Flash Fiction: Infernal Salon 9/21/24: Mina and the Mice

On Saturday, Sept. 21, Arvan Eleron's Twitch channel hosted another Infernal Salon, as part of his two-day Arvathon sub-a-thon to get more subscribers on Twitch and more Patreon pledges. During most of Friday and Saturday, he played Forgotten Realms: Unlimited Adventures video games, but for about an hour and a half on Saturday (around 04:09:40 to 05:35:00 here), he held a writing salon where professional authors (and a musician) created flash fiction (and music) based on prompts taken from the Negocios Infernales game. 

This is a diceless game created by Carlos Hernandez and CSE Cooney that uses a special deck of tarot-like cards to "create characters, establish relationships, and inspire roleplay" -- cards, all with unusual and interesting art, emblazoned with new adages like "Roots enough can bring the castle down" and "And yet, however stumblingly, progress." 

The premise of the TTRPG is that aliens have interrupted the Spanish Inquisition -- people bargain with them for things, becoming "wizards" thereby, as the apparently benign aliens try to guide humans toward kindness and thus toward galactic civilization. However, if you don't want to try that, you can just use the cards as writing prompts: ideas to spark your own stories!

So on Saturday, the game creators led William Alexander, Sol Foster, Steve Toase, Sophia Babai, Danni Brigante, Silvatiicus Riddle, and Dylan Haston through a quick creation session. Each person got a set of three cards drawn from the deck, and then they were allotted 20 minutes to use one card or combine them with each other to inspire them to write poems, short stories, or music. 

After the pros got their sets, the viewers in chat all got a set from which to craft their own creations. I was apparently the only person watching the stream to create something, although we usually have several people contributing.

Once all the prompts were drawn and read out, Hernandez and Cooney vamped for a little while, and then the 20 minutes were up for the first creator, who read their creation aloud as the next creator finished their activity.

Prompt cards for chat (including me):

In Your House, Make Mice Fear You
The Scavengers Win Every War
Piety Is Surrender

I thought first about a housewife battling mice, and considered calling her Minnie, but that was too on-the-nose, so to speak. Then I thought of naming her Mina, and everything else fell into place.

This is what I wrote in 20 minutes. Arvan read it onstream after all the pros were done with their pieces, and it was well received. I thought of some possible revisions later, like pointing out the awful possibilities if Mina hadn't submitted (incarceration at Seward's asylum, or even Lucy's fate), but I think it came out alright, even if obviously derivative:

Mina and the Mice

Mina had been through a secret war, fighting by her husband’s side to defeat a horrible predator who had killed her best friend, who assaulted, and menaced her husband, their allies, Britain, and all of Europe. Now he tried to shelter her from every wind – she, without whom the monster would have escaped to regroup – and denied her equal partnership in his work and even in their marriage. She was reduced to the home front, cooking and cleaning, now the scourge of nothing more than mere mice scavenging for scraps, a far cry even from the rats who had swarmed the monster-hunters in the estate next to the asylum. 

Her heart and mind rebelled at this reduction of her sphere, but every time she tried to step off her pedestal, her husband gently, lovingly, protectively placed her back there. He said she’d been through enough, and wouldn’t have her sullying herself in the business world. When she argued, he looked worried. He wouldn’t say it, but she could see him wondering if she’d been left tainted after all. He brought the learned professor in to consult. He said the scar on her forehead that had marked Mina as the monster’s had vanished with his vanquishing, so she appeared pure and pious once more; however, the professor didn’t say not to worry. He said to watch. 

And so Mina settled in for a long campaign. She must have patience. She would bide her time, and wait for the scraps of information that her husband let fall at night, and build a plan for her eventual freedom. She would remain pure and pious in public, surrendering to her husband’s will. Mina made herself  a meek mouse. Eventually, the watcher’s attention would waver, and then she’d seize her chance. THIS scavenger would win the war. 

Jason Thompson's Dreamland RPG

Summary: Jason Thompson's Dreamland RPG is easy to learn and fun to playtest. You should give it a try if you're interested in fantasy RPGs, dreams vs. the waking world, and storytelling, and if you like the thought of stringing words together quickly into sentences in response to prompts.

Cover art by Jason Thompson

I met artist/writer/game designer Jason Thompson remotely a couple of years ago via the SFFaudio Podcast. I think the only episode we've actually been on together was a discussion of The Cats of Ulthar by H.P. Lovecraft, but I've listened with interest to several other episodes he's been on, and I was really struck by his gorgeous and often very moving cartoon version of HPL's The Doom That Came to Sarnath, that was linked from the podcast notes when I discussed that story (my take: The Sarnath invaders deserved what they got.).

