incidents and accidents, hints and allegations

I'm at Arisia (no programming for me, I didn't make sure I was on their list in time after skipping last year, which is fine, very relaxing!). Just now I was part of a conversation in which I asked for recommendations of works that actually show how world-changing events would have widespread, structural consequences that affect people at the individual level. You know, the stuff the MCU conspicuously avoided doing in Endgame and that Steven Universe: The Movie skipped past in, what, two sentences?

Someone said that, despite everything else that could be said about them, the Pern series actually does this, going forward and back in time to show how the planet went from space colony to feudal society to back again. (My favorite of those was always the one where they discover the A.I. that walks them through becoming a spacefaring culture again.) Mercedes Lackey, too, is really into logistics as Valdemar's relationship to magic changes, again, despite everything else.

(I later remembered Becky Chambers' Record of a Spaceborn Few, which is about a particular community, which is in some ways a utopia, during a period of change (but not any especially dramatic one, because communities are always changing). It's told through the viewpoints of a handful of people, who cross paths but not in any major-plot-crescendo kind of way, just living their lives within a society and in relation to it. Somewhat to my surprise, I absolutely loved it.)

This conversation prompted someone else to say that I should write a list of stories that should be revisited, with less fail. And I am very tired and have other things I want to do tonight, so I'm not going to go beyond this, but I'm putting this up so others can chime in if they like. Is there some story you like that isn't as common these days, where the most prominent past examples have other stuff that you would like not to be there, so that it's ripe for revisiting with less fail? I'm not interested, for these purposes, in the core of a story being subverted or reclaimed; more like, gee, what about a Big Dumb Object story but with actual characters? Or The Grand Sophy without the moneylender? Or, as above, Pern without everything having to do with sex and romance?

Anyway, have at it. I'm going to see if I can catch up on Steven Universe Future because there's a panel tomorrow morning. Granted, it's at 8:45 a.m., so I may not make it regardless . . .

So I'm trying to actually read some short fiction before nominating for the Hugos this year, partly because I don't have a lot of time and partly because I'm not very enthusiastic about 2009 novels as a whole.

I've seen:

• The Nebula ballot;
• Niall Harrison's draft ballot;
• Abigail Nussbaum's draft ballot and links therein;
• The recommendation thread at Scalzi's.

I have a copy of the anthology Federations which I am slowly working my way through. I've put in a library request for Firebirds Soaring because papersky's story in it is getting a lot of attention.

So: What have you read that you've liked? What have you published that's eligible? (If you're modest, you can post your eligible lists separately from your recommended lists. I want to know what my friends have published.) Either links or names of things I can get from the library, please. I'm not going to go buying back issues of magazines at this point.

Things I've read so far that I've liked—not a draft ballot, note, and I still have a lot of things left to read even from the above-mentioned sources:

• "Carthago Delenda Est," Genevieve Valentine, Federations
• "Bespoke," Genevieve Valentine, Strange Horizons (dilemma! I think I like "Carthago" better, but "Bespoke" is getting more buzz, so, strategy-wise . . . )
• "Different Day," K. Tempest Bradford, Federations
• "Élan Vital," K. Tempest Bradford, Sybil’s Garage No. 6
• "Non-Zero Probabilities," N. K. Jemisin, Clarkesworld

So: go read those, and tell me what to read!

(If you absolutely can't stop yourself, go ahead and rec novels too, but I think I'm pretty well up on the possibilities there (things I have read or am reading but have not booklogged yet are in this LibraryThing collection) and I'd really prefer you focus on short fiction.)

So someone falsely told Harlan Ellison that K. Tempest Bradford was saying Mean Things about him. Instead of saying, "hey, don't be mean," or even "you are a mean person for saying mean things," he goes straight to the racist slurs, calling her an "NWA," a "swineherd," and a woman of "Cuhluh" (which is apparently some horrible attempt at "ghetto" phonetics, rather than a Lovecraft reference). Also says he wants to hit her, for extra classiness, and pulls out his token black friend "discovery" Octavia Butler. (Various comments and dissections of this at Tempest's blog.)

Then he issued what he told other people would be an apology, which is . . . not. That's quoted in full at Tempest's blog; I recommend yeloson's summary of its full non-apology-ness.

Do not say: oh, it's just Harlan, he's like that: being a jerk doesn't get you a pass on racist comments. (Indeed, if it did, it would be quite the perverse disincentive.) Do not say: oh, it's just Harlan, no-one cares about him anyway: he's still looked up to by many as a major figure in the field, and anyway, I'm not allowed to call out racism by random people? Do not say: oh, it's just Harlan, he's really a nice guy in real life: this is real life.

Look, he called someone a n****r as an insult. You don't get to do that. And it's important that we say, no, you don't get to do that.

References: Ellison's webboard doesn't do permalinks; his first post is timestamped "Thursday, July 23 2009 19:27:11" and is currently on the second page, but will eventually scroll further back. His second is timestamped "Friday, July 24 2009 16:35:36" and is still on the front page.

Helen S. Wright's A Matter of Oaths, long long out of print, is now available as a free e-book from the author. I didn't like it quite as well as perkinwarbeck2, but I concur with his assessment that "if what you want is a shot of spaceships to the arteries, you could do a lot worse."