Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 43

“The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign” is now available as a free e-book

Almost a year ago, I wrote a short story in response to the famous 1954 science fiction story “The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, which reimagines the classic story as a crowdfunding campaign. I then posted the story to my blog.

That story is called “The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign” and got quite a lot of hits and comments at the time.

Fast forward a year and I suddenly noticed that “The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign” got a quite a few hits, more than an old blog post normally gets. So I investigated and saw that a kindly soul had added “The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign” to the 2021 Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom.  Which is really awesome.

“The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign” is still available to read on this blog. However, if you’d rather read it as an e-book, you can now also get “The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign” as a free e-book in the format of your choice at StoryOrigins. It even has a pretty cover now, courtesy of Luca Oleastri.

“The Cold Equations” by Tom Godwin, winner of the 1955 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, is one of the most influential science fiction stories of all times and has inspired countless responses and rebuttals, mostly to avert the infamous tragic ending.

This story reimagines “The Cold Equations” in the form of a crowdfunding campaign. Will Captain Barton raise enough credits to refuel his emergency dispatch ship in time? Or is eighteen-year-old Marilyn Cross, who stowed away aboard Barton’s ship, doomed and will have to take a trip out of the airlock without a spacesuit?

Any similarities to persons living or dead are entirely intentional.

Get it for free in the e-book format of your choice!

Fanzine Spotlight: James Nicoll Reviews

We’re heading into the homestretch for the 2021 Hugo nominations, so it’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

So today, I’m pleased to feature James Nicoll Reviews and welcome four time Best Fan Writer Hugo finalist James Davis Nicoll to my blog.

Tell us about your site or zine.

James Nicoll Reviews (1) is where I review genre and genre-adjacent works. This translates mostly to science fiction and fantasy but “genre-adjacent” is license to review anything that catches my eye.

I try to cast as wide a net as I can, because that’s more fun. Anyway, who needs yet another site featuring 60-year-old white reviewer who stubbornly sticks to the stuff he liked back in 1975 (2) while ignoring all the wonderful new material people are producing? To this end, JNR features a number of projects covering a wide range of subjects (3).

Originally, I intended to read and write a book a day but this proved impractical. To date there are about 1800 works reviews on the site, of which 256 were posted in 2020.

1: I went for a very straight-forward site name because I opted for whimsical when I named my old game store Imperiums to Order, with the result people were not sure what I sold or how to spell the store’s name.

2: Granted, my Because My Tears Are Delicious to You reviews are nostalgic in focus but they cover the whole of 1974 to 1981! Not just 1975. Anyway, 1977 was a better year for science fiction than 1975.

3: Also, I keep stats! Because nothing says whimsical spontaneity like off-handedly asserting that of the 256 works reviewed on JNR in 2020, 139 were by women (54%), 105.5 were by men (41%), 8 were by non-binary authors (3%), 3.5 were by authors whose gender was unknown to me (1%), and 99.5 were by POC (39%).

4: Sometimes footnotes appear without proper markers in the text.

Who are the people behind your site or zine?

I write the reviews, Karen Lofstrom translates my gibberish into comprehensible English, and Adrienne L. Travis manages the website. My Patreon patrons fund it, for which I am very grateful.

Why did you decide to start your site or zine?

The two organizations for which I reviewed books suddenly stopped sending me material and friends convinced me to start up my own site.

What format do you use for your site or zine (blog, e-mail newsletter, PDF zine, paper zine) and why did you choose this format?

I have a website—jamesdavisnicoll.com—and I chose that format for durability.

The fanzine category at the Hugos is one of the oldest, but also the category which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines and sites are important?

In olden days, they were part of the conversation. Currently, despite the notorious effervescence of electronic media, they can serve as the genre’s memory. True, paper can last decades or centuries, but only if someone actively curates them, but as long as e-fanzines are copied in enough places, they too may survive.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online. What do you think the future of fanzines looks like?

No offense to the fans of paper fanzines, but the advantages of online fanzines so outweigh the drawbacks that I expect fanzines will be online to an even greater extent.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

My go-to sites are File 770, Camestros Felapton, a certain Facebook group of which I may not speak openly, The Dragon’s Tales, Atomic Rockets, and Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations.

Where can people find you?

https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
James Nicoll Reviews: https://jamesdavisnicoll.com/
https://twitter.com/jamesdnicoll
https://facebook.com/james.nicoll.927
https://upload.facebook.com/JamesNicollReviews/
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/jamesdavisnicoll
https://ello.co/jamesdavisnicoll
https://wt.social/u/james-nicoll

Thank you, James, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Check Out James Nicoll Review for reviews of SFF old and new.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

 

Fanzine Spotlight: Young People Read Old SFF

We’re heading into the homestretch for the 2021 Hugo nominations, so it’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

So today, I’m pleased to feature Young People Read Old SFF, a blog where a panel of young readers read selected older SFF stories.

Therefore, I’m happy to welcome James Davis Nicoll of Young People Read Old SFF to my blog. James is a reviewer, Tor.com columnist and four time finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. James was also one of my fellow Best Fan Writer finalists last year.

Tell us about your site or zine.

Young People Read Old SFF does what it says on the tin: my volunteers read a different vintage science fiction or fantasy piece each month, then comment on their reactions. It has been very educational; I was not all that surprised to discover my volunteers are not always thrilled by vintage SF. What did astound me was how incandescently furious some older fans got when they discovered not everyone adores their favourites.

Who are the people behind your site or zine?

I write the introductions, and Adrienne L. Travis manages the website. The Young People who contributed in 2020 were (first names only [1]) ambr, Gavin, Joe, Kris, Nina, Travis, and Nina.

1: My contributors haven’t given me permission to identify them by their full names, so I am playing it safe.

Why did you decide to start your site or zine?

To quote my site:
Young People Read Old SF was inspired by something award-winning author Adam-Troy Castro said on Facebook.

    (N)obody discovers a lifelong love of science fiction through Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein anymore, and directing newbies toward the work of those masters is a destructive thing, because the spark won’t happen. You might as well advise them to seek out Cordwainer Smith or Alan E. Nourse—fine tertiary avenues of investigation, even now, but not anything that’s going to set anybody’s heart afire, not from the standing start. Won’t happen.

