Please Don’t Be This Artist

In 2010 I saw a great movie that went totally under most people’s radars. Even I barely watched it, but caught the trailer and was intrigued enough to put it on my Netflix list. Among the movie’s many strong points was its soundtrack, which mixed ambient sound, classical music and modern instruments, turning some scenes very cheeky and others downright disturbing. I was excited to hear it over and over, to write to it, and to promote it to others. This is how I respond when I like music.

I’ve spent the last two years trying and failing to buy this soundtrack.

I won’t name the movie or its distributor because I don’t want to single out its composer for derision, nor will I name that composer. The day after I saw the movie, I searched for the soundtrack through Google, Amazon, and eventually tried iTunes and Youtube. I couldn’t find it for sale or streaming anywhere. I even resorted to the forbidden areas of the internet, without luck.

Figuring it had limited distribution (if any), I tracked down the composer’s recording label. Their website was a post-modern mess, so minimalistic that it took me what felt like an hour to find a contact feature. They never messaged me back, but I did find the composer’s social networks. When I discovered his Twitter account, I was elated.

He didn’t respond to any of my tweets, and I found that he’d set his account to Private, so I couldn’t read anything he said. I sent him a request to follow him.

It was 2011 before he accepted my request. In 2011, I still hopped on the opportunity. I tweeted at him that I enjoyed the score very much, and was there a way to buy it?

There was no response that day, week or month. A month later, I tweeted at him again. I couldn’t DM him because he wasn’t following me, but I didn’t mind that. It was also then that I noticed his account only tweeted every few months, when his music showed up in something. At that point there would be a single tweet, telling his hundred followers to go watch this movie or show. Because his account was set to Private, no one except his hundred followers ever saw this. It couldn’t show up in any keyword searches or conversations. And never in his accounts history had he actually responded to anyone about anything. He was unilaterally marketing to almost no one.

Within the last month I entered the most desperate and stupid ploy. Seeing that he’d tweeted within the last three minutes, I sent him one more @ message asking if his work might become available eventually. He’s never replied to it. Good chance, he never will. And that's fine - it's clearly a lost cause, and I'll leave him alone.

Maybe he doesn’t know how Twitter works. Maybe he can’t get the rights to sell the soundtrack and is too frustrated about it to talk to potential consumers. Maybe he’s almost blind and can barely use screens, or maybe he’s in a cult, or maybe he’s secretly a dog. I don’t know and I don’t want to judge this individual, but to judge this public appearance.

Specifically, everyone: don’t do this.

Maybe you’re so busy that you can’t reply to every fan comment, or you can’t check into social networks daily. That happens. But come on, the least you can do is:

1)      Don’t hide your promotion.

2)      Don’t refuse to engage with people who need help buying your stuff.

Now ideally, there’d be a 3), and to me, 3) is the most important.

3)      Be courteous to the people who like your art.

But I understand that 3) is tough for a lot of people for a lot of reasons, and nobody can sustain that all of the time. Even the nicest people have raw days. You’ll have a lot more, though, if you do the above.

Bathroom Monologue: Grandpa Defends Tolkien

“He should have just sent the eagles,” I said, making the greatest mistake of my week.

“Oh, you like the giant birds?” asked Grandpa. “I’m sure they would have been inconspicuous flying over several hundred miles of terrain that’s populated solely by armies, flying reptiles and the ghost of The Devil. That couldn’t go wrong.”

“Just fly straight to Mount Doom.”

“Because they wouldn’t look there?”

“They weren’t looking for the hobbits there!”

“Because they’re not twenty feet wide and flying overhead!”

“Then send the army.”

“Which is distinctly smaller than Sauron’s and lacks the home field.”

“They went anyway!”

“And they only won because the little boys destroyed the ring.”

“They could still go and distract him while the eagles fly over.”

“Again, giant birds fleeing battle to dive into one of his most sensitive locales would draw attention. Here.” At this point Grandpa made a circle with his index finger and thumb. He held it midway between him and his grandson. His left hand balled into a fist and loomed like a cobra preparing to strike over his head. “Try dropping anything into this hole while I use this hand to punch you in the face.”

“Grandpa!” He pushed all the way to the back of his bunk. “I didn’t know you took Lord of the Rings so seriously.”

“I don’t. Fantasy is for nancies. But Tolkien and I both served in the European theatre, and I’m not going to let people badmouth his work just because they like birds.”

Bathroom Monologue: Round One, OR, Amateur Boxing Advice

“So, the first round's in the books, and I just wanted to update you on what I learned about your opponent’s strengths. For instance, he’s really good at punching you in the head. Looks like he was born to do it. He’s got a great right, so maybe you should try dodging it next time so I can get a look at his left. His left is presently an enigma. Could be a pure southpaw for all I know.

“In terms of weaknesses, he really likes hitting you when you don’t him back, which would be a weakness if he seemed to get tired. But I don’t see how the human hand can be stronger than the human skull, so if it’s your strategy to pop one of his knuckles with your forehead, I mean, you’re the professional. God bless, and see you if you make through round two.”

Dark Knight Rises Podcast

So back on July 21, Nat Sylva and I hit the premiere of Dark Knight Rises, rushed home and recorded the timeliest podcast for Dark Knight Rises imaginable. It was comprehensive, covering the scripting, acting, ties to the previous films, the score, the handling of new and old characters - we were pretty proud of ourselves.

Today, on September 15th, the episode finally went on-god-damned-line.

It's been funny watching the relevance of this episode languish, as the opening weekend passed, and then the movie slipped from first place, and then from the top ten movies in the country, and is now well on its way to DVD. I could almost record a podcast about how doomed this podcast was.

