Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 46
March 16, 2013
Publishing Update
One of my best stories, "The Garden," is going to be reprinted in the online magazine Lightspeed.
Mulling
I may have written what follows before. Mulling is like that. And I'm not going back over my old posts. Life is too short to reread what I have previously written.
Among my conclusions from the current mulling: I need to take more long, hot showers. This is partly because we keep our apartment on the cool side, especially at night, and I am fairly often cold. I don't do enough stretching when I exercise, and I am not as young as I used to be. So I am often stiff and achy. The showers will help. I know I will be wasting some water, but I think I'll not worry too much about that. Right now, it looks as if human civilization is in real danger of crashing due to Global Warming, possibly in my lifetime. I think that will hit sooner and harder than my overuse of hot water.
The other conclusions are about the way I have spent my life. I have always wanted to be a writer, and I managed to do that. In particular, I wanted to write science fiction, because it was not an elite art form. When I was a kid SF was pretty much despised by educated people. It was trash in magazines with gaudy covers, written by people like William Tenn, Alfred Bester and Philip K. Dick (and later by Ursula K. LeGuin and Octavia Butler).
It seemed to me it told the truth about life in the United States. The society I grew up in ignored or minimized the threat of nuclear war. SF gave me vast, glowing nuclear wastelands... and police states... the endless war of Tenn's "The Liberation of Earth," the wealth and violence of The Stars My Destination.
And it talked about possibility. There's quote which I think belongs to Isaac Asimov, though I have not been able to track it down, even with Google. "There will be a future, and it will be different." This is a huge statement, in a world where we are told There Is No Alternative.
When I first found SF in the 1950s, it was a small community. Now, it is a huge part of popular culture. Everyone knows Star Trek and Star Wars. As has always been true of SF, a lot of popular science fiction is adolescent power fantasies, trash for kids. But even the trash says "the future will be different," and "we can change our lives." The best of it -- I would put Star Trek here -- has helped people imagine a humane future. This is important. The enemy is T.I.N.A. and the belief that the present can continue forever. Nothing better is possible. (It's interesting that capitalism, an economic system which generates -- and requires -- constant change, seems to believe that it can and will go on forever with very little change.)
So maybe my devotion to this weird little field was not a mistake, which is reassuring. I have invested a lot of time and energy in the community.
Finally, I wanted out of the professional middle class. I did not want to be comfortable and privileged in an unjust society, where many people got no breaks and were never comfortable. So I left graduate school and got a job in an office and spent most of my working life at pretty crappy jobs. In the end, I learned accounting and became a financial manager. I like accounting, and that was fun, though I had a little more authority than I liked. I have never wanted to be a boss. Still, it was in the nonprofit world, where pay is low and power is minimal.
Well, that is my life so far. I became a writer of science fiction. I never became comfortable or intellectually respectable. And I have talked for more than 40 years, at cons and in writing, about gender, race, class and prejudice and the right of all people to have decent lives and realize their potential.
Among my conclusions from the current mulling: I need to take more long, hot showers. This is partly because we keep our apartment on the cool side, especially at night, and I am fairly often cold. I don't do enough stretching when I exercise, and I am not as young as I used to be. So I am often stiff and achy. The showers will help. I know I will be wasting some water, but I think I'll not worry too much about that. Right now, it looks as if human civilization is in real danger of crashing due to Global Warming, possibly in my lifetime. I think that will hit sooner and harder than my overuse of hot water.
The other conclusions are about the way I have spent my life. I have always wanted to be a writer, and I managed to do that. In particular, I wanted to write science fiction, because it was not an elite art form. When I was a kid SF was pretty much despised by educated people. It was trash in magazines with gaudy covers, written by people like William Tenn, Alfred Bester and Philip K. Dick (and later by Ursula K. LeGuin and Octavia Butler).
It seemed to me it told the truth about life in the United States. The society I grew up in ignored or minimized the threat of nuclear war. SF gave me vast, glowing nuclear wastelands... and police states... the endless war of Tenn's "The Liberation of Earth," the wealth and violence of The Stars My Destination.
And it talked about possibility. There's quote which I think belongs to Isaac Asimov, though I have not been able to track it down, even with Google. "There will be a future, and it will be different." This is a huge statement, in a world where we are told There Is No Alternative.
