I haven’t done an open Q&A in while. Time to remedy that.
Ask me anything you like. Some questions I’ll answer on the spot. More complex questions may get their own blog post at a later date.
I reserve the right to not answer any questions that fall into the category of “I don’t wanna.”
Saturday afternoon, my wife and I went to see the Mythbusters: Behind the Myths show in East Lansing. I’ve been a fan of the show for many years, so I jumped at the chance to see Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman in person.
I didn’t know what to expect walking in. I figured it would be vaguely like the show, but with more audience participation and fewer explosions (since theaters tend to get cranky about using C4 on stage).
While I was right about the audience participation, there was no actual busting of myths. Instead, the show seemed to be one part Q&A, one part video clips, and five parts, “Hey look at this neat stuff we made with SCIENCE!”
And you know what? That’s pretty awesome.
Think about it. Adam and Jamie packed an auditorium and spent two solid hours showing everyone how great it was to ask questions and build things and make mistakes and learn and think. They received a standing ovation at the end for making science cool.
I’ve watched the show enough that some things were familiar. I’ve seen what interleaved phone books can do, and I had seen most of the video clips before. But the majority of the show was new. I don’t want to spoil things for anyone who might be planning to see the show, but I’ll tell you this much: if Jamie Hyneman challenges you to a paintball showdown, run as fast and as far as you can. Then keep running.
The most interesting part, to me, was probably the Q&A sessions. It was fun to see them both off-script. As you might have guessed, Adam was the more energetic (manic?) of the two, but they both seemed to be genuinely enjoying what they were doing, which was fun to watch.
A few highlights:
We didn’t take our kids because we weren’t sure they’d enjoy it, and my son doesn’t do “sit still” very well, but now I kind of wish we had. I think it’s a great show for kids, and they brought several children up on stage to help out, which was fun.
Bonus Achievement: I’ve now been retweeted by a MythBuster.
1. No book will work for everyone, and if you think one of my books is terrible, that’s no big deal. (I am sorry you didn’t like it, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it, either.)
But tagging the author on Facebook so that they get directly notified that you think their book sucks? Kind of rude.
I get that sometimes you type in a name and Facebook or other sites automatically convert that to a tag, so this might have been an accident. But, you know, something to be aware of…
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2. I remember teaching Freshman English at college a decade or so back and having students who honestly didn’t get that copying and pasting stuff from the internet without citing it was a problem.
I’m not sure why this is such a difficult concept.
If you’re presenting someone else’s words as your own, then you’re plagiarizing.*
(Yes, this was inspired by a specific incident. No, I’m not going to link to it.)
If someone else writes something you think it clever and you want to share, great. You do it like so:
John Scalzi wrote a piece about Kirk Cameron, homophobia, and free speech. He said, “…the First Amendment also means that when you say such things, other people have the a right to mock you and the silly, stupid words that have dribbled out of your skull through that word hole above your chin.” Read the whole thing.
You acknowledge the author. You quote a small excerpt if you want, but you do it as a quote so it’s clear you didn’t write those words. Then you link your readers to the original piece.
Changing a word here and there does not make it “yours.”
Sure, sometimes you won’t be able to find an original author online. If you decide to post and mock a chain e-mail, you probably won’t be able to track down who wrote it. But at the very least, you make it clear that these aren’t your words.
And now I’m done, because I’ve already exceeded my headdesking allotment for the week.
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*As soon as I posted, I started thinking, “What if you hire a ghostwriter? Or what about speechwriters? And what if…” So yeah, there are exceptions. But as a general guideline, I like it.
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Finally, because yesterday I promised kittens and fart jokes (from I Can Haz Cheezburger):
Today’s post talks about both rape and abortion. As such, I totally understand anyone who chooses to skip and come back when we’re talking about fart jokes and LEGO kittens.
After much internal debate, I’ve decided I don’t have the time or energy I’d need for reading, reviewing, and moderating all of the comments on this one, so for what I believe is the first time in my blogging history, comments are closed.
I have received page proofs for The Legend of Jig Dragonslayer [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy], the omnibus edition of the goblin books. I’d post the cover, but we’re still waiting on the final cover art.
As there’s no way I’m going to be able to scour all 900 pages as closely as I’d like, I wanted to ask anyone who’s read the goblin books to please let me know if you’ve found any typos or mistakes.
Most of my brain has been obsessing over Libriomancer, so it’s rather exciting to remember that I have two, two beautiful books coming out this year, bwa ha ha. [/Count]
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Speaking of Libriomancer (see what I mean?), yesterday I received my third set of blurbs from the wonderful Seanan McGuire and her alter ego Mira Grant. I posted one on my website, but she provided several others that probably won’t make it on to the cover.