Now, I don't want to point fingers (lies, I really do), but this is finally out of the archives. Spoiler-heavy, an in-depth discussion of one of the summer's biggest movies and a retrospective on Nolan's revival of the Batman franchise. You can download the episode totally free right here.

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."

Bonus: "A Worrisome Return" by Emma Newman

There’s a bonus on The Bathroom Monologues today! In addition to This Heavy World, we're hosting a tale from Emma Newman's Split Worlds. Emma is delightful lady, a longtime Twitter friend whom I finally met up with at WorldCon. She has a drop-dead reading voice, and has provided an MP3 reading for your additional entertainment. I'll let her set it up her story below.

This is the twenty-eighth tale in a year and a day of weekly short stories set in The Split Worlds. If you would like me to read it to you instead, you can listen here. This story is part of the build-up to the release of the first Split Worlds novel "Between Two Thorns" in March 2013. Every week a new story is released. You can find links to all the other stories, and the new ones as they are released here, where you can also sign up to receive each story free in your inbox every week (starting at the very first one).

A Worrisome Return
by Emma Newman

Aquae Sulis, 2002

Will searched for something familiar in his brother, but the man who walked through the front door bore little resemblance to the boy who'd left four years before.

Will was eight when Nathaniel had left for his great adventure and all he could remember about him was his superior strength. There were countless examples in his memory; being pinned down on top of wooden building bricks that left perfect rectangular bruises on his back and being crushed in a bear hug until he'd passed out.
   
He looked to his sister for solidarity but Imogen was beaming, no doubt hoping for a spectacular gift from their elder brother. Will was the only person in the household who seemed unhappy about his brother's return.
   
"Hullo," Nathaniel looked down at him as he crushed Will's knuckles against each other. "Still short I see."
   
"Hello Nathaniel," Will did all he could to hide the pain as they shook hands. "Still ugly I see."
   
Nathaniel laughed and released Will to clap him on the back. Will squeezed all the pleasure he could from staying on his feet despite his brother's efforts and followed the rest of the family into the drawing room.
   
"So," Father said as he poured sherry. "How was the trip?"
   
"Most enlightening," Nathaniel said.
   
"What was Paris like?" Imogen asked. "What's the latest fashion?"
   
"The only fashion worth noting in Paris," Nathaniel replied, "is that one should never appear to be concerned about fashion."
   
"He was probably too busy trying to get the dresses off them to notice anything useful," Imogen whispered in Will's ear.
   
Will tried to imagine a Paris ballroom full of beautiful women desperate to have their fashionable gowns removed but the fantasy collapsed when he thought of his brother being there.
   
The gifts for his parents were horribly boring; some kind of drink Will had never heard of for Father and Venetian glass for Mother. Imogen was given a necklace that glittered enough to make her happy and then Nathaniel fished out a small package from his travelling bag.
   
"And this is for my baby brother."
   
"I'm twelve."
   
"You'll always be the baby of the family though," Imogen said.
   
Will took the package and unwrapped the top layer to reveal tissue paper beneath. A row of tiny colourful dolls, wrapped in bright threads instead of clothes, lay within. "You got me dolls? I'm not a girl!"
   
Nathaniel laughed. "They're Guatemalan Worry Dolls. It's a custom I thought you'd appreciate."
   
"I've heard of these," Mother said, taking them from his hands to inspect them. "Oh they're adorable. Will, you whisper your worries to them and then tuck them under your pillow before you go to sleep."
   
He peered at them. Surely it was a trick. "Really? Why?"
   
"The natives believe the dolls worry for you so you don't have to," Nathaniel said. "And when you wake up in the morning the worries are gone."
   
"It's such a thoughtful gift," Mother said, handing them back to Will. "I think you should use them tonight. Now thank your brother."
   
***

Will woke in the night, alert and tense. There was a sound from the side of his bed so he peered over the edge. One of the worry dolls was lying on the floor, bathed in the light stretching under the door from the hallway. Thinking it had been pushed to the edge by his night time fidgeting he reached down, but the doll stood up and quivered before he reached it. Will snatched his hand back under the duvet as the miniature figure wobbled its way towards the door.
   
It was followed by another and then another. They were so small Will didn't feel them worming their way out from under his pillow. Casting long shadows, all six made their way to the door and wriggled under the crack beneath it.
   
Shaking, Will got out of bed and went out into the hallway. The dolls were heading for the door out of the nursery wing and into the main part of the house. He wasn't old enough to live there yet. But Nathaniel was. Just as he was about to curse his brother, the dolls lurched to the left and headed for Imogen's room instead.
   
Will followed them on tip-toe and pressed his ear against her bedroom door as the dolls wriggled beneath it.
   
He could hear her giggling and then the sound he hadn't missed at all; Nathaniel's low chuckle. His tormentors were reunited.
   
"Here comes the first one," Nathaniel said and sweat burst across Will's forehead at the thought of what he'd whispered to it. "What burdens are you carrying little fellow?"
   
Will heard his own worried whisper, the one he'd uttered to the doll earlier that evening. "What if I don't get any taller?"
   
"Oh, poor little William." The mockery in Imogen's voice made Will's stomach cramp.
   
"Ah, here's the next one," Nathaniel said. Will pressed himself tighter to the door as his breath seized in his chest.
   
"I'm worried I'll grow up to be just as stupid as my elder brother," the doll reported.
   
"What!"
   
Will covered his mouth with both hands to stifle his laughter.
   
"What if I have a nose like Nathaniel's?" Reported another doll. "What if I come back from my Grand Tour with as big a-" A thud cut off that one and no other dolls were invited to report in.
   
