I am now a contributor to Lightspeed Magazine. They bought my novella, Miller’s Wife, for one of their ebook reissues. Here is the cover of the issue:
I am, as you may imagine, very pleased. Support the magazine, get the stories.
Oh, and Miller’s Wife now has its third appearance. Originally, the story appeared in Black Gate Magazine. Currently it is also the lead story in my short story collection, Gravity Box and Other Spaces. Now this.
Enjoy.
He was a presence in my growing understanding of the professional side of science fiction for almost 40 years. He was the first book editor whose name I knew. I collected a slew of his Timescape imprints from Pocket Books, regarding the label as a mark of excellence in a volatile field that was often untrackable in terms of what was good and what was not. Because of David G. Hartwell, a number of authors came to my attention whose work I have continued to follow to this day.
I was fortunate to know him. A little. Somehow. We crossed paths enough times to be acquaintances and he was always—always—-gracious and, more importantly, interested.
The first time I saw him was in L.A. in 1984, at L.A.Con II, in a party shortly after the news had broken that Pocket Books had pulled the plug on Timescape. Among the other problems, apparently, was the fact that David kept buying books that wouldn’t sell. By sell, I mean they would not make bestseller lists. Her had this arcane idea, apparently, that a good book ought to be published, regardless of the numbers it might (or might not) generate. Odd notion, that, in an era dominated by the quest for the next blockbuster. But David kept acquiring and championing books that did not have that kind of potential. Anyway, I saw him in a hotel corridor, his hair sprayed with red and pink highlights. (In contrast, I recall his tie was relatively tame.) We spoke briefly. I was just a fan and a wannabe writer at that time. We talked a bit about the books and publishing. A few minutes. He said, finally, “Yes, well, the books are out there now.” He had won one over the corporates. The books had been published, despite the disapproval of the suits.
We said hi to each other in Atlanta in ’86 and by then I was, with some temerity, trying to write novels. We connected again in 2000, in Chicago, where we spent a couple of hours talking at the Japanese party at worldcon. I remember that especially because it was the quietest party I’d ever attended at a worldcon—-or any con, for that matter—and David spoke knowledgeably about Japan and fandom there. In the midst of our conversation, a number of our hosts,in kimonos, stopped at the same time, producing a variety of small cameras, and snapped pictures of us, as if by pre-arrangement. By then Allen Steele had joined us, so they were getting pictures of two famous SF personalities and one semi-obscure one.
A few years later I was involved with the Missouri Center for the Book. I’d just become its president and we were trying some new events, and one idea I came up with was what I called the Genre Forums. We would do a public panel with a number of writers in a given genre, with a Q & A afterward. The first one we did was science fiction, of course, and I had Robin Bailey come in from Kansas City, Carolyn Gilman, who lived in St. Louis then, Nisi Shawl from Seattle, and myself. At the last minute, David called Robin. He had seen a notice for the event. He was coincidentally going to be in St.Louis for a family wedding that weekend and wondered if this was something he should attend. Robin called me to see if I wanted David on the panel. Rhetorical question. We had a small audience, unfortunately, because it was a first-rate panel. My partner, Donna, said it was the best panel she had ever seen, and by then we had both seen enough to judge. His presence, his knowledge, his erudition graced our discourse with a sensibility difficult to describe, but it was wonderful.
After that he began soliciting work from me. We never connected on a project, but we had several fine conversations afterward. He was, I learned, a wine lover and I was able to introduce him to one.
Of course, he’s famous for the outré ties. He possessed an antic quality that leavened his profound seriousness. He had been instrumental in many careers.
He bridged the tail end of the Golden Age and the present. Elder statesman of the field seems a bit pompous, but in many ways it was true. For a long time he ran the New York Review of Science Fiction—where I finally sold him a few things—and through that facilitated a high-minded, ongoing discussion of the workings, the objectives, the ongoing assessment of science fiction and, indeed, literature.
Here is the Locus obituary for more detail.
David took me seriously. I am glad I knew him, sorry I didn’t know him better, and feel the world has lost a gentle, intelligent, wise light.
This coming weekend is Archon 39, our local SF convention. For the last two months I’ve been rushing about, often only in my own head, to prepare. This year is special in a number of ways. Harlan Ellison is attending. Now, unless one keeps abreast of such things, that alone is no explanation for the level of anxiety I’ve been feeling about this. For one, I instigated this event, largely without intending to. For another, I’ve been involved in arranging things for him and his wife, Susan. I’ve consequently been more involved in Archon than in previous years. But today, Monday, I can honestly say I have covered as many bases as it is possible. The unforeseen is…e=unforeseeable.
That’s not the only thing going. Those of you who have been following me on Twitter will know that I have been updating my computers. That has been both less bothersome and more annoying than it ought to be, but is now largely done. (I have one more thing to get, but it will keep till later.) I’m now well into the 21st Century on that front and not a moment too soon. This morning I took care of the last bit of bother for Archon that is in my power to take care of, so I spent the last twenty minutes playing with the theme on my blog. I think I’m sticking with this one for a time. How do you like it? I feel it is a theme of great nift.
