It’s Not About HPL or the Award. It’s About Us

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In sf/f there’s always one or more teapot tempests at simmer, waiting to come to a boil when the previous one, so to speak, runs out of steam. Every now and then, however, the tempest turns out to be a typhoon too big for that metaphorical pot, and it’s time to sort out where one stands.

Why? Greater or lesser, don’t these things always blow over eventually?

Sure they do. The question is, how much wrack and damage do they leave behind? How many reputations tarnished, friendships weakened or destroyed? How completely does our sense of sf/f as our “tribe” fail in the face of the latest reality check? None of these are good things, and standing idly by while it all happens is to share in the blame, whatever does happen. Certainly, it’s one thing to throw gas on the fire, but it’s not so very different to pretend that the fire doesn’t exist. Either way, the house burns down.

So here I am contemplating a lapel pin I received at World Fantasy Con in Washington, D.C., way back in 2003. It’s a copy of the World Fantasy Award in miniature handed out to the nominees and based, as is the WFA itself, on Gahan Wilson’s caricature of Howard Phillips Lovecraft. It’s the public face of the award and has been so as long as I can remember. And, as others have pointed out, H.P. Lovecraft was a virulent racist. Continue reading →

Jesus on a Piece of Toast

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MothThere was and is a metaphor floating around about “how your brain is wired,” having to do with how two people’s brains can—at least superficially—appear to work very differently from each other. Turns out, of course, that this particular model of the brain isn’t entirely inaccurate. We do form synaptic connections all through our lives. Some people have stronger ties to the sections of the brain in charge of fight or flight—they’re the sort of people who tend to see terrorists/commies/Godzilla-size ebola viruses around every street corner. Some people have stronger connections to their aural or visual senses and tend more toward music and art. Note the word “tend” there in both examples. Biology, as they say, isn’t destiny. We’re no more slaves to our wiring than we are slaves to our instincts. But they are both there, and getting through your day without unnecessary drama often depends on understanding what you’re working with. Most people don’t know that their brains are programmed to react, they just…react. You don’t have to look far to see the consequences.

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Posterity Can Kiss My Posterior

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Yoshino-1Lately it’s felt as if the sf/f field is under a curse. Within the space of a few months we’ve lost Lucius Shepard, Iain Banks, Jay Lake, Graham Joyce, and just this week, Eugie Foster. Nor was it that long ago that Kathy Wentworth left us. I think it was Kathy’s passing that hit me the hardest. Even though we’d been drifting in and out of touch as geography and our separate directions pulled on us, I considered her a friend. Then she was gone before I even knew she was sick. Cancer, like most of the above. All of them gone too soon no matter their ages, but Eugie especially in that regard. She was only forty-two (And for anyone out there who considers forty-two old, all I can say is—wait a while). Continue reading →

The Children’s Hour

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None of what follows negates what I said in the previous post, “The Selfish Meme,” but as with anything more complicated than a carpet tack–say, for instance, a human being–there’s always more to the story. I was recently reminded of a writer friend who had asked a question in her journal about early influences. Lots of people contributed but I wasn’t much help. It occurs to me that’s because the biggest very early influence–so early it was many years before I even thought about writing–wasn’t necessarily a single author–it was a collection of books ( I said I couldn’t hold it to 15). Specifically one of those cheap sets of children’s books they used to sell to young mothers back in the fifties and sixties. My mother was a hard working single mom with not a lot of cash back in the day and she was certainly the target audience, so to amuse me and my sisters she bought one.

This one was called The Children’s Hour  edited/compiled by Marjorie Barrows, and I have to say that Mom got her money’s worth. The set had everything–A volume of folktales. A volume of adventure stories. A volume of myths and legends. A volume of poetry. A volume of science fiction, for gossakes. This was my introduction to fairy and folk tales, which took a while to sink in properly but re-emerged as a dominant theme in my work. It was my introduction to poetry, of which (poets) I’ll never be one, but learned to appreciate. Also to The Song of Roland and the Arthurian cycle, and to sf (stories by Asimov & Heinlein, plus “Miss Pickerel Goes to Mars,” and “Lancelot Biggs of the Saturn.”) In hindsight it’s obvious to me that almost everything I do, nearly everything I’m interested in as a writer has a precedent in that one set of books.

It’s also probably why I’m not a proper “Southern Writer,” for better or worse. By the time Faulkner and Welty came along for me it was too late–I was already imprinted with a different strain of the fantastic, and remain so to this day.