Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I ran out of steam on my Wiscon report/posts, but because even sketchy may be better than nothing, this is based on notes I jotted down weeks ago.

Monday morning in the con suite, I got into a good discussion of language and dialect, which also included a FoaF story about a fan traveling in Tokyo, lost on the subway despite following his written directions, looking up and seeing someone with a Klingon t-shirt, saying something like "speak Klingon to me!" so he tried it, and got an astonished look and then directions in patched-together Klingon to get around the lack of some useful words. As the person who told us this said, the Japanese fan probably went home and told all his friens "you won't believe this foreigner I ran into on the train!" That conversation was good enough that I was late to the panel on "Tiptree winners you really ought to read," a discussion of winners (and shortlist and longlist works) that the panelists thought particularly well of, or had held up well. Matt Ruff's Set This House in Order came up briefly, someone mentioned that they weren't sure it was sf or fantasy, and I spoke up to say we'd discussed that at the time (that was my year on the jury). One very organized panelist had a list of what she recommended; I took a copy but may have forgotten to pack it. (She teaches literature, and has taught a large fraction of the Tiptree books and stories in one of her courses.)

I had a nice lunch Monday with Janet Lafler and Matt Austern. We walked around the capitol square first: there was a restaurant they thought might be open, and after a couple of days of overcast, I said I was quite willing to go for a random walk on the warm, sunny afternoon. The place they'd had in mind was closed, but most of the way back to the hotel we found a nice place, somewhat beer-focused but with quite good food as well. I resisted the urge to order poutine after finding out how large the serving was; I did order a pint of cider, expecting that I wouldn't finish it even if it was good. It was good, and I drank maybe a quarter of it, interspersed with iced tea. We finished lunch, walked out into the square, and heard and then saw that day's union/anti-Walker demonstration. I told my friends "I belong over there," crossed the street, and joined in on "Solidarity Forever"; someone cheerfully let me look over the shoulder for the verses (I know the chorus, of course). A couple of minutes of that, and then someone thanked us all and said something like "See you tomorrow, or Wednesday, or Thursday." I have no way of knowing if my participation did any good, but I'm sure it didn't hurt, and it felt right.

I spent some time on Monday talking to my friend L (who wishes to keep a low profile online), Matt and Janet some more, and to kateyule. I also had a nice conversation on Sunday with intelligentrix, who is still living in New Orleans and who I hadn't talked to in ages. (If I've left you out of all of these, it's not you, it's the nature of human memory.)

More collected comments: ( visual symbolism and 9/11, perception of hostility online, tiptree award and fanfic, maybe I shouldn't answer certain questions,class, not wasting time )

The kerfuffle I mentioned in my previous post was sparked by a fanfic being long-listed for the award this year. One of the odder assertions was that putting a "bad" work (whatever that means--I haven't read it, so have no opinion on its quality) somehow will make people take the award less seriously, or respect it less. And I'm wondering how many of the following works people who are worrying about that have read, and whether they read any of them because they were long-listed:

• The Salt Roads, Nalo Hopkinson


• The Braided World


• "The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet"


• The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein


• "Walking Contradiction"


• "Under the Lunchbox Tree"


• "Bernardo's House"


• "Poor Man's Wife"


• Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton


• Fitcher's Brides, Gregory Frost


• The Kanshou


• Wraiths of Will and Pleasure, Storm Constantine


• All Over Creation, Ruth L. Ozeki


• "The Wild Girls," Pat Murphy, Witpunk


• "Well-Moistened With Cheap Wine[...]" Ed Park, Trampoline


• Heredity, Jenny Davidson


• "Path of the Transgressor," Tom Purdom, Asimov's June 2003

Those are in no particular order, and half the author names are omitted because I'm tired, don't feel like digging out the ones that weren't in the email I was looking at and that I don't remember offhand, and don't want to postpone this post. A lot of my Tiptree reading material is not in easy view of my keyboard.

Note that this is a separate question from whether the story in question should have been long-listed: from what matt_ruff has posted, his jury's criteria/definition of the long-list differed from my year's. This is not a flaw in the award process: by policy, the Motherboard doesn't tell the jury how to do its job, except to the extent that they provide a deadline.

P.S. Yes, papersky, I'll do that panel.

There's some kerfuffle about the latest Tiptree long list. This led me to try hunting down the long list for my own year.

I have emailed the contact address for the Tiptree Award Website, asking what it will take to get this information put on the Website. It didn't work last time, but I am undaunted. (I cc'd wild_irises, again, but I assume she's got more urgent things on her plate, this close to Wiscon.)

I'm not taking it personally: several other years' long lists are also omitted.

I have the information for my own year, because I archive my email. But people who weren't on the jury should be able to find it: our purpose is to call people's attention to works that deserve it.

juliansinger offered to pick a letter for anyone who asked, and then we're supposed to pick ten things that start with that letter, and write about them and what they mean to us.

She gave me T. I started by listing some things, and then selected from them based on what I felt ready to write about. This proved trickier than I thought it would be (lots of T's in that sentence, but not ones I want to use) and the results may be more free-associative than was being asked for.( cut because it got quite long )

The Tiptree jury is at the stage of making lists and talking about books and stories we've all read. Which means that I'm going to be dipping into some of those works again--and no, I'm not issuing any sneak previews here--but it also means that I'm basically done with my intense "can't read that now, it's not Tiptree" stage. (The largest part of that, of course, was recommendations of works not published in the last year or so.)

I'm partway through John M. Ford's collection Heat of Fusion. I also have a stack of "we'll get to it later" things that came in as part of the Tiptree process, notably books that a fellow juror reported back on as "Good, but not at all Tiptreeish", so the rest of us put them aside for later.

But I'm also open to recommendations, more generally. In particular, if we had a conversation in which you recommended a book and I said "Get back to me next year", it is now next year.