When I first found SF in the 1950s, it was a small community. Now, it is a huge part of popular culture. Everyone knows Star Trek and Star Wars. As has always been true of SF, a lot of popular science fiction is adolescent power fantasies, trash for kids. But even the trash says "the future will be different," and "we can change our lives." The best of it -- I would put Star Trek here -- has helped people imagine a humane future. This is important. The enemy is T.I.N.A. and the belief that the present can continue forever. Nothing better is possible. (It's interesting that capitalism, an economic system which generates -- and requires -- constant change, seems to believe that it can and will go on forever with very little change.)
So maybe my devotion to this weird little field was not a mistake, which is reassuring. I have invested a lot of time and energy in the community.
Finally, I wanted out of the professional middle class. I did not want to be comfortable and privileged in an unjust society, where many people got no breaks and were never comfortable. So I left graduate school and got a job in an office and spent most of my working life at pretty crappy jobs. In the end, I learned accounting and became a financial manager. I like accounting, and that was fun, though I had a little more authority than I liked. I have never wanted to be a boss. Still, it was in the nonprofit world, where pay is low and power is minimal.
Well, that is my life so far. I became a writer of science fiction. I never became comfortable or intellectually respectable. And I have talked for more than 40 years, at cons and in writing, about gender, race, class and prejudice and the right of all people to have decent lives and realize their potential.
Modern Technology
This is from facebook:
Jeff VenderMeer did a post on communication technology... To wit, the new Google Glass and why it is not a good idea. I decided to not become comment # 110 on his post and instead do my own post. I deeply value the Internet. It has made my life much easier and more interesting. Now, when it's one a.m. and I need some bit of information for a story, I can get it at once, instead of waiting till the library opens. And when an idle question drifts through my mind, I can access Wikipedia. How old is Chow Yun Fat?
I love having facebook friends on the other side of the world.
I love being able to to take my netbook out to a coffee shop and write. Cell phones can be very useful. But there is also something to be said for actually being where one is and noticing what is going on around one. And there is something to be said for limiting information, especially since so much of it is crap.
I have always been a bit slow to adopt new technology, and I plan to continue to be slow. My phone is dumb. My netbook is a netbook. My Netflix movies come on DVDs. There is something to be said for time not filled with electronic input.
When I go on trips, I often carry my netbook. But I don't use it to connect with the Internet. The time away from e-information is very pleasant. I took my new nook to Minneapolis on Tuesday. Riding the bus on the way back, I pulled it out and played solitaire. It bothered me that I wasn't paying attention to the sky and the passing city. So I put the nook away.
Jeff VenderMeer did a post on communication technology... To wit, the new Google Glass and why it is not a good idea. I decided to not become comment # 110 on his post and instead do my own post. I deeply value the Internet. It has made my life much easier and more interesting. Now, when it's one a.m. and I need some bit of information for a story, I can get it at once, instead of waiting till the library opens. And when an idle question drifts through my mind, I can access Wikipedia. How old is Chow Yun Fat?
I love having facebook friends on the other side of the world.
I love being able to to take my netbook out to a coffee shop and write. Cell phones can be very useful. But there is also something to be said for actually being where one is and noticing what is going on around one. And there is something to be said for limiting information, especially since so much of it is crap.
I have always been a bit slow to adopt new technology, and I plan to continue to be slow. My phone is dumb. My netbook is a netbook. My Netflix movies come on DVDs. There is something to be said for time not filled with electronic input.
When I go on trips, I often carry my netbook. But I don't use it to connect with the Internet. The time away from e-information is very pleasant. I took my new nook to Minneapolis on Tuesday. Riding the bus on the way back, I pulled it out and played solitaire. It bothered me that I wasn't paying attention to the sky and the passing city. So I put the nook away.
March 13, 2013
Action and Change
There's a quote from Sartre which I like. I found it in a novel by Paco Ignacio Taibo II, a marvelous Mexican writer. The novel is An Easy Thing, and it's a tough guy detective story which asks, what really happened to Emiliano Zapata? Who murdered the Mexican Revolution? This is the quote from Sartre, roughly: "The only hope is in action."
I agree with this. In the end, there is no certain hope. We can only act.
My problem is that I'm an intellectual, more likely to hit a computer keyboard than to hit the bricks. I would far rather stay home and write.
I need a justification for what I do. It is as follows: (a) thinking and writing are a form of action, and (b) a good analysis is necessary if action is going to be effective. You have to have at least some idea of what the problem is, who the enemy is and what you want to achieve. The better the analysis is, the more effective the action is likely to be.
