R.E. Andeen's Blog, page 2

Ann Leckie is Hacking Your Brain

How the @ann_leckie’s #Ancillary books use language to hijack the reader’s biases and turn them inside out.

I just finished Ann Leckie’s Ancillary trilogy, and it’s really good. If you go in for science fiction that makes you think and you haven’t read it yet, you should go do that now. I’ll wait.

There are a whole lot of reasons why the series is among the best fiction I’ve ever read, but I’m going focus this post on just one.

Radchaai culture – the dominant culture in the books – has no gender. People are still female and male, like always, but that’s a minor detail, like being right or left handed. Fashions in clothes, hair, cosmetics, etc. are the same for everyone, with minor adjustments for body shape. There’s no difference between female people and male people in social or professional settings, and it would never even occur to most Radchaai that there could be.

The specifics of sexual relationships do obviously vary according to anatomy, and females presumably still get pregnant and bear children while males do not, though maybe technology takes care of that. The books don’t really go into specifics. Beyond that, though, there’s no difference between the genders.

This is not because the Radch is some sort of progressive-utopian, hyper-rational, Star Trek-style meritocracy; quite the contrary. There is enough inequality of wealth and status to make Jane Austen blush, and people find all sorts of reasons to look down on and even to hate others, including money, ethnicity, religion, language and accent, family and social connections, and so on. It’s just that gender isn’t one of those reasons.

As a result of the lack of gender, along with the author’s spare physical descriptions, the reader doesn’t know whether most of the characters are female or male. They’re just people. The only time gender becomes a thing is when the protagonist is dealing with a foreign culture. It’s invariably awkward, because the protagonist is constantly afraid of mis-gendering everyone, which just serves to illustrate how completely not-a-thing it is in Radchaai culture.

That, by itself, is really cool, but it gets even more interesting.

The lack of gender in Radchaai culture necessarily extends to language – if people don’t really distinguish between female and male, you can’t have separate pronouns for “she” and “he”. It would be like forcing English speakers to use “she” for right-handers and “he” for left-handers – nobody would have any idea who was who or which pronoun to use. Lots of present-day Earth languages are (mostly) gender-neutral like this, with one pronoun representing both “he” and “she”, often with another for “it”. Examples include Finnish, Persian, Malay, and Chinese (sort of). Also Klingon.

If the author were writing in one of these languages, that would be that. Every character would be referred to by the pronoun hän or t¬ā or ghaH or whatever, and nobody would have a problem. But the author didn’t write in a gender-neutral language; she wrote in English. In normal English, we use “she” to refer to female people (and animals, robots, etc. Also, ships) and “he” to refer to males. That obviously doesn’t work for Leckie’s novels. So how does she handle the problem?

She could use “he”, traditionally used in English for people of unspecified gender. There’s also the singular “they”, the ugly workaround “s/he”, and new alternatives like “ze” or “xe”. None of these are particularly satisfying, and all but “he” read as super-awkward on the page. Leckie doesn’t use any of them.

Instead, the pronoun she uses for all of her characters, male and female, is “she”. And it’s not just pronouns; it’s also “mother”, “daughter”, “sister”, and so on.

This leads to some (deliberately, I assume) jarring language, including “She was probably male, to judge from the angular mazelike patterns quilting her shirt. I wasn’t entirely certain.”

That’s where the brain hacking comes in.

When a writer introduces a character, she can’t possibly describe every detail, so the reader has to fill in everything the writer doesn’t provide, and the reader will fall back on her own expectations to fill in those details. Until the writer tells the reader otherwise, a character named Detective Smith is probably a middle-aged white guy in a cheap suit, maybe with a five-o’clock shadow, a thick Brooklyn accent, and an alcohol problem. Similarly, the military ship captain is another middle-aged white guy, this time with a wiry build, short graying hair, and ramrod-straight posture. They’re stereotypes.

While stereotypes do vary somewhat from person to person, they’re pretty consistent across a given culture, and they are almost invariably male. Male is the default, even for roles that could be filled today by either gender – cops, doctors, professors, soldiers, random drivers on the freeway. It’s only when you get to traditionally female roles like nurses, schoolteachers, or parents on the playground that the default changes.

In the Ancillary books, the reader knows pretty much upfront that almost all of the characters could be either male or female, and Leckie doesn’t usually give much physical description to tilt the balance one way or the other. Normally, the reader would fall back on stereotypes based on the character’s title, job, social position, etc. to form a mental picture. Ship’s captain, system governor, station administrator, head of security – probably all male. Horticulturalist, servant, tea server – maybe female?

But in the Ancillary books, even though the reader knows that any given character could be female or male, there’s still that “she”. Every time a character is mentioned with a pronoun, it’s “she”, not “he”. The reader starts to imagine every character as female, even the ship captain, the governor, the station administrator, the head of security. The author gets into the reader’s head, hacks into the reader’s existing biases, and turns them around. The default becomes female.

Once you’ve gotten used to the effect, it doesn’t seem strange at all. When you’re inside the world Leckie has created, reading along, it seems perfectly natural that the sea of faces staring out at you from the page is mostly female. And it’s not some hidden subtext thing – Leckie is able manipulate readers’ biases even when they know they’re being manipulated. It’s all much subtler and more effective than an angry feminist polemic (not that I don’t love a good angry feminist polemic).

Best of all, the effect doesn’t go away when the reader leaves the book and comes back into the real world. It weakens over time, but the female cop, the female captain, the female doctor all seem a little less unexpected, a little more normal.

All that with not much more than a pronoun, a choice to see the power of “she”.