Recently, Left Bank Books hosted an event with Sammy Hagar. He has a new cookbook out (yes, that Sammy Hagar, and, yes, I said a cookbook) and we ushered through a myriad of his ecstatic fans and sold a ton of them. So for no other reason than I have it on hand, here’s a photo of Mr. Hagar.
We have all more or less recovered from the chaos and excitement of that day, which was one day in a week filled with notable events. Jonathan Franzen was also in town and we (not I) worked that event. And earlier we hosted Mr. Jeff Smith, former Missouri state senator who went to prison and has, since release, dedicated himself to prison reform. He has a new book out about it. I did work that event and must report that some of what he said, while not surprising, was nevertheless disturbing. The whole fiction of “rehabilitation” in regards to incarceration…
Well, I may have more to say on that later.
I’m unwinding as I write this, so forgive me if I wander about from topic to topic. Last night we had friends over to dinner and it was terrific. Good food, great conversation, laughing…we don’t do nearly enough of that. Partly it’s the time thing, but you know, you can lose the habit of being social, and over the last several years we’ve seen our skills erode. We may be coming out of a long hibernation, but then there is still the time thing, and I have a book to write over the next several months. (Hence the new computers.)
On that front, this Saturday past I was one of eight local authors invited to attend the Carondolet Authors’ Brunch. Strange thing that it was, it was nevertheless fun. They arranged tables and set it up like speed dating. The authors would visit each table for 15 minutes, then move to the next, and so on. I was delighted that no two tables produced the same conversation, although some variation of “where do you get your ideas” came up each time, but that was only one of two questions that I found repeated. The other was “Do you teach?”
There were a couple of household repairs I tended to this morning and now I’m procrastinating here. I should be writing something serious, profound, or at least with the potential to earn income, but I’m fooling around with my blog theme and gossiping.
…And I just realized I have one more thing to take care of for Archon.
That said, this Thursday we’re trying something at Left Bank Books that I hope will establish a tradition. We’re having three of the major guests in the store for a kind of pre-con event. Jacqueline Carey, of Kushiel’s Dart fame; Esther Friesner, of multiple fames; and Vic Milan, who has been the toastmaster at Archon’s masquerade since forever, and if you like costuming and haven’t been to an Archon masquerade, you’re missing a real treat, of which Vic is a major part. So, seven o’clock Thursday night, October 1st, be there or be a tessaract.
After Archon I intend to find a corner and melt down into it.
Until then, thanks for stopping by.
My collection, Gravity Box and Other Spaces, has received some attention since it came out last year. (Last year? Really? Yeesh!)
Two critics in particular have been kind to it. The first, from the estimable Rich Horton, who does one of the Best of the Year anthologies (and I urge you all to check it out), wrote the following in LOCUS last December:
“Mark W. Tiedemann is the author of a fine space opera trilogy, The Secantis Sequence, that deserves a wider audience, as well as of strong stories in places like SF Age and F&SF. He hasn’t been entirely silent the past several years, but he hasn’t been as much in evidence as I’d like, so it’s nice to see a new collection, Gravity Box and Other Spaces, appear featuring a few reprints (including his outstanding early story “The Playground Door”) and a number of original stories. My favorites include one fantasy and one SF story. “Preservation” is about a gamekeeper in service to a King who commands him to poach the horn of an einhyrn, reputed to determine if a woman is a virgin. The King wants to make sure his son’s intended bride is pure, but it’s soon clear that dirtier politics than that are involved – not to mention that the einhyrn are a protected species. Solid adventure, and involving characters. I liked “Forever and a Day” even more, a time dilation story about a woman in a polyamorous marriage, who turns out to be unable to tolerate new treatments conferring immortality. Her husband and wife become immortal, while she joins the crew of a starship, gaining a sort of immortality due to time dilation. A cute idea in itself, though hardly new, but the story asks effectively how any relationship can survive centuries – indeed, how one’s relationship with one’s own self can survive centuries, and whether immortality is better than the sort of continual revivification star travel might bring.”
And now this from Paul di Filippo, in the July Asimov’s:
“The title and cover image of Mark Tiedemann’s Gravity Box and Other Spaces…might lead you to believe that its table of contents hold nothing but hard SF. But instead we find a panoply of genres. The book opens strongly with a Stephen King-style contemporary bit of weirdness titled “Miller’s Wife.” A futuristic story involving robot nursemaids/surrogates of a sort, “Redaction” evokes feelings similar to viewing Spielberg’s A.I. “The Disinterred” is a strong blend of steampunk, specters, and religion, as a man goes searching for his lost wife and runs into a scientific expedition instead. And the title piece tracks the fortunes of a teenage girl who must rebel against the ignorance of her family and the laws of society to attain a future in space. Tiedemann’s range is large, his heart big, and his skills and insights deserving of your attentions.” Paul Di Filippo, July 2015 Asimov’s SF.
