My Favorite Books That I Read in 2018

Books! Why would you bother living without them? Even slowed down by life and depression, this turned into one of my favorite reading years thanks to some stunning debuts and absolute gems in my backlog. In the post-Christmas haze I've gathered up some scary stories, a Pulitzer winner, a New York Times favorite, and novellas and a lovable killing machine for you. Let's read.

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

This is an Epic Fantasy about the real world destroying your adolescent notions of what matters. For the first chunk of the book, Rin throws herself into life at a military academy, exploring connections between drugs and the gods. The worst things in her world are an unfair teacher and her equivalent of a Draco Malfoy bully. But then she graduates and has to serve alongside her classmates in a brutal war with civilian death tolls and a nightmarish parallel to the Nanjing Massacre. The book lets us take Wizarding School tropes for granted and then rips them in half with reality. Hopefully one one reading this ever has to deal with the horrors of war, but Rin's revelation is an extreme version of the experience of so many people who hide from reality inside education systems and then have to confront the world. From this conceit, Kuang creates one of Fantasy’s greatest origin stories, showing us how Rin grows from desperate, to ambitious, to vengeful, to ruthless. We see all of the social pressures and life events that forge her into one of her world's great villains.

Recommended Reading List of Short Stories 2018

This was a year that was improved so much by short fiction. Stories I could finish in the waiting room at the doctor's, or on the train ride to helping someone with their hardship. They fit into so many openings of life. And there were such strong developments in the field this year, especially the opening of Robot Dinosaurs, a magazine that brought frequently funny and uplifting stories to a field that too often neglects them.

If you want to keep up with short fiction, I strongly recommended following reviewers you trust, starting with A.C. Wise and Charles Payseur. I fell behind in reviewing short fiction this year, but never stopped reading.

So whether you're reading stories for awards, or reading to feel less alone in the universe, here are some things you shouldn't miss. These are more stories than can fit on any one ballot, but that's the fault of awards, not storytellers.

My 2018 Publications

It's been a busy year! Most of my writing time this year has gone into the hardest novel I've ever written, which was a heck of a climb, and left me a better writer than I've ever been before. 2018 is my first year having something published my Uncanny Magazine, the first year I had a story get featured on Boing Boing, and the first year an editor accepted my story *in person*. It makes me feel fortunate both to have such supportive markets, and to be working in a time when so many other inspiring writers are putting out work.

I have three stories eligible for awards in 2018, as well as two non-fiction pieces I'm particularly proud of.

Fiction

Tank!

(~900 words)

Diabolical Plots, June 1st

Free to read at this link.

A sapient tank tries to make friends at their first Sci Fi convention.

Buyers' Remorse and Seven Slain Cause 'Adorable' Robot Dinosaur Stock to Plummet Tuesday

(932 words)

Robot Dinosaurs, May 25th

Free to read at this link.

A small town newspaper chronicles how the perfect holiday gift backfired at a local retailer.

 

Fascism and Facsimiles

(~900 words)

Fireside Magazine, June

Free to read at this link.

Two henchpeople learn the hero they've always fought is colluding

with their employer, and they have a crisis of faith in evil.

Non-Fiction

The Stories Our Games Tell Us: Excellent Game Narratives of 2017

Uncanny Magazine, January

Free to read at this link.

On the wildly diverse kinds of stories and storytelling in modern games.
Includes Pyre, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice, Night in the Woods,
Divinity Original Sin 2, Hollow Knight,
What Remains of Edith Finch, and NieR: Automata.

The Expendable Disabled Heroes of Marvel's Infinity War

Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, September

Free to read at this link.

On the MCU's historic failure of writing people with disabilities
and how it culminated in exploitation throughout their most popular film.

I can't talk about upcoming 2019 publications yet, but have some announcements coming. Thanks to everyone for your support!

At the World Fantasy Convention in Maryland This Weekend

I'm in Baltimore, Maryland this weekend for the World Fantasy Convention. It's a lovely convention packed with brilliant writers. I'll be out in public as much as possible, and I'll also be on a special panel Saturday afternoon.

Monsters and the Monstrous

Saturday, 4:00 PM

Hannah Strom-Martin (Moderator), Julie C. Day, Aliette de Bodard, Teresa Frohock, John Wiswell

Monsters have existed as long as humans have made myths. But what makes a monster truly horrifying? A look at the lines between myth, horror, privilege, class, gender, and more. Discuss the panel online using the hashtah #MonsterMonstrous.

Hope to see you all here!

