Charlie Jane Anders's Blog, page 27

dragonengine:He says it too, housing is a human right and...

dragonengine:

He says it too, housing is a human right and everyone should be treated better.

I always love this show lately but this episode is especially a must-watch

spiralcass:Raise your hand if you’re also a trans girl w...

spiralcass:

Raise your hand if you’re also a trans girl whose fantasized about being Emma Frost since you were a kid.

TBH I basically never stopped wanting to be Emma Frost

layaart:Tina & Rachael & Elza from Victories Greater...

layaart:

Tina & Rachael & Elza from Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders!

sapphicbookoftheday:Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa ...

sapphicbookoftheday:

Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle

Today’s sapphic book of the day is Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle!

Summary: “When Becca transfers to a high school in an elite San Francisco suburb, she’s worried she’s not going to fit in. To her surprise, she’s immediately adopted by the most popular girls in school. At first glance, Marley, Arianna, and Mandy are perfect. But at a party under a full moon, Becca learns that they also have a big secret.

Becca’s new friends are werewolves. Their prey? Slimy boys who take advantage of unsuspecting girls. Eager to be accepted, Becca allows her friends to turn her into a werewolf, and finally, for the first time in her life, she feels like she truly belongs.

But things get complicated when Arianna’s predatory boyfriend is killed, and the cops begin searching for a serial killer. As their pack begins to buckle under the pressure—and their moral high ground gets muddier and muddier—Becca realizes that she might have feelings for one of her new best friends.

Lisa Sterle’s stylish illustrations paired with Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s sharp writing make Squad a fun, haunting, and fast-paced thriller that will resonate with fans of Riverdale, and with readers of This Savage Song, Lumberjanes, and Paper Girls.”

I’ve been drawing lots of Kaiju cats in books lately

I’ve been drawing lots of Kaiju cats in books lately

Hello Kitty sticker says, “when the state fails us, we are...

Hello Kitty sticker says, “when the state fails us, we are entitled to take justice into our own hands. Protect your communities, not the establishment.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/CflKNryrxW-/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

How I use Goodreads

I've been trying to post reviews on Goodreads a bit more often lately, because it's nice to have a place to shout about books I've read and enjoyed. But I just wanted to make clear some stuff about how I'm using the service.

In general, if I didn't enjoy a book, I don't bother to review it. I often read the first 50 pages of a book and then decide it's not working for me, but even if I read all the way through to the end, I won't review a book on here if I didn't really love it. I have huge respect for people who warn others about underwhelming or disappointing books, but it's not what I want to do with my platform right now.

If you've read my rants on Twitter and elsewhere, you'll know I don't really like the star-rating system (or letter grades, which are basically the same thing.) In a nutshell, I feel like nobody can agree on what a star rating means — like Uber and Lyft have taught us all that "four stars" means terrible awful no-good drivers. I won't go to a restaurant that's under about 4.2 stars on Google maps, meaning that a 4-star review on there translates to "stay away." I always resisted calls to give star ratings or grades when I reviewed books and movies in my old job, because it made me feel like a teacher grading students on their performance. I sort of feel like the real question about a book is "do you recommend it or not?" which is a yes/no question.

(I could also rant here about how Rotten Tomatoes tries to aggregate all of the different ratings and grades that people gave a movie, and boil them down to "rotten" or "fresh." I know that RT gives the movie a percentage, but that's purely based on taking each individual review and deciding that the review is "fresh" or "rotten." Often the "fresh" reviews come from people who gave a movie three stars out of five. It's weird. But this is obviously a bit of a sidebar.)

Anyway, for a long time, I was just not giving stars to books on here at all — I was just leaving the "star" field blank. But like I said, I'm only reviewing books that I really loved. And I decided if I have an opportunity to nudge the star-average of those books up slightly, I should go ahead and do that. So for the past year or so, I've been giving an automatic five stars to every book I review on here. To me, five stars means "I enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it." If I don't feel willing to say that about a book, I'm not reviewing it on here.