You see, Libriomancer is about book-magic, about reaching into the pages and pulling stuff out, about the possibilities and the dangers … which is why certain books are “locked” so that you can’t access their magic. And that led directly to this quote:
“F***er locked my book. I’ll show him a zombie apocaylpse…” -Mira Grant
Seanan also provided blurbs from several of her characters, which was fun.
“Nice guy. Not too bright. Which means he’s probably a relative of mine.” -Verity Price (from Discount Armageddon)
(Isaac is very bright, by the way. But he can also be a little … impulsive.)
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Finally, remember my blog post a while back about Scientology and Writers of the Future? That post was noticed by a reporter for the Village Voice, and led to this article.
My first response upon seeing the article was, “Wait, you mean people are reading this blog?”
Yes, I know people are reading, but it’s a little strange seeing something get picked up like that by someone outside of the SF/F community.
I’ve written about freedom of speech on several occasions, but apparently it’s time to do so again, as I’ve read that my tale about the Pig and the Bunny and the word “retarded” advocates censorship.
I don’t want to pick on the individual who raised this point, because he’s not alone. The reason I had the third wolf reply, “You can’t tell me what to say. I have freedom of speech!” is because this response is in fact rather common. (Often, but not always, coming hand-in-hand with a slam on “political correctness.”)
Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech. (It should be noted that I’m talking about this issue from a U.S. perspective. Laws and ideas about freedom of speech vary widely from one nation to another.)
So here’s the thing. You have the right to say that Jim C. Hines is a condescending asswipe. I support your right to say that, and I would oppose any legislation that tried to take away that right.
But if you say it to my face, I’ll ask you to stop. Or maybe I’ll walk away and talk to someone else. If you come onto my blog and post it as a comment, I might delete your comment and boot you off of my site. Or maybe I’ll just mock you.
None of those things in any way restrict or take away your freedom of speech.
If you read Yo Is This Racist, you’ll find a lot of questions about white folks wanting permission to use the word “nigger.” There are people who get really upset, not about racism, but about the fact that we as white people aren’t allowed to use that one word. To paraphrase Khan, it tasks us. It tasks us, and we shall have it!
Well guess what. As it turns out, we do have the right to use that word. Yay us!
And the rest of the world has the right to call us racist, ignorant shits if we choose to to use it.
Hey look at that, freedom of speech goes both ways. Who knew?
You have the right to use the word “retarded,” too. And I recognize that we often use words unthinkingly. But people also have the right to ask you not to use it.
What I don’t have is the legal means to force you to stop using that word. After hearing someone say, “This word is hurtful to me and to others,” you can choose to keep using it. And that’s as it should be.
I’ll lose respect for you if you make that choice. I may tell you what I think about you continuing to use that word. I might mock you for it. If you’re a business, I might stop giving you money. If you’re an author, I might stop reading your books.
That’s my choice.
This is from a blog post I wrote back in 2009. (Is it egotistical to quote yourself? Oh well…):
Freedom of speech does not protect you from the consequences of saying stupid shit.
Freedom of speech is hard. It’s messy. Sometimes it’s ugly. But freedom of speech does not mean freedom from responsibility. Nor does freedom of speech obligate me to agree with your words, or to provide them with a platform.
Any questions?
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Another week, another review. This time it’s Jackie Morse Kessler‘s YA book Loss [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy]. This is the third book in her Riders of the Apocalypse series, but I picked it up without having read the others, and had no problem jumping into the story.
This is a book about Billy Ballard, a fifteen-year-old who is tricked into taking up the bow of Pestilence, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But first he must confront the old Pestilence, also known as the Conqueror, who … well, let’s just say that centuries on the job have done bad things to his sanity…
It’s also a book about bullying. Because Billy is that kid. The one everybody picks on. The one who gets teased, tormented, and beat up on a regular basis. The one the teachers ignore. The one the other kids avoid so as not to become targets themselves. The one who’s learned perfectly well that platitudes like, “Just ignore it” don’t do a damned thing.
Billy’s home life isn’t much better. He lives with his mother and grandfather, where most of the energy attention goes into managing his grandfather’s Alzheimer’s, keeping him from wandering into the street, cleaning up after him, and dealing with verbal and physical outbursts.
The Four Horsemen aren’t a new idea for fantasy. Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality was probably the first horsemen series I read. But Kessler’s take is more grounded, treating both the real world and the fantastic more seriously. These are real people with real conflicts and struggles and pain.
Except for Death. He’s not a real person. He’s just a badass.
I only had two complaints. By the end of the book, I wanted to know more about the horsemen, about their magic and origins and purpose in the world. But this might be something that’s covered in the first two books, so that could be my own problem.
Secondly … well, with a book like this, you know there’s got to be some sort of resolution between the bully and the hero. Without going into detail, that resolution didn’t really work for me.