H.P. Lovecraft was undoubtedly a racist, not just as "a man of his time" -- but he had an incredibly rich imagination, inspiring generations of writers, filmmakers and showmakers, artists, and gamers who continue the conversations and, at least more recently, often subvert his problematic themes. 

Many people refer to the Lovecraft mythos, but he is far from the only, or even the first, author to write about cosmic horror. Moreover, Lord Dunsany wrote earlier about the concept of fantasy lands that could be visited via dreams (or drugs). However, Lovecraft's connected stories mapped out a Dreamland that is weirdly approachable, but still wondrous, if sometimes intimidating, and his continuing popularity means that extensions and reinterpretations keep arising from his work. 

The Call of Cthulhu RPG system is originally based on Lovecraft's mythos, of course, although it has progressively updated its ethos and expanded far beyond its inspiration. CoC, now in its 7th edition, has a Dreamlands extension. The Eldritch Horror boardgame has a Dreamlands expansion, and there are probably plenty of other Dreamlands-inspired indie games that I haven't heard about.

Moreover, there are other options if you want to play alternating Dreamer/Waking characters. Girl by Moonlight, an Evil Hat RPG based on the Forged in the Dark engine, is one game that facilitates this; I've seen a really great 11-video actual play campaign done by Speculate!, originally broadcast on Arvan Eleron's Twitch stream and now available on YouTube.

But you can never have too many options. Each new game brings something different to the metaphorical gaming table. 

Thus, I was really excited when I heard that Jason Thompson was working on a Dreamland RPG. As noted above, his artwork is gorgeous, sometimes stark and sometimes lush, but it also shows the artist's deep thinking about Lovecraft's stories, especially those set explicitly in fantasy lands.  I've been wondering what his particular focus would bring to an RPG.

His Dreamland RPG is currently in playtesting and slated for full release in 2025. I've been trying to get in on this playtesting for quite a while, but most of those games had been starting around 8 p.m. Pacific, or 11 p.m. my time, which didn't work for me. However, I finally got to play in a recent afternoon session, and I enjoyed it very much.

The original plan was for Jason to GM this private playtest, but he ended up stepping back and asked one of the Dreamland RPG writers, Aaron V., to run it instead. He put us through his short scenario, Band on the Run, with some elements inspired by the Paul McCartney/Wings song. We used Discord to talk with each other and Roll20 for the virtual tabletop (Steam is another option).

Dreamland is much simpler to pick up than the above-named RPGs. The free Quickstart Guide is 52 pages, but probably about half of those are tables, cartoons, maps, and character sheets. Aaron took me and two other newbie players, Alastríona Órfhlaith and Stuart, through character creation and the basic rules in about 45 minutes (including waiting for tech issues to be resolved), but he said Jason usually gets that down to half an hour.

Some details will almost certainly change before the final release. But for now, players get to choose or roll a Dreamlands type from 25 Roles (occupations that come with different advantages, skills bonuses, and special powers), and to choose whatever Waking Self they want. Each player also chooses or rolls for 3 Memories that their Dream self carries from the Waking world; these Memories can be spent to create Marvels, which can help Dreamers in difficult situations, and help Dreamers advance in levels. However, if all their Memories are spent, their Dream self may detach from their Waking self. 

However, the 300 Word cards provide the main mechanic for playing the game. The GM provides a limited pool of Words that the players can either take into their own "hands" or draw later. When they come up against a challenge, from climbing a wall to negotiating with a vendor, or whatever, they'll decide how many Words to spend as bonuses (1 point per word) to the dice rolls associated with their skills. The player spends those words by creating a little narrative from them that explains how they'll prevail. But if they spend a lot of Words, there's a higher chance that they'll break one of the Dreamland Pillars.

The five Pillars of Dreamland are Passion, Loathing, Mystery, Faraway, and Wonder. Each Word is associated (color-coded) with one of those Pillars (e.g. "heart" for Passion, "hell" for Loathing, "fate" for Mystery, "Yann" [a place name] for Faraway, or "radiant" for Wonder), plus there's a sixth suit of neutral (color-coded gray) words (and using them doesn't risk breaking Pillars). Most Dreamland Roles have an advantage associated with one of the Pillars (for instance, getting double bonuses from that Pillar's Word cards).

That's the majority of what's needful to know for a Dreamland one-shot playtest. There's a Waking phase at the end of each session, which Aaron used to help us wrap things up, but that's mainly important for longer campaigns. You can also acquire Impairments and have to deal with them later. Furthermore, Dreamland mishaps can even kill Waking selves.