This is a testable hypothesis! I’ve rounded up a pool of younger people who have agreed to let me expose them to classic works of science fiction1 and assembled a list of older works I think still have merit. Each month my subjects will read and react to those stories; I will then post the results to this site. Hilarity will doubtless ensue!

What format do you use for your site or zine (blog, e-mail newsletter, PDF zine, paper zine) and why did you choose this format?

I have a website and I chose that format for durability.

The fanzine category at the Hugos is one of the oldest, but also the  category which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines and sites are important?

As I said in the other interview [which will be posted tomorrow], they’re part of SF’s conversation, and can function as its memory.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online. What do you think the future of fanzines looks like?

No offense to the fans of paper fanzines, but the advantages of online fanzines so outweigh the drawbacks that I expect fanzines will be online to an even greater extent.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

My go-to sites are File 770, Camestros Felapton, a certain Facebook group of which I may not speak openly, The Dragon’s Tales, Atomic Rockets, and Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations.

Where can people find you?

https://james-davis-nicoll.dreamwidth.org/
https://youngpeoplereadoldsff.com/
https://twitter.com/jamesdnicoll
https://facebook.com/james.nicoll.927
https://upload.facebook.com/JamesNicollReviews/
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/jamesdavisnicoll
https://ello.co/jamesdavisnicoll
https://wt.social/u/james-nicoll

Young People Read Old SFF host James Davis Nicoll.

Thank you, James, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Check Out Young People Read Old SFF, cause it’s a great project.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

Fanwriter/Fancaster Spotlight: Paul Weimer

It’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

Today’s spotlight is a bit different, because I don’t interview a specific fancast and fanzine, but rather a prolific contributor to several fancasts and fanzines.

Therefore, I’m pleased to welcome my friend and fellow 2020 Best Fan Writer Hugo finalist (and excellent photographer) Paul Weimer to my blog. Paul contributes to The Skiffy and Fanty Show and nerds of a feather, both of which were featured here, as well as SFF Audio and Dive Into Worldbuilding, which were not.

Paul in his natural element behind the camera, as photographed by Peter West Carey.

Tell us about your podcast or channel.

I am on several podcasts and channels:

I am a member of the Skiffy and Fanty Show, created by Shaun Duke and Jen Zink, which is a general wide ranging SFF podcasts that tackles interviews, books, movies and more.

I am a regular on SFF Audio, which focuses on audiobooks, particularly older works.

I also appear frequently on Dive into Worldbuilding, a weekly videocast that talks about worldbuilding in SFF

Who are the people behind your podcast or channel?

Skiffy and Fanty is led by Shaun and Jen, and features a variety of other participants, writers, creators and fans.

SFF Audio was created by Jesse Willis, a fan in Vancouver strongly interested in SFF works falling out of copyright. He maintains a large archive of such stories, as well.

What format do you use for your podcast or channel and why did you choose this format?

Skiffy and Fanty and SFF audio are both audio podcasts, free ranging discussions. Dive into Worldbuilding is a video endeavor that publishes live to youtube.

The fan categories at the Hugos were there at the very beginning, but they are also the categories which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines, fancasts and other fan projects are important?

Fans have been central to SFF since 1939. Without fans, without people agitating for books, for reading, for authors, the whole SFF community would not exist. Fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan enthusiasm make SFF the vibrant place it is.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online and fancasts have sprung up. What do you think the future of fan media looks like?

I continue to think that the ways fans engage with each other is going to evolve and change. I think too the pandemic is going to change how we have and deal with things like conventions. I predict boldly there will be more conventions which are entirely virtual and that space will evolve and change over time.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

Modestly, I myself am probably more eligible as a fan writer than I am in the fancast categories, since I write a boatload of SFF articles and interviews and reviews. Besides me, I value the voices of yourself, Alasdair Stewart, Adam Whitehead, Aidan Moher,Jason Sanford, the Worldbuilding for Masochists podcast, Charles Payseur, Alex Brown, Journey Planet, Nerds of a Feather (disclaimer, I am one of their writers), Claire Rousseau, The Breaking the Glass Slipper podcast, and a lot more. The fan community is fractally large, the deeper you go, the more complex and bigger it gets. Fans are everywhere!

Where can people find you?

http://www.princejvstin.com is my website but really, googling “princejvstin” on the internet finds me.

One more photo of Paul behind the camera in Nepal, captured by Peter West Carey.

Thanks, Paul, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out Paul’s various ventures, cause he does great work across various media.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

Fanzine Spotlight: Astrolabe

It’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

So today, I’m pleased to feature the SFF newsletter Astrolabe.

Therefore, I’m happy to welcome Aidan Moher of Astrolabe. Aidan Moher also edited the blog A Dribble of Ink, winner of the 2014 Hugo Award for Best Fanzine.

Tell us about your site or zine.

Astrolabe is a semi-monthly newsletter delivered free to your inbox. It’s stuffed full of features, reviews, book recommendations, fandom musings, retro video games, the coolest stories from around the web, and general geek goodies.

Past issues have covered what video games have taught me about worldbuilding, how Terry Brooks literally changed my life, a deep dive into non-fiction feature writing, the sick feeling you’re not reading enough, and the perils of going viral.

You can find it at aidan.substack.com. The main newsletter is free, and I’ve also got a $5/month subscription option that comes with exclusive content—like full transcript interviews, longer features, etc.

Who are the people behind your site or zine?

Just me!

Well, sort of.

I launched Astrolabe as a solo effort and published 11ish issues that way, and I’m still the solo editor/main writer, but I’ve recently launched a new series called Transmission Received. I want to bring plenty of new voices and perspectives to Astrolabe by inviting people for a focused discussion about a particular topic. One of my favourite things about being an editor—going all the way back to my days with A Dribble of Ink—was bringing forth stories and providing a platform for many voices. Transmission Received is a chance to tell many, many stories. Each edition will include a main feature interview in regular Astrolabe issues, and then I’ll follow up two days later with the interview posted in full. It’s a great way for readers to get a tight look at the topic, and also a deeper dive into my conversation with whomever I’m speaking with.

The first Transmission Received featured Chris DeMakes, the vocalist and guitarist from legendary Gainesville, Florida ska band Less Than Jake. I caught up with DeMakes to chat about creative momentum during troubling times, why you shouldn’t even think about your t-shirts before you’ve written a single song, and his advice for creative people struggling to get their project off the ground.

Why did you decide to start your site or zine?