Overall though, I think Kessler has done an admirable job with Loss. Billy’s struggle with bullies, his dread of walking into certain classes, the way he plans out his schedule every day to give him the best chance of avoiding certain tormenters, it feels real and at times all too familiar. And I loved Pestilence’s horse.
The short version: I read the book in a day and a half, and I hope to go back and read the first two.
You can read about all three books on Kessler’s website.
This has been a busy week on the old blog. I’ve done my best to keep up, but there have been plenty of comments I wanted to respond to that I just didn’t have the time. I wanted to say thank you to everyone who offered thoughts and suggestions to my werewolf brainstorming post: it’s helped a lot, and is very much appreciated. Thanks also for all of the kind and thoughtful responses to The Wolves, the Pig, and the Retarded Bunny. And thank you for generally being a pretty awesome bunch of people.
I’ll note that I’ve tweaked yesterday’s tale, swapping out the word “douchebag” and fixing a repetitive word at the very end. Normally I’m reluctant to go back and change something I’ve already posted — some of this comes down to accountability, and taking responsibility for my writing, even when I mess up — but in this case, I think both changes made the story better, and that took priority.
A few other quick notes…
Hugo nominations end March 11. The nomination site is here. Jig the goblin discussed my eligibility here. I’m pretty sure a Worldcon-fairy has been reading my blog, because I commented about forgetting a work I had meant to include, and a few hours later, got an e-mail which said:
If you need to correct any of these nominations, please go back to https://chicon.org/hugo/nominate.php and submit a new ballot. You will only need to fill in categories that you wish to change, all other categories will be left untouched. Be sure to review your ballot and confirm so that we record the updated ballot.
So, if any of you have potato-brain like I did, you can go back and modify your nominations as needed through Sunday night.
Ask a Goblin has been going for close to a month now at http://askjig.tumblr.com/ and is up to 44 posts. I have mixed feelings about this experiment. I’ve had fun, but there hasn’t been as much of a response as I’d hoped. Part of this is my fault, as I haven’t done things like update my webpage with a sidebar link to the site or the Twitter feed. Part of it may just be my inexperience with Tumblr.
I’ve broadened the guidelines to say that Jig et al. will now answer questions about absolutely anything, not just advice-type queries. But as of yesterday, I’ve answered every question I’ve received. So if you want it to continue, I need more questions! (I thought about making some up, but decided that would be cheating.)
Finally, to end the week on a fun note, here’s something I posted over there in between giving out bad advice, because it amuses me:
Once upon a time, a pig and a bunny were walking together through the woods, when up ahead they spotted a wolf in the middle of the path. The wolf was shaking his phone and growling.
“Hold my hand,” said the pig. The bunny reached up and took the pig’s hand.
“The company guarantees coverage everywhere,” complained the wolf. “But as soon as you walk into the woods, you drop to just one bar. That’s so retarded!”
The pig sighed and stopped walking. She looked down at the bunny. From the way his ears sagged, she knew he had heard.
“Would you mind not using that word?” asked the pig politely.
“What word?” the wolf demanded, holding his phone high in the air.
“‘Retarded.’ You see, my stepson is learning disabled, and it’s hurtful when–”
“Sounds like your stepson needs to grow a thicker skin,” said the wolf.
The pig clutched the bunny’s hand tighter. “He came home a year ago, crying, and asked me, ‘What does retarded mean, mama?’ The kids tease him every day on the bus. He won’t say anything in class anymore, because he’s afraid of being laughed at even more.”
“Tell him to stop being so sensitive,” said the wolf. “You’re not doing him any favors by coddling him.”
“Why can’t other people just stop saying hurtful things?” asked the pig.
The wolf simply growled.
The pig’s shoulders sank slightly, and she walked on, leaving the wolf to his phone. It wasn’t long before they encountered a second wolf. She was reading a yellow flyer posted to a tree. When she saw the pig and the bunny, she grinned and pointed.
“Look at this,” she said. “These people are offering a reward for their lost dog, but they can’t even spell. They’re so retarded!”
The pig sighed. She looked ahead, then looked down at her stepson. The bunny was staring at the ground, but she could tell by the set of his ears that he had heard.
“Would you mind not using that word?” asked the pig.
“What word?” the wolf demanded, ripping the flyer off the tree.
“‘Retarded.’ You see, my stepson is learning disabled, and it’s hurtful when people use that word in such a derogatory way.”
“I see,” said the wolf. “Please educate me so that I can decide whether or not to stop using this word that hurts you and your stepson.”
The pig’s shoulders slumped a little more, but she looked up at the wolf and did her best. For the next hour, while the bunny played in the dirt, she talked about the challenges her stepson had faced. She talked about how hard it was to get people to treat her stepson with respect, how society treated the mentally challenged as a joke, as stupid or defective.