I’m blushing. No I’m not. Well, maybe a little. I am very grateful. For the record, these are the first reviews of one of my books I ever received from either of these publications. Just goes to show, it’s never too late to have a good start to one’s career.
The other day I was taking with friends about that pesky subject, wages. Minimum wage is in the news, a big argument, and the politics are necessarily touchy. Comparisons were made and my own situation caused a bit of raised eyebrows and “What’s up with that” detours through personal histories.
According to some, among people who have known me a long time, I have always been seriously underpaid throughout my working life.
Before we get into that, though, I would like to reference this article, written by my boss, Jarek Steele, about the current anxiety-laden question of raising the minimum wage. Go read this, then come back here.
First off, I would like to say that I work at a wonderful place. Left Bank Books is now family. As you can tell from the essay, they are thoughtful, concerned people with no small amount of brainpower and good bead on life as it is and a solid moral sense. I’m lucky to work there. I’ll come back to that later.
Now. Most of my adult life I have been relatively unconcerned about my wages. I don’t know where I got this from, but I’ve always felt they were secondary to several more important factors. Some of this is naïveté, but some of it is a result of early on making a choice between security and fulfillment. For many people, money serves as fulfillment, and for some it genuinely is. They work to have. I offer no judgment here, everyone is different, and it’s all a question of degree anyway, because we fall along a spectrum.
For myself, I’ve always worked to Be.
Perhaps a small difference to some, but a huge difference over time. I came out of the box, as it were, with intentions to be a certain kind of person, to do certain things, to make a crater in the world that looks a certain way, and if the pursuit of money got in the way of that, then I ignored the money. Not consciously, because I always just assumed that somewhere along the way I would have it, mainly as a consequence of having done all the stuff that fulfilled my requirements of Being.
Now, if this all sounds a bit zen and possibly foolish, so be it. I’d be willing to bet many if not most of us have career-type dreams at some point that focus mainly of what we’re doing and not how much money we’re going to make doing it. But this is America and identity is conflated with owning things, so it becomes very difficult to tease apart the doing from the reward.
Which brings me to my rather jagged career path, which saw me graduate high school intent on a career in photography, which I pursued as an art first and foremost and, in the end, only. I never figured out how to make it pay.
So I worked for a major photofinishing chain, then a period as an in-house commercial photographer for a marginal advertising company, then as a delivery driver for a custom lab, and finally as the darkroom jockey of one of the best camera stores/black & white labs in town. That last for 20 years.
I never became the photographer I thought I’d be, at least not commercially. I did all the things. Portraits, landscape, art and abstract, architectural. Occasionally I did them for clients, but mainly I did them because they were cool to do and they produced images I wanted to see. I was Doing Photography and that was the important thing. I was fulfilled.
All the while I drew my wage from my job, which supported the art and all the other stuff.
Then I picked up the writing again. Time passed, I learned my craft, started selling stories, and then that 20 year stint of a job ended with the close of the business. Two years later I applied to and got another lab job, at which I worked for 11 years, most of them rather unhappily.
(And here the concerns over money enter in the most annoying way, because money would have been the means by which I would have been able to just write instead of having to work at something I no longer loved in order to eat.)
The story sales never added up to enough for me to quit that job.
But I was getting published. I was fulfilled, at least in the desire to Do The Thing.
Age does force one to confront certain realities. Looking back, I realized that I had never pushed for more money. I never once, in all the years of “working for a living,” asked for a raise. Somewhere in the back of my head there floated the assumption that good work brought remuneration, so if the people I worked for chose not to give a raise, then it was due to my lack of good work. I could maintain this attitude largely because, with one exception (that first job right out of high school) I have never worked for a large corporation. Never. I have spent my employed life working for small local businesses, the health of which I could see, right in front of me. They all struggled. I was part of that struggle, so adding a burden to them was not in my nature. I never asked for a raise.
Instead, I lived a life that fit with my earnings. One could do that at one time. And I did get raises, so it’s not like I’m talking about trying to scrape by on minimum wage. (Which was, btw, right around two dollars an hour when I graduated high school, and I worked for Fox Photo over a year before they granted me a ten cent an hour raise.) But I never asked. I was always grateful when they came, but I never asked. The people for whom I worked were usually close enough to the ground to show appreciation when they could. For a while I made a decent living.
Donna and I, however, had no children. That one fact explains a great deal about how we could opt to work for who we chose (often) and live as we pleased without overly worrying about income. We were careful. When we bought a house, we paid it off early. We carry no balances on our credit cards. We owe no bank anything.
And we realize how unusual this makes us.
But it also points up the major disconnect many people suffer in their lives in terms of employment and compensation. I never asked for raises because, by and large, I never had to. Had we lived a more traditional lifestyle, money would have been the single greatest driver of all our choices.
However, my comment above about being underpaid…
Several years ago an opportunity opened for me to possibly take a job as an editor at a local magazine. I’m not familiar with the task, but I’ve always been a quick learner, so I had no doubts about my ability to come up to speed, and I could offer myself for a bit less than others might. I went over the requirements of the position with a friend who had been in this end of the industry. She remarked as one point that the salary would probably be X, which was low, but in a couple of years I could probably come up to standard. I laughed and told her I’d never made that much in a year in my life.