But you're probably asking, aside from the mechanics, what was it like to actually play Dreamland? Well, I don't want to give away too many details from Aaron's scenario, but after we created our characters, we entered the game to find our characters running from a scary pursuer. We all passed our skill-and-word-narration challenges to escape, found ourselves wandering through a wilderness, got some advice from an enigmatic stranger doing a questionable job, and found ourselves entering a town. My Dream character was a painter, so in exchange for room and board at an inn, I painted a new sign for the business, with peacocks and elephants. Then our scary pursuer caught up with us. The other players and I resolved the situation by combining our characters' aspects to create a Marvel, so an elephant came to life from the new painting (with a peacock perched on its back) and went after our antagonist. And then we all woke up! We spent a little time narrating what our Waking characters did after the dream, and how it affected their lives. My Waking character was an accountant; she didn't quit her job, but she did start painting every weekend, all the spare time she could take, gaining a new Passion Memory.

Fellow player Alastríona Órfhlaith enjoyed the game so much that she sketched art of the elephant breakout scene and posted it on Bluesky!

I very much enjoyed my adventure in the Dreamland RPG and hope I'll get more chances to play. I think a longer campaign could be very rewarding, with the right companions and Dream Master. I can see huge potential for different styles of Dreamland play, leaning toward humorous, pulpy, noir, horror, etc. Currently, the Roles are slanted toward playing in a mostly agrarian type of fantasy world, but I can imagine making adjustments for an alt-universe or SF dream setting instead.

If you'd like to try playtesting this Dreamland RPG yourself, you can join the Dreamland Discord server, follow on Facebook, or download the free Quickstart guide and other materials, or watch a video of some other people playtesting it, at https://www.dreamrpg.com/upcoming-playtests/ -- enjoy! 

Virtual panelist at Glasgow 2024 WorldCon!

 I'll be a virtual panelist on two hybrid discussions at #Glasgow2024 ! Both are on Saturday, Aug. 10.

"30th Anniversary of Stargate" 17:30 BST, 12:30 EDT
with Eric Choi (moderator), Inge Heyer, and Barry Tilton, who will all be there in person.
"Ancient Egypt with Aliens! It's been 30 years since the Stargate movie launched a franchise on to the world. Our panellists discuss the influence of the film and the franchise and how it may have impacted the wider SFF landscape."

"The Conclusion of the Retro Hugo Era"  19:00 BST, 14:00 EDT
with David E. Hook (moderator), Cora Buhlert, Mark Plummer, and Perianne Lurie, who will all be there in person.
"The Retro Hugo Awards, a tradition where Worldcons retrospectively awarded prizes for years prior to the establishment of the Hugo Awards, have had both avid supporters and vocal critics. The last two Worldcons eligible to grant Retro Hugos opted not to do so, and Glasgow is following suit. Does this signify the demise of the Retro Hugos? And if so, is this necessarily detrimental?"

I have not been greatly impressed by hybrid panels at other conventions -- even without technical difficulties, the virtual panelists tend to get short shrift. I am hoping the Glasgow organizers can make it work better than I've experienced before.

This year, Glasgow's programming lists 34 online-only events and 301 total events that have online components (online only, hybrid panels, or just events that will be streamed, with Discord discussion channels).The price for an online membership is less than in-person membership, but still significantly greater than a mere supporting membership (the level required for voting for Hugo Awards, and getting the Hugo Voters packet). I know that a lot of people have been working very hard to make this con a success, and I hope that after it's over, the virtual members will feel that they got their money's worth.
To find out more, visit https://glasgow2024.org/ 

Anyway, it's an honor to be selected for two panels. I know of at least one Hugo finalist who was only selected for two panels, and I'm not even nominated for any group awards this year.

UPDATE 8/19/2024:
I was very pleased with how both my events went. It was slightly irritating that I couldn't see the other Stargate panelists, but after a little struggling with technology, I could hear them, and they could both see and hear me. The tech went fine for the Retros panel.
More importantly, the moderators for both events were mindful of my presence, including me in question rounds and discussions. I've certainly seen hybrid panels in the past where the remote participant was treated as a mere afterthought.
Also, as a frequent Twitch stream guest, I was able to keep an eye on the Discord chat for each event while being a panelist, occasionally commenting in those channel discussions. One person even said how thrilled they were that a panelist was participating in the chat, so I gather that was unfortunately rare.

UPDATE 9/23/24:
Dave Hook, who was on several panels with me at ChiCon 2022 and who chaired "The Conclusion of the Retro Hugo Era" panel this year, wrote up the panel here. As he stated, there were some good arguments for and against the Retros, but the day after the panel, the WorldCon Business meeting voted to end the Retro Hugos, with Seattle's biz meeting in 2025 expected to ratify that decision. Dave has written to Seattle WorldCon people to suggest that they could still run Retro Hugos in 2025, before the ratification; alternatively, he suggested that they could run a Retro track of panels (without awards), like ChiCon did.
I look forward to hearing what comes of these suggestions.