From 2007 – 2015, I ran a popular SFF blog called A Dribble of Ink. I closed it down for a variety of reasons (changing tides in blogging, a growing family of kidlets, a desire to do more paid freelance work, etc.), but I always missed having a platform and an audience eager to dig into the nerdy stuff I love to talk about. So, as my routines changed and I found the space to think about editing my own platform again, I decided I wanted to bring my love of SFF and gaming together in a new format. One thing I discovered over several years of dedicated freelance writing is that there’s a TON of cross-over between fandoms, and I wanted to create a place that felt like a home for fans across a spectrum of geek culture.

What format do you use for your site or zine (blog, e-mail newsletter, PDF zine, paper zine) and why did you choose this format?

A newsletter seemed like a natural choice for a bunch of reasons: a) they’re popular, b) they don’t require the constant, daily output of blogs, and, c) you only have to convince someone you’re worth it one time. Even back in 2015, I was finding the constant necessity to promote blog content exhausting. Each new article felt like a fight for attention, and with the way social media algorithms are evolving, even reaching your dedicated and most engaged readers was becoming more difficult. With a newsletter, I just need to fight to reach someone one time, and once they’ve signed up, they see ALL my content when I want them to see it. Even though newsletters are a one-way form of communication, I feel a lot closer to my base of readers—like we’re a little family of geek friends who all love the same things.

The fanzine category at the Hugos is one of the oldest, but also the category which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines and sites are important?

Oh, gosh. Where do I start?

It’s no secret to anyone who’s followed me over the past decade that the fan categories are immensely important to me personally, and that I feel like they get short shrift from a lot of nominating WorldCon members. For a convention that’s hugely fan-driven, the ambivalence toward fan projects/creators vs. professional projects/creators belies the concept a bit.

I think people are drawn toward huge, popular projects like moths to a flame—it’s good to feel involved in a zeitgeist, it’s fun to go to a bookstore and see something YOU personally voted for with a big HUGO WINNER sticker on its cover at the front of the store. Fan projects don’t have the same wide reach as professional projects for a lot of reasons, but I think they’re the heart and soul of the Hugos because they represent the passion of the fan community. They’re the collective effort of the fans out there busting their butts day-after-day creating brilliant non-fiction, art, YouTube videos, music, podcast, fanfic, blogs, magazines, and everything else that forms the emotional core of SFF fandom.

As fans, we commit a huge part of our lives to our fandom and expect nothing in return—we put hours and hours and hours into posting online, writing fanfic, posting Goodreads reviews, etc. because it means something to contribute to the larger conversation. It makes us FEEL good to spend time doing something simply because we love it so much.

The fan creators recognized on the Hugo ballots represent the highest echelon of fan creators—those who put out such good work (for free!) that it rivals professional work. Fan creators are the glue that holds fandom together, and, most importantly, they’re the ones of the cutting edge of discussion, opening doors for new fans, and, hopefully, a more inclusive fandom, because they’re not beholden to marketing budgets, quarterly profits, and ad revenue.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online. What do you think the future of fanzines looks like?

I think we’re already seeing a fast and beautiful evolution of the fanzine community toward a broader range of multimedia platforms. For a long time we had just paper zines, then we had PDF zines, then blogs came around. It was sort of one thing leading into another, but over the past several years, the field has become so diversified that we have all of those things that came before, but also newsletters, BookTube, podcasts, and I’d even lump some streamers into the mix. I consider a fanzine—as far as stuff like the Hugos are concerned—to be basically anything from a fan creator that covers SFF with a non-fiction angle, and I want to continue to see a broader and broader range of creators recognized for their work.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

Are there ever! It’s no secret I’m a huge fan of Nerds of a Feather, Lady Business, and Book Smugglers, all three of which have been recognized to varying (well deserved) degrees at the Hugos. Over the past year, I’ve really paid a lot of attention to SFF newsletters, and I hope more people subscribe to places like Andrew Liptak’s Transfer Orbit, Amal El-Mohtar’s Amal Content, Sarah Gailey’s Stone Soup, Isabel Yap’s hot yuzu tea, Charlie Jane Anders’ Happy Dancing, Matthew Claxton’s Unsettling Futures, and Alasdair Stuart’s The Full Lid. I’ve also really enjoyed Hilary Bisenieks’ Tales from the Trunk; it’s a podcast that sits down with writers to dissect one of their trunked stories, and it’s an absolute treasure trove of writing advice and insight into the SFF community.

As for “Best Fan Writer,” everyone mentioned above is brilliant, but I think this is the year Jason Sanford wins for his work on Genre Grapevine. His coverage of SFF fandom and publishing is unparalleled. He’s an absolute treasure.

Where can people find you?

Besides Astrolabe, I’m also very active on Twitter and have a website that rounds up all of my various writings for different outlets. I stream Astrolabe content to Twitch, and archive it all on YouTube. I’m… all over the place. In addition to Astrolabe being eligible for “Best Fanzine,” I’m also personally eligible for “Best Fan Writer,” and “Timeless: A History of Chrono Trigger” is eligible for “Best Related Work.”

You can find a big round-up of my best work from 2020 by visiting my official eligibility post.

Thank you, Aidan, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Subscribe to Astrolabe, cause it’s a great newsletter.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

New Kurval Sword and Sorcery Story Available: The Wolf of Rajala

I’m interrupted my schedule of Fanzine/Fancast Spotlights for a new release announcement. This one is for another Kurval sword and sorcery story, since the character has been occupying my mind of late.

To recap, during the 2020 July short story challenge, I had an idea for a sword and sorcery story that would not fit into my established Thurvok sword and sorcery series, so I created a new character named Kurval, barbarian usurper turned King of Azakoria. Kurval was initially intended to be a one-off character. However, I like him and he allows me to tell stories that just don’t fit Thurvok and his friends, so it was clear that he would show up again. Which he promptly did.

The Wolf of Rajala is the second Kurval story set before his time as King of Azakoria, though after he left his homeland of Temirzhan in The Plains of Shadow. At this time in his life, Kurval is plying his trade as a wandering mercenary and monster slayer for hire.

The initial inspiration for this story really was that I came across a great piece of artwork by Dominick Critelli featuring a swordsman facing off against a giant wolf in a wintery forest and thought, “That would make a great cover for a sword and sorcery story.” So I wrote a story to go with it.

