Kameron Hurley's Blog, page 45

The Many, Many Faces of Conan, Or: Conan the Schizophrenic

It's no secret that I'm a bit of a Conan fan, so though the trailer for the reboot looked awful, I went anyway – naturally.

For better or worse, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Sadly, much of the badness seemed to come from the fact that the writers couldn't really figure out what Conan was all about.

I mean, was he a mercenary fueled by money? Or a hoity-toity do-gooder who just frees slaves because it's "morally right"? You can probably guess my answer to this (and the answer of...

Ignorance & Lies: Why I Hate Going to the Doctor

When you have a chronic illness like mine and you go to the doctor – any kind of doctor, really – you inevitably get The Lecture.

I am a type 1 diabetic. This is an immune disorder that hit me 5 years ago when I was 26. Basically, it's triggered by some kind of event that convinces your white blood cells that the cells in your body that produce insulin are now Evil and must be eaten. Over time, your body ends up eating all of them, so you no longer process sugar anymore. Eventually, your body ...

What Little Kids REALLY Learn from Cinderella

The One-of-a-Kind-Bad-Ass-Woman…. Or the Strong Woman Circus Freak?

Many of my recent fictions are about the dynamic of how to be a strong woman among strong women, and what society and its individuals look like after we've already crossed over from the "one! kickass! woman! in! the! world!" place to the "OMG assassins at my door! Yes, of course they're women!" place.

Note that is not necessarily a BETTER place. But it is a DIFFERENT place.

And that is where my interest lies. Because a world in which that is an assumption is a much different world than ours.

The...

Remember When Fantasy Books Were AWESOME? Thoughts on The Cloud Roads

Remember when you were 9 and or 10 or 12 and you stayed up until all hours reading your favorite fantasy novel? Remember that strangely comforting feeling of slipping neatly and completely into some other place and so totally embracing the story of another person that you were engrossed until the sun came up? You remember that sense of awe and wonder when you encountered fantastic peoples, creatures, vistas?

Oh, sure, I enjoy reading now, to a point. Mostly, though, reading is drudgery for...