Reviewing The Mummy, The Mummy, The Mummy, and The Mummy

My first memories of The Mummy are parody. It feels like every syndicated cartoon had an episode with a pyramid and an angry zombie in bandages shambling after the heroes. It's one of the aesthetics up there with Dracula's fangs and cape, or Jason's machete and hockey mask, that you know some store will try to sell you every October.

But I'd never actually seen the movies that popularized the concept. To end my Halloween List this year, I visited the four big Mummy movies: the 1932 original, Christopher Lee's 1959 remake, the Branden Fraser 1999 action film, and Tom Cruise's most recent mistake.

Friends, there were surprises.

The Mummy (1932)

The Halloween List: Veronica and... Veronica?

Let's talk about two great movies.

They both came out in 2017.

They both came out in August of 2017.

They're Spanish-language.

They're both Horror movies.

They're both called "Veronica."

Yeah, somehow a Horror movie got a doppleganger. They caused a SEO nightmare for any of us not in their home countries. One came out in Spain and the other in Mexico, and both were extremely difficult to import to the U.S. until Netflix added them. The thing is that these two movies are utterly excellent and nothing alike.

And Netflix added them both in the same month, just to further the doppleganger curse.

The Halloween List: The Haunting (1963) and Kwaidan (1964)

Previously: My Friend Dahmer and Suicide Club

The Haunting (1963)

This has to be up there with the best of black-and-white supernatural films, neck-and-neck with the classic Frankenstein. It’s based one of the all-time great novellas, Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, about researchers who study whether a notoriously haunted house has anything true to its legends. Jackson inspired Matheson, King, and an army of other Horror writers to write similar stories, yet hers holds up thanks to fierce psychology. The movie focuses on Eleanor, a psychically susceptible woman carrying misplaced guilt over the death of her mother, who was always demanded too much of her time and stifled her growth – and who died the one time Eleanor ignored her.

It’s a slow burn that is well worth the time you put in. Everyone has a strong personality that the house is going to bend. The mansion itself is gorgeous, and only feels more old-fashioned and unwelcome in 2018. It doesn’t need cobwebs and dungeons. It has excessive signs of wealth that nobody wants anymore, and they’re all freshly cleaned. And when we get our special effects, they are remarkable for their time. There’s an effect where a door pulses inward as though it’s a giant heart beating with the life of a ghostly building, that frankly is one of the coolest practical effects I’ve ever seen.

Mental Illness in Horror: My Friend Dahmer & Suicide Club

Previously: Blumhouse's Halloween.

I love Horror, but too much of it views mental illness as a bottomless well of origin stories for killers. It's disappointing that Horror still views "crazy" as a synonym "villain" when we live in a world where so many people with mental illness are abused, evicted, and killed.

Today I want to look at two very powerful films that have different angles on mental illness. The first actually asks us to sympathize with the notorious Jeffrey Dahmer.

My Friend Dahmer (2017)

This is almost the prologue to a Horror movie. Based on the comic of the same name, My Friend Dahmer is about the years of Jeffrey Dahmer’s life right before he became a serial killer. It’s seldom merely morbid, offering a profoundly human vision of a confused, neuroatypical young man who had a brief chance to change. It focuses on the group of prankster friends Dahmer fell in with, jocular but not cruel.

At the start of the movie, Dahmer collects road kill and other dead animals in his shack, where he dissects them and reduces them to bones. It looks like he’s on the path to becoming a serial killer already, although he hasn’t made the typical jump to harming animals yet. But his father discovers the shack and demolishes it. Dahmer is infuriated, but his father sits him down and says he sees himself in the boy. There’s deep irony in this heart-to-heart chat about the importance of making friends and not isolating yourself, because his father thinks he’s just on the road to being an unhappy middle-aged man like himself.

That irony is lost on Dahmer, who then tries to fit in with the goofballs he knows at school, creating an incredibly unlikely friendship that sublimates his darker impulses. He’s willing to embarrass himself publicly in ways the other boys aren’t. That makes him a legend to them, and gives him an outlet he needs as the rest of his life starts to fall apart.

The Halloween List: Blumhouse's Halloween (2018), the Best Since John Carpenter's Original

Previously: the classic Prom Night.

This is the best made of the Halloween sequels. Halloween 2 in 1981 attempted to tell what happened immediately after the original film, and Halloween H20 attempted a soft reboot to address the kind of trauma Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) was still processing. Both were equally unsatisfying in trying to expand on the simplicity of the original.Blumhouse's Halloween surpasses them by naturally playing with the archetypes of the original. Laurie has grown into the new Dr. Loomis, a reclusive gun nut waiting for the night her attacker might return, and has left a failed family in her wake. That gives us a cast with their own suburban lives to be turned upside on another fateful Halloween night.

