Category: fiction

The Guilty Pleasure of the Snarky Review

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I always feel guilty when I enjoy a snarky review of a book, especially of fiction. I know how hard it is to write, so I rarely say much about books I don’t like, unless they’re the kind of book I want to throw across the room.

But sometimes a snarky review not only tells me I wouldn’t want to read a book, but also tells me why. And that saves me money and time and keeps me from throwing things.

Ron Charles – who reviewed for The Washington Post for many years and now has a newsletter – did just that in his recent review of Matthew Aldrich’s book, The Natural Order.

There are several delightful lines in this review, but it was this observation that really sucked me in:

[The main character’s] stew of self-aggrandizement, self-pity, and self-delusion requires a degree of irony that’s missing here because, like Fitzgerald, Aldrich is caught between satirizing the rich and idolizing them. But unlike Fitzgerald, he does not write like Fitzgerald.

Now you should understand that I think The Great Gatsby is terribly overrated. I’ve read it a couple of times, but while I agree that Fitzgerald had a lovely way with words, I don’t think it’s the great American novel.

In those two sentence, Charles encapsulates in a nutshell what’s wrong with The Great Gatsby as well as what’s wrong with the book he’s reviewing. You can only get away with that angsty idolization of the rich if you can write like Fitzgerald. And in my opinion, even Fitzgerald shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

But of course, by doing so, Charles is damning Aldrich’s book, which is a first novel. That seems a bit unfair, but since Aldrich is also a screenwriter and sold the screen rights to this book before it even came out, I don’t think it’s going to make a lot of difference in his life. He obviously will make more money from the movie than the book in any case. Continue reading “The Guilty Pleasure of the Snarky Review”…

Ourselves and our books

personby Gillian Polack
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It’s still Jewish Book Month. I wrote an exceedingly passionate post on Facebook just now and it struck me that, first, I can share Jewish books that have helped me in the past when I encounter these sorts of situations. Second, I’d love know of more books that help and heal in this kind of situation. They don’t have to be Jewish! (which is an old joke, but always  good one – and also quite serious – books that help us understand the impossible and find our way through it are so important.

First let me share the post with you, so that you know precisely what I’m talking about:

“I have stepped back from answering posts (here or elsewhere) where a person claims to be solving the world’s problems and yet all they do is pull things down and never suggest alternate paths. Criticising reports is perfectly fine: but if the criticism is purely emotional and contains no positive suggestions, then our social fabric is torn and abused and things are worse from the intervention.
If someone, for instance, tears down the work of Jillian Segal without suggesting alternate ways that we can address antisemitism, then they’re not going to listen to anything I say, so I will move on. If they hate Israel and don’t link to one of the Palestinians who are finding ways through this morass, then they’re not going to listen to anything I say and so I will move on. And if they tell someone what an evil person I am (this has actually happened) then unless they help me sort out what I’ve done wrong (besides being Jewish, or ill, or Gillian) then I will move carefully around them and keep them out of my life.
And by this latter comment, some of you know that the alternate Gillian (a Machiavellian figure who has done things I’ve never in my life done) who appeared some years ago is apparently still in existence. Those blaming me for this or accusing me of that have not actually spoken to me directly. We’re not talking about many people, but most of them also do the tearing down of policies without suggesting ways we can build community and repair the world.
I’m not asking that anyone like Jews or Gillian: liking and disliking is always, always our own choice. I’m asking that people consider the wider community and the shared world and that tearing things down hurts more than the hated person or people.
Also, I’m very tired of being ghosted by people who I then discover hate in this quite particular way. If you don’t want to talk to anyone Jewish, don’t. Don’t play hate-games.
Another kind of hate-game I’m seeing more of is this denial of antisemitism. Don’t read the reports, don’t mourn the dead… but please stop saying that the hate doesn’t exist and that Jews are liars. All it does is turn the hater into a liar.
Not long now before the next annual report on antisemitism in Australia. I am not looking forward to it for so many reasons. The idiots who want to perform goodness while hating and who do all the things I’ve described in this post are the single biggest reason.
I intend to have a hate-free evening. I shall finally catch up on Patreon and on 3 critical emails and on my novel. Tomorrow I pay respects to a student who died far too young and have lunch with a friend and do some more messages outside the home. These are my reset buttons. I need them because today was a high pain day and a fatigue day and a day that contained too many useful idiots. It still, alas, is all three.“

