Russell Davis's Blog, page 4

The First Review is In

I just saw the first review of my new collection, THE END OF ALL SEASONS, and I'm happy to report that it was a good one! You can click on the link above for the full review (and you should visit the site anyway), or read it right here:

"Putting this in fantasy is somewhat arbitrary since the stories collected here range across several genres, including science fiction and even westerns. I have a soft spot for westerns as that was the first genre I ever read way back in prehistoric times. The stories, and a few poems, are arranged by season of the year rather than genre or theme. There are retellings of fairy tales, stories of technology and magic, stories of the Old West and future. The science fiction - which is normally my preferred genre - are actually my least favorites this time around. Davis has a gift for short fantasy fiction - rare in my experience among even the more competent fantasy novelists - and imbues most of his stories with some genuine emotional content, also a rarity. If I had to pick favorites, I'd mention "The Angel Chamber", "When I Look to the Sky," and "The End of Summer". You'll enjoy this best if you forget about worrying about genre and just look forward to some good fiction." - Don D'Ammassa, 4/8/13

Now, if I can get through my appearance on John Scalzi's blog, Whatever, for The Big Idea on Wednesday, maybe I'll be able to breathe again. A little. Oh wait, then I'm on Mary Robinette Kowal's blog the next week. And somewhere in there, other folks will probably review it. That's it, then. I'm probably holding my breath for the next month...

Sexism in the (Spec Fic) World

It's entirely possible that by writing this, I'll find myself dragged into all kinds of fascinating (and not-so-fascinating) discussions on the topic of sexism in the speculative fiction world. I hope not, as those not-so-fascinating ones tend be to filled to the brim with trolls, people who argue from an emotional position rather than a factual one, and people who are filled with righteous (and oftentimes understandable) indignation. I'm just sharing my thoughts here, so you don't have to feel compelled to argue with me or even read on.

Let me begin by admitting something right up front. I have, in my lifetime, had sexist thoughts, said sexist things, acted in a sexist manner, and made sexist jokes. I'm old enough to remember a time in our country when the gender roles of men and women weren't nearly so fluid - and sexist thoughts, words, deeds, and jokes were far more common and much more socially acceptable. I'm also young enough to know that equality is a far better and superior ideal than any gender roles we might assign based on a society that no longer exists. Still, if I'm to be honest, despite my intellectualizing of the issue itself, I'm not guilt free by any means. Knowing that I have these thoughts and feelings from time to time at least allows me to try and control them, stuffing them back down into the dark where they belong. Most of the time, anyway.

All that said, I want to be clear. I was mostly raised by a single mother. A woman of almost unstoppable will and so far away from the stereotypes that plague the female gender as to be laughable. She held honorary ranks of Admiral in the Navy and Colonel in the Army National Guard. She was the driving force behind the creation and expansion of the Nebraska Vietnam Vets Reunion. And when I got my first martial arts belt, and stopped her from giving me a well-earned slap one day, the next day, my instructor was at her office giving her private lessons, which continued for quite some time. In short, she was a badass both mentally and physically for a long time and she raised me to believe that everyone should be treated equally, even if we lived in a world where they weren't. Equality, she taught me, was an ideal to strive for - not something that automatically existed whether we fought for it or not.

The issue of sexism is a long-running problem in the speculative fiction community. It is a problem - of that, I have no doubt at all. But one of the issues I see in the spec fic community on this issue is that there's a bizarre feeling of navel-gazing to it. The issue of sexism isn't limited to the spec fic world. There's sexism in mystery, romance, and westerns, too. I don't spend a lot of time there, but I'd be willing to bet that you'd find sexism in literary fiction and even poetry. And I know from experience that it isn't one-sided: men face sexism in the publishing world, too, though not nearly to the degree that woman have and do.

In fact, I'll go a step farther down the road and say that sexism exists - period. It always has, and to one degree or another, it likely always will. Sexism has roots that run deeper than our ideals. That doesn't make it right, not by any means, but perhaps this fact should change the focus in the spec fic world just a little bit. Writers know how to use language to point out wrongs in our society, or when someone says or does or writes something that crosses the line. Writers know how to use character and story to illustrate social injustice. As writers, we can and should do that, because only by shining a light on the problem do we have a chance to correct it.