The Halloween List: Prom Night

Previously: Upgrade and Short Night of Glass Dolls

I put off watching Prom Night for years because it was lumped in with those misogynistic punishment Slashers. How good could it really be if the prom scene in Carrie is more famous than this entire movie dedicated to proms? I imagined Jamie Lee Curtis would lead a cast of girls getting massacred for flirting. But that’s not what happens here.

The premise is standard issue: a masked killer stalks a high school on Prom Night. Even in 1980, this wasn’t breaking a lot of ground. The funny thing about Slasher films is they weren’t originally Conservative punishment fantasies. Prom Night is about a small group of friends who, when they were very young, accidentally killed a classmate and ran to hide from the consequences. Someone witnessed the death but never spoke about it. He’s only returned on the eponymous night of their prom for revenge. The killer is attempting to punish these teens for the thing they buried in their pasts.

The Halloween List: Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971) and Upgrade (2018)

Previously: Tragedy Girls, Evil Eye, and What Have You Done to Solange?

Today I offer you two movies, separated by nearly fifty years, with two very different approaches to paralysis. One is a suspenseful Giallo about being mistaken for a cadaver. The other is an action movie that would love to forget disability even exists.

Short Night of Glass Dolls (1971)

Gregory Moore isn’t dead, but the morticians don’t know that. His body is discovered in a garden one morning in Prague by a gardener who only cares about not getting blamed for a homicide. Moore is actually totally paralyzed, unable to speak or so much as blink or move an eye. He’s mistaken for an unusually warm dead body, and morticians study him trying to figure out what’s wrong with the cadaver. If they don’t figure it out, he could be buried alive, or accidentally killed on an autopsy table.

He struggles to think of how to alert someone for help, and tries to comb his memories for what caused all of this. Because of his condition, he can’t act on the immediate conflict. The movie punts, using his memories to flashback and tell the story of what happened before this morning. Moore had a girlfriend who abruptly disappeared, and with police refusing to help, he infiltrated the seedier parts of Prague’s society for answers. It brought him into the proximity of some grim murders, although he didn’t notice them at first and didn’t realize what peril he was in.

Horror's History with Violence Against Women, feat. Tragedy Girls, Evil Eye, & What Have You Done to Solange?

Previously: The Lobster and The Killing of the Sacred Deer

Every October I devote at least one blog post to Giallo films, but I have to deviate this year.

Giallo is a fascinating genre, and I owe Ryan Boyd for helping me jump into it. These are Horror movies about people who are guilty of something, or who got too close to the orbit of crime to wash the dirt off of them. Giallo lets its protagonists be wrong in ways no other sub-genre of Horror does.

But they are also sleazy, eager to sexualize young women and assault them in ways that can be even more off-putting than American Slashers. Some of the most lauded Giallo have problematic art to how they like to destroy girls. This month, after a year of #MeToo and yet another suspect of sexual violence being voted onto the U.S. Supreme Court, I have to interrupt the Giallo vibes a bit. Horror has too few ladies who get to be the killer and be proud in the way it lets Freddy, Jigsaw, and Pennywise.

So today we're going to look at two Giallo films and how they treat women - but only after we look at The Tragedy Girls, a Horror Comedy about a pair of BFFs who are tired of waiting around to be filler victims. These girls are going to become the killers, and get famous off of it.

Tragedy Girls (2017)

Tragedy Girls doesn't care that the bar for women in modern Horror is to be strong heroines who fight against cruelty. It happily picks two teen girls, who are petty and sometimes hilariously short-sighted, and makes them both the lead characters and the killers. The opening of the movie is one of them pretending to neck with a local boy in the efforts to fish out a serial killer.

Oh, they don't want to stop they killer. They want to catch him and study under him. This business is hard and they want professional advice.

The Halloween List: The Lobster and The Killing of the Sacred Deer

Jump Back To: Office, Unfriended: Dark Web, and Calibre

Finally I’ve gotten around to seeing the works of Yorgos Lanthimos! I’ve heard about the Greek director for what feels like a decade, but never got my hands on his movies. Today we’re taking in a double feature of his two most recent works from A24: The Lobster and The Killing of the Sacred Deer. They manage to feel strongly like they have to be A24 movies, while also not being quite comparable to any other A24 movies. My biggest takeaway was a need to see a third Lanthimos movie just to get a grasp on his style.