She was flabberghasted. How, she wondered, could someone with my abilities have been so undercompensated?
Because it had never occurred to me for a long, long time that I had been. I’d been Doing The Things, and wasn’t that what mattered?
No. At least it’s not the only thing. Money is the means by which we live the kind of lives we wish to. I want “success”—monetary success—as a writer so that I can do that and nothing else. But I’m not good at that kind of success. I’ve never been adept at parlaying skills and artistic ability into money. Whatever it is that allows some people to be skilled at getting compensated, I’ve never been good at it.
And the owners of corporate America know that most people are like that. They depend on it. The main reason unions were so important is for that reason and that most people need someone who is good at understanding that game to struggle on their behalf. But the fact remains, most people take what they can get and then worry about the shortfall.
Because we have consistently misunderstood the relationship between, in the classic terms, labor and management. As the economy has changed, that misunderstanding is becoming critical, because we are collectively faced with the consequences of our failure to address it.
Business knows average people aren’t either interested or especially adept at Doing Business. That alone gives business—and I’m talking business at the disembodied corporate level here—an advantage because they take it. They can shortchange employees because they know how and their employees don’t know they have either any power or can find the means to engage management to worker advantage. Had we kept abreast of the changes to labor’s benefit these past 30 years when we shifted predominantly from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, then the present strained issue of raising minimum wages would not be so traumatic. The problem of catching up is putting strain on small to mid-level businesses that they should not have had to bear. Because we’ve been underwriting cheap product and services for decades by a disproportionate-to-reality compensation formula that treats people like parts. Read Jarek Steele’s breakdown above. Numbers, folks, and realities.
Drastic measures become necessary only because of indolence in the system. As long as the numbers of people receiving poor compensation for work that has become increasingly primary were low, the problem could be ignored. It’s not even so much that so many are trying to make full livings on minimum wage but that all wages are commensurately constrained by the growing imbalance in consumer ability to pay for what we need and want.
Then there are people like me, who frankly have never known how to care about the money. Or at least never felt the freedom to demand it, because we keep getting sidetracked by Doing The Things.
Because Taking Care of Business consumes the one thing that art demands—time. I loved doing photography. I hated running a business. I love writing. Paying attention to marketing and sales is frankly loathesome. I wish sometimes (lately more than ever) that it were otherwise, that I had that ability to engage promotions and negotiations, but I am who I am and do it only because if I don’t then some day I won’t be able to do the art anymore.
Which, by completely unconscious intent, has caused me to work locally, for people I see everyday and can talk to as friends more than as employers. I think this is a good business model, but because it is not primary in this country, because people who think very much differently set the parameters of what constitutes “business practice” for so much of the country, this is not the business model that trumps treating people like parts.
We’ve been arguing about this since the founding of the Republic, since the idea of the yeoman farmer and the independent artisan was turned into a romantic myth by the privileging of corporate giants saw a massive culling early on, when it became harder and harder for the independent owner to function in the face of cheaper prices and savage competition that stripped people of their own labor by turning them into wage-slaves. The argument went on and on, the battle raging for over a century and a half, until finally the Second World War, the Cold War, combined to usher in the era of corporate hegemony that, while not eradicating the small business managed to place the entire economy in thrall to the requirements of giants.*
Hyperbole? Consider what happens when a large corporation closes a plant or leaves a market and dozens of smaller, local businesses—those that survived the initial arrival of that corporation, at least (mainly by learning to service it)—find their customers drying up because so many of them are unemployed. Taxes dry up as well, so relief doesn’t stretch as far, and we no longer have an economy that will support a regrowth in a timely manner. Towns have been abandoned due to this cycle.
Doom and gloom? No, I think there’s enough latent ability and power in local, small business to still have a good chance at not only holding its own but of succeeding and altering the standard model. Because there is still value in prizing Doing the Things over Making the Buck, and compensation can flow in those directions. We’re looking at a crucial time where those kinds of choices are more important than they have been in a long time.
Which leaves me back at where I started, admitting to a kind of aphasia when it comes to this money thing and by and large, as inconvenient as it is, still not much interested in changing who I am in order to meet some mogul’s notion of success. I work where I work and do what I do because I can decide that “career” is not a synonym for sheer acquisitiveness.
I am lucky, as I say, and do not in any way offer my life as an example of how to do this. I might well have ended up in much worse places. But it’s the people around me who have made the difference. They all ought to be better off, but we’re all Doing The Things and making the world, at least around us, better off. Meantime, I am grateful. I can still Do The Things.
It would be good if more of us remembered or realized that that is why we work so hard.