I first encountered this kind of attitude in my teens. I was sent to two authors. Primo Levi healed the heart. Amos Oz helped me understand that the world is complex, can be dangerous, and that I don’t personally have to solve everything. I met Oz on a cultural camp when I was an undergraduate, and in person, he was even more understanding. Two hours of discussion with him gave me the capacity to step back (as I did today) and not take more weight on my shoulders than I can bear. It’s not easy, but it’s possible. Another author gave me the tools to understand cultural dynamic and to bring my history into play: Judith Tarr. She has stuff lying under the narrative, always, and it helps, always. Her fiction added to the history I was studying and enabled me to see narratives from where I am at a given time. I’m part of them, not an isolated watcher. They affect me. I also read Susan Shwartz, Joanna Russ and so many other writers at that time and they gave me a textured tapestry and I am able (mostly) to handle a difficult world.
And now I’ve opened the floodgates and there are a thousand writers I want to tell you about. Let me stop here and hope that you can tell me of some. I need to understand more and a good novel is by far and away the easiest way of discovering new paths to understanding.

Jewish Book Month

personby Gillian Polack
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This month I celebrate Jewish books. It’s Jewish Book Month in the US, after all, and Jewish writers in Australia are fighting to be heard.

Today I want to introduce two people who will help you find books by Jews and books about Jews.. in the world of science fiction and fantasy. My post will be short because today is already a bit frantic.

First, Valerie Estelle Frankel. She is an editor and scholar, who has written and edited books about Jewish science fiction and fantasy and related genres. I think of Valerie Frankel as the person who introduced Jewish speculative fiction to the English speaking world. I am co-writer of the chapter in one of these books. Bettina Burger and I wrote about Jewish speculative fiction in Australia And New Zealand. Here is a link! (I do like links.) Valerie Estelle Frankel: Bloomsbury Publishing (US) – Bloomsbury

Second, Steven H Silver. He is a writer, but he also maintains a list of works. Such a good list. If you want to find Jewish-themed short stories and novels that are in the science fictional world, his list is a very fine place to start. And now for another link, for I do indeed like links. Jewish Science Fiction

I would love to hear about your favourite Jewish science fiction and fantasy. Warning: I might share some recommendations on Facebook, so let me now if you want to remain anonymous on my page.

I also like lists. I have only 19 more tasks to finish today. Let me see how many I can cross off my list before lunchtime. Not many, because it’s almost 11 am on Tuesday where I am… but we’ll see.

Good luck with the midterms, US folks. We’re all watching with you and hoping things improve.

Treehouse Writers at World Fantasy

personby Crow, Editor
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Poster for World Fantasy ConventionDeborah J. Ross, Madeleine Robins, and Nancy Jane Moore are all participating in this year’s World Fantasy Convention, which is in Oakland, California.

The three will be doing a reading on Saturday at 5 pm along with two other friends of the Treehouse, Chaz Brenchley and Pat Murphy. Madeleine has her beadwork in the art show and all three show up on panels and will be available to sign books and converse at the autographing on Friday evening.

If you’re in the Bay Area and not attending the convention, but might want to find some great books, the dealer’s room will be open to the public on Sunday afternoon for a $5. charge. It’s all taking place at the Marriott City Center in downtown Oakland, right at the 12th Street/City Center BART stop.

You can expect some reports from your Treehouse correspondents after the convention.

Memories

personby Gillian Polack
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When my life is a bit too busy or the illnesses eat my energy, I’m going to share with you something about my books or something I wrote for another time in another place. Today it’s the latter, and I feel wildly historical, so here’s an article I wrote for BiblioBuffet in 2011. Why did I choose this? I’d love to know what books you’d use to illustrate some of the things you read for. I want to know what books I’d place, 15 years on and to find out if my reading has changed in nature, but for that I need energy. One day. Today is about the books I read one week, back in 2011, and why I enjoyed them.

 

 

I love lists. Today I have a list that’s ten items long. It could have been five, or a hundred, or even a thousand. I wanted to tell you ten things I love about books and illustrate them using some of my recent reading. Some of the recent reading is hot off the press, and some is less so. I’ve chosen books from the speculative fiction end of the reading spectrum. This might be because they reflect my reading recently. It’s just possible. Let me admit, up front, that I know some of these writers. I wish I knew them all, but I know just a couple. Once there is something in someone’s writing that you love, the likelihood is quite high that when you meet the person in question, that you will get on. I’ve only given examples from writers whose books struck me for these precise reasons before I ever met the writer in question.

