Charlie Jane Anders's Blog, page 10

How To Fix Goodreads

Last week, a nauseating scandal hit the book world. Basically, a white author created fake accounts on Goodreads, and used them to leave a slew of one-star ratings on books by debut authors of color whom she thought of as her competition. (You can read all the revolting details here.)

I find this utterly depressing — not just because of the amount of work that went into being racist and destructive, but also because it's the ultimate of expression of this idea that authors are always in competi...

The Pesto Manifesto!

Just a heads up! If you want to get a signed copy of one of my books as a holiday gift for someone, you only have a few days left to order from Folio Books — otherwise, the booksellers at Folio tell me they can't ship it out on time. As I mentioned last week, I will not only sign the book and write someone's name in it, I will also draw a nice (??) doodle of a cat doing whatever job you specify in the comments field of your order. I have never drawn a cat DJ, and that feels wrong. Folio ships al...

A Productivity Hack That's Been Helping Me Lately

Hey everybody! If you're looking to get a holiday gift for the humans (or other sentient beings) in your life, I just wanted to mention that you can get signed, personalized copies of any of my books from Folio Books in San Francisco. As always, you can get a * nice cat doodle * in your book, and I will draw a cat doing whatever job you specify in the comments on your order. They ship all over the place!

I used to be way better at staying focused on pouring words into a word processor, which wo...

My Favorite Science Fiction/Fantasy Books of 2023

First off, what I've been up to lately... I realized that if folks are subscribed to my newsletter, they might actually be interested in what's going on with me personally? (Maybe?) So a quick update.

I'm doing revisions on The Prodigal Mother, my next adult novel which I talked about extensively in my interview with Locus a while back. In a nutshell, it's a novel about a young woman who teaches her mother how to do magic — I've seen plenty of stories about an older person teaching a younger per...

Doctor Who Spinoffs I'd Love To See

Doctor Who is back! This coming Saturday sees the first new episode in absolute yoinks, and there's tons more to come. Returning showrunner Russell T. Davies has said one of his goals is to make more Who spinoffs, the same way RTD's previous stint was accompanied by Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. (Full disclosure: RTD gave a very generous cover blurb to my novel Victories Greater Than Death.)

As someone who thinks about Doctor Who all the time (it's true!) I've been musing about spin-...

Why Does God Hate Figs So Much?

From 1999 to 2005, I ran a website called godhatesfigs.com. I realized that I've never talked about it in my newsletter, so here's the whole story. (Warning: this article contains references to homophobia and religious bigotry.)

Back in the late 1990s, when I was first acknowledging my voluminous queerness, I stumbled across a horrifying website called godhatesfags.com. This was the product of the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church, which used to show up and protest queer events. I found tha...

The Lesson That Superhero TV Shows Keep Learning

Two pieces of news struck me recently.

First, Superman and Lois is ending with its upcoming fourth season. This bums me out, because I love that show. Tyler Hoechlin is the best live action Superman since Christopher Reeve, and this show zeroes in on exactly who Superman really is: a nurturing father figure, and an actual family man. I'm a little nervous about the final season, because this show's excellent supporting cast has been downgraded from regulars to "possibly making appearances," pure...

Why I Don't Like Halloween

I didn't always dislike Halloween. When I was a kid, I kind of liked it: I used to dress up as one of the Doctors from Doctor Who almost every year (see above) though hardly anybody ever recognized my costume. But I scored a lot of candy (which mostly wasn't stolen by my dad.)

When I started figuring out that I might not be the dude everyone thought I was, I had one really magical Halloween where I dressed up in borrowed clothes and a friend helped me with my makeup, and we went out on a busy s...

Why Is It So Hard For Hollywood To Create Brand New Heroes?

The other day, director Matthew Vaughn argued in favor of going back and retelling the story of Anakin Skywalker and his scrappy kids. Vaughn said he would only direct a Star Wars movie if he could "play with the characters I loved," including Luke and Han Solo.

Vaughn's position might seem controversial at first, until you consider that most of our beloved movie and TV franchises keep circling back to their iconic heroes. (We now have both Chris Pine and Paul Wesley playing James T. Kirk, for ...

12 Male Role Models From Science Fiction and Fantasy

Lately I feel like everyone is talking about masculinity and what it means to be a good dude. The other day, I was on a panel at the Pride on the Page book festival with Jacob Tobia (Sissy) who was saying that we've spent decades expanding gender roles for women in mainstream society -- women won the right to wear pants in the workplace (for now) -- but meanwhile, most men remain trapped, unable to express healthy emotions or process all of their trauma.

As someone who was so successful at bein...