Audio/Video/Gaming Roundup, 2024 Part 2

Scroll down this post for the most recent updates (latest is 9/14). For roundups of the first half of 2024 and my 2023 activities in podcasting, gaming, videos, etc., please see here, here and here. Activities from before then are listed further back in my blog.

AUDIO:
The Stargate SG-Fun podcast I do with David Schaub and Andrew Pontious has cleared its backlog with the publication on July 21 of our 15th episode. That means I have to watch 4 S3 episodes before we record again on Saturday!
https://sgfun.space/threading-the-needle-with-a-hammer/

AUDIO/VIDEO:

The Skiffy and Fanty Mining the Genre Asteroid discussion between me and Paul Weimer of Suzy McKee Charnas' Walk to the End of the World (https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2136600063) was released as Skiffy and Fanty #776:
https://ia600401.us.archive.org/34/items/sand-f-776-charnas/SandF_776_Charnas.mp3
Also, here's the YouTube video, which came out in June:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xBPZ7zU9dU

June 21: streamed/recorded Skiffy and Fanty Mining the Genre Asteroid: Diadem from the Stars
June 28: streamed/recorded Skiffy and Fanty Torture Cinema: From Hell It Came
July 26 streamed/recorded Skiffy and Fanty Torture Cinema discussion on Demolition Man

GAMING:
June 29: Ninefox Gambit one-shot, run by Andrew Pontious!
July 4: Private Delta Green: Last Things Last
July 10: Private RPG: The Cawdor Complex (stranded time-travelers make dinosaurs into partners)
July 28: Private Call of Cthulhu game: Swamp Song, Part 1. This is the first time I ever built a character on Foundry VTT. Part 2 is on Aug. 4. UPDATE: My character, Eulalia, survived and didn't even lose a lot of sanity!

UPDATE 8/19/24:
AUDIO:
August 4: Skiffy and Fanty 784. Demolition Man (1993) — Torture Cinema #144, with Shaun Duke, Julia Rios, and me. https://skiffyandfanty.com/podcasts/784demolitionman/

This Saturday, Aug. 17, I recorded another Stargate SG-Fun podcast, discussing some more SG-1 S3 episodes, so that should be out in a week or so. https://sgfun.space/

GAMING: August 16: Private Call of Cthulhu game, part 1 of 3, with keeper Morpheus. I'm playing Carson Webber III, a self-made millionaire, a Patreon of the Debunker Bunker, which is sort of like Mythbusters. They've created a mysterious machine and invited me and a select few others to witness its activation.

UPDATE 9/3/24:
GAMING: Aug. 23: Finished the Call of Cthulhu Inversion game. This 3-session adventure went on a bit long for me; there were six players so it took forever to go through people's actions, round by round. Interesting stuff happened, but stretched over too much time. 

AUDIO/VIDEO: On Friday, Aug. 30, I streamed on Skiffy and Fanty for what will be Torture Cinema #145, discussing Space Camp (1986). There will be a podcast and a YouTube video. Spoiler: I haaaated Kate Capshaw's character, Andie.

On Saturday, Aug. 31, I participated in a discussion about H.G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau. Very wide-ranging, interesting and cordial! On The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord.

UPCOMING: I'll be playing a Call of Cthulhu one-shot tonight, set in the 1920s at Mammoth Cave, Ky. My pregen is a Dilettante archetype. On Thursday afternoon (9/5), I'll finally get to play Jason Thompson's Dreamlands RPG, on his Discord channel. And on Friday (9/6), I'll be on Shaun Duke's channel, streaming and recording about the 2024 Hugo awards, finalists and longlist.

UPDATE 9/23/24:
I enjoyed the Dreamlands game, which ended up being postponed to 9/12.
The Hugo Awards discussion was also postponed, and I'll post a link here once the YouTube and podcast are up.
Skiffy and Fanty posted the Mining the Genre Asteroid episode where Shaun Duke, Paul Weimer and I discuss Jo Clayton's Diadem from the Stars. My take: This had some interesting stuff, but the series got much better later. The show is available on YouTube and as a podcast.

Audio Transcripts

After I moved home in 2008 to live with my Daddy, I did a lot of odd jobs and freelance work before I found full-time journalism work again. One of the types of work I did was transcriptions of audio files. Some of this was for my church, transcribing interviews of longtime church members for a 100th Anniversary book. Some of it was for agencies. 

Now, once again freelancing while looking for full-time work, I have also been volunteering a fair amount of time for The Skiffy and Fanty Show. I've been doing more podcasts and writing more reviews. Recently, I've also been doing transcripts for the show, starting with podcast Episode No. 762, Science Fiction Empires. 