My ten things:

1. I love exploring someone else’s politics through their fiction, especially when that fiction is very fine. My book for this is Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. It’s all about freedom and the life of the mind and the limitations that we humans place upon ourselves. A lot of political books written in the 1970s have dated, for life has changed since the seventies, but this one hasn’t dated at all. It’s still vibrant and forceful.

2. Lyrical writing couched secretly inside a genre novel. It takes me by surprise and gives me a sense of the world being right, every time. So many of my favourite writers have this flavour in their writing: Hope Mirrlees, Alma Alexander, Mervyn Peake. My example for today, however, is Daniel Fox’s Dragon in Chains because he manages to take a non-Western universe and make it feel particular and its own, while still maintaining that lyricism.

3. Sometimes language and concept and personality infuse a writer’s work. Cordawiner Smith and Roger Zelazy are two writers who don’t seem to be able to write a word of fiction without that word somehow defining the universe anew. My example book is probably the least of all the writings of both authors: Roger Zelazny’s The Last Defender of Camelot. It is, however, the one I re-read most recently. When I get some time, I intend to re-read the whole Amber cycle, plus Smith’s Norstrilia books. Time is the limiting factor. Their worlds and their words haunt me even when I don’t go near the writing for years on end.

4. The historian deep inside me (well, maybe not so deep, in fact maybe just the one who shares the same skin as the rest of me) loves a book that explores another world that breaks with what we accept as normal reality and that does so in such a way that the reader accepts things that are unacceptable or understands things that are usually conceptually too difficult. Not that I want to accept the unacceptable, but that I really like writing that’s strong backing world building that’s even stronger. Aliette de Bodard’s Harbinger of the Storm is today’s example of that. An Aztec society, with gods and belief systems and treatment of women that are very uncomfortable for me, and yet I must read and continue reading for she makes it real. Lord of the Flies was the same but more so ‑ hate the world, but must believe it can exist.

5. There is happiness in small things. Grumpy fairy tales and twisted minds. When I was a child I read James Thurber’s The 13 Clocks and The Wonderful O. They rang truer for me than most other children’s literature at that time. The other book that I fell in love with (and have a lion’s head doorknocker right now, to prove that doorknockers are crucial to grumpy magical existence) is William Makepeace Thackeray’s The Rose and the Ring. The bizarre fairytale is still my favourite book by Thackeray, and this despite me having read Vanity Fair at least four times.

6. There are warped and twisted books for adults, also. There is Shriek. An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer and there is almost anything by James Enge. I was reading Enge’s The Wolf Age and I finally realised that it’s not the sharpness of these books or even their views on society that make them so delightful, it’s their inventiveness. Enge’s imagination is always one step beyond my mind’s reasoning ‑ he manages to think of places I’ve never thought of and make fantasy worlds look fresh and new.

7. There are trilogies. There are sets of trilogies. What there are, too, are occasional authors who manage to write one big book that has been broken up into parts that make coherent narrative sense but that are nevertheless mere aspects of one big book. I always find one of these near my desk, for I have a weakness for them. Right now there are two books by Joe Abercrombie, and there is Ravensoul, part 4 of James Barclay’s Legends of the Raven.

8. I love it when the people of two worlds meet. There’s always a book in my vicinity that shows the clash of cultures or someone who was brought up in two worlds or is touched by two worlds and has difficult choices ahead. The most recent book that touched on this (and leaves it unresolved ‑ I must read the next book!) is Jon Sprunk’s Shadow’s Lure.

9. Steampunk! Right now, for me, steampunk is alone enough to make me look twice at something. From the reasonably standard romantic approach to machines and villains and changing worlds expressed in Andrew P Mayer’s The Falling Machine to the steampunk romance of Katie MacAlister, but the best encapsulation right now, for me, personally, is in the work of Cherie Priest.

10. New approaches to something that I thought I knew. Eye-opening and making the whole world new. This is the most exciting writing of all. My example is Kafakaesque, and I shall write about it properly in due course. Some books demand attention of their own, and this is one. The editors’ genius in placing Carol Emshwiller, Kate Wilhelm and Theodora Goss in the same volume make it something that shifts what thought I knew about short stories. This is my current reading, and it’s wonderful.

