Jim C. Hines's Blog, page 125

Midnight Blue-Light Special, by Seanan McGuire

One of the best parts of going to Book Expo of America? The books, of course! Including a few I grabbed when I visited the DAW office, like Seanan McGuire’s Midnight Blue-Light Special [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy]. This is book two in McGuire’s Incryptid series. (I reviewed book one here.)

This one picks up quite smoothly where book one left off. Discount Armageddon introduced us to Verity Price, cryptozoologist and ballroom dancer, who was watching over the cryptids of New York City and doing her best to avoid attracting the attention of the Covenant of St. George, something that got more complicated when she started dating Dominic De Luca, a member of said Covenant. Also, there were dragon princesses and talking mice, a scary psychic math whiz, and lots of sharp pointy things.

Book two ups the stakes: the Covenant is sending a team to purge New York City. If Verity runs, the cryptic population she’s tried to protect will be slaughtered. If she stays, well, there’s a good chance they’ll be slaughtered anyway, along with Verity. Though the Covenant wouldn’t kill her right away. First they’d force her to reveal the location of her family so they could wipe out her entire line.

While the plot felt a little light, there’s a lot that impressed me about this one. First of all, when you combine it with book one, you have a full character arc for Verity. It feels like you’re reading an episodic book, just like a hundred others, and suddenly you realize McGuire knows exactly where she’s going with Verity’s internal journey as well as the external battles. A lot of books have action; not all of them have that kind of internal development.

McGuire also demonstrates her willingness to break the rules (guidelines? expectations?) of first person point of view novels, and does so effectively. I love the way the chapter dingbats (the symbols at the start of each chapter) change when we jump to a different PoV. That was beautifully done.

I’m quite fond of the characters, as always. From the religious mice to the introductory quips from Verity’s family to Sarah the cuckoo, who we get to see much more of this time around. (Sarah is both wonderful and scary.)

Basically, it’s fast-paced urban fantasy that passes the Bechdel Test with ease, includes McGuire’s trademark creativity and banter, and makes for a fun read. If you liked book one, pick this one up as well.

My ALA Talk on Sexism and Kick-Butt Heroines

This is my best reconstruction of the talk I gave at ALA on Sunday. I’m sure I’m forgetting bits, but this should give you the gist of things…

I was originally thinking about just doing a Q&A for this. I like the informal approach, and normally I’d probably be sitting on the edge of the stage chatting with you all. But as I was driving down to Chicago, I started thinking about various incidents that have come up recently, and I decided that if ALA was going to be kind enough to give me a platform and a microphone, maybe there was a better way for me to take advantage of that.

The past few months have been pretty intense in parts of the science fiction and fantasy community. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has been in the spotlight for a chain-mail bikini cover and a follow-up essay that dismissed complaints as the ravings of liberal fascist PC thought police. We have the former SFWA presidential candidate who accused a well-known black author of being an “ignorant half-savage.” Then last week, a well-known editor at one of the major SF/F publishing houses was outed for his history of sexual harassment.

The thing is, the blatant stuff is easy. It’s easy to focus on these instances of sexism and racism because they’re so obvious, and because they create a simple separation between us and them, between the heroes and the villains. But when we draw those lines, we tend to miss the larger picture.

These are systemic problems, not just individuals. They’re problems that show up in cover art, in award ballots, in which books get reviewed, in who shows up as the heroes in stories vs. the sidekicks, in token characters, and much more. In many cases, if not most, it’s an unconscious, unintentional problem.

So how do we respond to such a problem? Well, some of us choose to write long-winded rants online, or to contort ourselves into ridiculous cover poses. We can also speak up when we see these things happening, rather than turning away or accepting it because “it’s always been that way.” If you see someone who looks like they might be being harassed, say something. Offer them a casual escape from the conversation.

As a writer, I think one of our most powerful tools is our stories.