____________________________________________________________________________
* Consider further the completely bass ackwards relationship between large corporations and local communities wherein the community is required by circumstance to bride the corporation to set up shop—a bribe done with tax money, which means the community starts off impoverishing itself for the “privilege” of hosting an entity that will then extract profits from that community to distribute among people who do not live there. And when the latent wealth of that community has fallen sufficiently that the profits to the corporation are less than deemed desirable, they then close up shop and leave, the community having grown dependent to such a degree that, scaffolding removed, the local economy collapses, partially or completely. What should be the case is the corporation ought to pay the community for the privilege and the relationship should be one where the community as host is a primary shareholder and gets compensated first. Unworkable someone in the back says? Not so. Alaska did this will the oil companies decades ago and every Alaskan since gets a stipend from Big Oil. Or did till recently.
Confession time. I have never assumed that I am a good writer. I have never taken the position that I know what I’m doing, that I deserve respect, or that I am in any way special as a writer. My default sense of self is that I’m still trying, still learning, still reaching, and I haven’t “got there” yet. If, therefore, I write something that touches a reader, that evokes a positive response, that, given the opportunity, causes them to tell me how much they liked that story or novel of mine they read, I am always surprised and quietly pleased and a bit more hopeful that one of these days I might fully allow myself to acknowledge my own talent.
But I never let myself believe I deserve anything like that. Ever.
Initially, this came out of an inborn reticence characteristic of the fatally shy and an aversion to being the center of anyone’s attention. But you grow out of that eventually, or at least I did, because you come to realize you have nothing special about which to be shy. Also, that shyness is detrimental to your happiness when it causes you to pass up opportunities you might desperately want to embrace. It’s replaced, then, by a gradual sense of politesse, of what you might consider good manners, and a deep desire to be liked. Braggards are generally not liked, so you hide your light so you don’t become That Guy.
Too early success can derail your journey to becoming someone you might wish to be by replacing a perfectly natural humility with the idea that, hey, you really are something special! Nastiness can ensue.
I am very aware of my potential for being That Guy, the boor, the boaster, the “all about me” asshole. Part of me wants to be all of that, or at least have all the attention that leads to that. Why else would I have always been involved in work that has such a public aspect? Art, music, theater (very briefly), and writing. All of it has a Dig Me facet, especially if you have any ambition to make a living at any of it. You have to put the work out there, you have to take credit, you’re the one people have to identify with something they like in order for you to get paid. It’s all a recipe for assholedom, because you can so easily believe the hype that comes with success, and start acting like you deserve it all.
You don’t. You’ve earned it, perhaps, but you don’t deserve it.
If you don’t see the difference, then try harder. Deserving something in this instance implies believing it’s your due, regardless. Just by existing in the world, certain accommodations ought to accrue, whether you have done the work or not. We do have a category of things which fit that description—they’re called rights and everyone deserves them, they are not commodities to be dolled out according to some kind of intrinsic worth meter that suggests some people are better or more important than others. For the special stuff, we work and earn regard. It’s not “due” us by virtue of who we are.
But even in that, it’s not necessarily we who merit the regard but the work. If it has our name on it, then we get to accept the award when it’s handed out, but it’s the work that’s being honored.
We are in no way in charge of that process.
This is hard, I admit. How is the work to be separated from the one who does it? You can’t do it, really, but that’s not the point. The point is how what you put into the world impacts others and creates a space wherein honor and respect are given and received. It’s a condition of regard, one that acknowledges distinctions, sometimes fine ones, in which the work may well deserve an honor but, if given, the creator can only be said to have earned it.
That’s a negotiation and depends entirely on the relationship between creator and audience.
That Guy forgets or never understands that the relationship is what matters here. That in fact when respect and honor are given, it must be returned. Without that relationship, that process, there is no honor and awards are empty gestures.
So, all by accident, because I arrived here without a clear intent, I confess that I have never felt myself to be deserving of special consideration. I don’t think of myself as a good writer, even though I would very much like to be and hope that maybe I am. When one of my stories (or photographs or a musical performance) is praised, I am always surprised—and pleased—because it’s always unexpected.
It’s possible that, in terms of career, I have this all bassackwards, that I really ought to be pushing myself on people and, in the absence of praise, making scenes and telling people how ignorant or biased they are because they don’t like my work. Maybe I should be actively campaigning for honors, prodding, coaxing, cajoling, hard-selling myself and insisting on my worth, letting people know that I deserve something which they seem to be denying me. My sales might go up.
But I’d be That Guy and I don’t want to live with him.
One of the givens I practice in my dealings with readers is to never ask what they thought of the story. Never. That invites the potential for embarrassment. You put them on the spot and you open yourself for criticism. The common solution to that awkward exchange is dissimulation. Certainly honesty is unlikely and perhaps unwelcome. Never ask. If the praise is not forthcoming without prompt, leave it alone. Asking is fraught with pitfalls, the first of which is that comparisons are inevitably made. Praise, like all courtesies, cannot be demanded, even politely, because the expectation subverts it.
And you then become That Guy.
Especially if you ask in public.
I’m being circumspect in this. I trust some folks will understand what this is, in part, about. For everyone else, let it be the confession offered above, an explanation and description of one of the peculiarities of trying to be an artist in a public practice, a peak inside, as it were.
I never think of myself as a good writer. And I hope I’m not That Guy.