Will dashed back to his room, satisfied that he'd emerged from the prank as the victor. He knew Nathaniel hadn't changed and that there was no love behind the gift. His only regret was realising it after he'd whispered to the first doll.

Bathroom Monologue: This Heavy World

“World isn’t full of heaviness. It isn’t full of death and despair and failure. If it was, those things wouldn’t hurt so much. If the world was full of heaviness, nothing could drag you down. You’d be heavy in the middle of other great weights, and stay right where you were. If we plummet, it is because there are lighter things in this world, often above us, but isn’t the sky nice? Laughs, sharks, flatulence, sunny days, cool water, beaches, orgasms and overwritten poems. It’s a big place, of many masses.”

Saturn, Disability, and the Hugo Awards at ChiCon 7 - The Wrap-Up

THE ADLER

Good view for a Thursday.

A beautiful building right on the river, across from Chicago’s unparalleled skyline, was the perfect place to spend Thursday night. I spent sunset chatting about Hugo nominees and waiting for Saturn to become visible. While it was tiny even in the most powerful telescope we had, it was striking. Even when its figure is smaller than the tip of your pinky finger, you can make out its rings. Until then, I’d honestly thought that was an invention of cartoons, but it really does look like one of the glowing stickers I used to have on my wall as a kid.

While you’ve probably heard some complaints against the con-runners (and are about to read some more), they handled the Adler very well. Admission was free if you had your convention badge, and they rented eight buses to shuttle everyone to and from the planetarium for hours into the night.

ACCESSIBILITY ISSUES

While everyone working at the Hyatt Regency Chicago was courteous to me, I couldn’t recommend using the site again. Giving the floors arbitrary color names rather than numbers, and even less sensible themed names for the rooms (good luck finding “The Gold Coast Room” on “The Bronze Level”) were one thing, but the hotel is split into two towers that can only be navigated by three means:

1) a skybridge on the second floor where no convention events took place, requiring you to take either an escalator or a second, much slower elevator downstairs.

2) crossing the street outside on the ground floor, between a floor with three panel rooms and a floor with none.

3) crossing an underground bridge on the Bronze Level, where there were many panel rooms, including at least one that was only accessible up a set of stairs.

Complicate that with some elevators going down only to this set of colored floors, and some stairwalls only going this high, and you had a lot of baffled attendees walking indoor miles per day just to get lost. I expect to hurt when I’m at a convention, and had to set aside an hour every day to be in private over body tremors, but that’s my issue and I can handle it.

If they ever want to make a WorldCon Risk...

If you were in a wheelchair, though, you routinely had to cross to the other tower just to get downstairs and cross back to the tower you’d just been in to reach a room. That’s no reasonable way to ask someone to get downstairs. There have been reports of handicapped con-goers only being able to attend every other panel due to travel times within the Hyatt. They were rightly furious to make such long treks only to find a room with its own private set of stairs and no other point of entry. 

Especially at this point, I don't think outrage at con-runners is constructive. You can't fix architecture; you can only avoid patronizing it. WorldCon sites should be accessible to all attendees. Right now there are bids for 2015 between Florida, Washington and Finland. At none of the room-parties for these respective bids did I hear anyone pitch accessibility services. I’m hoping the post-con furor raises awareness. When you have over a thousand attendees, your location needs to start with being accessible.

THE HUGOS, AND A LITTLE SOMETHING

I am a longstanding and publicly-admitted cynic about awards shows. They are generally artificial and reek of politics-over-product. I can’t say that about the 2012 Hugos; at least half of the nominees claimed not to have written speeches thinking they would lose, and that same number looked genuinely shaken, stunned or overwhelmed. Whoever screamed in surprise when E. Lily Yu was announced for the John Campbell for Best New Writer was perhaps the single loudest I’ve ever heard in my life, and I’m told it was Yu herself.

There were a lot of class acts. Jim Hines won for Best Fan Writer, mostly for his amusing series on how women are objectified on book covers, and excused himself from the category for every future Hugo to ensure that more new voices would be recognized. Ursula Vernon (Best Graphic Story) gave an endearing ramble on how she entrusted her boyfriend with the ending to Digger, just in case she ever died before it finished. John Picacio was the only figure to swagger up to the podium, and while he hadn’t prepared a speech, he remembered in the six times he’d previously failed to win Best Professional Artist the names of artists he’d grown up on and wished had been recognized with their own Hugos. He waited about a decade just to name them from that podium.

This is Jim Hines.
As far as I know, this is not a degrading pose,
but he sure has a grip on that thing.

And as coldhearted as I am, Jo Walton almost got me to choke up. She deserved the Best Novel Hugo that she won for Among Others, but still seemed to be processing merely getting nominated. She me by recounting something Ian Osmond told her: "Lots of people have said Among Others is a love letter to fandom. Didn't you expect to get a reply?"

It was well worth the half hour traffic jam leading to the sole escalator back upstairs.

It was also at the Hugos that I had my highest point. It was perhaps the only time of the year I’d wear a tie, and the last day that I shaved, but I couldn’t help being myself. I sat with an exceptionally good-spirited group of guys, and we quickly fell into joking about great novels and bad Adam Sandler movies. When they asked what I did, I described my upcoming novel and they showed keen interest, though I didn’t know how keen. I just enjoyed making them laugh, because that’s one of my favorite things to do for other people, even if it’s at the expense of Deadman and Jason Todd.

It was as Jo Walton finished her acceptance speech that one of them leaned over to me, writing on a scrap of paper. He asked how to spell my last name. I told him, then asked what was up.

“I can’t wait to read your novels,” he said. “You’ve got a fan for life.”

I shook all of their hands and probably failed to express how much that meant to me. Exhausted and pretty sick with the syndrome at that point, I couldn’t have felt better.