Take the story of the kick-butt heroine, a trope that’s become incredibly popular over the past decade or two. Now, I appreciate this trope — I’m a huge Buffy fan — and I’ve written this kind of character myself on multiple occasions. But there are ways in which it’s problematic. Sure, it’s incredibly satisfying to see the heroine physically whoop the harasser/abuser/etc. But when that’s the dominant story we’re sharing, aren’t we basically suggesting that it’s the women’s job to physically overpower and defeat their aggressors? As opposed to men learning to move beyond such behaviors, or to challenge such things when we see them?

The kick-but heroine is certainly one solution, but it’s one that puts responsibility on the victims, and by implication, puts the blame on those victims if for any reason they were unable to physically stop what’s essentially an ongoing culture of systemic sexism.

There are other stories and other characters we need to share. Stories that show men and women as equals. That show relationships built on respect. Stories that give us more than one token example per book of a strong female character. Stories that move away from narrowly defined roles.

And now is when I take a minute to talk about my own stuff. Lena Greenwood is my latest attempt to engage with the kick-butt heroine trope. She’s … well, without spoiling things, she’s also very problematic. In many ways, that was deliberate. But she’s not the only strong female in these books. You have Nidhi Shah, a psychiatrist with no magical abilities whatsoever. There’s Nicola Pallas, an autistic bard. Jeneta Aboderin is full of teenaged attitude, refusing to take crap from anyone. Not to mention the sarcastic bug-eating ex-librarian Deb DeGeorge. My hope is that each of these women has their own strengths and weaknesses, that they present different ways to be powerful.

I’m not saying kick-butt heroines are bad. Any time I talk about something like this, someone responds, “Why are you trying to censor us?” Just like with cover art — I’m not saying we should never have sexualized or semi-clad women (or men) on book covers. What I’m saying is that it would be awfully nice if we could broaden our portrayals.

I’ll wrap this up with a few recommendations of authors who, in my opinion, do this stuff well. Karen Lord is a fairly new author, but her first book blew me away, in part for Lord’s choice to step away from the well-trod tropes. Elizabeth Bear is another. Saladin Ahmed, who just won the Locus Award for his debut novel, presented us with an Arabic-based fantasy and an old, heavyset, somewhat grouchy man as the protagonist. Tobias Buckell. Nnedi Okorafor. Seanan McGuire. These are just a few of the authors working to move beyond the tropes.

And that’s my time. Thank you all for giving me the chance to talk about this with you.

#SFWApro

In Which Taz the Cat Helps Me Change My Insulin Pump

Me: Time to change the insulin pump again.

Taz: SOMETHING INTERESTING IS HAPPENING IN THE BEDROOM HOLD ON HUMAN HERE I COME!!!

Me: Peels sticker and catheter off of my belly, removes vial from pump, sets the pump, vial, and tubing on the bed.

Taz: LOOK OUT! I WILL SAVE YOU FROM THE IMPROBABLY SKINNY SNAKE THAT WAS BITING YOUR BELLY!

Me: Fills new vial.

Taz: Excuse me, human, but the snake appears to have bitten my face.

Me: Removes sticker from Taz’s face.

Taz: Ooh, this looks like an expensive piece of medical equipment. But you know what it’s missing? A CATBUTT-PRINT!

Me: Removes Taz from my insulin pump.

Taz: You appear to be getting ready to jab a needle into your belly. I shall assist by RUBBING MY FACE ON YOUR ELBOW!

Me: Thank you. Pulls out new tubing and prepares to hook it up.

Taz: THE IMPROBABLY SKINNY SNAKE HAS REINFORCEMENTS! IMMA KILL IT FOR YOU!!!

Me: Dork.

Taz: Runs away for no particular reason.

Stumbling Over Gender, and an Apology

My awareness and understanding of gender issues is … well, let’s just say there’s an ongoing and deliberate evolution.

As a kid, I got the basic Kindergarten Cop lesson: Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.

By the time I got to college, I was starting to recognize more layers. I distinguished between sex (a biological binary) and gender, the (again binary) performance of cultural sex-roles.

I met a friend who introduced me to the concept of transgenderism. He (at the time we met) was in the process of coming out as female. I stumbled over pronouns a few times, but then got it through my head that she was now R—-, a woman, and that was that. No problem.