I came to the writing of this post because of two things. First, a post that appeared on the blog of SF writer Charles Stross on Women in Science and Science Fiction. I probably wouldn't have even read it, except that it was pointed out in the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) forums because it referenced our magazine, the SFWA Bulletin. It's an interesting article and makes some pretty important points, but I found myself a bit annoyed by the reference to the magazine as evidence of gender bias in SF/F because the authors used only a single issue of a quarterly publication for data. And some folks took that to mean that the magazine, its editor Jean Rabe (who is female) and SFWA itself were guilty.

The second post I read involved an article that appeared in the Bulletin, written by CJ Henderson on the topic of staying power and reinventing oneself as a writer. (I can't provide a link to the article, alas, as it's not online.) In the article, Mr. Henderson writes:

The reason for Barbie's unbelievable staying power, when every contemporary and wanna-be has fallen by the way-side is, she's a nice girl. Let the Bratz girls dress like tramps and whores. Barbie never had any of that. Sure, there was a quick buck to be made going that route but it wasn't for her. Barbie got her college degree, but she never acted as if it was something owed to her, or that Ken ever tried to deny her.

She has always been a role model for young girls, and has remained popular with millions of them throughout their entire lives, because she maintained her quiet dignity the way a woman should.

Wow. Well. Damn, Mr. Henderson. Couldn't you have come up with a better example than that? There's no doubt that it's a sexist statement, and Mr. Henderson should have shown better judgement as a writer and as a man. He didn't and is being taken to task by any number of individuals. But look at the post again. The headline isn't about the writer, is it? The first paragraph of the post isn't either. Once again, what the writer wrote is being attached to SFWA as an organization and the Bulletin as a magazine. I'm not sure that's entirely fair because like most every magazine I've ever read , there's a little blurb in the Bulletin that says, "The opinions expressed in all articles are those of the author and do not necessarily reflects the views of the editor or of SFWA."

But maybe there's something a little more unfair at work here. Do we and must we automatically assume that Mr. Henderson is a raving sexist? That he wants women in our society to be treated unequally, to be more like Barbie? I don't know him, but I think it's at least possible that what he wrote came as much from an unconscious generational place as it did from a consciously sexist one. Maybe we should ask him? Maybe we should look at this as a teaching moment, an opportunity to correct an issue (or an oversight) (or just poor judgement on his part) rather than a chance to attack?

One of the things I've noticed in the SF/F community over the last few years when it comes to issues like sexism, racism, and so on, is that people enter what I would characterize as "automatic attack mode." I tend to believe that this can cause almost as much harm as whatever "ism" itself is in question because people who feel attacked will feel compelled to defend. And so, from the get go, we create an environment of verbal combat, rather than creating one of mutual understanding.

There's another issue, at least for me, and that's the notion that somehow SFWA should police these kinds of things in the spec fic community at large, as well as within the organization itself. This idea ignores the fact that SFWA is a member-based author association. Our members aren't employees we can fire when they write or do something as an individual that we don't agree with. If SFWA gets into policing what its members say and do, the organization will cease to exist. Maybe the editor of the Bulletin should have caught these lines and asked for a revision. Is it possible, however unlikely, that Jean Rabe read the lines and wasn't offended? Would it be worth it to ask her, prior to assuming that she, too, is a sexist? Maybe the SFWA Board of Directors should vet every word of every issue of the Bulletin before it goes to press and censor the content that it doesn't like or agree with? Oops... we're on another rather slippery slope there, aren't we?

Are people understandably offended by what Mr. Henderson wrote? Of course they are, and of course they should be. It's offensive, and in no way, shape, or form, am I suggesting that people shouldn't take it seriously or not raise the issues. What I am suggesting, however, is that conflating the words of one writer, with the views of an entire magazine, and by extension, an entire organization defeats the opportunity to address the very real issues of sexism both in our field and in our world.