Our visions of the future help us act toward creating the future. Gene Roddenberry did something important when he gave us the universe of Star Trek. It is flawed in many ways, but it is also in many ways humane.
This is why I so much hate the famous Thatcher line, "There is no alterative." It is a vicious lie, which tells us that action is futile and change is impossible.
And this is why I love science fiction. It always says that change in inevitable. The future will be different. It is up to us to make the difference a good one.
I agree with this. In the end, there is no certain hope. We can only act.
My problem is that I'm an intellectual, more likely to hit a computer keyboard than to hit the bricks. I would far rather stay home and write.
I need a justification for what I do. It is as follows: (a) thinking and writing are a form of action, and (b) a good analysis is necessary if action is going to be effective. You have to have at least some idea of what the problem is, who the enemy is and what you want to achieve. The better the analysis is, the more effective the action is likely to be.
Our visions of the future help us act toward creating the future. Gene Roddenberry did something important when he gave us the universe of Star Trek. It is flawed in many ways, but it is also in many ways humane.
This is why I so much hate the famous Thatcher line, "There is no alterative." It is a vicious lie, which tells us that action is futile and change is impossible.
And this is why I love science fiction. It always says that change in inevitable. The future will be different. It is up to us to make the difference a good one.
March 5, 2013
Snow
It's snowing. We ought to get about ten inches of snow by the time the storm moves on. I think I need to get out into it for a little while, so will most likely go to my favorite coffee shop. The morning commute in the Twin Cities was bad. A semi went off a bridge into the Red Cedar River in Wisconsin. I don't think there's much hope for the driver. I love storms, especially snow storms, but they are dangerous, if one is not snug at home.
March 4, 2013
Fiction This Year Update
I have a small collection, Big Mama Stories, coming out in May; three stories due out in reprint anthologies, two of which are Best of the Year collections; and two original novelettes sold. I expect one of the novelettes will come out in F&SF this fall. The other novelette will be in a theme anthology, which may be out this year. Finally, I am working on a second collection, Hidden Folk, which might make it out in 2013.
I'm not sure how much I'm repeating. But I'm not going back through old posts to find out if I've already input this. There is a limit to how much of my old writing I want to read.
I'm not sure how much I'm repeating. But I'm not going back through old posts to find out if I've already input this. There is a limit to how much of my old writing I want to read.
Snow and Cons
It's snowing at the moment, and six to ten inches are predicted over the next 24 hours. This is cheering. If it's going to be winter, there should be snow and temps below freezing.
I went to Marscon Saturday and stayed four hours. I've been having trouble with cons the past year or so. They don't interest me as much as they used to. I began doing panels in the 1970s, because I wanted people to know who I was, in the hopes that they would look for my stories. For a long time, I was interested in learning how to do panels. Patrick used to sit in the audience and give me a report later on my presentation. "Don't cover your mouth when you speak. Look out at the audience and make eye contact." And I had things to say.
Now, I feel I am pretty good at doing panels, and a lot of the issues that used to excite me -- gender issues, race and so on -- are being handled by others, who do a better job than I can.
Other people -- the science fiction feminists of the late 60s and early 70s -- began raising women's issues before I did, though I joined in as soon as I was in a city with a science fiction community and cons. I began talking about race and GLBT issues comparatively early and had the horrible experience of sitting on race panels that had no nonwhites, or maybe one lonely PoC. We are always told that the most important thing whites can do is listen; and I have never been a good listener. Now, there are GBLT and PoC communities in SF, and I can be quiet. Maybe I will even learn to listen.
Maybe I need a new issue that interests we. I've tried do class panels, but it is hell to talk about class in the US. And I am personally interested in aging.
A number of years ago at Wiscon I heard LeGuin talk about husbanding energy as she aged. She was trying to keep the energy for writing. Maybe that is what I'm doing.
I went to Marscon Saturday and stayed four hours. I've been having trouble with cons the past year or so. They don't interest me as much as they used to. I began doing panels in the 1970s, because I wanted people to know who I was, in the hopes that they would look for my stories. For a long time, I was interested in learning how to do panels. Patrick used to sit in the audience and give me a report later on my presentation. "Don't cover your mouth when you speak. Look out at the audience and make eye contact." And I had things to say.