Resist

A letter to my Congressional representatives and to all Democratic members of Congress.

Dear Representative Jayapal, Senator Cantwell, and Senator Murray,

Now that Donald Trump is President, your job has changed. For the past eight years, and indeed for most of modern American history, your job has been to work with the administration and, when possible, with the Republican leadership in Congress to pass legislation for the good of the American people. Now, with a Republican majority pushing the most extreme right-wing agenda in at least a century and a president with unprecedented (and unpresidented) deficits in experience, temperament, honesty, and ethics, your job is to limit the damage.

I urge you to resist. I urge you to do everything in your power to frustrate, obstruct, and delay the legislative and administrative agenda of the administration and the Republican majority.

Do not vote to confirm Betsy DeVos, the profoundly unqualified nominee to lead the Department of Education. Do not vote to confirm any executive or judicial nominee the administration puts forward, no matter how qualified, from Secretary of State all the way on down to the Director of the Office of Paperclip Distribution. And, most importantly, use every weapon at your disposal to deny President Trump the opportunity the Republican majority denied President Obama – the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice.

Do not vote for any bill advanced by the administration or the Republican leadership. Use the rules of legislative procedure to derail or delay the most damaging legislation, and make sure that every bill passed by the majority receives a full measure of debate, with your opposition noted in the Congressional Record. Do everything you can, short of shutting down the government or defaulting on the national debt, to frustrate the Republican legislative agenda.

If you do find bipartisan agreement on a specific issue – sentencing reform, perhaps – then you should of course work with like-minded legislators from the opposing party. But don’t compromise your core principles when you do so, even in pursuit of a good cause.

You will lose many of these fights, perhaps most. The damage to our country will be awful, but that’s the political reality for the next four years, even with a favorable election in 2018. But while Republican control of both the Congress presents a terrible danger, it also presents a political opportunity. Make the Republicans pass every piece of destructive legislation with only Republican votes. Make the Republicans own every awful thing that happens while they control Congress. If the past eight years have taught us anything, it is that voters will not only forgive uncompromising obstruction, they will reward it. With the new president’s historically low approval ratings and the huge crowds at the Women’s Marches across the country, relentless opposition is looking even better as an electoral strategy.

Resist. Your conscience and your constituents will thank you.

Sincerely,

RE Andeen

Chaos

Donald Trump is going to be the next President of the United States.

He didn’t win a majority of the votes, and as of this writing, it’s pretty clear he didn’t even win the popular vote. For the record, the last time a Republican who wasn’t already president or vice president won the popular vote was all the way back in 1980. Claims of a “historic mandate” are not even close to the mark.

But it was enough, and we need to recognize the legitimacy of the result. We owe that to the office of the President and to, you know, reality, even though elements of the Republican party have refused to accept the legitimacy of any president in recent memory, maybe any president since John F. Kennedy. To Donald Trump himself, we owe nothing.

Distressed liberals are offering all sorts of reasons why Trump was elected – voter suppression, media bias, gerrymandering. Trump voters are racist or stupid or insane. Bernie Sanders would have been a better candidate. Anybody else would have been a better candidate. There may be some truth to all of these, but none can explain how almost half of voters could chose such a plainly awful candidate.

The real reason is much simpler. Americans voted to burn down the house.

People are angry at the status quo, and they voted for the opposite of the status quo. They didn’t vote for Trump in spite of the fact that he is an awful human being. They voted for him because he is an awful human being. They voted to tear down all the institutions they feel are rigged against them, and there is no better wrecking ball than Donald Trump. Nobody even comes close. The collateral damage is going to be terrible.

We already know a few things that are going to happen as a result of a Trump administration along with Republican control of Congress. Environmental regulations, especially those targeting climate change, will be rolled back or ignored. Broad immigration enforcement will needlessly ruin the lives of many immigrants and their families. Taxes on the rich and on corporations will go down, without a word spoken about the increased budget deficits that will result. The lives of women, minorities, LGBTQ folks – anybody not a straight white cis male – will get worse, if not because of actual harm from the administration, then at least from indifference to injustice.

The repeal part of the Republican plan to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act will happen very quickly, but the replace part will take much longer, if it happens at all. The Republicans have a few good ideas on health care, like allowing people to buy insurance across state lines, but they have no real plan beyond vague rumblings about “market-based solutions”, which the ACA already was. As a result, ten to fifteen million Americans will likely lose their health insurance in 2018.

And we’ll get at least one new Supreme Court justice. That can’t be good.

Beyond that, though, I’m much less certain what’s going to happen for the simple reason that nobody knows much about what Donald Trump is going to do as President, not even Donald Trump. It’s possible that Republican lawmakers and a cooperative administration will reduce harmful regulation and make the economy more efficient, though I’m skeptical. It’s possible that President Trump will be so preoccupied with settling his personal grudges that he doesn’t pay much attention to the business of governing, and we wind up with a pretty conventional Republican administration.

It’s also possible that President Trump will bumble, completely uninformed, into some issue that piques him and wreck everything in his path. For just one example, he could decide to shred the economy by unilaterally disrupting foreign trade as punishment for companies that have workers outside the US. He can’t generally impose tariffs without help from Congress, but there are plenty of administrative levers he can pull to achieve the same effect.

We really have no idea, because we have no precedent. Most of Trump’s policies are either obviously ludicrous (build a wall and make Mexico pay for it), impossibly vague, or wildly inconsistent. The man has a tendency to contradict himself on issues of substance, sometimes during the same speech.