I still want a Hugo, though.

Reading and Writing at ChiCon 7

Day Two of Three from the ChiCon 7 diary. Tomorrow I want to touch on disability issues at the hotel, the Hugo Awards, and seeing Saturn for the first time. Today is devoted to the public readings and private writings that go on at these sorts of conventions.

THE READINGS

I went to my share of readings over the weekend, and saw some very talented writers. The one that rocked me back in my chair was Mary Robinette Kowal, sharing “Locked In” from Apex, at the Broad Reading meeting. It’s a piece of flash fiction that captures Science Fiction, Horror, Tragedy and the Medical Thriller without succumbing to nearly any niche’s expectations, and it’s a great reminder of why Apex Magazine is a top resource in the industry.

I managed to make a total ass out of myself afterward by congratulating Kowal on that story and not realizing she was the same Mary Robinette Kowal up for a Hugo for the superb “For Want of a Nail.” It’s great when you realize the two people you’re a fan of are the same person. Not so great when you realize you're an idiot.

This is not two people.
Some people have a harder time learning this than others.

Broad Reading was a neat setup, housing over a dozen quick readings from individual members in an all-female writing group of all levels of expertise. Most official readings were for one person. Jo Walton, who won the Hugo for her touching tale of adolescence in Among Others, read from her work in progress about teens in space who want to party on the ship forever instead of land. George R.R. Martin’s reading room couldn’t have been packed any more hopelessly if he’d written it.

Friend and fellow #fridayflasher Emma Newman showed the chops she’s honed recording audiobooks in a fine reading from her short story collection and the upcoming Split Worlds. Probably the highlight for all readings for me was when she read of a curse being cast on our hero, and somewhere outside our walls, a pneumatic hiss went off and filled the room. You couldn’t pay for better publicity than that, though the hotel should check that elevator.

There’s a lot you can learn from a reading, even a bad one. Maybe especially a bad one, because you can study how authors psych themselves out. One author, who I won’t name, kept stumbling over her excerpt. At first I felt bad, but then I started constructing narration in my own head, and realized her errors were highlighting how strong the voice would be on the printed page. It was kind of uncanny, and reaffirmed a couple of things I suspect about how plot progression works. One of my recent hobbies is listening to readings or audiobooks and testing how it would sound in my head, as opposed to how it’s intended.

THE WORKSHOPS

These are an institution at WorldCons, and will hopefully be for the foreseeable future. Oz Drummond and Lou Berger organized at least eighteen different groups of three aspiring authors (“victims” is the official unofficial name). These trios were joined with two professionally published authors, forming critique groups of five, to hone the victims’ craft. I had the pleasure of working with Martha Wells and Gregory Wilson, who treated all three of us with total professionalism and consideration.

Typical writer reaction in workshops.

Our session lasted two hours, and we spent about forty on every victim, myself included. Your mileage will vary, but we were all serious about craft and I don’t think a minute was wasted. This workshop was a big test for my thoroughly peer-read The House That Nobody Built, as I thought it was near publishable an wanted to see how it would stand up to scrutiny. I left jubilant, having retained more of the positive feedback than the negative. But just as important, the negative feedback was all reasonable, like the desire for a few details, or how to streamline the synopsis. Reasonable, and addressable in just a few minutes of word processing.

So it was the positives I lingered on, which is rare for me. One of my pros asked if I’d already queried it, seeming to think it was ready. One of my pros also described it with what I wish to God will be a cover blurb: 

“This is like Dungeons & Dragons, except awesome!”

There were some other developments at the convention I can’t speak on yet, but cross your fingers for me. I’m doing everything I can with what luck I get. I can’t praise these workshops enough, if you have the fortune of attending a convention that runs anything like it. If I turn “pro,” I’d be happy to help operate one.

The Panels of ChiCon 7

Last week I had the pleasure of attending ChiCon 7 in Chicago, host to the 70th annual WorldCon. My digital camera died going through an airport scanner, so there are few photographs, but some things about the convention beg to be shared. I've split it into three days on different subjects so as not to drop a giant hunk of text on the site. Also, the Panels of ChiCon 7 really deserve their own post.

There were at least three panels about the schism between real medicine and Science Fiction. The con devoted over a dozen rooms to a plethora of topics, ranging from formalized book clubs (I hit the one discussing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein) to thoroughly unformulized nostalgia. You wanted zombies? You got zombies. Ethics of book reviewing? Could you biologically engineer a plausible dragon? They had experts on all of this. All you had to do was find your room on this map.

Behold: The Mapocalypse

There were two particularly stand-out panels, one a raucous group effort, and one a gutsy one-man act that I doubt many people in the field could match.

Jack McDevitt might have been the single-handed king of the convention for me. He’s a prolific Nebula-winning author, but even his panel’s circumstances impressed. Just hours from his flight into town, and minutes from having fought through Chicago traffic to get there, McDevitt ran a 90-minute one-man panel on what gets your work rejected from magazines and publishers.

He riffed on the audience, he was funny and insightful, and seemed to know how to work a crowd just as well as how to edit a manuscript. There was the traditional advice of cutting adverbs and using only as many characters as was absolutely necessary, but also analysis on how hooks work, and why forcing the reader to wait can be a great strategy (his formidable example: waiting for the murderer to strike in Horror).

There's no better reason to go to the next EerieCon in Buffalo than to catch him as the Guest of Honor. His best advice was perhaps the best advice of the whole weekend, and I furiously scribbled it down:

"Keep the exposition short, but get it right. ...
It's the things you think you know
and don't look up that you get wrong."