I guess my point in all this is a few things. First, and most important, as writers in the spec fic community we can and should be concerned with shining a light on sexism and gender bias - in both our own genre, but more importantly, in the publishing world at large. Second, that shining said light should have the focus of a spotlight whenever possible, not the radiant glare of the sun, that encompasses everyone and everything remotely associated with the incident in question. Third, that even when sexism and gender bias happen, it should at least be considered possible that the intention wasn't conscious or malicious - a generation ago, such ideas were pretty standard fare, and a generation before that, they were the norm. That doesn't make those ideas right, any more than thinking that slavery was right, but as humans, we are creatures of the times in which we live.

My hope is that - as writers - we can address these issues in a way that is both specific to any incidents that occur and presents the opportunity for mutual understanding before we decide that a given person or entity is consciously representing a position that many people fundamentally disagree with. At the core, creating understanding is what writers do. That we seem to struggle doing it when issues like sexism are raised is proof of how difficult it is to accomplish, and why equality is an ideal to strive for, but not one that automatically exists anywhere.

Writing Under Pressure

Late last night, just before midnight in fact, I was getting ready to call it a day. It was almost midnight, and what I really wanted to do was shut down the computer, read the end of Joe Abercrombie's excellent novel BEST SERVED COLD, and get a few hours of sleep before I had to wake up my small horde of children. That's what I wanted to do, in spite of the fact that I had writing to do. Specifically, I've been working on a little side project with poet Ernest Hilbert, and it was my turn.

I did one last email check and there was an invitation from Mary Robinette Kowal to join in a writerly hangout on Google+ for the express purpose of 15 minutes of socializing, followed by 45 minutes of writing. I saw that other friends and acquaintances were also going to be there, and I thought... why not? I can always pop in, say hello, then duck out.

Except I couldn't.

Something very strange happened while I was in that Google Hangout. After the socializing period, it was time to write. And even though I wasn't looking at the interface, I could hear other writers writing. I could damn near hear them thinking. And I felt guilty. Very, very guilty for not writing myself. So, I opened up the document that Ernie and I have been sending back and forth and started punching the keys. Every time I stopped, I could hear the others, and felt compelled to start again. It was writing under pressure - peer pressure. Could they hear me? Did they notice if I stopped typing? Were they writing faster, better than I was? It was... refreshing.

I wrote 850 words in that short window. I won't say they were good words - I write at my best when I can be unaware of myself or my surroundings - but they (probably) weren't horrible either. I've never written in those circumstances before, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Writers are creatures of habit, but breaking those habits every now and again is valuable to the process - to waking ourselves up a bit, and to pushing ourselves a little bit farther down the road and further into the story we're trying to tell.

Give it a try yourself. Write under pressure. Set up a group of writer friends and write in the same "space" together - even if that space is a virtual one. Chances are, all that writerly peer pressure, will be good for you.

Internet Memememe

Over the last week, the image above (and numerous variations of it) has appeared across the Internet as people signal their support of equal marriage rights. According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary (which is no Oxford English Dictionary, but that's a post for another day), a meme is "an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture." So, now there's this Internet meme using that symbol. It's everywhere. All the cool kids are using it on Facebook and Twitter.

I'm not going to be using it, I'm afraid. Not because I don't support equal rights. I very much do. In fact, to go off an a somewhat related tangent, I've long argued that there are essentially three kinds of marriage: state-based (the legal status which is dealt with by law and courts), emotional (a feeling of being married), and spiritual/religious (sanctioned by a given faith), and that regulating one (say, the state) on the basis of another (say, religious) is fundamentally wrong. I believe any given religious institution has the right to say, "We don't believe in gay marriage, so we don't perform those ceremonies in our church." I also believe that any given church or religious institution has the right to say, "Come on in! You love each other? Want to get married? We're here for you!" I say these things because religion is rooted in systems of belief and morals - and religions vary widely on the way those systems of belief and morals work themselves out within their own community. Go them, say I. Believe whatever you like - so long as you only require it of yourself.

The state (or State, if you will) on the other hand, finds its basis in law. Our law which covers all kinds of things like non-discrimination and equal protection. Frankly, if the Supreme Court chickens out and uses standing of the parties not to rule on this issue once and for all (thus sending it back to the lower courts), they'll have plenty to be ashamed of. Under the law, marriage is not a religious question, nor should it be answered like one. To suggest that a readily identified group of people within our community whose only differentiation is sexual orientation should not be eligible for marriage (and the legal benefits and protections thereof) is to say that discrimination is okay. And that, my friends, is a damn slippery slope to be standing on.