My biggest worry is foreign policy. Our standing in the world is about to collapse. The world can’t address problems like climate change when the leader of the only superpower (no, China doesn’t count) denies it even exists. And while our role as the world’s policeman has not been especially successful of late, the power vacuum left by American isolationism will be much, much worse. Trump has already jeopardized the legitimacy of NATO’s mutual-defense provisions, maybe even the organization itself, by questioning whether the US should defend NATO members from Russian aggression.

The thought of Donald Trump as commander-in-chief of (by far) the most powerful military in the history of the world is genuinely terrifying. The Trump administration might refrain from intervening in places like Yemen where there’s no possible way to do good, but it could also provoke or even initiate a conflict elsewhere on the flimsiest of pretenses. We know from recent experience that it’s not too hard for a president to take the country into a full-blown war just because he wants to.

Donald Trump is not known for getting along peacefully with others, and he has the potential has the potential to wreak untold death and destruction with the arsenal at his command, even without considering nuclear weapons.

Like the Brexiteers and the Filipinos who elected Rodrigo Duterte (look him up), Americans in their frustration and anger have freely voted to reject institutions, norms, and order.

We have voted for chaos.

I Voted

I filled out my ballot today, and I voted for Hillary Clinton.

There are lots of other decisions on the ballot, many of which will have more practical effects on my life. I urge everyone to carefully consider everything on their ballot – it’s all important.

But in this post, I’m only going to discuss my choice for President.

Above all, I voted against Donald Trump. He is not fit to serve this country in any capacity, let alone lead it, and I will waste no further (virtual) ink on him.

I also voted for Hillary Clinton. I voted for her not just because she’s the least bad option, but because I believe she will be a positive force for this country. I can’t give her my full support, but then I haven’t unreservedly supported any major politician since Ronald Reagan, when I was too young to realize that every politician is a flawed human being.

For a start, it’s important to me to vote for the first woman to become President. Progress on equality for all Americans has been excruciatingly slow since, well, ever, and I believe that President Clinton will be a voice not just for women but for everyone who wants to live up to the declaration that “all men are created equal”.

I generally support the policy positions of the Democratic party, and much of the Republican platform seems downright extreme, especially compared to moderate party I remember from my childhood. But with the exception of climate change, which needs immediate, responsible action, my vote isn’t about whose policies I prefer. Given the extreme intransigence of the Republican party, I expect very little of President Clinton’s agenda to get through Congress anyway.

I want government to work, to accomplish the myriad things large and small that keep the country functioning every day. We clearly can’t trust the Republican Party with this task – they have spent the past thirty years trying to convince us that government is always the problem, never the solution, and that’s even before considering the spectacular ignorance of the party’s current candidate. The Democratic Party’s record is far from excellent – they usually advocate more government rather than better government as the solution to a particular problem – but I do have cause for hope. Hillary Clinton has more and broader experience in federal government than anyone who has ever run for President, and I believe that experience will make her an effective manager of the executive branch. When I voted for Barak Obama eight years ago, my biggest reservation was that he would lack the skills to run the executive branch effectively. His administration has been more competent than I expected – certainly better than the Bush administration – but we can always do better. That is why I’m voting for Hillary Clinton. She may well disappoint, but I have hope.

I do have reservations about the next Clinton administration. Bill Clinton’s policies on criminal justice and welfare reform, though universally supported at the time, have had devastating effects. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy has gotten American involved in ugly, bloody conflicts across the Middle East, resulting in death and destruction across the region. Unfortunately, no public figure has been able to articulate anything better. Though broad principles apply, every situation is different in foreign policy, and right now an awful lot of those situations are going to turn out bad no matter what.

The rest of my reservations have to do with the general haze of dishonesty surrounding Clinton. The trouble is, the haze is all we can see. In all the hype about Benghazi! Benghazi! Benghazi! or the email server or whatever else, we’ve seen a lot of things that look vaguely shifty or shady, but no investigation has ever produced concrete proof of anything criminal or even seriously dishonest. If there were something real there, we’d have seen it by now.

Lust

A rant from the intersection of popular culture and politics.

I’ve lately been playing a little Diablo III before bed to kill some brain cells so I can sleep (doesn’t work, but that’s another topic). The game’s setting leans pretty heavily on western notions of heaven and hell. Act III focuses on Sin, and the last mini-boss is Cydaea, the Maiden of Lust. Cydaea is a creature rather like a centaur, with a spider’s body supporting a hyper-sexualized human female torso, and she speaks with a pouty, sultry voice. This got me thinking – not about the game (it’s about a millimeter deep), but about depictions of lust in our culture and history.

The personification of lust (specifically the sexual sort) is usually female. From the tortured women carved in Romanesque stone to pretty much anything on the internet these days, Lust is a woman, naked or nearly so.

This seems backwards to me. In the world where I live, lust is more of a male thing.

I’m not suggesting that women are delicate flowers, fainting at the mere thought of intimate contact with a man; quite the opposite. Women are sexual beings, just like men, fully capable of wanting, having, and enjoying sex. Women are fully capable of lust.

But both historically and in today’s culture, men tend to spend more effort in active pursuit of their sexual desires, especially the purely physical sort implied by the word lust. According to all the available data, men on average have more sexual partners than women and are more likely to cheat in their relationships. And prostitution is almost entirely about male customers seeking female prostitutes.

So why is lust depicted as female?

In part, I’d argue it’s another symptom of the double standard. Male sexual desire, even when it’s on the edge, is the norm. It’s excused. Boys will be boys, locker room talk, etc. Female sexual desire is judged by a different, harsher standard. We have a huge vocabulary to shame women who violate sexual norms – loose, easy, cheap, slut, whore, etc. – but basically nothing for men.