However, after I had written the initial confrontation between Kurval and the wolf, I hit a wall. Because “Kurval fights a giant wolf and wins” is rather boring. And a dead wolf suddenly changing back into a human wouldn’t have shocked anybody in the 1930s, let alone today. After all, Weird Tales was full of werewolf stories in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

As I looked through a rundown of werewolf stories published in Weird Tales with accompanying illustrations and covers, I noticed that a remarkable number of them seemed to feature werewolves and naked women. In particular, Margaret Brundage’s cover for the March 1933 issue of Weird Tales, which features a naked woman running through the snow with a pack of wolves and illustrates “The Thing in the Fog” by Seabury Quinn, caught my eye.

“What if my werewolf were a woman?” I wondered, “And what if she actually had a very good reason for harassing the people of Rajala? How will Kurval, someone we know cares about justice, react?” The rest of the story grew from there.

In the end, The Wolf of Rajala not only features a matriarchal werewolf pack – no, all characters with speaking parts in this story except for Kurval himself are women.

So accompany Kurval as a faces…

The Wolf of Rajala
Before Kurval became King of Azakoria, he was a wandering mercenary and monster slayer for hire.

One day, Kurval is hired to take out the monstrous wolves that have been besetting the village of Rajala. However, he quickly finds that the wolves are not what they seem. He also realises that the wolves have a very good reason for attacking the villagers…

This is a novelette of 8700 words or approx. 30 print pages in the Kurval sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

 

More information.
Length: 8700 words
List price: 0.99 USD, EUR or GBP
Buy it at Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Netherlands, Amazon Spain, Amazon Italy, Amazon Canada, Amazon Australia, Amazon Brazil, Amazon Japan, Amazon India, Amazon Mexico, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBooks, Google Play, Scribd, Smashwords, Thalia, Weltbild, Hugendubel, Buecher.de, DriveThruFiction, Casa del Libro, Vivlio and XinXii.

Fanzine Spotlight: Women Write About Comics

First of all, I’m blogging at Galactic Journey again today, where I report about a theatre scandal that rocked my hometown in 1966.

Futhermore, it’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

So today, I’m pleased to feature Women Write About Comics, a site where women and people of marginalised genders write about comics and related subjects.

Therefore, I’m happy to welcome Wendy Browne of Women Write About Comics to my blog:

Tell us about your site or zine.

WWAC (pronounced “Wuh-Whack, according to the poll results) is an Eisner Award-winning online journal that offers diverse insight into the world of comic book culture and the comic book industry at large by amplifying the voices of women and people of marginalized genders. We’re committed to giving our readers diverse, interesting, critical, and fun content on comic books, the comic industry, books, comic book culture, and a look into differing geeky lifestyles.

Who are the people behind your site or zine?

More than 300 women and people of marginalized genders have written for WWAC since its inception. Right now, our main editorial team consists of:

Wendy Browne, Publisher; Nola Pfau, Editor-in-Chief; Kayleigh Hearn, Big Press Reviews Editor; Kate Tanski, Comics Academe Editor; Kat Overland, Small Press/Webcomics/Indie Editor; Adrienne Resha, Comics Academe Assistant Editor; Gretchen Smail, Moving Pictures Editor; Corinne McCreery, Pubwatch and Assistant Editor; and Zainabb Hull, Editorial Assistant.

Why did you decide to start your site or zine?

The site was founded by Megan Purdy in response to the age-old question, “Why don’t more women write about comics?” which she and her friends would hear and read regularly as part of their time spent on comics forums. WWAC was initially a fan blog with a particular interest in Carol Danvers but has since expanded significantly.

What format do you use for your site or zine (blog, e-mail newsletter, PDF zine, paper zine) and why did you choose this format?

We’ve maintained a blog format and shifted into an online journal. We now offer reviews, reports on mainstream and local conventions, comic book-inspired recipes and crafts, features discussing socio-political happenings in and around the comic book industry, and much more. As part of an overhaul a few years ago, we added a newsletter to help expand our readership and make sure our readers aren’t missing out on all the good content that we produce each week.

The fanzine category at the Hugos is one of the oldest, but also the category which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines and sites are important?

Fanzines offer critical perspectives that invite fans to engage with the media in new and different ways. Fanzines foster meaningful discourse and encourage the respective industry to adapt to the needs of a growing, diverse fanbase.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online. What do you think the future of fanzines looks like?

Fanzines will continue to adapt to the online world, venturing into such media as podcasts and video blogs and more, but I believe there’s still a place for physical works, even if only for the novelty.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

Any of our writers at WWAC deserves all the kudos for their passionate writing on the subjects of their choosing. I’d also like to spotlight sites like Shelfdust, Xavier Files, and Comfort Food Comics for their work.

Where can people find you?

www.womenwriteaboutcomics.com
https://twitter.com/wwacomics
https://www.facebook.com/womenwriteaboutcomics
https://www.instagram.com/wwacomics/

Thanks, Wendy, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out Women Write About Comics, cause it’s a great site.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

Fanzine Spotlight: SFFWorld

It’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

So today, I’m pleased to feature the speculative fiction review and news site SFFWorld.

Therefore, I’m happy to welcome the team behind SFFWorld to my blog:

Tell us about your site or zine.

We are SFFWorld, a website and forum that has been running for over 20 years. We are interested in all aspects of science fiction fantasy and horror, review material that takes our interest and create discussion around such material. Over those 20+ years, SFFWorld has published over 2,000 “official reviews,” hundreds of interviews, as well as several author features like our “Authors of the Roundtable.”

Who are the people behind your site or zine?

The site is run by volunteers. Dag Rambraut is the owner and is from Norway, who deals with all of the technical stuff. Rob Bedford (@RobHBedford on Twitter) is our longest-serving Staff member and is the Lead US Reviewer, living in the USA, as does KatG who deals with the Forums and in particular is involved in the Writing Forums. Mark Yon covers reviews from the UK end and is also involved in the Administration of the Forums. Mark Chitty, also in the UK, is a regular reviewer who joined us from his website Walker of Worlds a few years ago. Shellie Horst is a reviewer who tends to pick up the small press books for us. Randy Money is our ‘expert’ on all things Horror and each year gives us a plethora of material old and new to look at throughout October.  Andrew Leon Hudson is our current Staff Member involved in the editing and publishing of our Anthologies, which is something we’ve taken on in the last decade.  We have also had a number of other wonderful people help us out over the years when they can.