Also, I could use a good books/reading userpic.

I got a ride both ways with womzilla, which is always good: he's good company, and it saves both time and money compared with ride-to-railroad, train to Harlem, crosstown bus, uptown subway. I'd hoped to get home earlier this time, but things took a bit longer than we'd hoped.

There was one article we were working on that I had enough comments on and disagreements with that I wound up photocopying the pages I'd scribbled in the margins of, with an eye toward writing a LoC once we publish it. This may seem weird, but if Womzilla can loc his own fanzine and have it published, staff can too. (Topics included Edward Gorey, American vs. European style (really), and religion in science fiction vs. fantasy). Another manuscript, I was sixth reader on (we initial them when we're done), and found myself making numerous basic proofreading fixes (things like omitted "the" and "a" for "as"), which is just weird: I may catch a thing or two even when I'm far from first, because I have a very good eye, but it looked as though nobody else had been reading it at that level. In the late evening Joe Berlant and I looked over a manuscript translated from the Spanish, and then discovered that it's not clear we can publish this, even after we polish the translation (bugsybanana was deliberately literal in her first pass) and even if we decide we want to, because it uses large chunks of the poetry being discussed, and there may be copyright problems. If and when it makes sense for me to work on this further, I want to sit down with her and both the Spanish and English versions. Joe and I also discussed, among other things, Kornbluth, Pohl, and Cordwainer Smith [the connection being via NESFA Press]; New York City and other transit (for practical reasons), and the difficulties of cons in hotels that are near nothing at all.

Kathryn recommended a story when I mentioned the Tiptree; fortunately, it's one we're already aware of, so I was able to say so, rather than explain that it would have to be passed on to next year.

Also, I let the cat in and out a few times, and gave her a lap; drank lots of tea; and chatted with people both during the afternoon and over a Chinese dinner.

I'm having a hard time getting reading done except in transit, if this continues after lunch, I shall take my book and head for the subway. (Unlimited ride passes have many uses.) I might even get off somewhere and buy tangerines. but walking away from the computer seems to have done the job.

Yesterday was delightful. I went down to the Village for tea and conversation with wild_irises. We discussed books, including but not limited to the Tiptree Award [she's on the Mother Board]. We talked a bit about people, but all in a cheerful way, even on the "I don't understand why Q* does that" bits. Ditto politics, specifically my pleasure that opportunistic politicians are seeing it as in their interest to support same-sex marriage. The only thing wrong with the get-together is that I would have loved more time, but she had many things to do and people to see.

Being in the West Village anyway, I decided to check out the branch of my gym that is now open all night (well, almost: they open Monday morning, close Saturday night, and then have fairly long Sunday hours. I had a decent workout, marred both by not finding some equipment quickly and by a few things they didn't seem to have.

From there, I met cattitude, eleanor, and fangorn for an Indian dinner at a place Eleanor likes. I liked it too, though we wound up spending more money than I'd anticipated--and getting more food than we could eat. The only thing is that it was over in the East Village, giving me a pleasant walk after exercising, and a second pleasant walk back west to Rose's Turn. (Cattitude went home; it's too noisy for him there.)

On the way in, we ran into Chuck on the sidewalk; he complimented my purple hair, which he hadn't noticed in the dark bar. I saw lots of cool people, including roadnotes, volund, and baldanders, and took the opportunity to tell coyotegoth that he is a hero of the revolution. Roadnotes sang very well, as did a new person who seemed to have been pushed into getting up by her friends (friends who were noisy when others were singing, alas, but at least quieted down for her) but once up there talked to the piano player and did "My Funny Valentine."

I left a bit after 11, and didn't get home until 1, because my A train (running local at that hour, of course) was taken out of service at 116th Street "due to an incident ahead", an announcement that made no sense until I saw the firefighters board and the train continue on its way.

( gym details, the usual )

*Not zir real initial

That might actually be a plausible title for this journal, the way my life has been of late.

In any case, cattitude convinced me to go to the gym when he did this morning; I did a shorter-than-usual-for-me workout, to favor a sore shoulder and tender knee.

And I've finished kijjohnson's novel Fudoki, an excellent intertwining of two stories, both set in 12th-century Japan: the life of a princess, spent almost entirely in the city of Heian-kyo, and the tail of a cat who travels a long way from Heian-kyo, the latter a tale of magic, kami, and adventure, set in a time when cats were new to Japan; the princess is writing the cat's tale, and interrupts to write her own. Cat and princess both run into what is expected of women at that time and place, but the cat is unaware of the expectations--the magic that gives her much else she needs omits large amounts of human culture and emotion--and, by the ways in which she ignores them, leads most of the people she meets to decide they don't apply to her.

( gym numbers )

I've done the paid work that has been sent me this week. Interesting, proofreading an ad with no original to look at: in other words, I'm checking for spelling and sense, but supposed to mark minimal changes because it's already at the layout stage. (It's all been cold reading of this sort, but advertising is its own brand of weird: fortunately, this was just a "coming next month in this magazine" notice, so not too strange.)

I've done a chunk of Tiptree reading: finished the novel I've been working on all week (largely on the subway), and read two short stories. I liked both short stories, though one of them was another case of "I like this, I'm glad to have been pointed at it, but it doesn't feel very Tiptreeish".

I also went out and got rye bread (which means a short subway trip), groceries, and exciting things like hair conditioner. Looking at my groceries as the cashier rang them up, it occurred to me that a stranger could deduce two things from the selection. That I had other food at home, because this selection wouldn't go together into a mea;, or even a single dish that could be brought to a potluck, and that I like peas: the six items included a bag of frozen peas and two bags of dried green split peas.

Not bad for someone who slept until ten and didn't get dressed until after lunch.