Kassandra Jo Tomaras's Blog, page 9

September Stories

Today is the official release date of Phantasm Japan. If you have pre-ordered it, you should receive it soon if not already. Read it in good health, and feel free to tell me how much you loved, hated, or were indifferent to "Thirty-Eight Observations on the Nature of the Self".

Also, I will be making my second appearance in FLAPPERHOUSE later this month, with a story entitled "Cold Duck". The fine folks there seem to think that this video might make you want to buy the issue and read it in ful...

Failures of Imagination

When I saw the book Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA on the shelf of my local library, I was not sure what to make of it. Given the usual types of "non-fiction" political books acquired by the small library in the mostly upper-middle-class Maine town where I live, I thought it might even be a right-wing scare tract. "Imagine the horrors after just a few more years of Obamacare!" A quick glance at the list of contributors on the back cover assured me otherwise.

For someone who considers himse...

Accessing the Future: A Skinseller's Contribution

The folks at The Future Fire are crowdfunding an anthology of science fiction focusing on issues that come with disability, and they have asked science fiction writers and readers to participate in a blog hop. Here is my contribution:

1. Tell us about your Work In Progress (WIP) / Current Read (CR) and the world it's set in.

My Current Read is not fiction, but On SF, a collection of Tom Disch’s critical writing. One could, as a speculative exercise, read it in such a way as to answer these ques...

Phantasm Japan

It is gauche to review collections in which one's story appears. So this is not a review. And while I have a vested interest in Phantasm Japan doing well--the more people who buy it, the more who will read my story, and one writes in order to be read--there is no financial conflict of interest to lead me to engage in uncritical boosterism. My contract paid a flat per-word rate, no royalties, so I make no more money if it sells 10,000 copies than if it sells 100. This post is therefore neither...

Shameless Self-Promotion, and Some Props for Others

My story "Bonfires in Anacostia" has been getting some critical attention:At Locus, Lois Tilton writes, "Cynically clever, subtly dark vision of If This Goes On, in which we see the continuing increase in the security state and the inequality of wealth and power. The author has a welcome deft touch."Antonio Urias was not as impressed but calls it "a thought-provoking exercise".And at Apex, Charlotte Ashley sets it alongside pieces by Jo Walton & Jim Gunn and says the story "has done a brillia...

Reading Capital... in the 21st Century (part 10 of 10)

This will be my last post on Piketty, for the simple reason that I need to return the book to the library. It will not be the last word, nor will the last word be mine.

Early on in the book, Piketty makes a strong claim for the essential interdisciplinarity of the social sciences. Yet there is, in the 21st century, a social phenomenon with the potential to upset all his calculations, which receives only token attention. One can refer to this as "coupled natural and human systems," i.e., situat...

Reading Capital... in the 21st Century (part 9 of x)

A passing reference on page 504 to August Bebel and Eduard Bernstein reminds me, apropos of my last post, that I should review the role of taxation in the SPD revisionism debate. Not that century old debates among Germans are or ought to be decisive for socialist strategy today, but any controversy in which Rosa Luxemburg was a participant is sure to clarify one's thoughts.

One Piketty subchapter heading that summarizes the contents well: "Confiscatory Taxation of Excessive Incomes: An America...

Reading Capital... in the 21st Century (part 8 of x)

Though overall I think Piketty intends his book as a counter to the logic of austerity, there are several places where the permeation of that logic into all segments of the mainstream political spectrum, including European social democracy, are made quite evident. One such place is his discussion of pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) pension systems (such as the public pension systems in most of the world's wealthy nations). From his prediction that growth, both economic and demographic, will be slower in...

Reading Capital... in the 21st Century (part 7 of x)

Piketty repeatedly resorts to the sarcastic comment that "Earth must be owned by Mars" when referring to the recurrently negative global balance of payments, a phenomenon which his frequent collaborator Gabriel Zucman has been able to trace to unreported financial assets held in tax havens. Yet as someone who writes science fiction, I find it an evocative image, and cannot help but begin to think of a story in which the colonization of Mars starts out as a tax-avoidance strategy.

Another subch...