It seems that the feminism issue rears its head on the speculative fiction blogosphere about once every six months, maybe more frequently if you follow specific blogs in question. I'd been meaning, with certain trepidation, to throw my hat in, and now seems an opportune time as I have found myself unwittingly participating in one editor's salvo in response to the issues -- with a poem that is very firmly a women's-issues poem.

I do support positive initiatives to broaden any industry (I'm using one of "Broad Universe's" flyers as a bookmark in Old Man's War at the moment, actually), but the problem with much of the discussion on the internet -- which, like all internet discussions, should be taken with a liberal dose of salt -- is that it seems to remain so resoundingly negative and resentment-generating.

I have a certain experience releasing pain-filled screeds onto the internet. That's probably why I get so bothered by these discussions. Since 2004 I have been working hard in the games industry to raise awareness and facilitate advancement away from problems that I highlighted, and a certain amount of it is out of a sense of penance for releasing something so full of negative energy into the world. But I certainly understand the value and the periodic need for such things. I just also understand that at a certain point you have to start talking about and then enacting solutions, or you start to harm yourself and your cause.

You also have to be reasonably self-aware, and aware of your position in the grand scope of the universe. I find that herbal tea often helps with this. But to further define my place in these things, I spend a lot of my time in the video game world and talking to people in related media, and boy howdy, does the spec-fic scene ever not have as much to worry about as video games or comics when it comes to the feminist cause. So this is another angle on my perspective and my rating on what deserves screaming into the ether and what is making sufficient progress on its own.

Lately, an angry black woman says that you shouldn't get a cookie for doing the right thing (though in fairness to her she does cite John Klima's Electric Velocipede 14 as undeserving of backlash) -- and I think this is recent evidence of what troubles me in the generally numbers-based quantification of the alleged bias in genre fiction toward publishing male authors. I think that if your primary goal is a sense of self-righteousness and reassurance of being in the Right on a particular subject, yeah, maybe you don't give cookies for good behavior. But if your intent is to elicit change, cookies are exactly what you need to give, and then on top of that you need to open your own damn cookie-generating bakery.

I'm on a women's-issues-based mailing list for the International Game Developers Association, and these issues find their reflections in every area in which women are in the minority and are attempting to claim their stake. I've written my share of public contributions and commentaries on the state of the industry in these subjects; I like to think I know what I'm talking about and have proved that I am sufficiently vested in the issues. And, as they do in spec fic (and anything having to do with fanfiction), these subjects attract a lot of attention and comment from a very specific subset of readers -- and also scare off a lot of the majority, who feel that they can't comment for fear of being attacked or denigrated. And that's unfortunate, and mildly hypocritical. I don't personally like the fact that John Klima and folk like him have to be delicate about explaining decisions they've made for their own magazines.

What we did find in video games, with the caveat that I certainly don't speak for all or even most women in the field, is that the most effective way to actually enact change in the industry was just to make the video games we wanted to see. Lamenting about their lack, which I have done my share of, has a certain purpose, but the more you repeat yourself the more you weaken your argument. Action must follow thought or the thought is impotent. In games this meant a couple of things: a) mentoring promising female developers and creating a safe haven for them to enter the industry, which there certainly has not always been; b) advocating for the awareness of games that did feature rounded, dynamic, enjoyable female characters; c) leaping outside of the existing boundaries of the field to create new audiences.

That third issue is why I still say that the militant sci-fi feminist contingent (and believe me that I am all about the 'militant' in issues for which I have passion -- I'm just for effective militancy) needs to create their own female-themed magazine. It would be nice if they did not engage in quota-meeting -- quotas are sometimes effective in extreme circumstances where brute force methods are necessary to leaven a field in a state of grave imbalance, but I don't think that's the case in speculative fiction (or video games, for that matter). There actually was an attempt at a feminist science fiction online magazine focusing on heroic female characters -- it was short-lived, and I wish I could remember its name, but I seem to have lost track of it since it went under. But I think it was very much on the right track. I understand why it hasn't been done -- for one thing, starting a self-sustaining magazine of any kind is wickedly difficult -- but I think for these issues to achieve relevance there needs to be an element of market proof of concept. And I think it could be successful.

Positive action is the key. And there certainly is a good deal of positive action from quiet individuals around the community -- but there is also this loud contingent of seemingly impotent anger. I think that the error is in a mistake in focus. It is possible, though difficult, to change someone else's views by screaming at them incessantly, or by quoting statistics at them. But it is generally easier, less enemy-generating, and better for one's blood pressure to expand the market rather than trying to brute-force alter the market. The problem here is not one of willful bias on the part of totalitarian editors; it is a simple vacuum in the marketplace, a niche that is not yet adequately filled. It is a potential, not an injustice; a prosperity engine waiting to be harnessed.

I'm not telling anyone not to be angry. People are free to feel as they choose to feel. But if change is the true desire, there are faster and happier ways to it. Me, I don't feel sufficiently disenfranchised in this particular corner to take action on it. I don't have trouble selling stories, at least no more than the average writing acolyte does, and I have more than my fair share of pet injustices to right in the world. And, uh, I like a lot of guy-oriented fiction, and I don't have a problem seeing a lot of male authors on magazine covers. But would I be on board and prioritize sending submissions to a magazine that promised (and delivered) women-oriented fantasy and science fiction? You bet. And I bet I wouldn't be alone.