Thank you for your time and attention.
I did an interview yesterday. Here’s the You Tube of it. It’s not as smooth as I’d like but it’s the result the fact that I’m in the Bronze Age, technologically. I had a difficult time hearing Sally Ember here, though that may not be readily apparent from this. I really need to upgrade all my systems. It would be nice if life would stop throwing me curve balls that keep costing me money I’d prefer to spend on new computers. However, I offer it here as one my few video bits. I recommend checking about Sally’s site, she has a lot of interviews there. CHANGES.
This is almost too painful. The volume of wordage created over this Sad Puppies* thing is heading toward the Tolstoyan. Reasonableness will not avail. It’s past that simply because reasonableness is not suited to what has amounted to a schoolyard snit, instigated by a group feeling it’s “their turn” at dodge ball and annoyed that no one will pass them the ball.
Questions of “who owns the Hugo?” are largely beside the point, because until this it was never part of the gestalt of the Hugo. It was a silly, technical question that had little to do with the aura around the award. (As a question of legalism, the Hugo is “owned” by the World Science Fiction Society, which runs the world SF conventions. But that’s not what the question intends to mean.)
Previously, I’ve noted that any such contest that purports to select The Best of anything is automatically suspect because so much of it involves personal taste. Even more, in this instance, involves print run and sales. One more layer has to do with those willing to put down coin to support or attend a given worldcon. So many factors having nothing to do with a specific work are at play that we end up with a Brownian flux of often competing factors which pretty much make the charge that any given group has the power to predetermine winners absurd.
That is, until now.
Proving that anything not already overly organized can be gamed, one group has managed to create the very thing they have been claiming already existed. The outrage now being expressed at the results might seem to echo back their own anger at their claimed exclusion, but in this case the evidence is strong that some kind of fix has been made. Six slots taken by one author published by one house, with a few other slots from that same house, a house owned by someone who has been very vocal about his intentions to do just this? Ample proof that such a thing can be done, but evidence that it had been done before? No, not really.
Here’s where we all find ourselves in unpleasant waters. If the past charges are to be believed, then the evidence offered was in the stories and novels nominated. That has been the repeated claim, that “certain” kinds of work are blocked while certain “other” kinds of work get preferential treatment, on ideological grounds. What grounds? Why, the liberal/left/socialist agenda opposed to conservatism, with works of a conservative bent by outspoken or clearly conservative authors banished from consideration in favor of work with a social justice flavor. Obviously this is an exclusion based solely on ideology and has nothing to do with the quality of the work in question. In order to refute this, now, one finds oneself in the uncomfortable position of having to pass judgment on quality and name names.
Yes, this more or less is the result of any awards competition anyway. The winners are presumed to possess more quality than the others. But in the context of a contest, no one has to come out and state the reason “X” by so-and-so didn’t win (because it, perhaps, lacked the quality being rewarded). We can—rightly—presume others to be more or less as good, the actual winners rising above as a consequence of individual taste, and we can presume many more occupy positions on a spectrum. We don’t have to single anyone out for denigration because the contest isn’t about The Worst but The Best.
But claiming The Best has been so named based on other criteria than quality (and popularity) demands comparisons and then it gets personal in a different, unfortunate, way.
This is what critics are supposed to do—not fans.
In order to back their claims of exclusion, exactly this was offered—certain stories were held up as examples of “what’s wrong with SF” and ridiculed. Names were named, work was denigrated. “If this is the kind of work that’s winning Hugos, then obviously the awards are fixed.” As if such works could not possibly be held in esteem for any other reason than that they meet some ideological litmus test.
Which means, one could infer, that works meeting a different ideological litmus test are being ignored because of ideology. It couldn’t possibly be due to any other factor.
And here’s where the ugly comes in, because in order to demonstrate that other factors have kept certain works from consideration you have to start examining those works by criteria which, done thoroughly, can only be hurtful. Unnecessarily if such works have an audience and meet a demand.
For the past few years organized efforts to make this argument have churned the punchbowl, just below the surface. This year it erupted into clear action. The defense has been that all that was intended was for the pool of voters to be widened, be “more inclusive.” There is no doubt this is a good thing, but if you already know what kind of inclusiveness you want—and by extension what kind of inclusiveness you don’t want, either because you believe there is already excess representation of certain factions or because you believe that certain factions may be toxic to your goal—then your efforts will end up narrowing the channel by which new voices are brought in and possibly creating a singleminded advocacy group that will vote an ideological line. In any case, their reason for being there will be in order to prevent Them from keeping You from some self-perceived due. This is kind of an inevitability initially because the impetus for such action is to change the paradigm. Over time, this increased pool will diversify just because of the dynamics within the pool, but in these early days the goal is not to increase diversity but to effect a change in taste. What success will look like is predetermined, implicitly at least, and the nature of the campaign is aimed at that.
It’s not that quality isn’t a consideration but it is no longer explicitly the chief consideration. It can’t be, because the nature of the change is based on type not expression.