Along the way I also sorted out transgender vs. transsexual vs. transvestite in my head (a process that might have gone more quickly if I had been into Rocky Horror half as much as some of my friends were).

Later on, the term “cis” started popping up. “Cisgender” and “cissexual” both threw me for a loop the first time I encountered them, and they still don’t feel like an entirely natural part of my vocabulary. Yet. But I recognize them as useful terms to identify “an individual whose self-perception of their gender matches the sex they were assigned at birth.” (From Wikipedia.) They also help move away from the flawed premise that cisgendered individuals don’t need a particular terminology because we’re “normal.”

I’ve finally started getting past the deeply-ingrained binary assumptions I grew up with. I learned the genetics a while back. Yes, we have XX and XY chromosome sets. We also have XXY, XYY, and other variations. They may be less common, but they certainly exist. If we have that much range at the genetic level, why the hell should gender identity be fixed or binary? For that matter, why the hell should gender be tied to biology at all?

I’m still learning, I’m still struggling, and I’m certainly still screwing up from time to time. I tossed out a joke yesterday that a few people challenged as cissexist. I didn’t get that at first. After walking away … well, I still may not agree with every single comment, but I think I better understand and agree with a lot of what people were saying.

I went through the typical defensive reactions in my head, of course. But that’s not what I meant! Why are you attacking people who are on your side? How hard do you have to be looking for offense to find it in that comment? Look how many people thought it was funny. And so on.

All bullshit. But bullshit that still goes through my brain when people call me on stuff like this.

Where I usually seem to mess up here is by asserting the implied equivalence of biology and gender. Or, to put it bluntly, with dick jokes.

I don’t make them often, because I try to keep a generally PG tone out of personal preference. But in my opinion, penises are goofy-looking bits of equipment, and as such, are useful elements for humor. (Or maybe a part of me is just perpetually stuck at age 12.) So when another all-male anthology or awards ballot comes out, I find myself wanting to make quips like, “Because everyone knows True Literature must be typed using only your penis!”

I think that’s a rather funny (and disturbing) image. It’s also problematic, because it equates “male” with possession of a penis. It reinforces that limited, binary, and demonstrably false worldview.

Defensive Brain immediately jumps in to say, “Okay fine, maybe you’re right, but it’s not like I’m committing hate crimes here or intentionally trying to hurt anyone!”

Defensive Brain needs to shut the &%^$ up. Because what I am doing is suggesting that a subset of people don’t exist. As they struggle for rights and recognition and legal protection, I’m making them invisible. Sure, it may not seem like a big deal to me … any more than “lady editors” was to a pair of SF authors from a recent sexism flap. But it’s one more unthinking erasure. One of a thousand daily slights, indignities, and assaults.

And I’ve contributed to that.

I won’t say that I fully get it yet, but I’m working on it, and certain things have finally begun to click. What can I say … sometimes I can be a little dense.

I apologize for my mistakes and missteps along the way.

—

The cardinal photo is from http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.c...

Two Links from My Google Feed

Back from ALA, and had a blast! More on that later, once I’ve unpacked and figured out which bag I left my brain in.

For now, I had two links two share from my Google Reader feed, before Google permanently retires that service.

1. The Mary Sue has the First Clip of The Legend of Korra, Book Two. ::Bounce::

2. This made me smile. It was built by True Dimensions, whose Flickr page has some other nifty builds as well.

How to Report Sexual Harassment, by Elise Matthesen

ETA: Elise has said she’s comfortable with the following comment being shared. “My name is Sigrid Ellis. I was one of the co-hosts of the party Elise mentions. The person Elise reported for harassment is James Frenkel.” (Source)

I am beyond furious.

In 2010, in response to a series of specific incidents involving an editor in the community, I posted a list of resources for Reporting Sexual Harassment in SF/F. A number of people made reports about this individual.

I thought those reports had made a difference. I was wrong.

What follows is an account and essay from Elise Matthesen describing the process of reporting an incident that took place this year at Wiscon. While I’m not in a position to name names on my blog, I will say that the individual in question is the same one I was hearing about in 2010.