Books mentioned in this column:

The 13 Clocks, by James Thurber (NYR Children’s Collection, 2008) 978-1590172759

Changer of Days, Alma Alexander (HarperVoyager, 2005) 978-0060765750

The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin (HarperVoyager, 1994) 978-0061054884

Dragon in Chains, by Daniel Fox (Del Rey, 2009) 978-0345503053

The Falling Machine, by Andrew P Mayer (Pyr, 2011) 978-1616143756

Harbinger of the Storm, by Aliette de Bodard (Angry Robot, 2011) 978-0857660763

Kafakaesque, John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly (ed) (Tachyon, 2011) 978 1 61696 049 0

The Last Defender of Camelot, Roger Zelazny (ibooks, 2007) 978-1596871076

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding (Perigee Trade, 2003) 978-0399529207

Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirrlees (Cold Spring Press, 2005) 978-1593600419

Ravensoul, by James Barclay (Pyr, 2011) 978-1616143817

The Rose and the Ring, by WM Thackeray (Folio Society, 1964)

Shadow’s Lure, By Jon Sprunk (Pyr, 2011) 978-1616143718

Shriek. An Afterword, by Jeff VanderMeer (Tor, 2007) 978-0765314666

The Wolf Age, by James Enge (Pyr, 2010) 978-1616142438

The Wonderful O, by James Thurber (NYR Children’s Collection, 2009) 978-1590173091

Is it Still Monday in California?

personby Gillian Polack
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I’m so late today that I’m (almost) posting on your tomorrow… which was my tomorrow over 15 hours ago. It’s been a busy day and was a busy yesterday and I’m so tired that I want to use colloquialisms. I shall refrain, because Australian colloquialisms can read as rather rude to North Americans.

Yesterday afternoon I finished with my end of the proofs of the forthcoming novel, then I went to a book launch. Then I had an online meeting and we updated each other on antisemitism. There were other things, too, but I forget. I did all this with the eye problems and every minute the world felt funky.

This morning was a grocery delivery and an emergency printout of stuff for a friend (at which point my printer failed) and we have a weather shift (it being spring here) and so my joints reminded me they hate weather. All my joints. Why the little toe aching is more annoying than the back aching is something I cannot work out.

I ought to be celebrating receiving copies of the German translation of one of my favourite short stories. There is an academic comment on my sense if humour, so my sense of humour is officially an academic thing now. In German academia. This is important, because a French translation of another story, a while back, turned all the subtlety into sarcasm and the story was not funny at all.
I’m also giving a workshop for ConSYDeration in two weeks. ConSYDeration is part of the Sydney Fringe Festival and this is my first time even getting to the Fringe. Which means, of course, my next thing is to update my handout for the workshop because I forgot to add my list of publications. It’s not gratuitous advertising this time round – my non-fiction is directly relevant to the workshop.

And all this is why, in a few minutes, I’m going to make a cuppa and watch some William Hartnell Doctor Who for a bit. I have so much to do but my body tells me to be gentle. I might put a bit of cinnamon in my tea. Later I’ll do more of the things.

I have been considering my New year, which is way soon. If anyone wants either or both of my grandmothers’ honey cake recipes here, next week, just say and I will oblige.

Under “Corporate’s” Thumb

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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So last weekend I was trying to get a Covid vaccine and came up against a frightening development in our society. And no, it wasn’t the fact that after six years and change we are still dealing with this damn virus.

I have major travel plans in September, so I wanted to get the vaccine a couple of weeks before my trip so I’ll be at peak protection when I get on a plane. Travel plans have generally dictated how I schedule my shots, which I get every six months.

I checked the CVS website, but couldn’t find any appointments at the one nearest me. Then I checked Walgreens, and they had appointments through August 23, but not afterwards. The new vaccine drops in mid-September – while I’m traveling – so I assumed they weren’t going to order any more vaccines if they ran out.

So I made an appointment for August 22 at the closest Walgreens. Walgreens sent me 9 messages via text and email confirming my appointment and reminding me of it.

I showed up right on time, only to be informed that they didn’t have it. “But I have an appointment,” I said. The pharmacist looked at me like I was crazy for assuming I could get a vaccine when I had an appointment. He didn’t apologize, but told me I could complain to “corporate.”

I got a cancellation text 10 minutes after I left the drugstore.

I was furious, of course. Fortunately, a friend mentioned that a major grocery chain in her area still had vaccines, so I decided to check with Safeway.

Their website said they did and that they took walk-ins, so I walked over on Sunday afternoon to get one, only to discover that they don’t do vaccines in the last hour the pharmacy is open (no, the website doesn’t mention that).

