Favorite Fiction Recommendation: “Her Husband’s Hands” by Adam Troy-Castro

"Her Husband's Hands" by Adam Troy-Castro, originally published in 2011, was honored with a Nebula nomination. The story was one of my picks as well as that of the membership at large. It's a disturbing story, no doubt about it. At the time, I wrote (rephrased somewhat to make the writing sharper):
A war widow receives bad news from the front: her husband is dead. However, they've managed to save his hands, and only his hands... It's dark, intensely written, and intimately and compassionately characterized
From the story:
Her husband’s hands came home on a Friday. Rebecca had received word of the attack, which had claimed the lives of seven other soldiers in his unit and reduced three others to similar, minimal fractions of themselves: One man missing above the waist, another missing below, a third neatly halved, like a bisected man on display in an anatomy lab. The Veteran’s Administration had told her it could have been worse. The notification officer had reminded her of Tatum, the neighbor’s daughter so completely expunged by her own moment under fire that only a strip of skin and muscle remained: A section of her thigh, about the size and shape of a cigarette pack, returned to her parents in a box and now living in their upstairs room, where it made a living proofreading articles on the internet. That’s no life, the notification officer said. But Bob, he pointed out, was a pair of perfect hands, amputated from the body at the wrists but still capable of accomplishing many great things. And there was always the cloning lottery. The chances were a couple of million to one, but it was something to hope for, and stranger things had happened.
Around 2011, there was a strong trend of stories about processing PTSD. It's still a theme now, but it was even more dominant then. At 6,000 words, it's a lot of emotional impact in a small space.
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Kitty Pattycake

Mike and Zephyr play patty cake.

Kitty pattycake 2 kitty pattycake 3 Kitty Pattycake

 

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It’s a Frightening Thing That Someone in the 21st Century Would Seriously Make the Argument that Jeffrey Lord Makes in This Video

I did not see the full exchange, and I hope Lord did not get the last word, as he does in this video excerpt, which I found in a piece in The New York Times by James Poniewozik. It’s worth reading the whole thing. Here are two excerpts:

This is 2016. And here was a white panelist suggesting that his African-American peer should really go back and learn his history before criticizing someone about the Klan. Mr. Jones, calmly but with clear emotion, dressed Mr. Lord down: “We’re not going to play that game,” he said. “When you talk about the Klan, ‘Oh, I don’t know, I don’t know’ — that’s wrong.”

And:

There is something frightening, in general, about hate groups becoming fodder for the modern cable news argument machine. Does anyone want to see TV take a “both sides have their points to make” approach to the actual Ku Klux Klan? But here, anyway, amid the usual hyperbole and Times Square graphics of an election night, CNN delivered a scene of authentic passion over real concerns: the deep schisms among Republicans, the fear that vile hatreds are being resurrected, the anxiety that the vitriol of the campaign is bleeding into the larger culture. (Mr. Jones said that he’d stopped encouraging his 7-year-old son to watch the news.)

Posted in Elections and politics, Race, racism and related issues | 14 Comments  

I may not like what you say…

..But I will defend to the….

To the…

Hold on, this is all happening too fast. Let’s stop and breathe and consider this a moment.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. I really, really want you to have the right to say it. Honestly, I do.

But although I really, really want you to have the right to say it, I really, really, really, really, REALLY want to continue living. So just in terms of number and font choice of “really”s, there’s no comparison there.

To be truthful, not only would I not give up my life to defend your right to say it. I don’t honestly think I’d give up my hands. Or even a thumb – I use both my thumbs very frequently. I’ve even been known to twiddle them.

How about “I may not like what you have to say, but I will defend to the loss of a small toe your right to say it.” I could give up a small toe. But there’d have to be some kind of anesthetic.

How badly do you want to say it, anyhow? Why isn’t it your toe on the chopping block? You’re the one who wanted to say it! This whole system seems very unfair to me.

Posted in Free speech, censorship, copyright law, etc. | 22 Comments  

Quick Notes: Poetry Planet podcast, & Tiptree Anthology 99 Cents

A few quick notes for this week.

Poetry Planet podcast

Diane Severson puts together the poetry planet podcast that aired recently in this episode of starship sofa. She includes my poem, “Terrible Lizards,” which is about — as you might expect — dinosaurs. She asked me to include an anecdote about it:

Dinosaur eye1) I love dinosaurs. I never went through a dinosaur phase as a kid, but my husband never got over his, so when I met him in college, I got to have a late dinosaur phase, which we still enjoy together.

2) I was driving cross-country through the midwest (well, my husband was driving and I was passengering) and staring out of the windows at all the flat land, and trying to visualize cool things walking through it, which my husband can do and which I mostly can’t. Then I saw one of those huge irrigation devices and realized it was about dinosaur-sized. I never got the visualization trick down, but I can do the imagining with words thing.