I think there’s more, though. The blame for male sexual misbehavior often falls at least partly on the woman. The vixen, the temptress, the painted Jezebel. That’s sometimes justified – two married people having an affair are equally culpable; a single woman is not completely blameless if she’s knowingly sleeping with a married man.

But far too often we blame women for men’s boorish (or worse) behavior even when it’s entirely out of their control. Getting catcalled on the street? It’s your fault for wearing a skirt. Creepy guy grabbed your ass on the subway? Shouldn’t have worn those tight leggings. And how many rape victims feel like they’re being violated all over again when they testify against their accusers, only to have the defense comb through their personal lives to paint them as sluts? How many never testify, for that exact reason?

It’s no accident that Cydaea’s lower body is a spider and not some other demon creature. She’s the black widow who tempts the virtuous man into her sinful embrace and then kills and eats him afterward. I don’t blame Blizzard for their sexy spider-demon; it works in the context the self-serious piece of cultural fluff that is Diablo III.

Lust isn’t always a bad thing; sometimes it’s just sexy fun. But when it’s channeled in the wrong direction, when it reduces another person to a sex object without her consent, it can be quite harmful. The background sexual harassment that women experience every day takes its toll; serious sexual assaults can ruin lives (and no, I’m not talking about Stanford swimming scholarships).

Creative people everywhere, if you want to personify the Lust in all its debased glory, you can do better. Make him male, because, obviously. Make him a bloated orange grotesque. Give him a mane of ridiculous blonde fur. Give him yuuuuge genitals (because art is not reality) and tiny, tiny hands.

After all the awful stuff that’s been spewing out of the presidential race, particularly this weekend, I can think of no better avatar for the destructive, dehumanizing power of lust than Donald Trump.

Sound Effect interview on KNKX Seattle

I went to see Hello Earth’s Outdoor Trek production of Space Seed this summer on the weekend when Marc Okrand was in town. He gave a talk about how he created the Klingon Language for Star Trek III and all that followed, and after the show, a producer from KNKX, Seattle’s public radio station, approached us and chatted a bit. When he found out I lived in Seattle and actually spoke Klingon, he handed me his business card. One of their shows – Sound Effect – was doing a series called The Ties that Bind around communities bound by shared interest, and he was interested in the Klingon speaking community. A few weeks later, I got a call from another producer, and a week or so after that, I walked up to their studio in Belltown and sat down for an interview.

You can listen to it here.

I haven’t actually listened to it myself (I really don’t like the sound of my own voice – not a useful quality for a writer, but hey), but I do know the Klingon on the show is pretty good but not perfect. I was nervous.

Enjoy.

Coronation

Just because a story ends, readers don’t stop caring about what happens next. Sometimes they have to wait for another book to find out, but they usually just have to wonder. For Kiv and Tallas of Love and Magic, I had a more definite answer in mind, in the form of a story that takes place many years later. Here it is:

Coronation

by RE Andeen

Kiv tugged absently at the red silk Wizard’s hood around her neck, shifting from foot to foot. Tallas stood beside her, serene as ever, wearing the blue silk of a Master Wizard. There were half a dozen people in the queue in front of them.

“Busy for an Oxday afternoon,” Kiv said.

“There was that enchantment symposium,” Tallas replied. “Probably all going home afterward.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Kiv said, remembering. “I wanted to go, but we had a dozen cases of pillow fever at Healer Hall. How was it?”

“Meh,” Tallas replied. “Sorling is brilliant, but she’s not a good speaker.”

Kiv laughed. Master Sorling was nearsighted and absentminded, so she often forgot her spectacles and lectured to a room full of people she couldn’t see.

“Ready?” Tallas asked when their turn finally came.

“It’s just a telegate,” Kiv replied. She had been through a thousand times before.

“Kiv, it’s been thirty years,” Tallas said. “It’s all right to be nervous.”

“I’m fine,” Kiv said, shoving down the butterflies that were threatening to escape her stomach.

Their turn at the telegate finally came. Tallas dialed in their destination, and they stepped through. In an instant, they traveled halfway across the world.

Escot.

In the thirty years since they met in battle at Nilling Fields, Kiv and Tallas had lived together all across the known world – five years in the desert city of Thunder, near Kiv’s birthplace; four years on the tropical island of Bandragammo, near Tallas’s; even two and half years in the Vannish kingdom of Barsan, just across the Blackfish Channel from where they now stood – but they had never been back to Escot. Tallas went from time to time – she even spent a year as Court Wizard after Master Fintan died – but she always went alone. In his first official act as King Escot, Bardoc had banished Kiv from the kingdom.

In all her years as a Wizard, Kiv’s one regret was the way she had earned that banishment, serving as Court Wizard to Bardoc’s twin Mardoc. Mardoc was the elder and the lawful heir, but he was an atrocious king, bankrupting the kingdom with lavish spending and incompetent administration. Bardoc killing his brother and usurping his throne was the least bad outcome to a terrible civil war.

But now Bardoc was dead too, and with his death, Kiv’s banishment was lifted. Kiv and Tallas were in Escot to attend the royal funeral and the coronation of the new king. Tallas took Kiv’s hand and led her from the telegate chamber.

“It’s not the same place it was,” she reminded Kiv.

