Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 396

The Strange Phenomenon of Post Con Blues – Charles Gannon

The Strange Phenomenon of Post Con Blues – Charles Gannon

With World Fantasy in the rearview mirror, a rumination on why SF/F Cons are all at once incredibly exhausting and singularly restorative:

I must start with a limiting disclaimer: I did not grow up among fen, and have never self-identified as one (or been exogenously identified as one, either, to my knowledge). I came to cons late: by the time I went to my first in (I think) 1987, I also had my first professional genre writing credit (I...

My People

I’ve been accused of having too many groups of “my people.” Science fiction writers for instance. My people, bless their hearts, most of them are more damaged than I am. Or science fiction fans in general. My people are full of the awesome strange. Or people who like to read. My people will short food to buy a new book. Or Americans. My people, bless us every one, fractious and fighting, a loud and tumultuous family, embracing liberty with all it means. Or my family, that small number of peop...

Special Types of Entitled – Kate Paulk

Special Types of Entitled – Kate Paulk

Apparently kicking back at the idiocy of the Social Justice Warriors brings the really special entitled ones crawling out from under whichever rock they were hiding under. That or there’s just something in the air at the moment. Or maybe the water.

The first round of really special entitlement came from According to Hoyt on Saturday’s post, where a truly charming specimen seemed to think that a combination of foul language and chastising Sarah for an incid...

The Myth That Kills — A Blast from the Past post from Oct-2012

*Sorry to use a bfp. I actually slept, which means I must be getting used to sleeping sitting half-up. But I slept too late, and I have a ton of work to do. So forgive me the repeat, which is relevant to shirtstorm. (BTW supporters of the turpid Rose Eveleth on twitter were accusing instapundit of “Doxxing” her for calling her a horrible person. Because libeling a law professor is a sane strategy. Of course, these people haven’t seen sane in the last ten years, not even through a periscope.)*...

No Space for Sewing Circles

A shirt with women involved in epic space fights is no reason to shame a man who landed on a comet. To think it is, is a form of insanity.

I’ve been meaning to write a long post about the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop, but life has been fraught since we came back, so it waited till today. And now it’s going to get somewhat highjacked (sorry) by … idiocy surrounding the shirt of a man who landed on a comet. Which means the real post about the workshop will come later, again.

First of al...

Novella Out

Yes, yes, real post as soon as I’ve had tea. I found out yesterday my “vitreous” is trying to part company with my eye and care must be taken to ensure it doesn’t take the retina with it. It started with “hairs” across my eye, which got much worse by Thurs. night. So yesterday Dan frogmarched me to the eye doctor, and now I’m not supposed to do anything that raises pressure in the eye. It should resolve itself in five days, though, because part of what might be causing it is the auto-immune c...

Table Settings At The Cannibal Feast

So, this week Dan and myself went to the Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop. There will be an after-action report on this, as well as my explanation of why I think this is is important, but first I want to talk about what happened elsewhere while I was busy learning about innovative methods of propulsion, theories of terraforming, and other fascinating subjects: that is, I want to talk about the incident that, somehow, in the realm of the internet, made me into a Lesbian, Thai, Social Jus...

There Should Have Been A Time For Such A Word

This a post I did not want to write.

Some of you have heard about our friend Alan Lickiss, and in fact, he has commented in this blog, now and then, though not (I think) much in the last year.

We first met Alan and his wife Becky when we moved to Colorado Springs. Our older son was a toddler, and we knew no one in town, but one day Dan came home late because he’d been talking to someone who “reads science fiction” and “his wife wants to be a writer.”

To you kids, grown in the age of the internet...

A Tragedy of Manners – A blast from the past post from Nov. 2012

I think the first person I hated was also the first person who tried to teach me manners.

In retrospect, the poor lady – who died relatively young – was absolutely right. At eight, when she met me, I had the vaguest hints of civilization overlaid on a willful personality and all the grace and gentleness of an untamed monkey. In a country like Portugal, which only isn’t as formal and tradition bound as Japan because… well, it’s Portugal and people can’t do the same thing in the exact same way t...

Juvenilia: More Embarrassing than Saturnalia? A Muddled Meandering Through a Writer’s Early Work – Alma Boykin

Juvenilia: More Embarrassing than Saturnalia? A Muddled Meandering Through a Writer’s Early Work – Alma Boykin

How many of us have marvelous, breathtakingly grand stories tucked away, pieces we wrote during our salad days that will leap to the forefront of the Hugo, Nebula, Rita, Lariat, and Pulitzer nomination lists the day after we publish them? Me either. How many of us have cleaned out a desk drawer or hard drive, opened up the pages, and wondered how on earth (or any other habitable plane...