But the clerk confirmed they still had the vaccine in stock. I asked if they would still have it Tuesday – I had plans on Monday – and she said maybe, but “corporate” might decide to have all the vaccines shipped back at any moment.

And that’s when it hit me, with that second reference to “corporate,” that big companies control a large part of our lives these days without us having any right to push back at how they do it.

I took the Safeway clerk at her word, changed my Monday plans, showed up when they started doing vaccines at 10 am, and got my shot from a very nice pharmacist. But “corporate” was still pinging in my head. Continue reading “Under “Corporate’s” Thumb”…

The Broligarch Misreading of Science Fiction

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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I did a podcast last weekend that focused on how the broligarchs miss the point when it comes to most science fiction, including the stuff they cite as influencing them. This was BCube Press podcast hosted by Cliff Winnig with myself and Wendy Shaffer as guests. You can watch it here on YouTube.

We had a great discussion, but there’s so much to be said on this topic, plus right now I’m reading Gil Duran’s new book The Nerd Reich, so I’m thinking a lot about what these technofeudalists are doing to undermine democracy based on their half-baked philosophy and complete misunderstanding of both science and science fiction.

(I’ll write about The Nerd Reich when I finish the book, but I can already tell you it’s worth your time even if you, like me, are obsessed with the subject and already know a lot of this. Duran is a journalist by training, so he marshals his facts and writes with clarity.)

Back when I was in college – an absurdly long time ago – there were four SF/F books (or series of books) that pretty much everybody read: the Foundation trilogy, Stranger in a Strange Land, Dune, and the Lord of the Rings. Those books didn’t get me into SF/F – that came later when I discovered the great feminist SF of the 70s – but they were part of the overall 60s-70s culture.

What gets me is that the broligarch crowd pretty much read the same books – and clearly missed the point of most of them – even though the oldest of those tech-adjacent guys is probably a generation younger than I am and many of them are millennials. And of course, Foundation and Lord of the Rings had been around quite awhile before my generation found them.

Now I’m not dissing those books. I embroidered a quote from Foundation on the backpack I carried when I went hitch-hiking across the country (“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”) I worked as a children’s book buyer for Grok Books (which didn’t have a great SF section, but did have that particular novel).

And I re-read the entire Lord of the Rings during law school finals every semester.

Dune was fun if you were smoking a lot of dope.

But you know, all those books were written before any of these guys were born. And there’s been a hell of a lot of good science fiction written since then. Yet these books still seem to attract their interest. Continue reading “The Broligarch Misreading of Science Fiction”…

Writing What You Don’t Love

personby Nancy Jane Moore
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So I saw a post on social media about an unnamed but well-respected writer who has apparently suggested that, as a way of making a living in a world that doesn’t pay enough for their actual work, writers should use LLMs to write “romantasy.”

The poster – also a writer – made the important point that since one would have to edit the LLM work, the writer would end up incorporating some of that style into their own work. (The poster is also a writing instructor who discourages the use of LLMs by their students because of its effect on their writing and also because reading LLM prose is deeply boring.)

But what struck me was that the first writer, who otherwise does their own work and wants respect for that, must consider romantasy a trash genre. I doubt they read it and if they do, it is with contempt. I’m sure they wouldn’t publish it under their own name.

So I guess outsourcing writing of “commercial trash” to LLMs is the current version of “learn how to crank out something that’s easy to write” to pay the bills.

Many years ago, when I was just setting out in the world and looking for a way to make a living that wasn’t too stressful so that I could explore my own writing and other passions, I checked a book out of the library on how to write romance.

I mean, romance is notoriously formulaic. I have been told repeatedly by people who write it and read it that there are basic rules you cannot break. It should be easy to write. Right?

Yeah, well no. Because what dawned on me then was that I couldn’t write romance because I don’t read it. I mean, I occasionally read it, and I don’t object to a good love story, but on the whole I’m not interested in stories in which the plot revolves around the characters falling in love and living happily ever after.

An occasional romantic comedy, sure. Jane Austen, of course – but then Jane Austen wrote horror, not romance. (I get cold shudders every time I think of a world that bars Elinor Dashwood from well-paid and useful occupation.)

I came around to the understanding that you can’t write fiction you don’t read and you really can’t write fiction you don’t like. I somehow doubt anyone who’s making money writing romance hates the genre.