Now there is another problem, because someone has pissed in the punchbowl. It’s one of the dangers of starting down such a path to change paradigms through organized activism, that at some point someone will come along and use the channels you’ve set up for purposes other than you intended. It’s unfortunate and once it happens you have a mess nearly impossible to fix, because now no one wants to drink out of that bowl, on either side.
Well, that’s not entirely true. There will be those who belly up to the stand and dip readily into it and drink. These are people who thrive on toxicity and think as long as they get to drink from the bowl it doesn’t matter who else does or wants to. In fact, the fewer who do the better, because that means the punch is ideally suited to just them. It’s not about what’s in the bowl but the act of drinking. Perhaps they assume it’s supposed to taste that way but more likely they believe the punch has already been contaminated by a different flavor of piss, so it was never going to be “just” punch. They will fail to understand that those not drinking are refraining not because they don’t like punch but because someone pissed in the bowl.
As to the nature of the works held up as examples of what has been “wrong” with SF…
Science fiction is by its nature a progressive form. It cannot be otherwise unless its fundamental telos is denied. Which means it has always been in dialogue with the world as it is. The idea that social messaging is somehow an unnatural or unwanted element in SF is absurd on its face. This is why for decades the works extolled as the best, as the most representative of science fiction as an art form have been aggressively antagonistic toward status quo defenses and defiantly optimistic that we can do better, both scientifically and culturally. The best stories have been by definition social message stories. Not preachments, certainly, but that’s where the art comes in. Because a writer—any writer—has an artisitic obligation, a commitment to truth, and you don’t achieve that through strident or overt didacticism. That said, not liking the specific message in any story is irrelevant because SF has also been one of the most discursive and self-critical genres, constantly in dialogue with itself and with the world. We have improved the stories by writing antiphonally. You don’t like the message in a given story, write one that argues with it. Don’t try to win points by complaining that the message is somehow wrong and readers don’t realize it because they keep giving such stories awards.
Above all, though, if you don’t win any awards, be gracious about it, at least in public. Even if people agree with you that you maybe deserved one, that sympathy erodes in the bitter wind of performance whining.
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*I will not go into the quite lengthy minutiae of this group, but let me post a link here to a piece by Eric Flint that covers much of this and goes into a first class analysis of the current situation. I pick Eric because he is a Baen author—a paradoxical one, to hear some people talk—and because of his involvement in the field as an editor as well as a writer.
Recently I acquired a couple of new(er) photography books. One is a history of Group f.64 by Mary Street Alinder, which proved to be a joy to read. It chronicled, apparently for the first time comprehensively, the movement known by that label, Group f.64, which changed the way photography as art was done in this country. Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange…names to conjure with in photographic history, and still today the names to look for when wanting to know what photographs can do. I’ll do a longer review of it later in the Proximal Eye.
The other two are more straight picture books. One is a used volume, the 75th Anniversary celebration of Leica cameras. It includes some truly amazing work. Then a new volume by Tom Ang, Photography: The Definitive Visual History. Again, amazing work, beginning from the 1830s on into the digital age. Ang knows his history and this is a beautiful book.
It sent me into a fit of nostalgia. So I’ve been revisiting old images and doing some new work on them. For instance, this is one of my personal favorites:
This was taken in 1984, on a trip to Colorado with Donna. The technical data is obsolete—Minolta cameras, Technical Pan film for finest grain and detail—but the image, reworked a bit in Photoshop, pops, and stands as one of my best pieces.
I spent over 35 years doing work in a darkroom, wet process. For most of that time I loved it. I have no guilt whatsoever in saying today that I’m glad I don’t have to do it that way anymore.
But the fact is, I must have close to fifty thousand negatives. I’ve been taking pictures since I was 14. I have always been visually-centered. It has even been remarked that my writing is highly visual.
Recently, I’ve been toying with mounting an exhibition. I have done remarkably few shows over the years. Mostly out of reluctance to expose my work to criticism, which is silly, but there’s been more than a little laziness about it. But I think I’ve got some good things and maybe I should put them out there. Yes, I have the Zenfolio galleries, linked to this site, but I haven’t overseen them as carefully as I perhaps should. I think I’m going to change that up this year.
But I’ve been, as I said, going over some of my old work. Like this one, another favorite:
Opportunistic art. A wintry morning, too early. We lived in an apartment as an intersection with a traffic light. I went out to get the car started, to warm it up, and brought my camera, because I have no idea why, and the traffic light through the ice on the windshield did this. I’ve improved it somewhat here, but it’s one of the few images I’ve made that required little more than some cropping.
Another one from the Colorado trip that I’ve always liked, sort of similar to the one above, but totally different at the same time:
One of my “Ansel Adams” imitations. I love texture and this poor old barely-hanging-on trunk offered plenty.
Raising my lens from the ground to the sky then gave me this one:Â 
More f.64 Group pretension, but there is something primal and fascinating about looking at the world that way.
