the controversy began. Sources within the South Korean education system report the dispute emerged over depiction of the archaeopteryx, a primitive bird, as an example of evolution. Sources on anonymous message boards report the dispute emerged over "how shitfuckingly gey teh bibel is."

The truth is a toss-up; a matter of faith. Even conservationists are split over the move to ban evolution from the country. Some see it as a denial of a principle of life, an impractical march against what begat us, or even a refusal of God’s lasting creativity. Others see it as the best way to preserve life. Nancy Atweiler, a native Korean of sixty generations, says, "If you want to save the Asiatic Black Bear, you've got to stop it from adapting. What if it evolves into the Asiatic Hot Pink Bear? Then your Black Bear is extinct. Evolution is a heartless murderer and must be stopped."

Experts estimate that natural selection kills trillions of organisms per year, more than handguns, automobiles and illicit drugs combined. “In fact,” says Chung Jong-kwan of Hanyang University, “Handguns and automobiles are just a symptom of the problem that is natural selection. Natural selection can pretty much take credit for anything dying. It's nature's bureaucrat.”

Beige Countries: places where evolution happens.
Red Dots: dunno.

So far only South Korea has made explicit legislation to ban evolution. There are unofficial anti-evolution measures in other nations, such as Vatican City which applies celibacy to counteract evolution’s sexually transmitted issues, but these motions are the minority. China was previously expected to lead the way on anti-evolution legislation with its one-child policy, but caved to the Evolution Lobby. At present, the United States, Germany and Russia have a laissez-faire policy towards evolution, but sources within the Obama administration claim the president is, "willing to adapt."

Bathroom Monologue: The Newsroom Day Two of Two: The Support

“We need the past to be brighter than the invisible darkness of future. We need a history of heroes to let us know that bravery is possible. A Greatest Generation and a century of inventors and soldiers and firemen leave us with the belief that many humans have the potential for action, not merely one president or general or saint. We need a canon of many saints who slump towards us. The photo of the many men raising the flag on Iwojima, the tales of many men running into the towers on 9/11, and that the Constitutional Congress was the labor of many minds rather than a gift to a lone Moses - these things tell every man and woman that history beckons widely.

“And we need to feel like we’re failing, because any other feeling will lead us to complacency. For whatever amalgam of reasons, we are the most likely nation to pursue self-improvement. By harkening to the great decisions, of Cronkite weighing against the Vietnam War and Murrow standing up to McCarthy, we invite a generation to seriously look at what present mistakes and evils are going unchallenged. The truth is that history assures we will always have made great decisions, and human nature assures we will always have great decisions we are not making. If history can goad us into living better, then we ought to lose our feet in its tide.

“A hundred years ago we saw Europe at war and could not let the forces of democracy be slaughtered. Today we see blood running in the streets of the Middle East and find ourselves too tired, too weary, too taxed and afraid, and ultimately too confused to answer the simple question of whether we should attempt to stop it.

“You were telling an audience to do more than sit, and for all the current anchors and writers and bloggers to do more than spend twenty-three hours of the day asking whether a single mother eight states away was a good parent. Using the past as a prop to coerce us into thinking we’re failing? We needed that, because we are failing, and if the truth won’t convince us of it, we’ve got to find other means.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Newsroom Day One of Two: The Attack

“When exactly was the United States of America a moral nation? When it interred a million Asians? When it only went to war against the Nazis because it had been bombed? Or perhaps it was in our golden days, when it was slaughtering natives and receiving shipments of blacks to pick cotton. We didn’t go to war for moral reasons. We went to war because we wanted Texas, or didn’t want Spain interfering with our interference in Cuba, and the newspapers were right there toadying. Benjamin Franklin was the first great American op-ed writer and he was such a stooge for the establishment they almost let him write the Constitution.

“This illusion! This illusion you have that the American public was ever informed. There was more than a century when the only reliable way to get a presidential candidate’s platform was if he happened to visit your town. And the Founding Fathers knew people were ignorant and never expected better from them, and so while they enshrined freedom of the press, they also institutionalized the Electoral College for Congress and a Presidency – a private crop of people who would select another private crop of people to decide everything while most of the country tried to survive the flu. Maybe, maybe the second private crop of people decided things for moral reasons, or maybe they fed into a Military Industrial Complex that Lyndon Johnson warned the entire country of live on television and still no one did anything meaningful about.

“So tell me when America knew what it was doing. Was it when we were scalping the natives for government credit? Was it when we were enslaving anyone even descended from an African? Was it when we dropped an atomic bomb on private citizens? When did we qualify as the greatest country in the world, who is the greatest country in the world now, and why on earth would we want to be that thing again?”

Bathroom Monologue: Real News

“No news anchor has ever been off television for three years and returned. If you terminate me, you’re right that the three-year non-compete clause will kill my television career. You’re wrong that I won’t be able to hit back, though.