Now, I feel I am pretty good at doing panels, and a lot of the issues that used to excite me -- gender issues, race and so on -- are being handled by others, who do a better job than I can.
Other people -- the science fiction feminists of the late 60s and early 70s -- began raising women's issues before I did, though I joined in as soon as I was in a city with a science fiction community and cons. I began talking about race and GLBT issues comparatively early and had the horrible experience of sitting on race panels that had no nonwhites, or maybe one lonely PoC. We are always told that the most important thing whites can do is listen; and I have never been a good listener. Now, there are GBLT and PoC communities in SF, and I can be quiet. Maybe I will even learn to listen.
Maybe I need a new issue that interests we. I've tried do class panels, but it is hell to talk about class in the US. And I am personally interested in aging.
A number of years ago at Wiscon I heard LeGuin talk about husbanding energy as she aged. She was trying to keep the energy for writing. Maybe that is what I'm doing.
March 1, 2013
Deadlines and To-Do Lists
A dreary, overcast late winter day. The snow is dirty, and the air looks a bit hazy. I had four deadlines in February and made two of them. The other two will have to be met in the first half of March.
I have a number of things on my March to-do list, besides making the deadlines. See my doc. Do my taxes. Get to work on a new collection of short stories, which a wonderful friend is interested in publishing.
Finally, I need to get back to my novel.
I feel better when I'm working on writing, even though a part of me wants to be a slug. At one point, facing the four deadlines, I thought, "I can't do this. I need to give up writing."
But there are still things to say...
On the plus side, Marscon begins today. I plan to go tomorrow. Today I will take it easy, make a curry and -- in the evening -- watch the last two episodes of the BBC Pride and Prejudice with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.
I have a number of things on my March to-do list, besides making the deadlines. See my doc. Do my taxes. Get to work on a new collection of short stories, which a wonderful friend is interested in publishing.
Finally, I need to get back to my novel.
I feel better when I'm working on writing, even though a part of me wants to be a slug. At one point, facing the four deadlines, I thought, "I can't do this. I need to give up writing."
But there are still things to say...
On the plus side, Marscon begins today. I plan to go tomorrow. Today I will take it easy, make a curry and -- in the evening -- watch the last two episodes of the BBC Pride and Prejudice with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.
February 28, 2013
Chabon
I'm going to keep the second post on Chabon, because it got a comment. But I think it's one of those times when I chewing on something and not getting anywhere. Sometimes, later, I can figure out what's bothering me and actually say something sensible. And sometimes I never figure out what is bothering me.
I did get the proofreading done, which is good.
I did get the proofreading done, which is good.
February 27, 2013
More on the Chabon Quote
I'm going to write more about the Chabon quote, mostly because I want to avoid proofreading.
(It's 10:00 in the morning local time, and I need to finish proofing a short story collection today. I'm going to have to ask for changes in the typeset version, due to errors of mine I did not catch before, and I have reached the point where I don't like what I've written. This usually happens. The feeling passes, but it is not enjoyable while it lasts.)
I don't know enough about Chabon to write intelligently about him, so I will simply write about my response to the quote. What it triggers in me.
Chabon includes entropy and mortality in the list of things that suggest the world is broken or fallen. The first is the second law of thermodynamics. The second is a fact of multicellular life on this planet. I do think both are qualitatively different from problems such as human violence. In the end, he is going back the question of why do we suffer, why do we die, why is the world not made for our personal comfort? These are pre-modern questions. The question of why humans often act badly is still worth asking, but it has to be pulled away from the pre-modern questions.
In Ring of Swords I have Anna say that people who talk about personal honor do so to avoid behaving as decent human beings. This is not merely Anna -- and me -- being flip. There are moral and philosophic ideas that can be used to avoid decent behavior. A belief that personal morality matters more than being part of a community and working to make the community better. A belief that the world is unfixable, so why bother? The first focuses on the personal, the second on the universal. Both avoid the communal, which is where morality belongs.
It is possible to sound very thoughtful and intelligent and philosophic, while saying this kind of thing. But in the end it's a way of avoiding action, especially humane action.
Chabon writes very well, but what he has given us is an extended metaphor, the broken world, which tells us nothing useful about the universe and does not tell us much about human experience. There are cultures that don't see the world as fallen or broken. The Chinese built an entire, gigantic, long-lasting civilization by focusing on political and social questions. What is a good society like? How do we build one? How should humans behave toward one another?