Jack McDevitt, taken by Maureen McDevitt

You couldn’t beat what McDevitt brought, but you could excel at something entirely different. For instance, moderator Myke Cole, Jean Johnson, Scott Lynch (of Lies of Locke Lamora fame), Marie Bilodeau and the man known as “Eightball” discussing Disaster Relief in Science Fiction.

Everyone on the panel has real life experience in disaster relief, from firefighting to wrangling Deep Water Horizon, and so you wouldn’t expect them to put on the funniest show of the weekend. What began as an inquisition into what film habitually gets wrong and how strong the human spirit is devolved into a ten-minute debate about how to put a tourniquet on a bleeding asshole. Cole’s facial expressions as he listened put me into tears laughing. You know you’re winning when the Iraq-veteran-turned-moderator is hiding his face in revulsion.

Myke Cole could kill me, or entertain me with his giddy list-making of horrible disaster movies.

The depth and variety at these events left me deeply desiring to do one. It also left me deeply desiring that audiences shut up during them. There's little worse at a panel than the nerd who can't help yelling opinions, or raising their hand for a question and then monologuing on their lives for five minutes. The strangest thing of the weekend came not from religion or cosplay, but from an audience member breaking into a screaming fit against Apple when someone merely mentioned Amazon's business tactics.

An honorable mention for Achievement in Panels goes to Kendall F. Morris on the Medicine and Science Fiction panel, who shared a unique insight from engineering cough medicine:

“We learned if you cough a lot, it’s irritating.

If you don’t cough at all, you die.”

Bathroom Monologue: To Serve a SciFi Nerd

Step 1: find a SciFi nerd rabid enough to argue that Star Wars is Fantasy.

Step 2: suggest that Arthur C. Clarke’s third law means that Star Wars just has some micro-technology the aforementioned nerd can’t discern from magic. Comfort him/her by saying Captain Picard probably couldn’t tell them apart either, and that Star Trek’s Q was essentially a wizard, as were the aliens in Contact and Clarke’s own 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Step 3: persist until he/she coughs up blood and passes out.

Bathroom Monologue: Kick a Child, Save a Life

I'd like to ask you a question about violence.

Consider the platform at any train station. The sky is grease-grey today. Many adults are lined up waiting for the train to come in, and it blares its horn to signal its closeness. One of the adults is a mother, who looks exhausted, smudged with grime, leaning for a moment's respite against an advertisement board.

Her son springs from her side and runs down the row of waiting adults, arms out at his sides, pretending he is flying. He whirls around a bench and flings himself toward the train tracks. Just as he crosses the warning line at the edge, one of the adults whirls around and kicks him squarely in the chest, such that the boy falls on his butt on the concrete rather than fall onto the tracks. The boy opens his mouth to cry as the train rushes into the station ahead of them.

How do you feel about what the adult did?

Bathroom Monologue: The Segregation of the Best Man

Finally, here comes the bride. I didn’t know they wore white, too. Looks funny against her… brown. Why don’t they call them ‘brown’? You should call a thing what it is.

Think better thoughts, man. Think warm thoughts; look like you’re thinking warm thoughts. Look at Jasper; look how he’s looking. Okay, less lust than he’s got. What a perv. You can ogle her later tonight, dude. Her parents’ are in the front row.

Front row left. Front row right are Jasper’s. White on right, or, I guess kind of beige. His dad is kind of turnip-colored now. Souse.

Why are my guts churning? Why does this feel wrong? Jasper’s so happy he’s rocking on his heels. The perv looks horny as hell, which is as close to happy as he gets without pot in hand and baseball on TV. He isn’t wrong. My guts are wrong. Look at her.

Am I wrong?

Rainbows. When we were really little and I drew rainbows, I’d have all the colors in their own bars. Nobody said that was wrong. I’d look out and see a real rainbow and all the colors would mix into each other, and I go, “Oh yeah, that’s what it is.” But the next time I got out my Crayolas, damned if I didn’t scribble all the colors in their own lines. That wasn’t wrong. Everybody draws rainbows like I did, except sometimes I forgot orange.

That’s just how people work. Jasper knows this. Akeelah knows this. You jump rope during Gym, and you draw rainbows during Art, and then you put all your papers together in a binder. You have a sock drawer, and a shirt drawer, and a pants drawer. If the economy isn’t crapping on you, you have a bed room and a kitchen. You put kitchen things in the kitchen, and bed things in the bed room, and socks in the sock drawer. Akeelah didn’t get that dress from a pile of crayons and used books. She bought it off a rack of dresses at a store that sells dresses, because that’s how order works. Wish she’d bought a looser one.

Okay, smile. Smile. Yes, smile for Akeelah like you don’t think this is weird. A little nod. Let Jasper make the big gesture. Don’t make it seem weird that she’s not wearing a veil at a freaking wedding.

Think of sports. Think of all the players in all the teams in all the cities in all the divisions in all the conferences in all the leagues in all the world. Number 67 from the Red Sox can’t just join the White Sox because he feels like it, or because he loves the shortstop. They’d holler at him, just like my mom would have hollered at me if I tied a red sock and a white sock and called them a pair. People have sock drawers for a reason.

Is the room dizzy?

I am not going to pass out. No, I am not. Jasper will never forgive me. Okay, he’ll forgive me a minute later, but he’ll never let me live it down. If I pass out on top of the groom, or worse, fall onto Akeelah’s side. Onto the black side. The brown side of the wedding. Then I’ll be the one messing up the order of all things, and Jasper will never stop making fun of me.

Jasper! Stop eye-banging her like that. She’s a person, not a pair of floating mams.

She’s a person. He’s a person. They want to be together. Isn’t like I’m going to scream, “Rainbows!” when the pastor asks for us to speak now or never yadda-yadda. I know I’m wrong.