Occasionally, I get asked what kind of photography I do. What kind? As in portrait, landscape, abstract, and so forth, and the fact is I’ve done pretty much all of it. My world isn’t limited to one way of seeing, one set of subjects, or one story to tell. Maybe if I’d picked one and stuck with it to the exclusion of all else, I might have made more of a success out of it as a career, but that’s not how my brain works, so I just photograph what crosses my path, and I see differently day to day. For instance, going through some old proof sheets this week, I stumbled on some images I never printed before, and found this one:
Now, sure, you could say that it shares something with landscape. Composition if nothing else. Old tires as mountain range? But it’s a different kind of story. As is this one:
No, I haven’t titled it. I generally don’t, at least not for public consumption. I have them titled now for filing as digital files. But I think it’s more fun to let people look and decide on the story implied for themselves.
Working on these old negatives in Photoshop has given yet another way of seeing them, and maybe in the next several months I’ll mine my archives for more, while I try to decide about that exhibit. I don’t really know how to go about that, but at the moment I’m interested. The question is, would anybody else be.
Last year I did one of these, declaring that stating intentions was more honest and less guilt-making than resolutions. As it turned out, I fulfilled virtually none of my stated intentions, although I did manage to make a dent in several of them.
So this time, I’ll ramp it back a little and just sort of ramble about what I’d kinda sorta like to do and maybe might get a chance to.
Rambles, by their nature, tend to be disorganized, stream-of-consciousness thingies with no real direction—though they may have a center. With that in mind…
I’d like to read more books this coming year. This is hardly a new one. I always want to read more books. As I said in my year-end summation, I read at a lot of books, but I only finished a few. I have a large to-be-read stack still left over from 2014 (with maybe a few from 2013) and as I work at a book store, you know there will be more on the pile before 2016. I have two TBR stacks. There’s the main one, the big one, in my office at the base of my south wall bookshelf, then there’s the more modest stack at the end of the couch in the living room. The latter is comprised of books I’m either reading now or intend to read next, though really some of them have also been there for months. I am finally making progress on that stack, though, and here is a firm intention, to finish that stack before adding any new ones to it.
Then there’s the large pile…
The problem is time, obviously, and to a lesser extent opportunity. Maybe they’re the same problem. In fact, I’m sure they are, just different ends of the same equation. I’m still working on new fiction and when I write, obviously, I’m not reading. Common problem. So with that in mind I have resolved that one of my intentions is to figure out how to distort the space-time continuum in order to allow for more reading time. I have a book by Kip Thorne on the TBR pile that talks about some of that and I hope to gain enough insight to accomplish it. So if in the coming months I seem a bit slow to you, don’t worry—it’s not me, really, it’s just a difference in time.
I expect the same technique will help with the writing as well. Maybe even the housecleaning.
It appears that I will require surgery this year. Nothing life threatening, just seriously annoying. Back in August I injured my right arm. I’ve been to the doctor, had the MRI, gotten the verdict. Partially ruptured biceps tendon. I can function…just not comfortably or at my previous level of strength. They’ll have to Go In. The biggest inconvenience with this will be the two weeks of complete immobilization of the right arm as it starts to heal. (This could really help with that pesky reading time problem.) I was told that it will be a total of four months recovery time and then I should be back to normal. (But I want to be MORE than normal, I want to be GREAT, I want—shut up, sit down.)
One might expect that I did this at the gym, but no, I did it at work. Dumb.
So one of my other intentions for this year is to NOT HURT MYSELF AGAIN!
Ahem. *cough*
On the writing front, I’ve been ruminating on how to follow-up the coolness of my first short story collection, Gravity Box (which, may I suggest to any and all, that they get and read and spread the word, and write a short review on, I dunno, Goodreads or that other place I try not to feed but is there nevertheless and provides a space for reader reviews, you know the one I mean, don’t make me say it), and get more books published. To that end, a modest survey, to whit:
How many of you would like to see a new Secantis novel? How many of you would like to see reissues of the first three? Especially in ebook format?
(Now, I don’t expect a lot of response to this, because over the last several years I’ve come to expect not much response on this blog. I have no idea how many regular readers I have, but even among those who do read it regularly I don’t receive much comment. But talk among yourselves about this and keep it in mind that I’ve got Plans, so when I announce them here you’ll know one way or the other what you might want.)
So a follow-up intention from 2014. I am working on two novels. I intend to finish them both. This year. At which point I have to make a decision about what to do next. There are options. Depending on, well, everything, I’ll make a decision some time after finishing these two books.
Minor intentions. More and better photography. Some real cooking.
Oh, and we’re starting up a new reading group around the core of our last one. We did Dante last, this time we’ll be doing Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. I haven’t read this since high school, so it’ll practically be all new to me. We were leaning toward this even before Ferguson happened, but I think it’s a good choice because of Ferguson, since it is one of the earliest social justice novels.
Finally, it is my intention this year to be a better companion to Donna, who has been a wonderful companion to me. A better friend to those who already are and to those who are becoming good friends. It seems I got people. More than I deserve. I’d like to reciprocate.
I don’t think that’s too much, do you? As intentions go? It fits on a plate. Large plate, maybe, but…