I ended up speaking to this person a while after I wrote that original blog post. He seemed genuinely contrite and regretful. I thought … I hoped … that he had learned, and that he would change his behavior.

I was wrong.

From what I’ve learned, nothing changed. Because the reports weren’t “formally documented,” this person was able to go on to harass other women.

Please read Elise’s essay. I’ve bolded one section about filing a formal report. If you’re aware of the situation and want to do so, I’ll be happy to do whatever I can to help hook you up with the appropriate contacts.

My thanks to Elise for her relentless work on this.

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We’re geeks. We learn things and share, right? Well, this year at WisCon I learned firsthand how to report sexual harassment. In case you ever need or want to know, here’s what I learned and how it went.

Two editors I knew were throwing a book release party on Friday night at the convention. I was there, standing around with a drink talking about Babylon 5, the work of China Mieville, and Marxist theories of labor (like you do) when an editor from a different house joined the conversation briefly and decided to do the thing that I reported. A minute or two after he left, one of the hosts came over to check on me. I was lucky: my host was alert and aware. On hearing what had happened, he gave me the name of a mandated reporter at the company the harasser was representing at the convention.

The mandated reporter was respectful and professional. Even though I knew them, reporting this stuff is scary, especially about someone who’s been with a company for a long time, so I was really glad to be listened to. Since the incident happened during Memorial Day weekend, I was told Human Resources would follow up with me on Tuesday.

There was most of a convention between then and Tuesday, and I didn’t like the thought of more of this nonsense (there’s a polite word for it!) happening, so I went and found a convention Safety staffer. He asked me right away whether I was okay and whether I wanted someone with me while we talked or would rather speak privately. A friend was nearby, a previous Guest of Honor at the convention, and I asked her to stay for the conversation. The Safety person asked whether I’d like to make a formal report. I told him, “I’d just like to tell you what happened informally, I guess, while I figure out what I want to do.”

It may seem odd to hesitate to make a formal report to a convention when one has just called somebody’s employer and begun the process of formally reporting there, but that’s how it was. I think I was a little bit in shock. (I kept shaking my head and thinking, “Dude, seriously??”) So the Safety person closed his notebook and listened attentively. Partway through my account, I said, “Okay, open your notebook, because yeah, this should be official.” Thus began the formal report to the convention. We listed what had happened, when and where, the names of other people who were there when it happened, and so forth. The Safety person told me he would be taking the report up to the next level, checked again to see whether I was okay, and then went.

I had been nervous about doing it, even though the Safety person and the friend sitting with us were people I have known for years. Sitting there, I tried to imagine how nervous I would have been if I were twenty-some years old and at my first convention. What if I were just starting out and had been hoping to show a manuscript to that editor? Would I have thought this kind of behavior was business as usual? What if I were afraid that person would blacklist me if I didn’t make nice and go along with it? If I had been less experienced, less surrounded by people I could call on for strength and encouragement, would I have been able to report it at all?

Well, I actually know the answer to that one: I wouldn’t have. I know this because I did not report it when it happened to me in my twenties. I didn’t report it when it happened to me in my forties either. There are lots of reasons people might not report things, and I’m not going to tell someone they’re wrong for choosing not to report. What I intend to do by writing this is to give some kind of road map to someone who is considering reporting. We’re geeks, right? Learning something and sharing is what we do.

So I reported it to the convention. Somewhere in there they asked, “Shall we use your name?” I thought for a millisecond and said, “Oh, hell yes.”

This is an important thing. A formal report has a name attached. More about this later.

The Safety team kept checking in with me. The coordinators of the convention were promptly involved. Someone told me that since it was the first report, the editor would not be asked to leave the convention. I was surprised it was the first report, but hey, if it was and if that’s the process, follow the process. They told me they had instructed him to keep away from me for the rest of the convention. I thanked them.

Starting on Tuesday, the HR department of his company got in touch with me. They too were respectful and took the incident very seriously. Again I described what, where and when, and who had been present for the incident and aftermath. They asked me if I was making a formal report and wanted my name used. Again I said, “Hell, yes.”