I find this pretty enjoyable. Back then, it was all me listening and typing, sometimes at half speed, sometimes at full speed but doing a lot of pausing and rewinding. I tried doing some transcripts as a volunteer for the 2019 WorldCon Fringe Festival, but trying to transcribe panels was overwhelming, with so many people talking, sometimes cutting each other off and talking over each other, so I had to renege on my offer, sadly. (Google docs offered free transcriptions at the time, but it was horrendously bad.) 

These days, all I'm doing is downloading the MP3, uploading it into MS Word, and then proof-listening while I proofread the document. I'm not trying to fix all the grammar mistakes and run-on sentences, etc., just mainly getting everyone's names right and looking out for egregious errors -- for instance, today I changed Word's misheard "our incest" to "orange zest." Sometimes getting names or titles right does take quite a while; I once spent about 10 minutes figuring out that a garbled sentence referred to a character name, and then hunting for a review that named characters in that book, so I could get it right. But unless it's a Torture Cinema or something where people are talking over each other, I can usually proof the transcriptions at about twice speed, so it's not too time-consuming.

Sometimes I can tackle transcripts right away, but sometimes it takes me up to a week to get around to transcribing something. But a lot of people don't listen right away, either, so I figure that's OK. Once I'm finished, I upload the transcript to a folder, and Shaun amends the episode Shownotes to add my transcript.

Audio Editing: Pro work for Arvan Eleron

 The former podcast editor for Arvan Eleron has moved on to other, full-time work. I've taken that over, turning video episodes of Arvan Eleron's Twitch RPGs into podcasts, after having been responsible for making shownotes and timestamps from his videos for quite a while. Editing audio episodes for pay is new, although I've had a fair amount of experience editing audio for Skiffy and Fanty, Stargate SG-Fun and the Supergirl Supercast. My first podcast for Arvan, Shire Adventures - Episode 28, went live on his website on Monday, April 22, and I'll be putting those episodes out weekly from now on. Eventually, certainly by the end of Shire Adventures if not before, I'll start turning his Eberron campaign into podcasts.

Review: Death in the Spires, by KJ Charles

I've loved KJ Charles since I stumbled across her historical fiction a few years ago, starting with Band Sinister, a sort of frothy gender-flipped combination of Georgette Heyer's Venetia and Sylvester, progressing to the wonderful caper/crime/romance Any Old Diamonds, reveling in the supernatural adventure/romances of This Spectred Isle and the Magpie Lord trilogy, and various other fun romps that combine crime/suspense/adventure and romance. Charles' latest book, Death in the Spires (being released April 11), is not a romantic romp like many of her others, but it is a gripping, immersive, deeply engaging and well told mystery.

It opens in 1905 with clerk Jeremy Kite being shown an anonymous letter that his employer had received, accusing him of killing Toby Feynsham. Yet again he has lost a job due to a scandalous unsolved mystery from 10 years ago, when he was one of "The Seven Wonders," a close circle of shining students at Oxford. After Toby, the leader of the group, had been found murdered, Jeremy had been unable to concentrate on exams and dropped out into obscurity. Now, he reaches out to the others to find out if they've been plagued with similar accusations, and finally decides to find out who ruined his life by killing Toby.    

I've read plenty of books set at Oxford (the Spires of the title) between the World Wars. This is a bit earlier than that, but the only major change I saw was that in 1895, women weren't yet awarded degrees, although they were allowed to study there. So there only a couple of women were members the charmed circle. One of the students was Black. Jeremy himself was lame in one leg and a scholarship student from a poor background to boot (and secretly homosexual). Toby, however, had drawn all these apparent misfits into his circle, and for a while they brought out the best in each other.

A decade after Toby's death, some of the others are doing just fine, at least on the surface, but others have fallen nearly as far as Jeremy. However, they have mostly moved on and want him to drop the matter. Despite warnings, pressure, and eventual attacks, Jeremy perseveres in his investigation, traveling across the country to question his former friends and others who might know anything, and returning to Oxford to dig for clues in the past. Secrets are revealed, old wounds are revived, and old relationships are renewed, for good or ill.

Death in the Spires was a compelling page-turner; I raced through it in one night. The protagonist is highly sympathetic and relatable, and the other characters in the group are sharply drawn. The writing is evocative, and the revelations throughout the book and at the end were surprises but felt natural after all. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in historical mysteries, especially anglophiles.

Content warnings: Death, violence of various forms, a few short sex scenes, and negatively portrayed sexual and racial discrimination and ableism.

Comps: Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers

Disclaimers: I received a free eARC of this book via NetGalley.