“I see,” said the wolf. “But don’t we all have challenges? Don’t we all have someone who refuses to respect us? Don’t we all get laughed at sometimes? You might be surprised to know that I have a very good friend who’s a bunny, and she uses the word ‘retarded’ all the time.”
“What does it cost you to use a different word?” asked the pig.
“Nothing,” said the wolf. “But you have failed to adequately educate me, so I will continue to use the word that hurts you and your stepson.”
The pig took the bunny’s hand, and they walked on, leaving the wolf to laugh at the flyer.
They were almost home when they spotted a third wolf. This wolf was reading a book and laughing. “Oh my goodness,” he said, glancing up. “The grown-ups in this book are so retarded!”
The pig sighed and stopped walking. She looked down at the bunny. His ears were now completely flat on his back.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d stop using that word,” said the pig.
“What word?” the wolf demanded, slipping a leaf into the pages to mark his place.
“‘Retarded.’ You see–”
“You can’t tell me what to say. I have freedom of speech!”
“I understand that,” said the pig. “But I’m trying to tell you that you’re hurting people by using that word.”
“It doesn’t hurt me, and I can say whatever I want! If you don’t like it, you should go back to pig country.”
The pig looked at the bunny, who was staring at the dirt. She looked at the wolf, who towered over them both. She looked past the wolf, to where the path emerged from the woods into a field.
The pig took a deep breath and said, “Mister wolf, I understand what you’re saying, but you are hurting my stepson, and you are hurting me. Mister wolf, you are a jackass.”
The wolf bared his teeth. “You can’t say that to me!”
“I thought we had freedom of speech,” said the pig.
One of the wolf’s ears flicked backward. “Well, you’ll never convince people to do what you want by calling them names.”
“So how should I convince them?” the pig asked. She waited, but the wolf didn’t answer. He opened his book and continued to read.
The pig looked at her stepson. Her shoulders slumped lower. Holding the bunny’s hand tightly, she walked on.
When they reached the edge of the field, the bunny looked up and said, “Mama?”
The pig scooped the bunny into her arms and hugged him, hoping he wouldn’t see the tears in her eyes. “What is it, sweetheart?”
“I love you.”
For a long time, the pig merely stood there, holding her stepson. She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. Slowly, she straightened her shoulders. She kissed the bunny on the head and pet his ears. “I love you too.”
My ballot for the 2012 SFWA Officer Election showed up this week. Some of the decisions are pretty straightforward. John Scalzi is running unopposed for President, and overall I’m fairly happy with the work he’s done for the organization. Bud Sparhawk is also running unopposed for Treasurer. He’s got experience and a reasonable platform I can support.
There are two candidates for Secretary: Michael Burstein and Ann Leckie. I haven’t yet made up my mind here.
And then there are the Vice-President candidates, Rachel Swirsky and Lou Antonelli.
The platforms of the various candidates are posted in the SFWA Forums (you have to be a member to log in and read them). Let me say up front that I appreciate anyone’s willingness to step up and volunteer for a tremendous amount of work, work that can be difficult, time-consuming, and often thankless.
With that said, I’d like to publicly support Rachel Swirsky for VP.
Both Swirsky and Antonelli bring impressive resumes. While I was leaning toward voting for Swirsky already, what solidified my decision tonight was an exchange in Antonelli’s blog where he had posted his platform. Author Nisi Shawl expressed being offended by his use of the phrase “Canine-Americans” to describe his dogs. Antonelli responded by calling her concerns esoteric, politically correct bullshit, and saying she takes herself way too seriously.
I’m not posting this with the intention of dropping the internet on Antonelli’s blog. But … well, I guess I take stuff way too seriously too.
To start with, I get really sick of white folks lecturing people of color on what they should and shouldn’t take offense to when it comes to issues of race and ethnicity. If you don’t get it, that’s one thing. I don’t believe there’s any shame in saying “I don’t understand.”
But this is a condescending, insulting, and flat-out shitty way to respond when someone calls you on something.
I get that it’s hard. I’ve been called out on stuff before too. Sometimes I’ve agreed, sometimes I haven’t understood, and sometimes I’ve thought about it and decided I didn’t agree. None of those responses require you to disrespect or insult the other person.
More to the point, whether you agree with someone or not, this is an utterly unacceptable way for a potential officer in an organization to respond to the concerns of a member.
ETA: a link to Shawl accepting Antonelli’s apology.
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Follow-up: I’m angry right now, which is a dangerous time to blog. I’ve tried to lay out my concerns clearly, without getting into personal attacks or name-calling. If I’ve screwed that up, I reserve the right to come back and tack on an addendum, though I’ll leave the original post as is.