The Lobster (2015)

In the midst of a dystopia, people who don’t love anyone are shipped in droves to hotel-like centers for re-education. They are given 45 days to fall in love or else they will become animals. For more than half the movie we don’t know what the outside world is like, and wonder if the entire planet is a series of dystopic hotels like this, split up by farms of former humans.

The Halloween List: Office (Korean), Calibre, & Unfriended: Dark Web

Previously: Ghoul and Erased

Office (2015)

From now on whenever someone asks me whether I prefer the British or American Office, I’ll answer, “The Korean.”

Hong Won-chan’s Office is a movie holding a massive beef with corporate culture. Before the title card we get a deliberate pairing of scenes: a mentally shattered office manager going home for the evening and murdering his family, followed by a temp worker breathlessly sprinting to work the next morning to check in on time. That’s Office’s thesis statement: fear for your job is stronger than fear for your life.

The Halloween List: Ghoul & Erased

Previously: Thelma, Annihilation, and The Endless

We're taking a brief break from movies today to spotlight two Horror miniseries. One is from India, about terrors occult and governmental. The other is an anime that brings terror into Time Travel. Need something to binge this Saturday?

Ghoul (2018)

In a dystopic future, India has divided into multiple states, some secular, and some religious, cracking down with strict censorship rules. It’s all intended to reduce terrorism and general violence. It has all failed, and the fascistic government continues burning children’s books and searching random civilians to send to black site prisons. Ghoul takes place at one of those black site prisons, where the latest prisoner and interrogation subject has more than knowledge. He’s possessed by a demon that wanted to get in.

It feels like an overdue topic for Horror, which prides itself on grasping reality’s sharp edges. Black sites are real nightmares, scarier than any serial killer. The prospect of the torture crew that runs such a place being mentally toyed with and haunted by an invasive presence could carry its own movie. The tensest scenes are brilliantly constructed, like a power outage during which one worker tries to see around a torture chamber with the minuscule illumination of a blow torch. The show has ample tricks to fill up its few episodes, building to an ending that had my little group cheering.

The Halloween List: Thelma, Annihilation, and The Endless

Previously: Pyewacket, The Meg, and Hold the Dark.

Today I have three winners for you. Helping get the taste of Hold the Dark out of my mouth are three masterfully made movies, and two of the best Cosmic Horror films ever made. After years of people wishing for anything close to In the Mouth of Madness, we got both Annihilation and The Endless in the same year. And yet I'll come across as ungrateful and say that as much as I enjoyed them, it's Thelma that stuck with me the longest.

Thelma (2017) 

Somewhere between Carrie and The Omen lies Thelma. This Scandinavian movie follows a young woman who’s going off to university for the first time and discovering herself – and discovering that something is wrong with her. Over the course of a superb slow burn we learn about strange events that happened during her childhood, and how her parents insisted on quietly doing nothing about them. It seemed to work at the time; those events seemed to stop.

Those events aren’t repeating, and with them seemingly safely in her past, Thelma has a chance at a life. She goes out to party, meets a girl she immediately crushes on, and starts to become an independent person. There are hours of class, and she has to deal with jackasses for the first time, but she’s adapting. It’s the beginning of a promising life, one interrupted by sudden seizures and nightmarish delusions. These things are starkly different than what we learn happened in her childhood.

The Halloween List: Pyewacket, The Meg, & Hold the Dark

Previously: Nicholas Cage's Mandy, A24's Slice, and Summer of '84.

Talk about three intensely different movies. Today I've got a demon summoner, a giant shark, and a veteran-turned-Slasher. And surprisingly, The Meg is not the worst movie I watched for today.

Let's dive in, starting with the overlooked gem that is Pyewacket.

Pyewacket (2018)

I’ve been giving more IFC films a look since they released Devil’s Candy. Pyewacket had a very quiet premiere in March – so quiet that I only heard about it in a random thread on Dreadit.

It follows a single mother and daughter handling the trauma of the father’s death. The two are driven far apart by their pain, and the daughter seeks comfort in cheesy occultism. After a particularly horrible fight with her mother, she performs a ritual asking for her something to happen to her mother, but no lightning strikes. It’s a bit of runtime later when she starts hearing strange noises around the house. Whatever listened to her prayer seems to have followed her home.