Review: Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery

I ran across Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery, story by Mat Johnson, art by Warren Pleece, and letters by Clem Robins, in the graphic novels section of my local library. It's fiction, but it's based on the true story of Walter White, the former head of the NAACP, who was, as Johnson puts it, "an African-American even paler than I was." White went undercover passing as a white man in the Deep South in the early 1900s to investigate lynchings, which was, of course, incredibly dangerous.

Incognegro's protagonist is Zane Pinchback, who works for the New Holland Herald of New York, reporting undercover on lynchings in the 1930s. Having narrowly survived his last assignment, he wants to switch to local Harlem coverage, but his editor pulls him back one more time by telling Pinchback that his brother back in Mississippi has been charged with murdering a white woman, his partner in distilling illegal moonshine; meanwhile, a sheriff's deputy has gone missing. Zane will save his brother Alonzo if he can, and cover the expected lynching if he can't. 

This effort becomes more complicated when his best friend turns up on the train. Carl wants to tag along and learn how to become an incognito black reporter himself, but he's overestimated his acting ability, and gets into his own trouble. Also, it turns out that missing deputy was keeping a major secret, too, which plays a major part in how things turn out.

I admire the characterization and plotting here; Johnson tells a great story, interspersed with ironic humor that highlights the horrors of dehumanization. He's aided in this by Pleece's striking black-and-white artwork; its bold expressiveness really brings people, including their conversations, arguments and actions, to life. Additionally, the juxtaposition of cheerful camaraderie in some of the crowd scenes with the crime that they're there to perpetrate is quite chilling.

The version of Incognegro that the library had was a 10th anniversary edition, published in 2018. An afterword by Johnson written for this edition says that when he first wrote it, he thought of it as a story of America's past -- not that racism was gone, but that its organized, overt expression had largely been defeated. But now, "the racial dynamic of the early 20th century seems to be, in some ways, repeating itself. ... Sadly, the era of racial terrorism covered in Incognegro is suddenly relevant again." 

I couldn't agree more. I'm from the South myself, and the facts that acted as a springboard for Incognegro weren't any surprise to me; however, seeing how they played out here in fiction acts as a visceral reminder of how normal and accepted vicious racism has been in this country's past, and if we don't work hard to stop its current recurrence and spread, may become so again in the not too distant future.

Content warnings: Lynchings and other violent deaths, drawings of dead bodies, casual and vicious racism, racist language.

Disclaimers: None

A Vanilla Villain's Variant Villanelle

 “After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.”

– Dave McCarty’s much-repeated statement on the 2023 Hugo Awards.

 

 

A Vanilla Villain's Variant Villanelle

It’s wrong to allege we were mere censors’ tools;
If you knew all the facts, you’d condone our behavior.
I grok Chinese fans, and was their White Savior.
I maintain the Committee just followed the rules.

We guarded our fellows by serving as footstools!
The Committee’s allowed to use our discretion,
so we bowed to preempt any Chinese repression.
It’s wrong to allege we were mere censors’ tools.

To dodge any offense, we looked hard for cesspools.
So what, if we glitched on some searchable facts?
Our Ineligible rulings were protective acts;
I maintain the Committee just followed the rules.

I knew we’d be hearing some protesting mewls,
so I massaged data while dragging things out,
and blamed lots of factors for the info-drought.
It’s wrong to allege we were mere censors’ tools.

Those who’ve assailed us are ignorant fools;
My Facebook inquirers, I rightly rejected,
except for Neil Gaiman; the ONLY affected.
I maintain the Committee just followed the rules.

So sorry I / we had to bury some jewels.
I’d have liked to give Weimer some facetime to vent,
But I’d have said that we ruled just the way that we meant.
It’s wrong to allege we were mere censors’ tools.
I maintain the Committee just followed the rules.

 

(I thought the repetitive nature of a villanelle was a perfect match for McCarty's self-referential defensive statements. Yes, I know a true villanelle should have been five tercets followed by a quadrain, not five quadrains followed by a quintain. But I needed a bit more space, and I am proud of some of these rhymes.)

 

UPDATE same day: Edited to fix McCarty's name.

Audio/Video/Gaming Roundup, 2024

Scroll down this post for the latest updates. For roundups of my 2023 activities in podcasting, gaming, videos, etc., please see here and here. Activities from before then are listed further back in my blog.