Both HR and Legal were in touch with me over the following weeks. HR called and emailed enough times that my husband started calling them “your good friends at HR.” They also followed through on checking with the other people, and did so with a promptness that was good to see.

Although their behavior was professional and respectful, I was stunned when I found out that mine was the first formal report filed there as well. From various discussions in person and online, I knew for certain that I was not the only one to have reported inappropriate behavior by this person to his employer. It turned out that the previous reports had been made confidentially and not through HR and Legal. Therefore my report was the first one, because it was the first one that had ever been formally recorded.

Corporations (and conventions with formal procedures) live and die by the written word. “Records, or it didn’t happen” is how it works, at least as far as doing anything official about it. So here I was, and here we all were, with a situation where this had definitely happened before, but which we had to treat as if it were the first time — because for formal purposes, it was.

I asked whether people who had originally made confidential reports could go ahead and file formal ones now. There was a bit of confusion around an erroneous answer by someone in another department, but then the person at Legal clearly said that “the past is past” is not an accurate summation of company policy, and that she (and all the other people listed in the company’s publicly-available code of conduct) would definitely accept formal reports regardless of whether the behavior took place last week or last year.

If you choose to report, I hope this writing is useful to you. If you’re new to the genre, please be assured that sexual harassment is NOT acceptable business-as-usual. I have had numerous editors tell me that reporting harassment will NOT get you blacklisted, that they WANT the bad apples reported and dealt with, and that this is very important to them, because this kind of thing is bad for everyone and is not okay. The thing is, though, that I’m fifty-two years old, familiar with the field and the world of conventions, moderately well known to many professionals in the field, and relatively well-liked. I’ve got a lot of social credit. And yet even I was nervous and a little in shock when faced with deciding whether or not to report what happened. Even I was thinking, “Oh, God, do I have to? What if this gets really ugly?”

But every time I got that scared feeling in my guts and the sensation of having a target between my shoulder blades, I thought, “How much worse would this be if I were inexperienced, if I were new to the field, if I were a lot younger?” A thousand times worse. So I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders and said, “Hell, yes, use my name.” And while it’s scary to write this now, and while various people are worried that parts of the Internet may fall on my head, I’m going to share the knowledge — because I’m a geek, and that’s what we do.

So if you need to report this stuff, the following things may make it easier to do so. Not easy, because I don’t think it’s gotten anywhere near easy, but they’ll probably help.

NOTES: As soon as you can, make notes on the following:

what happened
when it happened and where
who else was present (if anyone)
any other possibly useful information

And take notes as you go through the process of reporting: write down who you talk with in the organization to which you are reporting, and when.

ALLIES: Line up your support team. When you report an incident of sexual harassment to a convention, it is fine to take a friend with you. A friend can keep you company while you make a report to a company by phone or in email. Some allies can help by hanging out with you at convention programming or parties or events, ready to be a buffer in case of unfortunate events — or by just reminding you to eat, if you’re too stressed to remember. If you’re in shock, please try to tell your allies this, and ask for help if you can.

NAVIGATION: If there are procedures in place, what are they? Where do you start to make a report and how? (Finding out might be a job to outsource to allies.) Some companies have current codes of conduct posted on line with contact information for people to report harassment to. Jim Hines posted a list of contacts at various companies a while ago. Conventions should have a safety team listed in the program book. Know the difference between formal reports and informal reports. Ask what happens next with your report, and whether there will be a formal record of it, or whether it will result in a supervisor telling the person “Don’t do that,” but will be confidential and will not be counted formally.

REPORTING FORMALLY: This is a particularly important point. Serial harassers can get any number of little talking-to’s and still have a clear record, which means HR and Legal can’t make any disciplinary action stick when formal reports do finally get made. This is the sort of thing that can get companies really bad reputations, and the ongoing behavior hurts everybody in the field. It is particularly poisonous if the inappropriate behavior is consistently directed toward people over whom the harasser has some kind of real or perceived power: an aspiring writer may hesitate to report an editor, for instance, due to fear of economic harm or reprisal.