Kiv started to say, “I know,” but the words stuck in her throat. Castle Escot was almost unrecognizable. The chief steward’s hall, once a dark, cobwebbed place hung with beautiful, threadbare tapestries and furnished with decaying luxury was now bright and utilitarian. The walls were hung with plain dyed wool, and the gilded couches and chairs were replaced with a dozen wooden desks. Even more startling was the activity – every desk was occupied by some royal official or other, and a steady stream of uniformed pages flowed in and out with envelopes and packages.

“Wow,” said Kiv. “I bet these people get more work done in a day than Mardoc’s did all year.”

“You would win that bet,” Tallas replied, smiling. “Shall we go to our room and leave our things before the memorial? We have an hour or so.”

“All right,” Kiv replied, butterflies stirring again.

Tallas led the way. When they came to the last turning, Kiv stopped in the middle of the corridor.

“The only room this way is the Court Wizard’s suite,” Kiv said. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” Tallas replied. “Ham is leaving for Ashfen Hill this evening, so the room was available. He wanted to give Bardoc’s heir a chance to start fresh. New administration, new Court Wizard.”

“It’s just…” Kiv said. “That was my suite for four months, you know. It’ll be strange to sleep there again.”

“It was my suite too,” Tallas replied, “for a lot longer than it was yours.”

Kiv laughed. “I guess if it’s all right with you, dear Tallas,” Kiv said, “then it’s all right with me too.” She took Tallas’s hand and they walked the rest of the way together.

The suite had been emptied of Ham’s belongings, cleaned, and furnished in blonde wood, white cotton, and silk. Only Tallas could arrange such a beautiful living space in such a short time.

“Does it meet with your approval?” Tallas asked.

“You know it does,” Kiv replied. “It’s beautiful. And we’re only here for a week.”

Tallas pulled Kiv into her arms and kissed her forehead. “Anything for you, love,” she said. Kiv knew from long experience that she meant it. Kiv hugged Tallas tight and let her go.

Both women unpacked and Tallas changed into the red silk dress – the color of mourning – she would wear to the memorial. Kiv smiled – this was only the third or fourth time in all their years together she could remember Tallas wearing a dress. Kiv was not in mourning, officially or otherwise, so she was free to wear her usual cotton blouse and wool skirt. Her wizard’s hood was the same shade of red as Tallas’s dress.

Tallas leaned down to pick up her blue hood, but Kiv snatched it away.

“Let me,” she said as she reached up to lay the blue silk around Tallas’s neck, smoothing it down until it sat just right. “I’m so proud of you, Master Tallas.”

Tallas smiled shyly at Kiv, and though her black skin never showed a blush, Kiv knew Tallas so well that she could almost feel the heat rising in her cheeks.

Kiv had considered trying for her own Master’s hood once, long ago, but the days she spent nursing Tallas back to health after three unsuccessful attempts at the Trial of Sorcery changed her mind.

“Shall we go?” Kiv asked.

Tallas nodded, Kiv took her by the hand, and they made their way to the Great Hall at Castle Escot. As they approached the iron-bound oak doors, one of the royal guards broke ranks, heading straight toward them.

“Are you Kiv?” he asked brusquely.

Kiv took half a step back and readied a shield spell. She had no idea what she had done to wrong this man, but he appeared quite exercised by her presence.

“Yes, I’m Kiv,” she replied.

“I’ve been waiting thirty years for this,” he said, and he raised his right hand. Kiv steeled herself to fend off the blow, but it never came. Instead, he extended his arm and offered Kiv a meaty open hand, and his face cracked into a broad, beaming smile. Kiv took his hand in her own, wondering what was going on.

“I fought under Mardoc’s banner at Nilling Fields, with my two boys by my side,” the guard said, a storm of emotion clouding his face. “The younger boy was cut down early, but my oldest and I fought to the finish. When the line crumpled and we ran, I knew we were dead. Just knew it.”

A tear rolled down his cheek, and he made no attempt to hide it.

“But then there was a rumbling behind us, like distant thunder, and Bardoc’s army stopped chasing us, just like that,” he said. “It’s because of you I got to see my grandkids born. It’s because of you I got grandkids at all. Thank you, Dewin Kiv, from me and my boy and all the rest of my family. You saved our lives.”

“You’re welcome…” Kiv replied, waiting for the man to supply his name.

“Findal, Dewin,” he said.

“You’re welcome, Findal,” Kiv said, surprised to find a tear forming in her own eye.

The guard gave them a deep bow and backed away to resume his station. Kiv and Tallas stepped through the doors and into the hall, with a nod to Findal as they passed.

“See,” Tallas said in Kiv’s ear as they made their way to their seats. “I’ve told you over and over how big a difference you made back then, but you never believe me.”

Kiv didn’t respond.

The wizards were seated on the left side of the hall, directly behind the kings and assorted other nobles from the twelve Vannish kingdoms outside Escot. In addition to Tallas and Kiv, two Master Wizards and fifteen Wizards were in attendance – an impressive showing for a king whose reign began in fratricide. In the thirty years Bardoc ruled, Escot had prospered through a combination of sound economic management and brutal repression of dissent.

“Those are Bardoc’s sons,” Tallas said, leaning in close to Kiv and pointing at the front bench across the aisle. “Bam, Ohlveg, Ulgar, Silgar, and you already know Lendoc. The daughters are behind them – Barlach, Regan, and Birgid. The older two are married to Vannish nobles; Birgid is of age but still unmarried.”

A slight, red-robed man entered the hall from a small side door and the room fell quite.

“Filseth,” Tallas whispered in Kiv’s ear. “Bardoc’s first councilor, and Lord Regent since Bardoc was confined to bed last week.”