AUDIO: The SFFaudio Podcast #767 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: The Charwoman’s Shadow by Lord Dunsany, published Jan. 1, 2024. I discussed the novel with Scott Danielson and host Jesse Willis. I really enjoyed this old-fashioned fairy tale set in Spain. The audiobook is 7 hours, 40 minutes, and our discussion follows, bringing the podcast up to a total of 9:37:39. I haven't had a chance to review our discussion yet, but I certainly enjoyed exchanging thoughts about the book.
https://www.sffaudio.com/the-sffaudio-podcast-767-audiobook-readalong-the-charwomans-shadow-by-lord-dunsany/

UPDATE 2/7/24:

GAMING: On Wednesday, Jan. 17, I played a Call of Cthulhu one-shot on the Shadows of Nox Discord channel (video and audio). I thought it was being taped, but it hasn't been released as of 2/7/24.
On Saturday, Jan. 20, I played another session of the Stargate RPG, with Andrew Pontious as the DM. As always, I had a lot of fun. It was private, as usual, so it wasn't recorded. I STILL NEED TO EDIT OUR FIRST SESSION, THOUGH.
UPCOMING: I have a private Star Trek Adventures game set for Sat., Feb. 10, and another Stargate game set for Sat., Feb. 17.

CONVENTIONS: I went to Capricon in Chicago Feb. 1-4 and came back Feb. 5. I played my first game of Traveller with the Fan GOH, Victor Raymond, and attended a lot of panels. Very pleasant!

UPDATE 2/9/24:

VIDEO/AUDIO: I was on The Skiffy and Fanty Show's Looking Back, Looking Forward discussion last Friday, where Shaun Duke, Paul Weimer, Brandon O'Brien, Daniel Haeusser and I discussed Books, Media and Other things that we'd enjoyed in 2023 and that we are anticipating in 2024. Currently the VOD is on twitch.tv/alphabetstreams (Shaun Duke's Channel), but eventually this will be edited into a podcast.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2058256572
(Update: This was posted on the Skiffy and Fanty podcast feed on Feb. 17 at
https://skiffyandfanty.com/podcasts/759lookingbackmovingforward/
as a and YouTube video on Feb. 18 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibtWceJvwq8 .)

UPDATE 2/25/24:

GAMING: I played three role-playing games in February: Star Trek Adventures on Sat., Feb. 10, Stargate (by Wyvern) on Sat., Feb. 17, and Cthulhu Invictus on Sat., Feb. 24. All three were over Discord speech/video, and Stargate and CI also used Roll20. Both Paul Weimer and Andrew Pontious are very good gamemasters who do a lot of preparation but roll with it when players strike off in unexpected directions. Zoekitten (who offered the CI one-shot via The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord) is also fun to play under; she used the scenario Akhenaten Unveiled, where we were servants of the old gods taking action against the heretic monotheistic pharaoh.

I'll be playing several more private games during A Weekend with Good Friends, a free online gaming convention organized by The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord channel, this weekend. I'll be playing a science fiction game in the Bulldogs system, a villagers vs. monsters (or aliens) game in the Mutant Crawl Classics system, and a Nahuatl (Aztecs) vs. conquistadors game (we're the doomed Nahuatl) in the Unknown Armies system. And who knows, I may also end up in a pickup game or two!

VIDEO/AUDIO:

Paul Weimer used to do a regular column for Skiffy and Fanty, called "Mining the Genre Asteroid", back before the blog went on hiatus. Now it's been reborn as a discussion and podcast, intended for every month or two. It's being first broadcast live on Shaun Duke's Twitch stream, then converted into podcasts and YouTube videos. 

The first "Mining the Genre Asteroid" revival episode, on Feb. 16, had Paul, Shaun and me discussing The Demon Breed (1968) by James H. Schmitz, which featured a female scientist using her planet's ecological expertise to fight alien invaders. Rarely for the time, especially for male writers, Schmitz often wrote using tough, competent female protagonists, usually without even a male love interest. We had a good time talking about this one! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2064916424
The podcast https://skiffyandfanty.com/podcasts/760demonbreed/
and YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvOZQJugbZ4
were both released on Feb. 22.

AUDIO: I'm in The SFFaudio Podcast #774 – READALONG: Farnham’s Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein, released Feb. 17, with host Jesse, and Paul Weimer, Maissa Bessada, and Jonathan Weichsel. The discussion is almost 3 hours long, and does not include the audiobook. I definitely recommend skipping the audiobook, unless you're a serious genre historian, because there are a lot of vile ideas in this post-apocalyptic exploration. Maybe read Steven Barnes' Lion's Blood instead, if you want to read about an America where Blacks rule over whites (because the Plague killed off 90% of Europe in the Middle Ages). But you may still be interested in our discussion, because we had a LOT to say about this book.
https://www.sffaudio.com/the-sffaudio-podcast-774-readalong-farnhams-freehold-by-robert-a-heinlein/

UPDATE 3/5/24: 

GAMING: I was offered a slot in a Moonlight on Roseville Beach game on The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord's A Weekend with Good Friends free online role-playing games convention, on Thursday, Feb. 29, but I had to back out with an hour's notice because one of my freelance science editing projects ran long. However, someone else snapped up the slot within 5 minutes of its availability being posted, so I didn't feel too bad. I've played this game before, and it's fun with a willing crew, and easy to pick up.