“I get paid enough to have lawyers who have parsed this clause, and there is nothing preventing me from going to Youtube and ripping you apart. More people watch a funny cat video than your leading sitcom. Now, this won’t hit with the internet-illiterate part of our audience, but it will poison the 18-25 demo your advertisers are terrified about. If you think I can’t get an audience, you’ve never seen a famous person go inflammatory online before.

“I can take my claims to the NY Times Op-Ed and The Huffington Post, and my exit will be the top story on every other network, but that’ll be a blip in a promotional tour. The book I write about you will sell more copies for every move you try to make to discredit it, and it will go digital-first, with links and social networks that will draw anyone with a Kindle or iPad to new media. Don’t be surprised if Facebook signs me as their first anchor for their first exclusive on-site programming, where I will get to cover any story I want. If that comes to pass, I sincerely hope that I get to cover your resignation from this network.”

Conservatives Moving to Canada, and Other Wastes of Your Time

A week later, what haunts me from the pilot is the line,
"People choose the facts they want now."

Last week a different sort of news story took over the internet. On Twitter, a few apparent Conservatives claimed that if Obama defeats Romney in the upcoming presidential election, they will move to Canada. The users were not politicians, office-holders, or actually individuals of any note. They were merely people who said dumb things online. Their tweets were copied and pasted into mega-posts and ran as feature stories on sites I won’t name because I don’t want to send them further traffic.

This wasn’t the first time that the random opinions of people you never cared about before and will never care about again trended in social media. I first noticed it in March after the Hunger Games premiere, when a few bigots complained on Twitter that characters had been cast as black. That they were actually black in the novels didn’t matter to them. That there were very few people tweeting this and that none of the individuals had any significance didn’t matter to editors, who ran stories mocking their ignorance and pretended that the three or four quotes they’d found represented a large block of people.

After the “Moving to Canada” nonsense, I was disturbed at the rise of a new form of non-news: the story about someone of no significance who said something ignorant. Not who ran a KKK rally in front of a Mosque, not who protested en-masse at Wall Street, not who banned a minority’s customs or shot at soldiers. It’s much more worrisome than CNN pandering that “viewers tweeted this” about their headline story. Here, the feature is: “RANDOM GUY SAYS DUMB THING.”

"But the NYTimes needs those clicks!"

I’m used to (and sick of) the non-news story about a celebrity saying something offensive. Things Mel Gibson has said while inebriated have received more press than entire civil wars in Africa. It’s gossipy entertainment of some sort, and toxic of many other sorts, and largely a waste of the fourth estate.

These Twitter-quote stories are an expansion of celebrity infotainment. I understand that Gibson’s anti-Semitic remarks and movie-goers’ racism can be starting points for conversations about important social topics.

Except, they tend to spur very few conversations. I would have been blown away if Buzzfeed had featured a single journalist tracking down a single Conservative tweeter, finding out why they had radical misconceptions about Canada and Obama, culminating some sort of human exchange. But there is no dialogue with these individuals, only electronic shouting, and the Comments beneath such articles are full of partisan vitriol. The “Moving to Canada” story became an excuse for my Liberal friends to call Conservatives stupid all weekend. They were doing it anyway. This way they were only managing to do it more while being assured they learned nothing from reading the laziest possible news story.

It was hard not to line this “news story” up with the debut of HBO’s The Newsroom. The “Moving to Canada” nonsense was a sort of fodder for Liberal condescension, much as The Newsroom fodder for super-Conservative condescension. It’s hard not to reflect on the show’s plea for news media to focus on stories that matter. It’s also hard not to reflect on the Gawker columnist who told Aaron Sorkin that there should be a show about her site.

Bathroom Monologue: Lovably Bland, No More

“You were perfect: bland to the point of absolute trustworthiness. Innocuous. Anodyne. Perpetually informed, and informing without opining. You were the tap water of nightly news. Where other people had flavor that carried chemicals and calories, you were crystal clear, something you could drink, cook with, even wash your hands with.

“Now they’re washing their hands of you.

“You just had to take a stand? How many wars did we stay neutral on? How many scandals? Our office got bomb threats and you never editorialized. We were doing so well. I mean, minus the bomb threats.

“So well until you spoke up on an issue. Not even an important one! You didn’t change any minds, except the advertisers, four of which have already left, and others are following them to the door.

“You can’t take it back; no one’s going to trust that you aren’t a person anymore. We’ve got to spin this issues-liberal, or maybe spin it centrist-conservative, because if you don’t pander, no audience is coming in to fill this gap. You’ve got the afternoon to pick some passions. Tonight you’re either turning into a pundit or a pumpkin. Glass slipper’s off the foot.”