Why did you decide to start your site or zine?

The website started with Dag back in 1997. It was a hobby, created initially to share good books, films and TV and comment on the bad, current ideas and thoughts about the genre, which Dag loves.  Shortly thereafter, our discussion forums opened up which grew into a thriving community of fans, many of whom have become friends over the years. Many, many people have found some of their favourite “next books to read” in our forums and had the chance to meet some of their favourite authors, too. The discussion forum is still active, though much of the focus has been on the content we’ve been providing. We are mainly a book review site, though we dabble in film, TV, webcasts and the like if something takes our fancy.

What format do you use for your site or zine (blog, e-mail newsletter, PDF zine, paper zine) and why did you choose this format?

I guess it’s partly because we’ve been going longer than many of the formats that have come along after, such as blogs and Social Media. The book reviews and the Forum came first for us, as it was what was available. We like the website as it is an immediately accessible format and allows us to communicate with others around the world at all times of the day and night. Perhaps most of all the Forums allow us the space to be as brief or as lengthy as we want. We have an active Writers area which uses the space well to create new material, which they then discuss and critique in a nice way every month. It’s usually all good-natured and supportive.

The fanzine category at the Hugos is one of the oldest, but also the category which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines and sites are important?

It is odd that an award that started all those years ago as a fan award at the Worldcons now gets the lowest number of votes and nominations – especially when the genre has broadened out so much in recent years. But we think that the growth of the genre and its global popularity would not be there without the fans all rooting and parading their particular interests. It is not possible to cover everything these days, but the fact that a group of people with common enthusiasms can discuss those interests together is very important.  I guess the other element is that what fanzines and sites do is allow those not directly part of the industry to talk about their passions to others with similar ideas. They allow an individual or indeed a collective voice to speak its mind that might not be otherwise heard. In other words, these things are a great tool for building a community.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online. What do you think the future of fanzines looks like?

Well, I guess we benefited from this as we began on dial-up just as people were getting the Internet in their homes. Now with mobile phones and tablets, we have the ability to be more easily available and immediate than ever before. The future is clearly digital, although the growth is audio material – podcasts and the like – suggests that it may not be entirely through words.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

You’re right – we try to keep up with the changes, as we’re fans as well as website coordinators. Rob Bedford has contributed to articles at Tor.com and SFSignal.com, as well as having run his own blog over the years. For fun Mark Yon has been writing of British magazines New Worlds and Science Fantasy from the 1960s at Galactic Journey (www.galacticjourney.com), which you know as well, Cora!

Where can people find you?

The website is at www.sffworld.com, from where you can access the reviews, the Discussion Forums and take part in the Writing section. We’re also available on Twitter (@SFFWorld) and on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/sffworldcom/ ).

Thanks, everybody, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out SFFWorld, cause it’s a great site.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

WandaVision offers up “The Series Finale”

It’s time for the final installment of my episode by episode reviews of WandaVision, Marvel’s sitcom parody/Dickian faux reality paranoia. Previous installments may be found here. Also, may I remind you that Disney is still not paying Alan Dean Foster and others.

Warning: Spoilers behind the cut!

After a brief recap, this episode picks up right where the previous one left of, with Wanda facing off against Agatha a.k.a. “Agnes”, who’s holding the twins hostage. Wanda also wants it to be known that she is not a witch, thank you very much.

After a red and purple energy bolt throwing magical slap fight, Agnes managed to drain some of Wanda’s lifeforce like she did with the Salem witches last episode, leaving Wanda with a withered hand. Wanda, on the other hand, throws her car at Agatha and manages to free the twins. “Run to your room”, she tells them, which they do thanks to Tommy’s superspeed. But when Wanda goes to investigate, all she finds under the car in Agatha’s garden are Agatha’s boots in a Wizard of Oz homage. Agatha herself has escaped, for now.

But before Wanda can go after Agatha, she is distracted by the reappearance of Vision. However, it’s the white version of Vision that Hayward rebuilt from the disassembled original, the Vision who’s nothing but a living weapon without emotions or memories. The first meeting between Wanda and White Vision plays out almost as it does in the comics. An overjoyed Wanda hugs White Vision. But while White Vision in the comics merely has no idea who Wanda is and what this strange woman wants of him, the MCU White Vision has been programmed to kill Wanda and promptly tries to strangle her and/or break her neck. Come to think of, there is a lot of strangling going on in this episode.

Luckily, the real Vision shows up just in time to rescue Wanda and we get a quick family reunion of Wanda, Vision and the twins. Wanda apologises to Vision for not telling him the whole truth, Vision says that it doesn’t matter. However, they still have to deal with not one but two supervillains, White Vision and Agatha.

So the battle continues with the Visions slugging it out in the sky above Westview and later in the Westview library. However, the battle is decided not by brawn but by brains, when red Vision uses the Ship of Theseus problem to make White Vision question his identity. White Visions laments that he has no memories, whereupon red Vision restores his memories, most prominently those of Wanda. Very confused by all this, White Vision takes off. I strongly suspect we haven’t seen the last of him, unless Paul Bettany is sick of spending hours in the make-up chair. In his review, Camestros Felapton wonders whether the Ship of Theseus scene is a reference to the inexplicably popular multi-Hugo winning afterlife sitcom The Good Place, which has a thing for philosophical discussions, while Tor.com reviewer Emmet Asher-Perrin views it as a take on the time-honoured tradition, going back at least to Isaac Asimov’s early robot stories of the 1940s, of reasoning a robot or computer to death. Both are possible, though I simply like the fact that even though the final episode was very much superbeings slugging it out, the resolution to both conflicts was more innovative than “The person with the harder punch wins”.

Some people seem to be a bit disappointed that the pay-off after nine episodes was yet another CGI heavy superhero fight. However, in spite of the sitcom trappings (which have been gone the past two episodes anyway), WandaVision is still a Marvel superhero show at heart. And we all know that superhero stories, whether Marvel’s or DC’s inevitably climax in a big, no holds bared fight featuring multiple beings with superpowers. So I honestly wonder why so many people seem to be surprised that WandaVision ended with a massive superbeing fight, since that’s as much of a genre requirement as the laugh track is a genre requirement for sitcoms. Several people also seem to be disappointed that the many fan theories did not come true (but then fan theories rarely do) and that there was no big twist at the end. But then, as Font Folly points out in his review, twists are overrated.