Filseth welcomed the guests, thanked them for their attendance, made a few short remarks about how Escot had prospered under King Bardoc, and called on a priestess to commend Bardoc’s soul to the gods. It was all over very quickly, without any long speeches or useless pomp, in accordance with Bardoc’s instructions. He had no tolerance for either flattery or criticism, even in death.

With the memorial over, Filseth turned to the other pressing matter of the day.

“And now, in accordance with the laws and traditions of the Vannish Kingdom of Escot, I shall name the right and proper heir of Bardoc who was King Escot,” he said in formal cadence.

The four older sons all sat forward in their seats, waiting to hear which of them would be king. Lendoc, the youngest, was ineligible – when he was eleven years old, Tallas had discovered a hidden magic blooming in him, and she took him away to join the Guild of Mages.

Bardoc’s four sons were not a promising pool from which to choose. Bam, the presumptive heir, grew up entitled and spoiled, just like his uncle Mardoc. Ohlveg was a drunk whose only ambition was to visit every tavern and whorehouse in the thirteen Vannish kingdoms. Ulgar and Silgar had both inherited their father’s foul temperament without any of his smarts or discipline.

“Seedday morning, King Bardoc summoned his council, along with representatives from the Council of Vannish Kingdoms to witness his declaration,” Filseth said. “Being properly recorded and executed, there can be no question of its validity. The new ruler of Escot is…”

He drew out the pause, keeping more than just Bardoc’s sons on the edge of their seats.

“… Birgid.”

The hall erupted in howls and cheers, clapping and stomping, outrage and joy. The chaos threatened to whirl out of control.

Tallas stood, held up a hand, and the hall flooded with silence, instant and complete. Feet kept stomping and mouths kept moving, but no sound came. When she felt she had everyone’s attention, she gestured for Helgar, the white-haired King Vannin, to speak. He was overking of all the Vannish kingdoms, and also father-by-marriage to Bardoc and grandfather to all his heirs.

“The law gives preference to sons, but it does not forbid daughters from taking the throne,” he said in a voice as precise as carved stone. “The Council takes no position on the fitness of any of Bardoc’s children to rule, but we do affirm Bardoc’s lawful choice. Upon her coronation tomorrow, Birgid will be Queen Escot.”

“Furthermore,” Tallas added, “the Guild of Mages recognizes Birgid as the rightful ruler of Escot, with our full support.”

Whatever plans were forming behind Bam’s gray eyes died there. Palace intrigues were risky enough, but opposing the Guild was tantamount to suicide. He slumped back in his chair in defeat.

With that, Tallas lifted the blanket of silence from the hall, and it erupted once again. This time Tallas let them talk themselves out. A storm of activity swirled around the hall, with Birgid in its eye.

“Let’s go,” Tallas said into Kiv’s ear. “Birgid will need us later, but I think she’ll be quite occupied for the next few hours.”

Kiv and Tallas squeezed their way through the crowd and left the hall. On their way back to their rooms, they stopped by the kitchens and managed to talk the cooks out of two bowls of stew, two mugs of ale, and a tray of bread, cheese, and fruit. It was nice to share a meal together, just the two of them. They rarely had that luxury at Ashfen Hill, or anywhere else.

Hours later, after the food and the ale were long gone, a knock came at the door. With a magical wave of her hand, Kiv opened it to reveal Birgid standing outside, shifting nervously from foot to foot.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Birgid said, “but—”

“Don’t apologize,” Tallas said, cutting her off. “This time tomorrow, you’ll be crowned Queen Escot. You need to adjust your bearing accordingly.”

“I’m sorry—” Birgid started to say, but she caught herself and tried again. “Master Tallas, Dewin Kiv, I would like to ask you something.”

“Better,” Tallas replied. “Now come in and ask of us what you will, Queen Escot.”

Birgid walked through the door, blushing at the title. Kiv closed the door behind her with another wave of her hand.

“I need a new Court Wizard,” she said. “I can remember five in my father’s court over the years, but the only one he trusted completely was you, Master Tallas. I know he asked you time and again to serve, but you always told him no.”

“He could not satisfy my conditions,” Tallas said. “Kiv and I come together, or not at all.”

“Of course, I’d love to have you both, if you’re willing,” Birgid said. “I don’t know yet if I can afford you both – the Court Wizard’s salary is not an insignificant portion of the budget…”

“Money won’t be an issue,” Kiv said in a neutral voice.

“Oh,” Birgid said. “Good. Well, then, Dewin Kiv and Master Tallas, would you consider serving as Court Wizards in Escot?”

“Kiv and I need to discuss this matter privately,” Kiv replied, looking to Tallas for reassurance. “We’ll give you an answer in the morning.”

“Of course,” Birgid said. “I should, um, probably go now.”

“Goodnight, Queen Escot,” Kiv said. Birgid curtsied to the wizards and left.

“Well, well,” Tallas said after Birgid shut the door. “This is interesting. I do think she’ll be a good ruler in time, but she does need our help.”

“You knew,” Kiv said, her eyes flashing with anger. “You knew Bardoc would name Birgid as his heir, and you knew she would ask us to serve in her court. You had all of this planned before we ever stepped through that telegate.”

“I honestly didn’t,” Tallas replied. “I hoped, but I didn’t know any of it for sure.”

Kiv raised an eyebrow.

“When I saw Bardoc last week, he asked me to promise the support of the Guild to his heir,” Tallas said. “He wouldn’t tell me whom he had chosen; he just told me I would approve. I hoped that meant Birgid, but I didn’t know for sure until Filseth read her name at the memorial this afternoon.”