The atmosphere of Pyewacket approaches A24 levels of tense authenticity. It’s shot in a real house bordering real woodland in Autumn, and the shots feel cold enough to make you put a jacket on. It’s edited with enough quiet, and a strong balance of soft, eerie sounds against sharp and abrupt ones. The actors couldn’t ask for a better indie production to walk into. These surrounding details earns confidence much faster than the plot.

The Halloween List: Mandy & Slice & Summer of '84

We started off October with A Quiet Place and Hereditary, two of the biggest Horror hits of the year. Today I'd like to talk about three of the smaller indie hits that barely got "Limited" theatrical releases. Instead they got their buzz on VOD, a space I'm overjoyed to see become a garden for off-beat Horror. Just because Netflix and SyFy don't want you doesn't mean you're doomed.

Mandy (2018)

Mandy is an exquisite train wreck. It is a movie that takes forever to do anything, then soaks the screen in torrents of gore. Just when you feel like you’re wasting your time, it provides a shot or a quote or a devastating smile that leaves you flailing. When my friends and I finished the movie, we were in shock not because of the chainsaw fight or the skull crushing, but because of the devastatingly silly final image.

Mandy is a retro Grindhouse movie, layered in effects to mimic the feel of trippy, ultraviolent revenge movies of the 70s. There’s a little Evil Dead, and a little Hellraiser-- actually there’s a lot of Hellraiser; the demonic biker gang look like they’re from Pinhead’s high school class. The fig leaf of a plot is that Nicholas Cage plays a lumberjack with a Metal-head girlfriend. The local cult leader decides he likes that girlfriend, and summons his cult and a local gang of demons to abduct her. Cage must go on a journey for gory revenge without ever once wiping his face.

The Halloween List: A Quiet Place, Emelie, and Hereditary

I'm kicking off The Halloween List this year with one of my favorite hidden gems, and two of the biggest Horror movies of 2018. 2018 has been so long that it's easy to forget A Quiet Place even came out back in April, right?

All three of these films attack the family in very different ways. A Quiet Place is about family surviving in a country that's destroyed; Emelie is about a family that thinks it's safe until they hire the wrong babysitter; and Hereditary is about a family haunting itself. Each is powerful, but which kind of conflict is the most effective on you?

A Quiet Place (2018)

I have been waiting a damned long time for A Quiet Place. Horror has a troubling history of relegating disabled characters to the roles of villains. I wrote about that phenomenon for Fireside Magazine last year. You can take solace in the well-meaning portrayals of Wait Until Dark and Silver Bullet, but those are moves with abled actors cripping it up, and screenplays that pander. They could never get beneath the surface.

Millicent Simmonds is a deaf actor, and she’s the emotional core of this movie. She plays Regan, the oldest child in one of the few families to survive an invasion of monsters. The monsters hunt on sound; they can hear a toy space ship from miles away, and be there in seconds. Regan has saved the family, because since they all know ASL, they know how to communicate and live without speaking. They walk into town to scavenge on paths of sand to quiet their footsteps. They have adapted.

The Halloween List for 2018

Happy October, everyone! This is my favorite month of the year. The leaves are turning, the air is fresh, and pop culture is overrun by spooky things. Today I'm hanging a ghost named Gus on my front door, and revealing this year's Halloween List.

The Halloween List is my annual blogathon reviewing scary movies. The rule is that every movie has to be a first-time viewing for me. I spend most of the year saving these films up. Each year is packed with interesting scary movies between Hollywood, domestic indies, and international film, but I'll also try to cover some things from Horror's past, like Kwaidan and the original Haunting. It all kicks off on Wednesday with some titles you probably recognize.

Wednesday, October 3: A Quiet Place & Emelie & Hereditary

Friday, October 5: Mandy & Slice & Summer of '84

Monday, October 8: The Meg & Pyewacket & Hold the Dark

Wednesday the 10th: Thelma & Annihilation & The Endless

Friday the 12th: A break from movies for two special miniseries: Ghoul & Erased

Monday the 15th: Unfriended: Dark Web & Office & Calibre

Wednesday the 17th: The Lobster & The Killing of the Sacred Deer

Friday the 19th: The Evil Eye & What Have You Done to Solange? & Tragedy Girls

Monday the 22nd: Upgrade & Suicide Club & Short Night of Glass Dolls

Tuesday the 23d: Blumhouse's brand new Halloween (2018)

Wednesday the 24th: Prom Night

Thursday the 25th: My Friend Dahmer & Suicide Club

Friday the 26th:  Kwaidan & The Haunting

Monday the 29th: Veronica & Veronica, the strange case of two movies from the same year with the same title and nothing in common.