Now, getting back to that symbol and why I'm not going to be using it. I'm not going to be using it because when I look at it, my first thought is, "Why the hell is it necessary for any right-thinking person, who believes in equality, to have to say so with a giant red symbol?" (And, for those of you interested in color psychology, red means stop or danger. Think about that for a moment.) That we live in a society where we have to say so in order to make a political statement about something that should be obvious in this day and age is... well, it's pretty fucking sad. To be honest, I think the people who are against equal marriage rights should have to clearly identify themselves before we do. Maybe with a red symbol of some kind or another:
As it is, all we're doing is shouting, "Me, too! Me, too! Me, too!" An Internet "memememe."

I guess that's okay. I know some of you reading this might be thinking about solidarity, and there's value in that, I agree. Still, I'd much rather identify those who are against basic legal protections than those who are for it. It seems to me that those folks are the ones we need to know about: so we can protect our nation from them.

The Good Old Days

I admit it. I miss my typewriter. The last one I owned, a Smith Corona Deville 750, was a reliable, comfortable friend. My ex often went to sleep to the sound of my click-clacking away on it, sitting at the tiny desk next to our bed, though now that I think about it, perhaps that Should that have been a hint of things to come. My first typewriter was a cheap manual that my mother bought for me when I was twelve years old. Frankly, I still wish I owned them both, though my wife, Sherri, swears that if I go back to using a typewriter, I'm on my own in terms of getting a manuscript digitized.

If memory serves, I sold my first short story back in 1995 or thereabouts - and I wrote it on that Smith Corona typewriter. A couple of years after that, exasperated by my having to re-key entire manuscript pages, my good friend John Helfers showed up at my apartment one day with a used computer running Windows 3.1. He moved my typewriter out of the way, set it up, and ordered me to learn to use it. I did, and of course, I'm writing this on a computer far more advanced than that one. Still, there is something... deliberate about the typewriter. Writing on one requires a certain conscientiousness, an attention to detail, that I like. It turns writing into a physical act of creation with an immediately tangible result. Computers can make for lazy writing: "I'll go back and change it later."

But those were the good old days, right? So here I am - trying once again to put together a real website with the kind, patient assistance of my friend Tim Ward (thanks again, Tim!). But then I find out that this site isn't enough. But... I'm already on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, and Tumblr! Still not enough. My friend Mary Robinette Kowal says, "You need an author account at Goodreads." Tim adds, "You have an Amazon Author page, right?" I've added those, too, and with any luck at all, the effort will be worth it. (Tim keeps adding to the things we need on this site, and I'm going to forgive him one day, and also buy him a nice dinner for his trouble.)

I'm thankful I have people to guide me through some of this, and I imagine that in the not-too-distant future, I'll slowly dip my toes into the dark, mysterious waters of self-publishing, too. I may even take a peek at podcasting, though the word itself sounds suspicious to me - like tossing an alien egg across the cosmos. Still, I find myself thinking that somewhere along the way, I turned into that cranky old codger sitting in the corner and mumbling about how it was done in my day. All of this technology - and it is amazing that so much of our world is what we called science fiction when I was a kid - takes writers away from writing and pulls them in a hundred different directions. Some of those directions are good, some maybe less so.

It's funny to think that in fifty years, someone else will be looking back on this time as the good old days, too. I'll be long gone by then - barring that successful cloning project I've been waiting for - but I do hope people find this site (and all the other connected/associated ones along with it) useful and enjoyable. I have plans for it, including talking about things other than writing and publishing. Things like cooking, coffee, and wines... things like poker and knowing when to fold 'em... and even things like MS (my illness) and Type 1 Diabetes (my son's illness). I think about a lot of things, and I'll do my best to share some of them here on a regular basis.

In the meantime, I invite you to explore this site - which is still officially under construction, but we're getting closer to mostly done - and share your feedback with me. If there's one certain positive about leaving those good old days behind it's that the technology we now have brings us closer together. We may as well take advantage of that, yes?

Under Construction

This site is currently under construction and will soon be updated with my current projects, books, blog, and whatever else we think to throw at it. Thanks for your patience!