While Vision and Vision are duking it out, Wanda confronts Agatha in the town centre. Most of the familiar Westview residents are there – the mailman, Norm, Herb, Harold, Dottie, Mrs. Hart, Beverly, etc… Agatha now releases Dottie from Wanda’s spell. We learn that Dottie is really a woman called Sarah who just wants to hug her eight-year-old daughter again and would even let her daughter play with Wanda’s twins. Agatha also releases the rest of the townspeople, who all beg Wanda to let them go or let them die, because they are hurting and also experiencing Wanda’s nightmares every night. Wanda is horrified – after all, she never wanted to hurt those people. She also deactivates the Hex to let them go, which unfortunately causes Red Vision as well as the twins (for of course, Billy and Tommy did not stay in their rooms, while their parents were having a superhero fight – which kids would?) to begin to dissolve.

Now Agatha twists the knife even further and points out that Wanda can either save her family or the people of Westview but not both. However, Agatha has the solution. If Wanda will only surrender her powers to Agatha, Agatha can repair Wanda’s spell. Anybody with half a brain of course knows that Agatha is lying.

Meanwhile, Hayward is still doing his best X-Men villain routine. He has arrested Jimmy Woo, but Jimmy uses his escapology skills (Darcy is not the only one with those) to free himself from his handcuffs and steal the phone of one of the S.W.O.R.D. goons, which he then uses to phone up the FBI and calls for help. I wonder why he didn’t do so before. However, the FBI still needs some time to get to Westview. And time is something the characters don’t have, because once the Hex starts to break up, Hayward orders his troops to move into Westview. “Different century, same thing”, Agatha remarks, once Hayward shows up, “They’ll always try to burn witches.” As a survivor of the Salem witch trials, Agatha should know.

Meanwhile, Monica has been captured by the fake Pietro and was dragged to a weird attic room. When Monica asks where she is, Pietro says it’s his man cave, because he needs to escape “the missus” from time to time. Now Monica realises that the house isn’t Agatha’s home at all (logical, because Agatha only arrived shortly after Wanda created the Hex). It’s the home of the fake Pietro who is really an actor called Ralph Bohner and Agatha/Agnes’ unseen husband. So fake Pietro is not Pietro Maximoff borrowed from the Fox X-Men universe, but just a brilliant bit of stunt casting. It’s not quite clear how Ralph Bohner came to have Quicksilver’s superspeed, but maybe that was Agatha’s magic, too.

Monica uses her newfound superpowers and realises that Agatha is controlling Pietro/Ralph via the necklace he always wears. She rips it off and frees the terrified Ralph from Agatha’s and Wanda’s control. Then Monica sets off towards the town centre to help out with the fight. She arrives just as Hayward arrives with his goons and his guns.

Since there are now multiple villains and threats to deal with, Wanda, Vision, the twins and Monica split up to deal with the threats separately. Vision deals with White Vision, Wanda with Agatha, while the twins and novice superheroine Monica deal with the lesser threat, namely Hayward and his goons. “We never really prepared you for this”, Wanda and Vision tell the twins, “But you were born for this.” And indeed, as second generation superheroes, they were.

Billy uses his powers to freeze the soldiers, while Tommy uses his superspeed to steal their guns. Hayward is furious to have been shown up by superpowered ten-year-olds. He gets out of his car, draws his pistol and fires at the twins, which is a true boo-hiss moment, because whatever else Billy and Tommy may be, they’re still ten-year-old kids. However, Monica steps in front of the boys and stops the bullets with her new superpowers. One gets past her, but Billy uses his telekinesis to stop it. A furious Hayward now jumps into a car to run down Monica, Billy and Tommy, but Darcy shows up with the ice cream truck she and Vision appropriated and rams it into Hayward’s car.

Meanwhile, Wanda uses a repeat of the trick she used to take out the Avengers in Age of Ultron and shows Agatha her worst nightmare, which is the night the other witches tried to burn Agatha at the stake. Now Agatha really does seem panicked, but she still has an ace up her sleeve. She tells Wanda that she is the Scarlet Witch, a witch with no coven and enormous powers stronger than that of the Sorcerer Supreme, a title currently held by Doctor Strange. Furthermore, Wanda is fated to bring about the end of the world, as is written in the Darkhold, Agatha’s Necronomicon style grimoire. The other witches, though they had their lifeforce sucked out by Agatha, promptly rewaken to do the same to Wanda, because Wanda is obviously even worse than Agatha. I find that I don’t like these witches very much.

So Wanda is tied to the stake and the other witches begin to attack her. However, Wanda manifests horns which look very much like her classic headpiece. She frees herself and tears Agatha out of the dreamworld into the real one, where Agatha and Wanda slug it out for another round. Wanda hurls her powers at Agatha, telling her that she does not want them. Agatha absorbs Wanda’s powers and lifeforce, while Wanda literally withers. Once Wanda is seemingly depowered, Agatha informs her that she lied (now there’s a surprise) and that she cannot fix Wanda’s spell and Westview. “This world will always be broken”, she tells her, “Just like you.”

Then Agatha calls up her powers to deal Wanda the death blow, only that nothing happens. Now Wanda reveals that she’s tricked Agatha. The Hex is still active, albeit smaller than before, and Wanda has etched the same protective runes that Agatha used in her basement lair into the walls. “Only the witch that cast the runs can use her magic”, Wanda tells her, “Thanks for the tip.” Wanda also gets a new costume, which is a great update of her classic Scarlet Witch costume. I’ve always found Wanda’s costume in the Avengers movies somewhat underwhelming, though the classic comic costume obviously wasn’t an option for a superhero movie made in the 21st century. This new costume, however, is much better and incorporates elements of the classic costume such as the cape and the headpiece.

Agatha is now thoroughly beaten and depowered, but she still tries to bargain with Wanda. “You need me”, she tells her, because Agatha has all the magic training and knowledge. Wanda, however, manipulates Agatha’s mind and turns her back into the nosy neighbour character she played in the fake sitcom. “You live her now”, she tells a horrified Agatha, “I know where to find you.” It’s a fitting punishment for Agatha and besides, Marvel – and we – get to keep the brilliant Kathryn Hahn around for further use. I do feel a tad sorry for Ralph a.k.a. fake Pietro who’s now stuck with a partner he never chose.