STAY SAFE: You get to choose what to do, because you’re the only one who knows your situation and what risks you will and won’t take. If not reporting is what you need to do, that’s what you get to do, and if anybody gives you trouble about making that choice to stay safe, you can sic me on them. Me, I’ve had a bunch of conversations with my husband, and I’ve had a bunch of conversations with other people, and I hate the fact that I’m scared that there might be legal wrangling (from the person I’d name, not the convention or his employer) if I name names. But after all those conversations, I’m not going to. Instead, I’m writing the most important part, about how to report this, and make it work, which is so much bigger than one person’s distasteful experience.

During the incident, the person I reported said, “Gosh, you’re lovely when you’re angry.” You know what? I’ve been getting prettier and prettier.

ALA and a Secret Project

I’ll be at the American Library Association Conference in Chicago this coming Sunday.

10 – 11 a.m., Signing at the Penguin Booth
2 – 2:45 p.m., Presenting/Q&A/Signing at the Pop Top Stage

This will be my first time at the ALA Conference, and I’m looking forward to it. Particularly given the rather librarian-centric focus of the current series

#

I apologize, but apparently I’ve become one of those authors. The ones with the Secret Projects who tease you about how they’re working on a Nifty New Thing, but never share the details.

This wasn’t planned; I was basically invited to do a project that sounded like a lot of fun, paid reasonably well, and would let me try something new. So after looking at my schedule, crunching some wordcount numbers, talking to the family and a writer friend, I said yes.

And I’m not allowed to talk about the details.

I have no idea when that’s going to change. I may or may not be able to talk about it by the end of the year. Rest assured though, I’ll babble away the instant I’m permitted.

In the meantime, I’ll just say that I’m excited about the project, and it means I’m going to be a very busy writer for foreseeable future. It should make for an interesting year or two.

I don’t know how this will affect things like the blogging or my ability to respond to emails in a timely fashion. With only 24 hours in a day, I’ve had to shift some priorities around a bit.

But hopefully it will all be worth it.

Abortion and Bodily Autonomy

My decision to write and post this came from something Seanan McGuire shared on Tumblr (in which Hannah Goff talks about bodily autonomy and organ donation) and from Wendy Davis’ filibuster of an abortion bill in Texas.

Right now, a sixteen-year-old child is dying of kidney failure. He’s on the waiting list for an organ transplant, but he’s running out of time. Doctors figure he’s got a week left. Maybe two if he’s lucky.

Fortunately, it turns out that you’re a match. You’re the right blood type, the right body size, the tissue matching is positive … your kidney could save this child.

The ambulance will be arriving at your house tonight to take you to the hospital for surgery.

Wait, what? You can’t do that. What about the risks? Kidney donation is major surgery, and there’s always the chance of death by bleeding or infection!

You’ll be happy to know that I’ve considered the risks for you, and I’ve found them to be acceptable, given the stakes.

But I have a medical condition that makes surgery extremely dangerous. There’s a good chance this could kill me.

I’m sorry to hear that. Please make sure you don’t eat or drink anything from now until the procedure.

The surgery requires three weeks off of work. I’ll lose my job! I’m a single parent trying to look after three children.

Your inability to plan and manage your own life shouldn’t cost this child his chance.

Hey, I just read the file on this kid, and he’s much sicker than you said. Even if I donate my kidney, he’s still going to die.

That doesn’t matter. Your kidney is a match, so you’re required to donate. If you refuse, you’ll be arrested and fined, and the procedure will be performed in the prison hospital.

Who’s going to pay for the procedure and the medications I need while I’m recovering?

You’ll need to pay those costs out of pocket. Insurance companies don’t like to cover this stuff.

Look, I’m a compassionate person, and I don’t want this kid to die any more than you do. But what gives you the right to force me to donate my kidney to save him?

…

#

A while back, my mother chose to donate a kidney to a family friend. Because my mother is awesome. The procedure went great, and our friend is doing much better. Mom is back to running ridiculously long races and doing karate with me on Monday nights. And y’all should totally sign up on the organ donor registry, if you haven’t already.