As a result, I don’t write romance. Or tie-in novels. Or literary fiction about young editorial assistants having affairs with senior editors. (Especially that last one.) Continue reading “Writing What You Don’t Love”…

Baycon 2026 report

personby Deborah J. Ross
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I don’t attend many science-fiction/fantasy conventions these days. Pre-pandemic, I often attended conventions on the West Coast, including Orycon in Portland, Oregon. I’d add a day or two on each end of the convention dates to get in a visit with my best friend from college and a dear writer friend. Ditto going south to Loscon in Los Angeles or Condor in San Diego, or larger conventions like World Fantasy or SFWA’s Nebula Awards weekend when they’re held on the West Coast. Sadly, both friends have died, so even before the pandemic, I found it harder to fly north. Orycon has closed, and I believe that Condo has, too. Nevertheless, I always try to make it to my local con, Baycon/Westercon. It’s within driving distance, although a bit far to commute, and it’s a vibrant, diverse community.

When I attend a convention, I do so as a professional author, so I almost always appear on panels, readings, and autographing sessions. Some conventions request that potential guests submit proposals for events. If panel topics are accepted, the guest then moderates them. This was the case for 3 of the 6 panels I appeared on (* = I proposed and moderated this panel). Here are descriptions, with a few notes on how the discussions unfolded. With only one exception, I have avoided using the names of panelists and audience members. All the opinions are my own!

 

The Reality of Fiction. We normally think of fiction as unreal, but quite a few authors talk regularly with their fictional characters about the story and where it should head. How does this work? How can knowing some of the psychology involved give us a livelier relationship with fictional characters? What wisdom for life might they impart when listened to?

I arrived a bit early, as is my custom, to find the panelists wondering who the moderator was and expressing their unwillingness to do it. “Okay,” sez I, “I’ll do it.” Therein followed a fascinating divergence between the tired, perennial question, “What to do when your characters won’t behave the way you want them to?” and how much your characters reflect yourself—is this a good thing or a bad thing?–versus my personal focus, “Where is the energy in the story? Character (Hamlet), plot (thrillers), ideas (mysteries)…and how difficulties with characters arise from mismatches between different elements.

 

*Writing our Nightmares. What horror, dark fantasy, and related genres can teach us about surviving personal and political catastrophes.

The idea for this panel arose from two incidents: Octavia Butler told me that she took the things that really scared her and put them on paper; in a horror panel many years ago, when I said I had enough nightmares in my life, the other panelists showed me how horror can shine a light in the darkest places. As writers, we have agency; as readers, we trust that the protagonist, no matter how vulnerable, has or gains power over their fate.

We talked about having lost many traditional methods of dealing with trauma, so horror as a genre offers catharsis via the story journey; the end is different from the setup. “Horror is safer than memories.”

Finally, the zinger trope: “Play nice or I’ll put you in my novel” (and you won’t come out unscathed)!

 

*Finding Our Tribe. Writers, readers, and fans share how storytelling creates communities of understanding, acceptance, and celebration of differences. From fandom as family to writing as a way of healing, stories transcend the fear and prejudice of our times.

My thought in proposing it was to celebrate how the science fiction/fandom community welcomes and celebrates those who feel they don’t fit in anywhere else. This could be folks “on the spectrum” (of autism), sexual and gender minorities, racial and ethnic minorities, geeks of all flavors, and so forth. Everyone in the room had a version of a “finding my home here” story.

The second aspect was ethnic or ancestral communities. I was fortunate to run into one of my favorite co-panelists, an Indigenous elder, and invite him to participate in the panel. He brought the perspective of tribal membership being integral to identity, the history of near-extermination, and the separation he experiences between his role as elder and teacher, and his love for science fiction not shared with fellow members of his tribe. He helped us to understand the difference between tribal and tribalism. Tribal affiliation nourishes community and deep understanding of collective history. Tribalism creates a distinct “in-group” (those we identify with) and an “out-group” (everyone else).

Three of us were Jewish, and the only thing we agreed on was that we don’t agree on anything except being Jewish (“two Jews, three opinions,” more like “twenty-five opinions with footnotes and appendices spanning 2,000 years of commentary.” You can join if you’re willing to study hard for a year and pass a board examination. Otherwise, “Are you nuts?”) Much laughter ensued.

 

*Escapism is Not a Dirty Word! Panelists and participants share their favorite comfort reading and how it informs, sustains, and gives us hope. Continue reading “Baycon 2026 report”…