It’s a well-known that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has something of a villain problem, since the villains are almost always less memorable than the heroes and exist mostly so the heroes have someone to fight. There are exceptions – Loki, Thanos, Killmonger – but they are rare. Agatha, however, was one of the most memorable villains we’ve seen so far in the Marvel Cinematic and TV Universe – just as brilliant, insane and memorable as Loki. And can we have a Loki and Agatha team-up please? Cause that would truly be a match made in hell.

As for Kathryn Hahn, so far I only associated her with her role as the grief counsellor Lily in Crossing Jordan more than a decade ago. And while there was nothing wrong with her performance, it also wasn’t particularly outstanding. Her role was basically the stock understanding best friend character. Kathryn Hahn’s performance in WandaVision, however, was brilliant, both as the nosy sitcom neighbour Agnes and the over-the-top supervillainess Agatha. I do hope she gets an Emmy and/or Golden Globe nod next year. Ditto for Elizabeth Olsen, who portrayed a woman wrecked by grief, a superbeing with ambiguous powers and motives, and five different variations of a sitcom wife/mother all in the same show. And Paul Bettany was wonderful as the android who thinks he’s a sitcom husband. And his comic timing in the magic show episode was brilliant.

I’ve seen some grumbling online that “those Marvel stans” apparently truly think that a mere superhero show would be in any way award worthy, when there is real acting(TM) going on in the usual awards bait programs. Considering that most of the TV acting Golden Globes, which were awarded last weekend, went to The Crown and Schitt’s Creek, I honestly wonder what those people are smoking. Now I have no idea what Schitt’s Creek is (likely exactly the sort of family sitcom WandaVision is parodying), but The Crown strikes me very much as an example of make-up and costume doubling as acting. Also, what is more challenging, convincingly portraying an amnesiac android, a malicious 17th century witch and a grieving, unstable woman with superpowers pretending to be sitcom characters or playing some of the most photographed and recorded people in history? Never mind that many of the actresses Elizabeth Olsen’s parodied in WandaVision have won Emmys and Golden Globes, so why is their performance more valuable than hers?

It’s not exactly news that the major film and TV awards – the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the Emmys – tend to snub genre films and TV and particularly the actors who appear therein, exceptions such as Peter Dinklage, Gillian Anderson (her win for The X-Files, not The Crown) and Tatiana Maslany notwithstanding. Meanwhile, how many TV actors have won Emmys and Golden Globes for playing stock characters like “the grumpy cop”, “the kindly doctor” or “sitcom Dad” and “sitcom Mom”? Are all genre performances award-worthy? No, of course not. But I think that Elizabeth Olsen, Kathryn Hahn and Paul Bettany would deserve recognition. Ditto for Pedro Pascal in The Mandalorian, who for much of the series only had body language and his voice to act with (and Din Djarin doesn’t exactly talk much) and yet managed to do so much with so little. Fine performances can be found in all genres of films and TV shows. And “An actor was made up to resemble a famous historical figure who looks nothing like them” does not necessarily mean that a performance is great, even though the Oscars, Golden Globes and Emmys seem to think so.

Richard Lawson’s review at Vanity Fair is a typical example. Lawson is disappointed by the WandaVision finale, because it ties in too much to the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (well, it is a Marvel show, duh?) and was just an entertaining rollercoaster ride in the end instead of something deeper. Never mind that WandaVision tackled plenty of themes other than “See superheroes beating each other up”, e.g. grief and trauma and how to deal with it, the fakeness of the US sitcom, the quiet horror of the American suburb, the hollowness of the American dream, the familiar people fearing and hating what is different theme from 58 years of X-Men comics, etc… Meanwhile, what deeper themes does a regular sitcom tackle beyond Michael J. Fox weeping over the death of a character who only appeared in that one episode, while the laugh track still plays in the background?

Richard Lawson writes:

It was probably best to not watch WandaVision through a humanistic, emotional lens to begin with. The show was, at its best, a fantastical what-if lark, a show that let us spend some time with a couple of second-string Avengers characters in a curious new setting. Marvel wasn’t actually invested in mining deeper truths about life in the world. That was, in essence, marketing. Marvel also tried really hard to convince us that one of the Captain America movies was a 1970s conspiracy thriller, and not just another (good! fun!) Captain America movie. WandaVision advertised itself from within, adding a new layer of argument each week that it was about something more.

My reaction to this is, “Why on Earth should we not watch WandaVision or any superhero movie or show through a humanistic, emotional lens?” But then I have been a longterm reader of the comics and am invested in the characters. I know these people, so of course I am invested in them. Meanwhile, I am not invested in the interpersonal drama of the British royal family or in the travails of a white middle class guy with cancer who feels the burning need to become a murderous drug dealer because of reasons. At their heart, superhero comics are long-running soap operas, only with superpowers, fights for the fate of the universe and all sorts of cool stuff added in. So of course, we’re invested in these characters. It’s okay, if Richard Lawson is not invested in these characters or their stories, but he shouldn’t claim that superhero stories can never be more than entertainment, when many of them are. And besides, what is The Crown if not entertainment?

Back to Westview, where it’s all over save the mopping up. The Hex is still retracting and both Wanda and Vision know what this means. So they go home, tug Billy and Tommy into bed one last time. Then they kiss and say good-bye in a touching scene, before the Hex vanishes, leaving Wanda alone in an empty lot once more. As Wanda wanders through the Westview town centre (she no longer has a car, because she threw it at Agatha), the people of Westview all glare daggers at her. Monica briefly talks to Wanda and tells her that those folks will never understand what Wanda gave up for them. Monica also tells Wanda that she understands grief and that given the chance, she would bring her mother back, too.

I suspect I should feel more sympathy for the people of Westview who were after all drawn into Wanda’s personal trauma through no fault of their own and literally put through hell. However, when they glare at Wanda at the end, all I could think was, “Here’s the next torches and pitchforks mob – Agatha was right, after all” and “Boy, I so didn’t miss the endless ‘Everybody hates and fears mutants’ stuff from the X-Men comics.”