Do I know I’m wrong? My guts know one thing: sock drawers, baseball, Gym class and English. Separating things is the way. It’s human nature. Can I go against it? Is that possible? I mean, if I know that what I know is wrong, then don’t I also know another thing that is right, and isn’t that also in me? Am I right and wrong, stowed away in the same brain drawer?

I mean, I don’t have to marry her. I don’t even have to touch her. Jasper will take the ring and then he’ll touch her. They’ll handle all the touching themselves. God, she looks so happy.

I will not pass out. I will not pass out.

Say your vows already! I need to sit down. About now, I need a bottle of Grey Goose and the head off of that ice sculpture.

Not that ice sculpture heads go in drinks. Cripes, she’s getting to me.

They’re not even listening to this priest. He probably cost a lot of money, and all you’re doing is salivating. Jasper, your mom is watching. Your bride is watching. And Akeelah, you, you…

Man, she is watching. Has she been looking in his eyes like that this whole time? Why isn’t she mad at him? Don’t they get mad? How can you not be mad at such an obvious perverted fuck? I mean, he is my friend, but he wouldn’t be if he stared like that. I even want to slap him, and I’m not on her side. I mean, the best man is never on the bride’s side, but that’s only… fuck it.

Did she wink at me? Is she happy I’m here? Lady, you would not be winking if you could hear my thoughts. Unless you can hear them. In which case… I mean, why didn’t you wear a veil? Also, is his horniness funny to you, or do you actually love him? Because I don’t know if I can handle this. I’m really sorry if I pass out at your wedding. You look very nice, as Jasper is making obvious. I think I wouldn’t mind red and white socks going together if they looked as happy for it as you do.

God, please make them say their vows already so I can get drunk.

Bathroom Monologue: Life is Backgammon

“Backgammon is the game of our age. The Munenori and their Contiguities see it as a sport for kings, able to be played sitting. For the commoners, though, it is the correct balance of chance and strategy. In Chess, there is nothing uncertain save your enemy’s strategy. That’s nothing like life. And in Dice, there is nothing planned, only the value of a face roll. In Backgammon, you roll and are given this many spaces to move your units, and must move wisely. You plan into chance, and you organize what you’re given, all at the peril of another person who is doing the same. You need to build blots of defenses, but you also need to expand beyond them, into increasingly perilous territory. To each player there is a reassurance. To the strategist, there is strategy. To the layfolk, there is the luck of the roll. Neither skill nor chance will grant you victory every time. Best and last: you can get exceedingly lucky and make it all the way to the end, then not roll the proper numbers to get your pieces off the board. It’s the board game equivalent of losing a war to budgeting, which is the theme of our age.”

Bathroom Monologue: Never Okay

"What if her blouse is soaking wet?"

"Then that's gross."

"What if she doused it on purpose? Then she's inviting it."

"Then she's gross, and you shouldn't give her the attention she wants."

"What if she's wearing a really bright green bra that I can see through her tank top, and it catches my eye because it's so unusual, and I can't help but look for a second on instinct?"

"Then look for one second. No longer."

"What if she takes her top off?"

"In what situation are you going to see someone do that?"

"Well, besides with you?"

"That's becoming iffy as it is, Samuel."

"What if her tanktop snags on a passing truck, tearing it off? And she's thrown to the pavement by the sudden blow?"

"What the hell?"

"She could be hurt from her fall, and I'm the only one around. Surely I should go over and help her, and in the course of being a good Samaritan, I'd look occasionally. I'm her only hope of medical attention."

"Then throw yourself under the truck to stop the driver, and ride with her to the hospital."

"Cripes. That's just mean."

"It was your stupid hypothetical, Samuel."

"Well, is it at least okay to look at her boobs while we're riding to the hospital?"

"For one second. No longer."

My Big R.A.Q. 2012

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this year's Rarely Asked Questions. Hopefully I'm in a cake-coma right now, but rest assured when I regain consciousness I'll be very grateful to you all. Cheers!

Jihan asked: Have you ever wished you were a girl?

Certainly! What man hasn’t stood in a long line for the Men’s Room, seen the empty door to the Lady’s Room, and pondered a temporary swap?

Jamie Cameron asked: You are briefly transported to a universe where everything is the opposite of what it is in this universe. (Everything in this universe still exists in that one, however. So, for the case of this question, the opposite of here is there, not nowhere.) You track down your parallel self. What is your parallel self like?

Parallel John never shaved his beard. I watch him from afar for several days, in mixed awe and disgust. He walks away in the middle of most conversations, not out of deliberate rudeness, but because he's bored and uninterested in pretending otherwise. He's at least a hundred pounds heavier than I am, having clearly indulged in every food I've weeded out of my diet. He's made quite a living writing formulaic Genre fiction with no prose style on the Kindle, and using a pseudonym to sell positive reviews to self-published authors. He's never gone bankrupt over a surgery like I have, though he's needed more surgeries. He talks to himself so much that even I feel sorry for him, though he seems to enjoy his imaginary friends more than I do. I think our crucial difference is that a decade ago when he started serious critical thinking, he applied it outwards to the world rather than inwards. I can't be certain, though, because a decade ago I focused my criticism inward and thus suffer from irrational degrees of self-doubt.

Karen Wojcik Berner asked: What's your favorite vegetable?

Every one that came to mind is actually a fruit, so I’ll say fruits are my favorite vegetables.

Tony Noland asked: Has your life turned out the way you expected it to? So far, anyway?