Listen here.

Tiptree Anthology available at 99 cents:

Last year, I was honored to participate in the anthology project Letters to Tiptree.

Letters to TiptreeFor nearly a decade, between 1968 and 1976, a middle-aged woman in Virginia (her own words) had much of the science fiction community in thrall. Her short stories were awarded, lauded and extremely well-reviewed. They were also regarded as “ineluctably masculine”, because Alice Sheldon was writing as James Tiptree Jr.

In celebration of the 100th Anniversary of Alice Sheldon’s birth, and in recognition of the enormous influence of both Tiptree and Sheldon on the field, Twelfth Planet Press has published a selection of thoughtful letters written by science fiction and fantasy’s writers, editors, critics and fans to celebrate her, to recognise her work, and maybe in some cases to finish conversations set aside nearly thirty years ago.

I gave my answer in the form of a poem.

If you’re a Tiptree fan, now is the time to buy the book–until March 31, it’s available at 99 cents.

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2015 Science Fiction and Fantasy Graphic Novel Recommendations, part two: Curveball and Nimona

Click here for part one: The Sculptor and Beautiful Darkness

Since it’s Hugo nomination season, I’ve been making an effort to read every notable science fiction or fantasy graphic novel that came out in 2015. And you know what? It’s hopeless! There are just too many coming out. I’ll never get around to reading them all. And probably some of the best ones, I won’t even find out about until after Hugo nominations are over. (That’s what happened last year.)

And of course, by limiting myself to graphic novels, I’m missing out on any number of wonderful webcomics and floppy comics. (If you’re in the market for great sff webcomics, I’d highly recommend checking out Dicebox and Family Man and O Human Star and Stand Still Stay Silent and Modest Medusa and Strong Female Protagonist and Evan Dahm’s extraordinary Vattu and probably many more.)

So I can’t cover them all. But some of the ones I’ve been reading are awfully good, and that’s the real point of this exercise. So, onto the reviews:


CurveballOf all the science fiction graphic novels I read this year, Jeremy Sorese’s Curveball did the best at immersing me in a science-fiction world. This is the power of comics; rather than trying to explain the futuristic technology in scientifically plausible detail (something that I’m not sure Sorese could do), comics can show us how it feels for the characters living in that world.

Curveball is set in a world of robots and web-connected tech which is constantly on the danger of breaking down, sometimes disaterously; plus, there’s a war. But all of that is just the backdrop for Curveball‘s real concerns, which are friendship, relationships and main character Avery’s broken heart from a bad romance.

What I loved about Curveball, in addition to the feeling of immersion in a new world, was Sorese’s art, which is unabashedly cartooney, full of gray smudgy energy, and feels completely unique. Sorese also chose to use neon orange as a spot color, mainly to show where the sci-fi tech was present and what it was doing, a daring choice that ended up being effective.

Curveball‘s story is sprawling. This is not a book for readers who require a carefully structured narrative where every page fits cleanly into a clear-cut story arc. (If that’s what you’re looking for, see the previous recommendation of The Sculptor.) The story wanders here and there (at 420 pages, there’s room!), often feeling improvised, and early in the book the meandering feeling prevents the story from gathering momentum. But by the end – as Avery’s broken heart narrative came to the fore – momentum wasn’t a problem.

Another nice touch: Curveball has multiple gender-queer, gender-ambiguous, and non-binary gender characters, including main character Avery. This is presented in such an everyday manner that I’m not sure all readers will notice; in Curveball‘s world, being non-binary is unremarkable, and thus not remarked on. (Sorese has said that he considers the world of Curveball “utopian”; I wonder if this is part of what he’s referring to.)

Curveball does have flaws; the art, although beautiful, was occasionally hard to make out. (Unfortunately, the front cover is one of those few occasions.) In particular, the occasional bit of orange-on-orange art was almost impossible to read, and I suspect a lot of readers over 40 will have similar difficulties. And the main character Avery, despite being non-binary, still felt a bit flat, like dozens of listless, heartsick protagonists I’ve read before. The characterization of Avery’s best friend, Jacqueline, popped a lot more, and I sometimes wished that she had been the central character. (Avery and Jacqueline’s relationship sometimes felt a little bit like Maggie and Hopey.)

Still, this was an impressive first graphic novel, one of the most interesting sf/f graphic novels of 2015. I can’t wait to see what Sorese’s next graphic novel is like.

curveball-slide-010


nimona_finalNimona, by Noelle Stevenson, might be the most charming comic I read all year.