October 31st, Halloween itself: The Mummy (1932), The Mummy (1959), The Mummy (1999), and The Mummy (2017). A special four-part feature on all four iterations of the classic Mummy franchise.

What looks good to you? What are you watching this October?

Click here for Day One, with A Quiet Place, Emelie, and Hereditary!

Never Drown Alone: A Story of The Ring, Friday the 13th, and True Love

I'm busy enough that I don't write much fanfic anymore, but this summer I made a secret pact with Ryan Boyd. Pursuant to our pact, I wrote a story idea that I've been thinking about for years. It's a crossover between two Horror icons that requires you be fairly weird to enjoy it. 

Friends, I love being fairly weird. 

Ahead of all the Horror movie blogging I'll be doing in October, I want to share this with you. I call it...

Never Drown Alone

She was like the revenge of all the snarls of hair stuck in all the drains in all the world. There was more hair than skin, swirling out at all angles as she darted through the chlorine-reeking pool. Unlike the other students, she went lap after lap without ever coming up for air. Jason never saw her face.

A voice behind him taunted, “You haven’t done your laps.”

Jason knew better than to turn around, and he still did it. It was a reflex.

There was nobody there – not corporeally. How he hated ghost bullies. A red balloon floated in front of Jason’s eyes.

Pennywise chided, “What’s wrong? Do you need your mommy?”

Another voice said, “Don’t you know? He can’t swim.”

That one was Paimon. Pennywise and Paimon, the new popular kids in school. The popular kids always hunted in packs. You never knew when the next attack was coming.

They were both invisible, save for the balloon that drifted closer to Jason.

Jason held up his hands, and tried to swat the red balloon away. It burst, the sound echoing throughout the swimming pool, and he lost his balance for a moment. Someone shoved him hard and he stumbled toward the pool, careful to keep from falling in.

Pennywise asked, “Afraid you’ll drown again?”

Paimon said, “We’ll help you learn.”

Jason barely braced before the next shove came in a gust of fetid air. It was harder than any shotgun blast he’d ever felt, and sent him sprawling through the air. The humid warmth of the pool sprang up even before he hit it. Then he was underwater, that chlorine sting in his eyes, and up his nose, and filling his lungs. The water always got in Jason’s lungs.

This was drowning, and he thrashed, and in his idiot reflexes, tried to stab the pool. Pools didn’t bleed, and waving his arms, he barely got his nose above water, the stuff streaming through every hole in his mask. His eyes were muddied, and he couldn’t even see the invisible figures that blinded him.

Pennywise said, “Looks like you’re short another lifeguard.”

Their voices always sounded the same, harmonizing into laughter. He reached for them, and all he got was a handful of balloons. They didn’t float down here.

Paimon shouted, “What’s she doing?”

“Hey, fuck you—”

The world filled up with the sounds of bursting balloons, and Jason thought he went under again, but he was lifted up. Something caught his hand, like a thousand steely strings wrapping around his fingers. He sprawled forward onto the edge of the pool, groping for whoever had caught him, ready to ring Pennywise’s neck if this was another game.

There were no clowns, and no invisible ghosts laughing. There was only the sloshing of the water, and something dripping to his left.

Hair was tangled around his hand, and it writhed free, going back to its owner. It had pulled him out of the drowning. The figure of hair that had been swimming laps paused at the edge of the pool, and inside it, eyes darker than coal bored into him. It was like a power drill to the mind. It stung and was nice at the same time.

He was used to staring. He stared back. It was all he knew how to do to thank her.

The girl and all her hair dove back into the deep end without a word.

That was for the best. Jason had never been good at banter.

The Expendable Disabled Heroes of Marvel's Infinity War, live at Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction

It's my honor to have a piece in the Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction issue of Uncanny Magazine. Between Lightspeed and Uncanny Magazine, Disabled People Destroy has allowed voices from multiple marginalized communities to speak openly about the stories that matter most to us and the fandom community. The issue is packed with excellent stories and essays by the likes of Fran Wilde, Merc Rustad, and Nisi Shawl. I've been waiting for this issue for years.

My essay is about the representation of disability in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, particularly as it appears in Infinity War. Infinity War is the biggest nexus for MCU characters to date, and has a number of disabled characters in its cast: War Machine, Nebula, Bucky Barnes, and Thor are a few. Yet they're handled carelessly, either marginalizing them based on their disabilities, or seeking to erase those disabilities from view. It speaks to how few disabled people work on the Marvel films, how few write them and act in them, and it's time for that to change.