I’ve developed far fewer superpowers than I’d expected at age 10. Certainly, with the neuromuscular syndrome, none of my adult life has been what I anticipated. But I think by the end of my teens I developed a reasonable outlook, if a little pessimistic, and where I’ve deviated from there has largely been positive. I’ve been more successful in publishing and making friends than I’d imagined, for instance. Also, I really can’t undersell how much I did not expect dieting and exercising to destroy my gallbladder. Healthy living, baby!

The Elephant's Child asked: What is your biggest regret? And thank you so much for giving us your birthday present. A truly generous gesture.

My regrets can be funny things. My biggest regret ought to be letting the doctors perform such egregious malpractice that they crippled me at 13, or exercising myself into a gallbladder failure, or at least not figuring out my girlfriend was cheating on me sooner. But I’m at peace with those, possibly because they were so big that I’ve thought them through. My long-festering regrets tend to be petty, like not thinking of a clever thing to say until an hour after an argument ended. I’m writing this before going to a major literary convention, and I almost guarantee you that as of this posting, on that day, I’ll more acutely experience regretting not asking another author out to coffee than I do never getting to know my paternal grandfather before he died. I can be a petty little beast, even in hindsight.

Joshua Londero asked: Will you remember the little people when you are famous?

Never. Godzilla was an early and profound influence on me.

Ross Dillon asked: Which 21st century technology are you most intrigued by for its future?

Digital data storage might be it. If cognition, of a human, transhuman or other stripe, can be stored, invented, duplicated and modified as such, we’re looking at a punctuation in our evolutionary equilibrium. The problems it poses, for the replication of self, the loss of the analog original, and a suddenly laterally expanding society, are only rivaled by the wonders it offers. Never in medical history would we have such a shot at isolating and treating mental illness. Is your knee inoperable? Try this new prosthetic body. And just imagine where fetishes will go once Dad’s midlife crisis causes him to download his consciousness into a Corvette.

Helen Howell asked: What is the best lesson you have learnt so far in your life?

By far, it’s how to be alone. I’m at my worst when I forget that one.

Tim Van Sant asked: If we describe the best of the questions you get as being well done, how will you resolve the paradox of something being both well done and rare at the same time? And what medium will you use to resolve it?

High quality does not require high frequency, so there is not actually a paradox to begin with. There is some coping necessary, though, to handle persistent mediocrity or poor quality. This I will remedy through passive aggression and ice cream cake. I’m told there’s an ice cream cake in the house right now, so I’m ahead.

Tom Gillespie asked: When is it due?

The doctor has begun drilling into Dustin Hoffman’s teeth, so I should say it will only be a minute.

Susan Cross asked: Do you take your cell phone into the bathroom with you?

I only have my cell on me when I go out, and it would be suspicious to leave the phone outside a public rest room. Historically, I prefer talking to myself than listening to messages while on the can.

Peter Newman asked:  Right, so a question I wouldn't ask of anyone... On judgement day (or equivalent), what crimes would be weighed against you?

My sense of humor. I imagine cheating on my diet so often will come up, especially when I kept claiming to strive on it. The money I spent on anything except charity, I imagine, is something I’ll get hit with, just like every other human being. We’re all going down for that.

Samari Smith asked: How much wood would a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?

There is no way that this is a question you ask rarely. I’ve only reproduced your question here to publicly shame you.

Marc Nash asked, with his own unique choice of capitalization: who wrote THE post-war Epic American novel, Don Delillo ("Underworld") or Philip Roth ("American Pastoral")?

Don Delilo strikes me as likely to live longer, thus sucking up to him has a better chance of bearing fruit. Thus: Don Delilo’s evanescent masterpiece, Underworld, best captures the post-War heart of America.

Larry Kollar asked: Indie or trad?

In a decision between a major publisher or an independent publisher, it’d probably go to whichever had the healthier marketing plan. It’d be something of a dream to work with Tor, and they have such admirable editors that I think I could get a lot out of the collaboration, in addition to giving them someone who is to the left of Scalzi on the Goofy Scale.

Anonymous Sylva asked: As you are someone who would be categorized as 'awesome' by even the most conservative estimates, I believe you to be uniquely qualified to answer this two-part question. First, what do you consider the most radical of dinosaurs? Second, how would you have made said dinosaur even more better on a redesign?

It’s hard to deny that Grimlock am king. I’d make him even more better, and perhaps demonstrate finesse, by granting him the Autobot Matrix of Leadership and putting him in charge of the good guys in my new robot cartoon, The Incompetons.

Beverly Fox asked: What's the most messed-up ill fate you've ever wished upon someone? (This someone, BTW, can be a fictional character you really hated or a superhero that was too cocky for you to stand- it doesn't have to be a real person.)

I’ve routinely wished evil fates on hard bosses in videogames. The one that amused and horrified the most bystanders was, “I hope your kids need things you can’t pay for.” I feel like that’s at least a start.

Bathroom Monologue: Praise for Lindsay Cavanash’s New Novel

“…possessing a unique merit…”

“Cavanash’s novel is so funny you’ll almost laugh.”

“A sure bet to be nominated for many obscure awards, and to likewise win none.”

“Fearlessly apes the least appealing strands of [Hawthorne] and [West].”

“Seldom does fiction have such a sense of place….

I thought we’d all gotten over that.”

“…America’s only heir to J.D. Salinger, surely chaffing to be disowned.”

“One is almost disappointed she did receive warrant a fatwa.”

“Painfully funny, achingly entertaining, rigorously enthralling–

[C]avanash simultaneously captures what we go to novels for

and sucks the fun out of it.”

“Comes with a flashlight app.”

Bathroom Monologue: Sleep in Your Mother

He slept in his mother. She held him safe and stiff until the Devil came. God was always there in a square of incognito, but you couldn't see Him all the time. Only when the Devil came. He shone through the gap and illuminated all. His fingers got into the boy's eyes, and he shrugged off his mother for the day ahead. He never abused her. He stayed in her arms no longer than he was asleep, and always reset her sheets. Respect was important in the room.