Nimona is the funny, touching, and hard to put down story of a young girl, Nimona, who apprentices herself to a gentle-hearted super villain named Ballister Blackheart (Ballister is the point of view character for the book). The early chapters of Nimona are concerned with the long-ongoing and rather wacky war between Ballister and his heroic nemesis Ambrosius Goldenloin. A lot of the humor comes from the ways Ballister’s attempts at evildoing are complicated by Nimona’s sometimes clumsy, sometimes frighteningly effective, assistance.

But as we read on, it becomes clear that the mystery of Nimona’s origins (she has shape-shifting powers), and her difficulty fitting into the world, are Stevenson’s real concerns. The assistant is the most consequential character in this world, and also the character who is suffering the most; but the hero and villain, caught up in their heroic battles, take a long time to realize that. It’s a story that begins funny and violent and winds up heartbreaking (but still violent).

nimona-pageStevenson’s art is simple, energetic, and expressive, like a slightly more controlled Kate Beaton. And the three main characters are well written and defy simple stereotypes.

I did find Nimona a little self-contrary; the story urges us to see its three main characters as more than simple genre tropes, but Stevenson also relies unquestionably on some genre tropes. Specifically, the way Nimona kills minor (and usually nameless) characters left and right is never seriously questioned or dealt with, which felt odd to me in such a generally thoughtful narrative. And the artwork, while charming and clear, isn’t very ambitious or experimental compared to Curveball or The Sculptor. But not everything needs to push the boundaries of the form.

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Recommended Reading | 1 Comment  

New Story: “Love Is Never Still”

Love Is Never Still” just came out in Issue 9 of Uncanny Magazine, a story about Galatea and Aphrodite, and their broken, bittersweet love affairs. The story begins with the sculptor’s perspective:

Pygmalion & Galatea“I’ve loved other sculptures. Though I’m not yet old, I have worked diligently at my art, and so have loved hundreds. I have loved leaping horses and dour-faced spearmen and exotic animals pieced together from sailors’ descriptions.

Galatea is my culmination. From the beginning, winnowing the ivory to her form has felt more like discovery than invention. Our bodies move together in conversation; mine contorts as I twist and crouch to discover precise angles, and she emerges from my labor.”

This took me about four months of intense concentration to write because it features about fifteen perspectives (the number went up and down while I was drafting) and the writing is very precise. Sometimes it felt like I was writing a really long poem. I actually wrote part of the story in verse (iambic pentameter), but my friend Barry Deutsch rightly convinced me that it slowed the story way down.

I’ll try to tempt you to read with another passage, this time from Galatea’s perspective:

Forms of AphroditeBirth is pain, and I have been twice born. First I was an egg of ivory until he struck away the pieces that were not me and cracked me open. Later, the goddess touched me with her fiery fingertips and melted away the good, solid quiet of my soul. She made me into hot, fragile skin, always beating with blood.

What misery it is to crack at the seams, to be forever bending and reshaping. Once, my body held its place in the world; once, it stood in perfect, unchanging balance. Now I am walking, stumbling, falling, sitting, smiling, resting, startling, kneeling, offering, dressing, approaching, avoiding.

My sculptor is nearby, but turns his face away. I chew a cube of cheese and swallow. Even my insides move.

Read here.

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I’ve watched this like 30 times.

I know everyone’s seen it by now, but I am in love with this OK Go song shot in Zero Gravity:

Posted in Stuff I like | 4 Comments  

Ann Leckie’s short story: The Nalendar

Oh, I love the Nalendar! Ann just wrote a bit about it on her blog, and I realized I should link to it. It’s one of my favorite short stories by Ann. It originally came out in Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, but you can listen to it and read Ann’s thoughts about it.

 

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Cartoon: It’s Great To See Such Diverse Job Applicants!

job-applicants-800

As always, if you’d like to support my political cartooning (and see some cartoons early!), you can do that at my patreon.

Transcript of cartoon:

Panel 1 shows four executives sitting at a desk. We can only see the backs of their heads; they all have the same height and haircut. The four executives are facing a large group of people dressed up for a job application. There are a similar number of women and men, who appear to be of a range of ages, races, sizes, and ethnic backgrounds. One applicant is using crutches to stand.
EXEC 2: It’s great to see such diverse job applicants! Rest assured, our firm does not discriminate against women or minorities.

Panel 2. We are now looking at the four executives from the front. They are all identical white men in business suits.
EXEC 1: But we can’t hire everybody, so… Anyone who didn’t graduate from the “right” kind of college, please leave.

Panel 3
EXEC 2: Anyone with family responsibilities that could interfere with work, please leave.

Panel 4
EXEC 3: Anyone without a recommendation from someone already in the field, please leave.

Panel 5
EXEC 4: Anyone whose accent or look or gender presentation wouldn’t be a “fit” for our firm’s existing culture, please leave.

Panel 6 shows the applicants again; only one is left. Other than being younger, he looks precisely like the four executives.
EXEC 4: Gentleman, we’ve found our new hire!

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