“And now you want me to uproot my life and move here?” Kiv asked.

“I do,” Tallas replied. “I’m getting old, Kiv. I can feel my body slowing down, and I want to retire somewhere that feels like home. I know how much your work at the Healer Hall means to you, and I do love Ashfen Hill, but I really think we could make a home here. Will you do this for me, Kiv?”

“No, I won’t,” Kiv replied, reaching out to take Tallas’s hand. The hurt in Tallas’s jet-black eyes was unmistakable.

“I’ll do it for us,” Kiv said.

“Really?” Tallas asked.

“Really,” Kiv replied. “You know my one regret in life is how I failed as Court Wizard here.”

Tallas opened her mouth to object, but Kiv held up a hand to still her. “I know you won’t call it failure,” Kiv said, “but I lost my chance to make up for my mistakes when Bardoc banished me. How often do we get second chances in life?”

“Oh, Kiv,” Tallas said. “Every time I think I finally have you figured out, you surprise me again.”

“I try, my darling,” Kiv replied, smiling.

“We should get some rest,” Tallas said. “The festivities go all day tomorrow, and they’re going to be spectacular. Bardoc was never liberal with his treasury, but he did know the value of a grand gesture.”

“That should help get Birgid’s reign off to a good start,” Kiv said. “She’ll need it.”

“I hope you don’t mind, Kiv,” Tallas said, “but I packed that green dress that looks so good on you, and a purple hood.”

“And you really didn’t know exactly how everything was going to turn out?” Kiv asked, though her voice was teasing this time.

“I really didn’t know,” Tallas said, “but I hoped.”

“Come to bed love,” Kiv said, taking Tallas by the hand and leading her to the bedroom.

Tallas lifted a hand to her blue Master Wizard’s hood, but Kiv stopped her.

“No,” she said. “Let me.”

Kiv proceeded to slowly undress Tallas, shedding her own clothes along the way, with a tenderness deepened by thirty years together.

When she was finished, she pulled Tallas into bed and made her forget about the coronation in the morning, the palace politics that would come after, and everything else in the world but the joining of body and spirit and magic.

Love and Magic

Love and Magic exists because I can’t follow directions.

Earlier this year, I came across Torquere Press, and they had a call out for stories for their Theory of Love anthology, which they released in April. I admired Robin Watergrove, one of the authors they published, and the theme of the anthology got me thinking. I had a few ideas, including a story about a captain of a Mars Emergency Response squad, but nothing really gelled.

Sometime later, I thought of a story about two battlemages on opposite sides of a civil war, and a story came together. It wasn’t really science fiction (but, hey, SF/F are usually lumped together, right?), and it was at the outer limit of the word count they were looking for, but I submitted it anyway.

I got a very nice rejection letter telling me the story would not work for the anthology, but that Torquere wanted to publish it as a standalone novelette.  It took me about thirty seconds to say yes.

With some great editing by Deelylah Mullin and a gorgeous cover by Kris Norris, it’s now out there for the world to read.

It’s available directly from Torquere, from Amazon for the Kindle, and from other ebook retailers.

Why I Write What I Write

I’m a straight, married man, and I write, among other things, lesbian romance novels. I feel like this requires some explanation.

I’ve always been drawn more to women and their stories and life experience than to men, even outside the complication of physical and romantic attraction. I don’t know why this is; it’s just wired into who I am. Always has been.

I grew up like a typical boy, with mostly boys as friends. Societal pressure, my interest in math and science (stereotyped as male pursuits), and activities like the Boy Scouts saw to that. Still, I preferred the company of girls to boys in just about any context.

My favorite playmates in the first grade, before any of that societal pressure, were girls. In high school, as soon as I was allowed off campus for lunch, I joined a group of six girls for cheap takeout at Chop ‘N Wok, and I learned to use chopsticks when they made it clear I wouldn’t eat otherwise. Among my fellow engineering students in college, my best friend was female, and outside classes my social circle was mostly made up of women from my girlfriend’s dorm. My career choice – software engineering – skews overwhelmingly male, and it’s actually gotten worse since I graduated from college, but even there I’ve had the privilege of working with some fabulously smart women.

It’s not that I don’t value male friendship – many of my best friends are dudes. It’s just that in any group, a disproportionate number of the friends and colleagues I value and remember are female.

In my reading, too, I seek out women’s voices. I mostly read science fiction and fantasy as a kid, where women and girls have historically been poorly represented, but I still found female characters I loved. Perhaps my strongest personal connection with a fictional character was with Menolly of Anne McCaffrey’s Harper Hall books. Though my life was nothing like hers, I immediately understood the shy, exceptional girl who ran away from the limits of her small, closed-in life. That she was a girl didn’t make it any harder for me to relate to her struggles and her successes. In retrospect, it might have even made it easier for me.

When I read, and particularly when I write, I get to be somebody else for a while. I get to step into somebody else’s shoes. Whether those shoes are sneakers, heels, or combat boots, the foot that goes into them is female more often than not.

So that’s why I read and write female characters. Why lesbians? The simple answer is that the part of women’s life experience I find it hardest to relate to is romantic interest in men. As we’ve already established, I generally find women more interesting than men, and I’m not attracted to men at all. I perfectly happy for people, male or female, who are attracted to men; I just don’t get the appeal. Falling in love with a woman, on the other hand, is something I understand.

There’s more to it, though. Women, especially straight women, have limits in both narrative and real life that men do not.