Marvel is celebrating their biggest box office hit and ten years of blockbusters. It's time for Rocket Raccoon to stop stealing disabled people's prosthetics.

You can read the entire essay for free right here.

You can buy the whole issue right here.

Thanks for reading! I have more good news for y'all coming soon.

New Story: "Fascism and Facsimiles" live at Fireside Magazine

I have one more story for you this summer! It's been a busy few months and I've capped them off with a new story at Fireside Magazine.

"Fascism and Facsimiles" is a superhero story about henchpeople. The world is about to learn that Captain Democracy isn't a great hero, but a sleeper agent for the evil organization Kommand. It might possibly be a parody of something, not that our heroes are aware. Two underlings at Kommand are startled to learn the guy who's been kicking their heads in for years is actually a co-worker. They're more surprised to learn just how evil their employers are. It's a story about work friendships and about the struggle to refuse to be complicit.

This is my third story at Fireside, following "Bones at the Door" and "A Silhouette Against Armageddon." I'm so happy to have another story find its home with them again.

You can read the story for free by clicking here.

My Readercon Schedule

I'll be in Massachusetts this coming weekend for Readercon! I've attended for years, but this is my first time doing programming with them. They have a long history of compelling conversations, and I'm excited to participate. This will also be the first convention where I've done a public reading! Come by for the worldwide premiere of my next short story.

Friday

4:00 PM

Room: Salon 5

The Bureaucracy of Fantasy

  Phenderson Clark, Alexander Jablokov, Victoria Sandbrook, Kenneth Schneyer (M), John Wiswell

Authors such as Daniel Abraham, Max Gladstone, and Ken Liu have received attention for incorporating bureaucratic concepts into their fantasy works, but fantasy frequently has bureaucratic underpinnings that escape notice because they're so familiar: the nuances of who inherits a title or a throne, the specific wording of a prophecy, detailed contracts with demons. Why do some bureaucracies feel more incongruous in fantastical contexts than others? What are some tricks for making dry, nitpicky topics exciting and comprehensible?

Saturday

3:30 PM

Room: Blue Hills

John Wiswell Reads Flash Fiction and Short Stories

I'll be bringing a couple of my favorite flash pieces, as well as a short story I've never shared in public before. It's a comedy about people dying on furniture. Hopefully the seating will be comfortable.

Sunday

12:00 Noon

Room: Salon 5

It Takes a Village to Raise a Protagonist

Andrea Corbin (M), Scott Lynch, Nisi Shawl, Graham Sleight, John Wiswell

Conflicts in speculative fiction often tend toward hyperindividualist solutions, but there are other ways to build those stories. Gene Roddenberry and Ray Bradbury both often wrote stories of cooperation in which the community is the protagonist. In Cory Doctorow's books, long sequences are devoted to the process of achieving consensus. What other stories center collaboration and cooperation, and what are some best practices for writers who want to explore these types of stories?

My 4th Street Fantasy Schedule

This weekend I'll be at one of my favorite cons, 4th Street Fantasy in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I love the location, the conrunners, and most of all, yelling about books with smart people on the panels. I'll be moderating on Friday afternoon, and being a mild-mannered panelist on Saturday. Come say hi!

Friday

4:00 PM

All the Things We Do That Aren’t Smashing Things 

Mary Robinette Kowal, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Chelsea Polk, Abra Staffin Wiebe, John Wiswell (M)

A discussion of all the ways we tell stories about building lives, civilizations, and legacies using anything but the edge of the sword. Why do we so often truncate our experience/expectations of fiction to revolve so firmly around the linked concepts of heroism and violence when there are so many other crucial aspects to being human? How has the fantasy genre dealt with this conundrum, and how have specific fantasists tried to approach it? How do we keep the discussion from degenerating into a prudish or performative rejection of the abstract concept of “violence” altogether, while affirming that there are other common and crucial ways of getting things done?

Saturday

3:30 PM

Complicity and Consequence in Interactive Narrative: Press ‘D’ to Feel Guilty!

Max Gladstone (M), Scott Lynch, Cat Manning, John Wiswell

A panel discussing the challenges and implications of attempting to inspire feelings of guilt, responsibility, or complicity for fictional activities/decisions in players of games and interactive fiction, also touching on the concept of vicarious responsibility when experiencing a more traditional narrative (if one laughs along with Corwin of Amber being a total bastard, does that make one a bad person?). Why do this? When is this a useful frame-breaking learning tool? When is it a cheap trick? Can we truly use fictional spaces to make people interrogate the decisions they make and the circumstances they dwell in? What are the practical and ethical limits of this sort of exploration?