But here in the U. S., nobody has the legal right to force you to sign up to donate your organs. Every state requires your legal consent for organ donation. Even if the surgery wouldn’t cause you any serious complications or side effects. Even if it would save a child’s life. Even though more than 6000 people die each year for lack of available organs.

The Uniform Anatomical Gift Act of 2006 “strengthens the power of an individual not to donate his or her parts by permitting the individual to sign a refusal that also bars others from making a gift of the individual’s parts after the individual’s death.”

In other words, U. S. law gives you control over your body. Even if that means someone else will die. Even after you’re dead and presumably have no further need of those organs. Your corpse has the right to bodily autonomy.

I’m not going to argue about when a group of cells transforms into a human being, whether that happens at conception or birth or some nebulous time in between.

But if the “right to life” is so important, why don’t we have mandatory organ registries in this country? Why isn’t everyone required to have their blood type and other information entered into a national database? Why don’t we require living organ donations, since most of us have some redundant organs we could give with no significant loss to our own quality of life?

Why have we so enshrined our right to control our own bodies … unless you happen to be a woman?

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I’m closing comments on this post. I love you all, but I know how emotional and contentious and complicated this issue is. Given the state of the Internet these days, I don’t trust what would happen if comments were left open, and I don’t have the time and energy to clean up that mess.

Death Troopers, by Joe Schreiber

Joe Schreiber’s Death Troopers [Amazon | B&N | Mysterious Galaxy] was presented to me as “Star Wars with zombies.” And now you know everything you need to know to decide whether or not to read this one.

It’s a fairly standard zombie story. The Imperial prison barge Purge encounters an abandoned Star Destroyer. They investigate, return to the Purge, and then a mysterious illness begins killing both the crew and the inmates. Will our handful of survivors manage to escape the uprising?

There are references to Darth Vader, but the only familiar characters were the “two smugglers” who had been conveniently isolated in solitary confinement, and thus didn’t get infected right away.

There were a few points where I struggled with suspension of disbelief. (Yeah, I know. Star Wars and zombies. But still…) The one that comes to mind was the behavior of the zombie-goop when the doctor (the only female character, I believe) was trying to prevent another character from becoming infected. I got stuck on, “Wait, how exactly is that supposed to work?”

There are moments of genuine horror — the wookiee scene in particular, and Chewbacca’s reaction. For the most part though, I didn’t feel like I was reading anything new. I was left asking myself, “Why was this a story that needed to be told in the Star Wars universe?”

Schreiber has written another zombie Star Wars book, Red Harvest, which introduces a Jedi and a Sith Lord into a zombie story. I suspect that one could do a better job of bringing the Star Wars universe and mythology into things. How does the force affect the walking dead, and vice versa? What’s the impact on the larger political struggles we’re familiar with?

I have absolutely nothing against trying to write something popular, and zombies have been hot for a while now. The fact that Shreiber wrote a second of these books suggests that Death Troopers sold well, and I’m always happy to see a fellow Michigan author succeed.

Personally though, I wanted to see something new, something that managed to feel like both Star Wars and zombies. For me, it accomplished the latter, but failed to do the former.

I mean, if you’re going to do this, you’ve got to include at least one zombie Ewok trudging along, groaning “Nuuuub… nuuuuubbbb.”

Two Thoughts on Civility

I should be working on Unbound. (30K words and counting!) But I wanted to put two things out there first, both about the call for “civility” I’ve seen in various quarters.

1. Author Kari Sperring wrote this week about civility both as a protective mechanism against abuse, and as a behavior enforced by the threat of violence and abuse:

I absolutely support the right of those who are subjected to abuse, oppression, elision and exclusion to shout back, to push, to demand. This is not an area in which there can be compromise.

But there are also people of all races and backgrounds for whom this option is never available and they may speak and act as they do because it is their only safety.

2. I know many people have seen and quoted this already, but there are more who haven’t. What follows are excerpts from Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was “well timed” in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word “Wait!” It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This “Wait” has almost always meant “Never.” We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that “justice too long delayed is justice denied.”

I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

The whole thing is worth reading, but these bits struck me as particularly appropriate, given certain conversations I’ve seen and participated in recently…