My book of the moment has been Maurice LeBlanc's Arsène Lupin: Gentleman-Thief. Written in 1907 by Maurice LeBlanc (he of the moustache below), the stories were largely a response to A. Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, with the twist being that Lupin operated on the opposite side of the law. In fact Holmes appeared (without any respect to copyright) in an unfavorable light in a number of Lupin stories.


My wife read the book before I did and told me they were great fun. And I have to reinforce that by saying the stories are absolutely delightful: madcap, urbane, and playful. There's suspense, action, occasional philosophical asides, and an approach to what are now everyday objects (phones, automobiles, and airplanes) but at the time were the latest in technology. When Lupin races a train in his 35 horse-power roadster, it's this white-knuckle race.

And for you manga/anime fans, Lupin III is the grandson of Arsène Lupin. Monkey Punch freely used characters, plot lines from the LeBlanc books and set up his hero as a direct descendant. My version has been the Penguin Classics edition. Project Gutenberg has some as well.

In more of the rollercoaster that this week has turned into, I give you:

Cyberpunked: The Fall of Black9

Note that the Escapist server seems to be having some indigestion; I can only intermittently get to all of the pages. They should have it worked out soon, though, they tend to be pretty quick on stuff like that.

This was by far the most difficult piece I've ever written for them, the one I had the most apprehension about having published and the one I angsted over getting just right. I still don't know if I did. With everything that happened over the last couple of days, I actually forgot that it was going up today until I got the alert in my email, but there it is. The opportunity to write it rose up out of nowhere a few months ago; the calendar went out and I saw that they had planned a postmortem issue, and I knew it was finally time to get all of this out. Some of you were reading my LJ when all of it went down, so you know the story, but now it's all in the open air. We'll see what happens.

Mike DeLuca, my colleague in both writing and drinking fine beers, wrote a neat blog post last week about the feeling of having your work enjoyed by people you’ve never met. Every writer has friends and family who love their stuff, but there’s something both neat and odd about getting that from people you’ve never met.

I just had my first experience with this. My literary story “A Brief Swell of Twilight” won the 2006 Fiction Award from the Briar Cliff Review. Last week I got a nice e-mail from a freshman at Briar Cliff University who’s taking a lit class taught by one of the faculty advisors for the magazine. They were assigned to write a character analysis paper, and one of their choices was the protagonist in my story. This student said he wasn’t allowed to ask for any extra information about the character; he just wanted to tell me that he enjoyed the story.

Which was all very cool, but still made me feel odd. All my characters are based on myself, in different ways and varying amounts, but this particular character was close to home in a few. And, of course, completely fictional in others.

I’m very glad this student enjoyed that synthesis of me and very much not-me, combined in an interesting story. It does seem especially cool that it resonated with him even though he has no idea who I am. Which I think is the ultimate goal for all of us striving to be read–it must resonate with as many people as possible.

And it was a bit more interesting a comment than the extended family readers who read the rescue climax of that story and asked, “Did that really happen to Scott?” :)

I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.”
– Anais Nin

Tally ho!

Happy birthday to nalroth! May his vivacity and zest for life be eternal.

Since some of you (caerbannog, I'm looking at you) might be interested in this, the Escapist has my "Hail to the Kitty" article up this week, a retrospective on my disturbing affinity for the Kitty. Stay tuned next week for the next phase in my game industry troublemaking...

I am making travel plans for Ion, where I will be speaking next month on BetterEULA stuff and all that jazz. Let me know if you're in the Seattle area and would like to catch up!

I just finished a spate of writing deadlines last weekend. Given how slowly I work, usually six weeks or more to write a short story, I grudgingly find that deadlines often are a great motivation. These were only critique group deadlines, not real deadlines for anyone wanting to buy my fiction, but they still often produce work that is quite solid. Not that it’s still not a struggle leading up to them…. :)

Marketing for a kids' game is difficult. Marketing for a kids' game that also pushes a whole mess of technology boundaries is phenomenally difficult. But despite all of the discussion on the various technological challenges associated with the GoPets DS game, seeing this review on Amazon has been the most satisfying yet:

A Kid's Review
This is a very fun game to play. You start out by getting interviewed to adopt a dog or cat (later on you can get a horse). You decide what color you want it to be, the design (spots, stripes), and its name. You can dress your pet and clean it (by putting it in the tub and using the stylus to make bubbles by rubbing). There are mini games in a different part of the island, and you need to unlock one, I haven't yet. On wifi you can meet other peoples pets and make friends and chat. It is perfectly safe because you use pictures for words and only certain words have pictures for them. It gets a tiny bit boring when you just keep playing the same mini games, but you get a lot of motivation to get the biggest house and the most friends.
I would say "get the game!" but also, you might want to save your allowance so you can get 2 games in case you aren't the type for this game.

I love it. (And that s/he gave us four stars.)

I may be writing a few articles for Gamasutra on the development of the game and the difficulties inherent in developing for this particular demographic -- and then watching the game get pummeled by game reviewers who already have enough of a hard time defending their masculinity -- but y'know what, a review like that is enough for me.

In other game type news, Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing (also here on Amazon but without the snazzy cover image), with many illustrious contributors and my chapter on writing game pitches, should be out next month.