New Story: "Tank!" is live at Diabolical Plots!

Are you ready for a new story? Because I've got a fresh one, just for you. "Tank!" is free to read over at Diabolical Plots.

This is the story of a sapient tank going to their first nerd convention. Comics books, anime, movies - most of us love them and want a community. The tank wants a community. More than anything, the hulking piece of military technology wants to make some friends.

The story is the result of a conversation I had with Max Gladstone at one 4th Street. I have to thank him for beta reading it, as well as my other beta readers, Paul Starr, Cass Williams, Merc Rustad, and Alison Wilgus. Their support helped me believe in a story that, so far, is touching a lot of people. Maybe more of us have been the tank than we admit.

Click here to meet the tank!

New Story Live at Robot Dinosaurs!

I'm thrilled today to announce the publication of "Buyers’ Remorse and Seven Slain Cause ‘Adorable’ Robot Dinosaur Stock to Plummet Tuesday."

It's part of a series of stories on the theme of robot dinosaurs edited by the wonderful Merc Rustad. My story follows a company that promises to turn unwanted electronics into adorable baby robo dinosaurs.

Naturally, nothing goes wrong.

You can read the story for free by clicking here.

Eight Tips for Better Conventions

Convention season is almost upon us. Later this week I'm flying to the Nebulas, and 4th Street and Readercon are right behind it. I'm excited to hang out, be on panels, and to see panels. Conventions are a source of joy, but also a source of anxiety. Over the years I've compiled a few tips on how to handle cons. They could help us all have a better time when we nerds congregate. Please consider, and thanks for reading!

Instead of: interrupting the panelists with what you think are insightful comments...

Try this: ...spend this time writing down your question so that, when the panel opens to audience interaction, you have something clear to say and don't ramble. People will remember a succinct question.

Instead of: walking ten feet outside the panel room and continuing your conversation in the middle of the hall, blocking everyone else trying to get to their next destination...

Try this:...invite your chat-buddy to an empty row of seats, or the bar or cafe, or to walk out of the hall and find a nook elsewhere that won't block traffic. Then talk to them for as long as you like as everyone else passes.

Convention Schedule for 2018

I've just booked my travel for this year's conventions. I can't believe all that travel is just a couple months away! I've got an exciting slate of destinations this year:

Nebula Weekend
May 17-20
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

4th Street Fantasy
June 22-24th
St. Louis Park, Minnesota

Readercon
July 12-15
Quincy, Massachusetts

World Fantasy Convention
November 1-4
Baltimore, Maryland

Please come join me if you're at any of these areas! I love meeting new people, and doubly like to meet long-time readers.

At present it looks like I'll be doing panels at half if not all of these conventions. There's a rumor I might be doing my first convention reading as well, which is exciting. Is there a story of mine you'd most like to hear me read, if you could be there?

Bathroom Monologues Movie Awards 2017

It's almost March 2018, so of course we're all talking about the best movies of 2017. Naturally I disagree with some of the Oscar winners. More naturally, I don't understand what some of the categories mean. But nothing shall dissuade me from telling a democratic body of people who devote swaths of their lives to film that their mass conclusions were wrong. So here we go!

The Robbed Award

Going to the movie that got no play last year

and is just as good as whatever won Best Picture

FENCES

Bathroom Monologue: The Do's and Don't's of Being a Host

NO: "I'm sorry the house is a mess."

YES: "Thank you for coming so late!"

NO: "I'm sorry I'm turning again. It's a full moon."

YES: "Thank you for gathering the rags that were once my clothes."

NO: "I'm sorry that I'm devouring you."

YES: "Thank you for being delicious."

The Stories Our Games Tell Us at Uncanny Magazine Today!

I have an article in the new Uncanny Magazine. What a way to start out the year.

It's one of the most positive articles I've ever written. Explaining why awesome things are awesome is one of my favorite pastimes, and here I've selected seven videogames released in 2017 to illustrate how great the medium has become for storytelling. Thanks to the tireless efforts of so many geniuses, we're seeing mental illness portrayed with new depth, player choice expanding, and stories that could never have been told in any other medium. This doesn't diminish my love of literature or film. It excites me to see this medium grasping more of its potential.

I'm too excited to share a table of contents with so many writers I admire, and to have published with Uncanny, one of my favorite magazines in the world. Let me know what you think of the article.

The new Uncanny is for sale right here.

You can read the entire article for free right here.