I’m not sure why I had this reaction. Part of it may be that Westview itself looks very much like the dark side of America. Without Wanda’s reality manipulation, it’s very much a shithole, a fading and rundown town, whose inhabitants probably voted for Trump, because they thought he’d make Westview great again. We’ve seen loads of Westviews in the past few years, whenever some newspaper or magazine decided to run a feature about the forgotten white America and why those people were forced to vote for Trump. And yes, I know that not everybody in Westview is white, but the town is very much that sort of place, though a bit more diverse. So in short, Westview elicited negative emotions, which stem both from four years of “Won’t someone think of the neglected white America?” articles and from more than twenty years of X-Men comics. And indeed, it’s interesting that WandaVision is leaning so heavily into the “Feared and hated by a world they’re trying to protect” theme of the X-Men comics, both with Hayward and the people of Westview, when the Marvel Cinematic Universe has largely ignored that aspect so far and was all the better for it.

Also, Wanda now has a new costume and some nifty new powers, but otherwise she’s back where she began. She’s lost Vision – again – and she’s lost her kids, too, (though they’ll be back eventually) on top of everything else she’s already lost. Hell, she’s even lost Pietro a second time. She’s still grieving, still unstable and now even more powerful, which is not a good combination. The post-credits sequence sees Wanda alone in a cabin in the wilderness somewhere. Her astral form is studying the Darkhold, which she appropriated from Agatha, while her physical form is moping, when she hears her kids calling for help.

There’s a second post-credits sequence, too, where Monica meets up with an FBI agent, who reveals herself to be a Skrull and informs Monica that an old friend (Nick Fury, Captain Marvel?) needs help in space. Monica grins. Sadly, we don’t get a lot of Darcy and Jimmy Woo in this episode, but I hope we’ll see them again somewhere else, because they’re both great.

Considering that I initially wasn’t even sure whether to bother with WandaVision at all, I largely enjoyed the show, even if I found the ending rather depressing. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier will have to be very good indeed to live up to this one.

Regardless of what the Richard Lawsons of this world say, Marvel is actually quite willing to take chances and tell a large variety of different stories within the framework of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In the movies, we’ve had war movies, gonzo space operas, Wagnerian fantasy, 1970s style political thrillers, afrofuturism, caper movies and much more. And yes, they’re all about superheroes in the end, but that’s like complaining that sitcoms are about families or cop shows about cops.

WandaVision is certainly an example of Marvel taking a gamble, because here we have Marvel taking two of the most complicated characters in the comics, plugging them into a genre that normally is about as far from superhero stories as you can get, namely the sitcom, adding in a big dash of Philip K. Dickian weirdness as well as a couple of other genres (X-Files style mystery thriller, paranormal fantasy) and pulling it off. The pay-off may have been not quite as good as the build-up, but the fact that Marvel made a show about the family life of an East European immigrant magic user and her android husband work at all is almost a miracle in itself.

Fancast Spotlight: Androids and Assets

It’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

I have decided to expand the scope of the project to also cover fancasts, because the fancast category could also use a boost. And besides, the borders between fanzine and fancast are porous anyway.

So today, I’m pleased to feature the Androids and Assets podcast, which discusses the politics and economy of science fiction.

Therefore, I’m happy to welcome Stephen and Marshall of Androids and Assets to my blog today:

Tell us about your podcast or channel.

Androids and Assets is a podcast about the political economy of speculative fiction. It is a crazed experiment, and is a truly unique attempt to engage Fandoms in fierce political discourse. We mostly look at fantasy and science fiction and examine the choices in the background of the story. What do they use for money? What sort of government is in place? Is this modern capitalism simply moved to a fictional world? Is that an intentional choice to critique capitalism or is it an unquestioned acceptance of our current system?

Basically if a work is about the future and makes any comment on the social relationships of people to wealth, power and each other we want to engage with it.

We process creative works through a lot of different lenses. So maybe we are making a historical analogy, talking about Foucault or we are doing cost analysis of a spaceship. We take wild liberties with the show’s broad conceptual mandate. We are also very lucky to often have guests to come on and talk about their works. We interrogate them about what they were thinking and what they were trying to tell the audience through their work. It has been wonderful to engage with so many great creators who are so willing to engage with our questions about quantitative easing and post holes.

We are also doing a complete watch through and discussion of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in what might be described as a separate show. Every other episode we release is called Emissaries of Profits and we talk about Star Trek and DS9 and grapple with what the show tells us about the Federation and what people were thinking about in the nineties.

Who are the people behind your podcast or channel?

If the show is a crazed experiment we are happy to be the mad social scientists. Stephen is an orthodox Marxist He’s interested in history, philosophy and psychology. Marshall is a heterodox Marxist, our resident economist and an insightful amateur historian in his own right.

Above all else we are good friends with a passion for SFF and a hatred of market centric capital, that sees wealth as an end in itself.  We see wealth as a tool for improving people’s lives and that it needs to be shared through a scientific and democratic form of governance. The institution of property cannot be inviolable in a just society

Why did you decide to start your podcast or channel?

Because we’re two white dudes in the 21st century.

A little more seriously, we talk about these things all the time and thought other people might also want rage against unrestrained capital through the Cypher of SFF.

What format do you use for your podcast or channel and why did you choose this format?

We always have a thesis trying to link a fiction work to a real world phenomenon. Sometimes the pursuit of that thesis takes us to strange places. Our podcast is formatted as a conversation. It is pretty free flowing and lightly (sometimes more and sometimes less) edited. Even when we have a guest it is less an interview and more a discussion about the work.

If you like deep dives into minutia and rapid fire hot takes on SFF franchises you may like this show.

The fan categories at the Hugos were there at the very beginning, but they are also the categories which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines, fancasts and other fan projects are important?

Media is best shared with others. It is more fun to discuss and critique things we love (or don’t) with others. We’ve had our opinions on books and movies changed after a good chat. Fan projects help shape opinion and help people find new things to enjoy or new ways to enjoy things they already love.

Inevitably fan communities will attain a totalizing hybrid holographic/drug fueled mass consciousness until then… we need this.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online and fancasts have sprung up. What do you think the future of fan media looks like?

Predictions about the future are incredibly difficult. I’m certain that as media evolves, fans will be right there alongside it. But, we are confident in the inevitability of a totalizing hybrid holographic/drug fueled mass consciousness

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

We are happy to share the media discourse with our good friends at the Hugo Book Club Blog, The Hugo Girl! Podcast, Spectology and Escape Pod. They are all worth checking out and worthy of awards.

Where can people find you?

androidsandassets.ca

@assetdroid on Twitter and Instagram

We are also reachable through most major occult rituals.

Thank you, Stephen and Marshall, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out Androids and Assets, cause it’s a great podcast.

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Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.