How to Write a Space Opera That's Not Quite So Messed Up

Space opera is just over a century old — it grew out of the Western, with all of its themes of the frontier and wagon trains and Manifest Destiny. Space opera was also heavily shaped by notorious racist John W. Campbell, who infused it with his ideas of the “superior man.”

Soooo… how do you write a space opera that’s not kind of messed up?

I feel like people have found different answers to this question at different times.

In the early 2000s, there was a vogue for post-scarcity AI-fueled space utopias (partly inspired by Iain M. Banks) which solved the problem of the frontier by creating a universe where nobody wants for anything and there are enlightened, if problematic, saviors in the stars.

More recently, there’s been a ton of blue-collar space operas, influenced by Alien and The Stars My Destination, including The Expanse, Becky Chambers’ Wayfarer series, and books by Valerie Valdez, Karen Osborne, Tim Pratt, and a bunch of others. The blue collar thing means that instead of an intrepid explorer or colonizer, who ventures boldly into the unknown, you have working stiffs, who are just trying to get by and get swept up in some cosmic bullshit.

But when I set out to write Victories Greater Than Death, I really wanted to pay tribute to the space operas of my youth, especially Star Trek. Which means uniforms, exploration, boldly going, etc.

So I tried to find ways to gently subvert some of the assumptions of the genre.

In doing this, I was heavily influenced by Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat books, which subvert as Asimov’s ideas of a galactic empire and various other things in a clever fashion. Also Tobias Buckell, John Scalzi, Karen Lord, and many others.

Before I explain further… when I say “subvert,” I don’t mean that I replicate bad tropes with an ironic veneer. Or that you need a PhD in space opera to understand what I’m doing. I tried to keep it pretty easy to follow and not annoying for neophytes.

One big trope in space opera is that everyone is humanoid. And I decided early on that the crew of my alien starship would be humanoid — because it would be easier for my characters from Earth to adjust to. And I just wanted to celebrate the classic space offers that I love.

But why are there so many humanoid aliens? The usual explanation is something along the lines of Prometheus, or the TNG episode “The Chase”. Long-ago aliens have seeded the galaxy with humanoid DNA, and that’s why everybody looks like us.

The other usual explanation for humanoid life arising elsewhere in the galaxy is bilateral symmetry: there is a distinct advantage to having creatures with two arms and two legs and one head, for reasons.

In Victories Greater Than Death, I decided on a different explanation: a huge awful eugenics program, created by mysterious ancient aliens for their own bizarre and terrifying reasons. This isn’t really a spoiler, because we find this out pretty early in the book.

This way, instead of humanoids being the bold, inquisitive explorers of a galaxy that’s not ready for our pluck and determination, it puts us in a somewhat more complicated position.

Another space upper trope that I tried to mess with is faster-than-light travel. I wanted to allow it, because it’s a mainstay of most space opera, but I didn’t want it to be quite as cut-and-dried as it usually is.

So I came up with the spaceweave, which weaves two points in space together (as its name suggests.) There’s just one problem: The spaceweave only really works at top speed for smaller vessels — because the energy requirements go up exponentially for a larger starship. (Again, I promise this is not something that becomes a boring lecture in the book. It’s just touched on very briefly and obliquely.)

This size limitation on ships going top speed means the ship in the book, the Indomitable, cannot rely on the larger and more powerful ships in the fleet for rescue every time they’re in trouble. It also gives an advantage to the bad guys, whose ships are all small and nimble.

I also decided to do away with traditional military ranks, other than Captain, on board my alien starship. That way, I could have a looser and more ambiguous chain of command, and thus a more collaborative and less authoritarian atmosphere.

Different alien species have very divergent ideas of authority and hierarchy and leadership, so it wouldn’t work to impose top-down rule on people. In the book, there’s one civilization that believes that only pregnant people (who can be any gender) should be in charge.

In addition to the captain, there’s also the alternate captain — who can countermand any of the captain’s orders. The alternate captain can also can take over as captain at a moment’s notice, if they deem the captain is making errors. This isn’t a mutiny. Or a “you’re relieved of command” situation. It’s just the ship really has two captains, and either one can be in charge at any given time.