He had twenty-one guards. Three were horizontal, and eighteen stood vertical. They were cold, standing near enough that no one could slip between them. Not even when the boy was first born and thrown into the room was he small enough to escape. The guards only stepped aside when his meals were brought. Afterward, they always they swung back to cold attention.

There was firma and incognita. He spent most of his time on firma, allowing his mother to slumber while he stared at the guards. Firma was supportive. It never shifted or sent him away. It was always cool beneath his bare feet. In the winter it grew bitingly cold, but not of its own volition. It had no more choice in its temperature than incognita did of its ungraspable height. Some days he looked at incognita, high above and housing the square that was God. Some years he wondered when he would grow tall enough to touch them. No year yet had he gotten tall enough.

As much as he enjoyed the sight of God, the ability to regard the guards and fathom incongnita, he loathed the light. If he sat in it too long his skin ached and burned. It was sent of the Devil. The Devil illuminated all and woke up the others. In the halls beyond his guards, mad men screamed nonsense. They threatened, fought and murdered each other - always in the presence of the Devil. Never in his absence. Never when God was alone, when it was dark and when mother welcomed him into her lap.

He showed the Devil his strength. He showed him that he could clean his mother and keep her straight, and showed him that he did not need her. He spent hours laying on firma with his bare skin. He would sit up over and over, or climb the guards and suspend himself. Every day he exercised his body, not until it was sore, not until the veins in his limbs stayed out, not until he was so tired that eyes quaked - but until the Devil ran away. Then it was dark. Then he lay there in his mother's grip and whispered to her how brave he was. He promised into her down that if the Devil came back, he would do it all again, and show that beast he was strong. The Devil always came back.

Bathroom Monologue: At 29

At 29 I realized I needed to become famous soon or Charlie Rose would retire before our interview.

Bathroom Monologue: The Newcomer

Simon fell into the keyboard arrays, armored legs twisting as he sought orientation. He felt drunk, even though he hadn’t touched a bottle since last night. Montgomery stepped in to help, but Simon put up a robotic gauntlet to stop the approach. “Just keep briefing. Touch me and I’ll sue you for sexual harassment. I’ve got very good lawyers.”

“As you will.” Montgomery took two steps away from him, struggling to keep his eyes on the PDA rather than Simon’s busted suit. “His first appearance this morning was at 10:01. It’s conveniently time-stamped on an ATM camera. He stopped two men from mugging an elderly woman cashing her social security check. It’s on Youtube.”

“What a sweetheart.”

“At 10:05 he stopped a locomotive with his bare hands.”

“Bare hands?” Simon asked, pulling off his armored gauntlets. As soon as the servos disconnected, they snapped from the frame and thunked to the floor. He shook feeling into his fingers and found contusions all the way up his forearms.

“His bare hands,” Montgomery confirmed. “Three minutes later police saw him take those bare hands into a warehouse being held up by the Mastiff Brothers. They emptied five clips into his forehead and didn’t even disturb his spitcurl. The Mastiffs are in custody, though they already have three appeals filed.”

Simon stroked his chromium mask, searching around the hand-shaped dent over the faceplate for the release valves. “Shot in the bare forehead?”

“One would presume, sir. There may be video this afternoon.”

Simon lingered on that as steam spat out from the valves. He let the crumpled chromium mask drop to the floor, then wiped his brow. He didn’t think he was bleeding. “Did he do anything between getting shot at 10:08 and 10:21?”

“Well, you encountered him at 10:19. So he did at least one thing for two minutes.”

“If I hired you for your wit, you’re fired.”

“Fortunately I was hired because you don’t know how to make Youtube on your own. Do you want help with that?”

“Search engines were invented by rabid monkeys.” Simon braced one titanic boot on the control panel and leaned as far back as he could. The dents along his chest-chasse were so deep that neither of the hinges would come loose. He clawed at them for another impotent moment before shrugging at Montgomery. “You could get me a crowbar. Maybe a jaws-of-life?”

Loyal Montgomery traveled to the workbenches, one hand searching for the appropriate tool, while the other held up his PDA. “He was on the way to something big, possibly an earthquake in South America since that’s where he’s gone since, when 10:19 happened. It’s also on Youtube, if you’d like to see it again.”

“Not right now.” Simon pinched his eyes closed and groaned; he was only now getting feeling back in his ass. He’d never imagined how much he’d miss feeling down there.

Montgomery returned to him with a blowtorch tucked into his armpit and a crowbar in hand. He offered the tools, then stepped back, withholding them as he asked, “What are we going to do about him, sir?”

“Well, you are going to get my other suit. The Alexander Amosu with the pink tie and cufflinks.” He snatched the crowbar and dug it into his armor’s mechanized hip, grinning to himself. “Meanwhile, I’m going to see if he needs a best friend.”

Bathroom Monologue: The Tepid War

"This not a cold war. The empire keeps invading our Frontier, one brigade at a time. They’re small spurts of combat, skirmishes for which we don’t retaliate because it’s anarchy out here. When a band does counter and run to their side of the continent, the Munenori wipe them out, and having wiped out the isolated psychopaths, have no nation to retaliate against. Thus, it never bursts into a hot war. It’s neither cold nor hot; the result of utter fascists bordering utter decentralists is a tepid war. The kettle has been on long enough that it will burn your fingers if you touch it, yet the water inside is too meek for good tea. You’d probably get sick drinking it. The tepid war. It’s a unique dilemma that kills only anyone dumb enough to deal with."