When a woman settles down with a man, his needs expand to fill up the available space in the relationship, only leaving room for hers to squeeze in around the edges. This happens even in modern, enlightened couples – they may strive for equality in the big things, but unconscious biases inevitably sneak into the million little things that make up a marriage. It happens all the time in my own marriage (to that high school lunch pal and college girlfriend), no matter how I try to fight it. We simply don’t have the mental capacity to think through every action, every situation, so we fall back on routine, and routine is reflective of a society that undervalues women even in this age of supposed equality. There are exceptions, of course – stay-at-home dads, mothers with high-powered careers – but they’re depressingly rare. Rarer, I would guess, than women who identify as something other than completely straight.

Lesbian relationships completely upend this dynamic. They start on even ground. Differences in age, income, class, ethnicity, religion, and all sorts of other things may unbalance a relationship between two women, but the big hammer is completely absent. A lesbian is never the lesser partner just because she is a woman. Lesbians do face all sorts of other hardships, including appalling discrimination and hate, but in this one way they retain a kind of agency in their lives and relationships that straight women rarely do, even today. I find that inspiring.

More than anything else, though, lesbian stories just make sense to me, deep down in that part of me beyond thought. I saw Stop! Kiss! at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival back in 2000, and to this day I still remember it as the most beautiful love story I’ve ever seen on stage, screen, or page. I read Nicola Griffith’s The Blue Place two years ago, and it affected me more powerfully than any story I’ve ever encountered. Once in a blue moon, a book/movie/etc. will make me cry; The Blue Place knifed me in the gut and left me for dead.

So when I write, most of my protagonists are women, and many of them are genderqueer. I am aware that a straight man – top of the privilege ladder – writing about people who are neither of those things may make people uncomfortable or cause offense. Both the potential for offense and the writing itself make me a little uncomfortable as well, but not enough to stop.

I do the best I can to write with respect for all the cultures and social groupings – women or men; queer or straight; Asian or white or black or Hispanic; rich or poor; able-bodied or not; programmer or artist or doctor or Wizard of the Guild; etc. – from which I draw characters. I hope the results speak for themselves.

Thanks for reading.

Thoughts on Microsoft

I worked for Microsoft for nine years to the day, from December 2006 to December 2015, as a developer and a dev lead in SharePoint, Internet Explorer, and Windows. The best and worst experiences of my career as a programmer happened during my tenure there, and I will always miss the place, even as I celebrate my escape from the asylum.

I’m going to share some thoughts on how Microsoft has shaped the technology landscape, how it fits in today, and some of the problems that are holding it back. These thoughts are mine and mine alone, and they do not reflect the opinions of anyone else.

First, some history. Microsoft showed the world that software matters. It was the first significant company to realize that while processors and hard disks are essential, it’s the software they run that makes the magic happen. Before the PC, most companies charged too much for hardware and gave the software away for free, almost as an afterthought. Microsoft also realized that computers were important to everyone, not just the black-robed priests inside corporate mainframe temples. It certainly wasn’t alone in this – Apple had an amazing early history – but thanks to IBM’s lock on the corporate market, the practical, boring, beige PC became ubiquitous.

Microsoft’s early focus and the bad decisions of companies like IBM, Apple, WordPerfect, and Borland made Windows and Office the indispensable standards, and Microsoft worked relentlessly to make both ever more indispensable. While most mission statements are vague corporate nonsense, including Microsoft’s recent iterations, the original was as clear a guide to the computing world in the eighties and nineties as I can imagine: “A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software.”

For a long time, that worked. The internet changed everything, causing a famous panic inside the company, but it was a slow change, and Microsoft had time to respond. A few years later, a PC running Microsoft Internet Explorer was the way to access the internet. IE6 was so dominant that Microsoft basically shut down browser development after that. Their behavior in achieving that dominance attracted the attention of the Justice Department, but the case eventually fizzled into a pointless consent decree. So things were good for Microsoft – it had successfully defended its status as the gatekeeper to the world’s information. Companies like Google were doing some interesting things on the server side, where Microsoft had never been as dominant, but nothing ever seriously threatened the iron grip of Windows directly.

Then the iPhone happened.

Apple showed the world that you didn’t need a PC anymore, and they did so essentially overnight. It was immediately obvious to everyone except Steve Ballmer that the old equilibrium had shifted. And because Apple is only interested in the expensive, high-margin segment of any market, the iPhone also created a brand new market for the 60+% of consumers that want a smartphone but are never going to buy an iPhone. Like the PC market, the hardware would be competitive and low-margin, but there was only room for one software ecosystem beside Apple. Microsoft was the most obvious candidate to provide that ecosystem, but its effort was too little too late. Google filled the gap with Android, and it looks increasingly unlikely that anything will change until the next major disruptive technology comes along.

Windows is no longer indispensable. Most people still can’t get real work done without Windows and Office, but it’s no longer inconceivable that an alternative will emerge. And for the average consumer, a smartphone or (non-Windows) tablet is almost as good as a PC for the stuff you do every day. For some, the simplicity may be even better than a PC.

That’s where we are today. Microsoft is still a huge company, and Windows is still essential, especially for businesses, but it’s no longer the only ecosystem that matters.

Over the next few posts, I’ll lay out some of the reasons why Microsoft has responded so slowly to competition and why its responses haven’t been good enough. I don’t have any particular insight into corporate strategy (and I’d be legally prevented from disclosing it even if I did), but I do know what the daily life of an engineer is like in both Office and Windows.

Microsoft is an extremely dysfunctional company. My purpose in exploring that dysfunction in this blog is to help people inside and outside the company understand that dysfunction and how it affects what the company builds and how it acts.