I also drop plenty of hints, in the first book, that the Royal Fleet (the good guys) have a lot of problems and are somewhat morally compromised, especially after their long war against the Compassion. In the second book, we see a lot more of this. By the end of the third book, I’m guessing (planning) that we’ll move towards something more radically inclusive and small-d democratic. This is definitely not a spoiler, bc I’m keeping it super vague.

Bottom line: I love space opera, and I love to play with tropes in general. And I think right now, there’s lots of scope to take the old-school explorers-in-uniforms space opera in some really new and interesting directions.

How to Write a Space Opera That's Not Quite So Messed Up

Space opera is just over a century old — it grew out of the Western, with all of its themes of the frontier and wagon trains and Manifest Destiny. Space opera was also heavily shaped by notorious racist John W. Campbell, who infused it with his ideas of the "superior man."

Soooo... how do you write a space opera that's not kind of messed up?

I feel like people have found different answers to this question at different times.

In the early 2000s, there was a vogue for post-scarcity AI-fueled space utopias (partly inspired by Iain M. Banks) which solved the problem of the frontier by creating a universe where nobody wants for anything and there are enlightened, if problematic, saviors in the stars.

More recently, there's been a ton of blue-collar space operas, influenced by Alien and The Stars My Destination, including The Expanse, Becky Chambers' Wayfarer series, and books by Valerie Valdez, Karen Osborne, Tim Pratt, and a bunch of others. The blue collar thing means that instead of an intrepid explorer or colonizer, who ventures boldly into the unknown, you have working stiffs, who are just trying to get by and get swept up in some cosmic bullshit.

But when I set out to write Victories Greater Than Death, I really wanted to pay tribute to the space operas of my youth, especially Star Trek. Which means uniforms, exploration, boldly going, etc.

So I tried to find ways to gently subvert some of the assumptions of the genre.

In doing this, I was heavily influenced by Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books, which subvert as Asimov's ideas of a galactic empire and various other things in a clever fashion. Also Tobias Buckell, John Scalzi, Karen Lord, and many others.

Before I explain further... when I say "subvert," I don't mean that I replicate bad tropes with an ironic veneer. Or that you need a PhD in space opera to understand what I'm doing. I tried to keep it pretty easy to follow and not annoying for neophytes.

One big trope in space opera is that everyone is humanoid. And I decided early on that the crew of my alien starship would be humanoid — because it would be easier for my characters from Earth to adjust to. And I just wanted to celebrate the classic space offers that I love.

But why are there so many humanoid aliens? The usual explanation is something along the lines of Prometheus, or the TNG episode "The Chase". Long-ago aliens have seeded the galaxy with humanoid DNA, and that's why everybody looks like us.

The other usual explanation for humanoid life arising elsewhere in the galaxy is bilateral symmetry: there is a distinct advantage to having creatures with two arms and two legs and one head, for reasons.

In Victories Greater Than Death, I decided on a different explanation: a huge awful eugenics program, created by mysterious ancient aliens for their own bizarre and terrifying reasons. This isn't really a spoiler, because we find this out pretty early in the book.

This way, instead of humanoids being the bold, inquisitive explorers of a galaxy that's not ready for our pluck and determination, it puts us in a somewhat more complicated position.

Another space upper trope that I tried to mess with is faster-than-light travel. I wanted to allow it, because it's a mainstay of most space opera, but I didn't want it to be quite as cut-and-dried as it usually is.

So I came up with the spaceweave, which weaves two points in space together (as its name suggests.) There's just one problem: The spaceweave only really works at top speed for smaller vessels — because the energy requirements go up exponentially for a larger starship. (Again, I promise this is not something that becomes a boring lecture in the book. It's just touched on very briefly and obliquely.)

This size limitation on ships going top speed means the ship in the book, the Indomitable, cannot rely on the larger and more powerful ships in the fleet for rescue every time they're in trouble. It also gives an advantage to the bad guys, whose ships are all small and nimble.