One of the comments to my previous post said that Chabon is addressing the problem comfortable suburban Americans have with the idea that the world is not -- in the end -- entirely safe. I suspect this is correct. Middle class Americans do have pretty comfortable lives, compared with much of the rest of humanity.
At the same time, their lives have become far more stressful in a number of ways. Wages have not gone up for most Americans in the past 30 years. Unemployment remains high. Good union jobs have vanished. Health care and higher education are increasingly unaffordable. Private pension plans are mostly gone. 401(k) plans have not worked as an alternative. The collapse of the housing market has meant that many Americans have lost the one thing they had left to support them in old age: a house they could sell for a good price. As a result of this, the mostly white members of the middle class have no reason to believe they will remain middle class. They may well slip down into the lower middle class or into poverty, and their kids are even more likely to sink.
Finally, Americans do not have a sense that they can change their lives. The traditional ways of coping through political and social organization don't seem to be working. All of these are social problems. They do not tell us the world is broken. They tell us our society is breaking.
There is a certain comfort in being told the world is broken and unfixable, because then you don't have to do anything. Instead, you can cling to whatever comfort remains. Change is hard and risky.
But especially now, faced by Global Warming, we have to change. Writers who wax philosophic about the fallen world are not doing the rest of us any favors at all.
P.S. This post is me in a dead-horse-beating mode.
(It's 10:00 in the morning local time, and I need to finish proofing a short story collection today. I'm going to have to ask for changes in the typeset version, due to errors of mine I did not catch before, and I have reached the point where I don't like what I've written. This usually happens. The feeling passes, but it is not enjoyable while it lasts.)
I don't know enough about Chabon to write intelligently about him, so I will simply write about my response to the quote. What it triggers in me.
Chabon includes entropy and mortality in the list of things that suggest the world is broken or fallen. The first is the second law of thermodynamics. The second is a fact of multicellular life on this planet. I do think both are qualitatively different from problems such as human violence. In the end, he is going back the question of why do we suffer, why do we die, why is the world not made for our personal comfort? These are pre-modern questions. The question of why humans often act badly is still worth asking, but it has to be pulled away from the pre-modern questions.
In Ring of Swords I have Anna say that people who talk about personal honor do so to avoid behaving as decent human beings. This is not merely Anna -- and me -- being flip. There are moral and philosophic ideas that can be used to avoid decent behavior. A belief that personal morality matters more than being part of a community and working to make the community better. A belief that the world is unfixable, so why bother? The first focuses on the personal, the second on the universal. Both avoid the communal, which is where morality belongs.
It is possible to sound very thoughtful and intelligent and philosophic, while saying this kind of thing. But in the end it's a way of avoiding action, especially humane action.
Chabon writes very well, but what he has given us is an extended metaphor, the broken world, which tells us nothing useful about the universe and does not tell us much about human experience. There are cultures that don't see the world as fallen or broken. The Chinese built an entire, gigantic, long-lasting civilization by focusing on political and social questions. What is a good society like? How do we build one? How should humans behave toward one another?
One of the comments to my previous post said that Chabon is addressing the problem comfortable suburban Americans have with the idea that the world is not -- in the end -- entirely safe. I suspect this is correct. Middle class Americans do have pretty comfortable lives, compared with much of the rest of humanity.
At the same time, their lives have become far more stressful in a number of ways. Wages have not gone up for most Americans in the past 30 years. Unemployment remains high. Good union jobs have vanished. Health care and higher education are increasingly unaffordable. Private pension plans are mostly gone. 401(k) plans have not worked as an alternative. The collapse of the housing market has meant that many Americans have lost the one thing they had left to support them in old age: a house they could sell for a good price. As a result of this, the mostly white members of the middle class have no reason to believe they will remain middle class. They may well slip down into the lower middle class or into poverty, and their kids are even more likely to sink.
Finally, Americans do not have a sense that they can change their lives. The traditional ways of coping through political and social organization don't seem to be working. All of these are social problems. They do not tell us the world is broken. They tell us our society is breaking.
There is a certain comfort in being told the world is broken and unfixable, because then you don't have to do anything. Instead, you can cling to whatever comfort remains. Change is hard and risky.
But especially now, faced by Global Warming, we have to change. Writers who wax philosophic about the fallen world are not doing the rest of us any favors at all.
P.S. This post is me in a dead-horse-beating mode.
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