Kassandra Jo Tomaras's Blog, page 7

Novelettes, Novellas, and Fan Writers

The Hugo "Novelette" category is an example of one of my least favorite phenomena in the superstructure of science fiction and fantasy as genres, the tendency to invent arbitrary classifications and in-speak nomenclature to refer to them. Despite being married to a librarian with a BA and MA in English literature, as well as having (briefly) attended a graduate program in literature myself, I never encountered the word "novelette" until I started to follow contemporary science fiction. Defini...

Hugo Novel Ballot

Let's get this out of the way quickly: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu is almost everything a science fiction novel can and should be. Rigorous in both its physics and its sociology, attentive to the obscure moments in which everything can change. Both emotionally shattering and intellectually exciting, often on the same page.

In contrast, three of the remaining items on the ballot, I found unreadable--the Addison, the Anderson, and the Butcher. If I had to rank them, the Anderson would co...

WorldCon 2017 Site Selection Ballot

I do not know yet if I am going to vote on the WorldCon 2017 site selection ballot. It would require buying an Advance Supporting Membership for 2017. I want to sell some more fiction this year before I spend money on something like that. But I do know what my preferences are.

My first choice would be Montréal. Can you imagine a better site for a science fiction convention than the Palais des congrès?

Montréal is a short 5 hour drive for me, it is one of my favorite cities that I have visited,...

Points of View: On 2 Hugo Nominees

The ranks of those who take science fiction seriously have been abuzz with discussion of slates and voting tactics. This entry will not be a commentary upon those events, not least because I, as author, am less qualified to comment than most who already have. If we analogize science fiction to a country, with its distinct political institutions and customs, then I am a recent migrant, drawn more by economic necessity than conviction (I write in all genres and none, but there are more paying v...

A New Story, & Critical Reception of Some Older Ones

A new issue of The Future Fire has come out, and my story "After the New Dawn" is in it. (Trigger warnings: fascist dictatorship, child abuse and neglect, Greeks)

Charles Payseur reviewed the entirety of The Journal of Unlikely Cryptography, including my story "The Joy of Sects":

It's an interesting story, full of human connection, and yet the main character finds that the most intimate touch is not one that they want to experience, that they are repulsed by the person they are joined to. Defin...

The Little Red Hen: An Updated Parable

Once upon a time the little red hen found some seeds on the ground. She planted the seeds. The little red hen asked her friends, "Who will help me plant the seeds?"

"Not I," said the dog.

"Not I," said the cat.

"Not I," said the duck.

"Then I will," said the little red hen. So the little red hen planted the seeds all by herself.

When the seeds had grown, the little red hen asked her friends, "Who will help me cut the wheat?"

"Not I," said the dog.

"Not I," said the cat.

"Not I," said the duck.

"Then I...

Meta-Anthology 2014

As I did in late 2013, to some positive response from people whose tastes I trust, here is my meta-anthology for the year 2014. It does not pretend to represent the best stories from that year--not least because the stories are mostly if not entirely from the previous calendar year--but as a kind of meta-analysis of the already anthologized, selecting out from the "best" those that are actually good. This year's meta-anthology is drawn from the Best American Short Stories 2014 (series editor...

More Theses on Feuerbach

My story The Joy of Sects is now available in The Journal of Unlikely Cryptography (aka Unlikely Story No. 11). It has cultic sex rituals, proletarian revolutions under siege, and detailed references to French and German philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries, so of course you want to read it.

Also, keep your eyes open next month for the next issue of The Future Fire, which will include my story "After the New Dawn".

Song of the Shank

"Truth often has to masquerade as falsehood to achieve its ends." So the narratorial voice of Jeffery Renard Allen's Song of the Shank summarizes the inner self-justification of a con man, but so also it ellipsizes its own relationship to a largely forgotten history. The geography is not of this world. The sequence of events is not as one would find in a well-researched biography or documentary film about its putative subject, Thomas (Blind Tom) Greene Wiggins. Devilish miracles happen at the...

News from the Near Future and the Recent Past

Three brief notes in lieu of a substantive entry:

1. In a year which she assesses as "lackluster" overall for science fiction, Lois Tilton singled out "Bonfires in Anacostia" for praise in her review of 2014.

2. Sirens is a new project featuring journalistic dispatches from the year 2022. You may want to check it out, as I expect there will be some interesting news soon that I "compiled".

3. I remembered belatedly that Alice Sola Kim's "Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters because They Are Terrifying...