I also decided to do away with traditional military ranks, other than Captain, on board my alien starship. That way, I could have a looser and more ambiguous chain of command, and thus a more collaborative and less authoritarian atmosphere.

Different alien species have very divergent ideas of authority and hierarchy and leadership, so it wouldn't work to impose top-down rule on people. In the book, there's one civilization that believes that only pregnant people (who can be any gender) should be in charge.

In addition to the captain, there's also the alternate captain — who can countermand any of the captain's orders. The alternate captain can also can take over as captain at a moment's notice, if they deem the captain is making errors. This isn't a mutiny. Or a "you're relieved of command" situation. It's just the ship really has two captains, and either one can be in charge at any given time.

I also drop plenty of hints, in the first book, that the Royal Fleet (the good guys) have a lot of problems and are somewhat morally compromised, especially after their long war against the Compassion. In the second book, we see a lot more of this. By the end of the third book, I'm guessing (planning) that we'll move towards something more radically inclusive and small-d democratic. This is definitely not a spoiler, bc I'm keeping it super vague.

Bottom line: I love space opera, and I love to play with tropes in general. And I think right now, there's lots of scope to take the old-school explorers-in-uniforms space opera in some really new and interesting directions.

Writing advice: Tone is everything!

Tone is a vastly underrated aspect of storytelling. People often seem to think of tone as something superficial, literally on the surface of the story—but tone tells us what to expect. Like, "everyone in this story is garbage." Or, "people are basically kind."

Tone isn't just "funny," or "dark," or "scary," or "grim."

The tone of a story presents a theory of human nature, and the state of the world, and the sort of things that are likely to happen therein. A satirical tone can accommodate a lot more horrendous behavior, for example.

I can never get a consistent tone in my first draft (or usually, my second.) The tone will keep coming in and out of focus, and I'll try different tones on for size. I might have an idea in my head of what the tone should be, but making it materialize is another matter entirely.

And of course, tone is closely related to genre — a pulp detective story has one sort of tone, a technicolor kids adventure has another. Though you can get a lot of zing out of telling a story in a tone that's not usually associated with that genre. (Like telling a babysitters-club-type kid story in a grimdark or noir tone, for example.)

If I'm lucky, I'll end up with a handful of moments in a finished draft where the tone feels right — there's a bit of humor that feels like it anchors me in the story and the characters, say. Or there's a descriptive passage where I can hear the "music" of this world.

Clarifying the tone of a story is like landscaping... I prune back the bits that go too far outside the tone I have in mind — too scary, too cynical, too funny, too sentimental, whatever — and try to nurture the green shoots that represent the "correct" tone.

This is sort of where the idea of "kill your darlings" comes in. I'll have a scene that I love, that feels vivid and well-written, but it doesn't belong in the kind of story I'm telling. Sometimes the sharpest bits of dialogue or scene-setting just break everything else tonally.

In the case of Victories Greater Than Death, I wanted it to feel like a "real" space opera, with complicated worldbuilding and attention to the logistics and mechanics of spaceflight and space battles. But tonally, it had to feel like a YA. Where those things conflicted, YA won.

Not only that, but as I was working on VICTORIES throughout 2017 and 2018, I was painfully aware that people were hurting, and we were all scared. LGBTQ+ kids, in particular, were already coming in for a lot more political nonsense and being targeted by cynical opportunists.

So I really agonized about the tone of VICTORIES. Earlier drafts were a bit darker and more cynical, and I kept hearing from beta readers that my main characters were put thru the wringer a bit too much. I decided I wanted something gentler/sweeter, but still with real danger.

My touchstones became things like Steven Universe, Becky Chambers' Wayfarer books, She-Ra, Doctor Who, and a few other things. I tried to use the danger and scariness to bring my characters closer and to show their resilience and kindness to each other. And the humor got lighter.

Made me so happy when I showed VICTORIES to a trans friend and he said the book felt like a big warm hug. That was totally what I was going for. I had no way of knowing how scary things would be in the real world in spring 2021, but I'm glad I made the tone choices I did.