As the convention continued, I played 3 RPGs on Saturday, March 2, and every one of them had a no-show. Now, THAT is rude! But, whatever the GMs may have had to do on their ends to adjust threats/balances, things appeared to go smoothly from the players' viewpoints, and we had fun anyway.  I won't put other players' names here, in case they expected privacy (games were not permitted to be recorded or streamed).

Slot 9, 10-2 Saturday, March 2: Diverted Through a Nebula, for Bulldogs (FATE system), run by River, with three other players and me (and a no-show). It was a science fiction game, where we were exploring a derelict sending out a distress signal, but it wasn't abandoned after all. I hadn't played Fate before, but I had watched and listened to several Fate-based Actual Plays, and the GM was pretty good at talking us through our options. I played a medic ejected from a military service for triaging people and saving supplies TOO efficiently, and losing too many patients. My goal was to find something worth writing a paper about so someone would buy my contract back into civilization from the fringes. I enjoyed my RP, and so did the GM (who found something nice to say about everyone). Good game!

Slot 10, 3-7 Saturday: Temple of the Sk'wik for Mutant Crawl Classics, run by Blythy, with two other players and me (and a no-show). It started out with me, playing a sentient plant, with a human and a rat-mutant with a gun, all defending our village from gun-wielding wormy invaders, but took several unexpected technological turns. Not much RP, but a ton of fun action!

Slot 11, 7:30-11:39 Saturday: A Bed of Roses for Unknown Armies, run by mellonbread, with two other players and me (and a no-show). This was set during the fall of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), and we were struggling against the conquistadors. Again, I hadn't played Unknown Armies, or watched/seen it, but our GM talked us through it, and I had a fantastic time once I got the hang of it. I was extremely satisfied with my glorious Flowery Death that saved my son to fight another day! The GM has a wonderful write-up of the one-shot here:
https://bellenmred.blogspot.com/2024/03/unknown-armies-bed-of-roses-playtest-two.html

UPDATE 3/22/24:
GAMING: I played another really fun game of Star Trek Adventures on March 9. What had been planned as mainly a medical research/rescue mission turned out to have a lot of political angles, at least in the mind of my acting captain. We found a cure for the plague, but then various territorial/warlord wars heated up on that planet, and now numerous people are asking our ship for asylum.

On March 16, I played "Trailer Park Shark Attack" on the Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord. It was a lot of silly fun.  I forget the system, but it was pretty simple to pick up. The venue was Owlbear Rodeo, which only requires the GM to have an account. 

VIDEO/AUDIO:
On Friday, March 1, I streamed on Shaun Duke's alphabetstreams Twitch stream with him and Paul Weimer, discussing Science Fiction Empires. That discussion was released as a podcast on March 10 (https://skiffyandfanty.com/podcasts/762sfempires/)and on YouTube on March 11 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnZqbxVymZQ).

AUDIO:
I was on The SFFaudio Podcast #778 – READALONG: Houston, Houston, Do You Read? by James Tiptree, Jr., with host Jesse and Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, Will Emmons, and Jonathan Weichsel, released March 18. It's a grim but extremely well written novella from 1976, about a group of astronauts who return to Earth and find out that all the men there had been wiped out by plague long ago. Our discussion was very lively. 

UPDATE 3/30/24
GAMING/VIDEO/AUDIO: On March 26, I played "Cats of Catthulhu II: The Wraith of Chan" on Shaun Duke's Twitch stream (https://www.twitch.tv/alphabetstreams). Cats of Catthulhu is a very light-hearted, light-on-rules role-playing game, unaffiliated with Call of Cthulhu or any other cosmic horror game as far as I know. But there IS weird/eldritch horror, as seen, reacted to, and affected by cats. Part I of this game was played privately on Discord a few months ago. In Part II, my character, the adorable Abyssinian Tora-Chan, had, unknown to themself, acquired an evil twin named Tora-Khan. Congrats to Paul for successfully Catherding us to a conclusion in less than 2.5 hours!
Currently, the game is on Twitch, but I'm hoping that it will eventually be posted to Shaun's YouTube channel.
In case it doesn't, I made some clips:
https://clips.twitch.tv/FaintVastBillTBCheesePull-oDWdWd1xJD5fLw9U (Tora-Khan-I-Do-The-Eating)
https://clips.twitch.tv/UnsightlyToughOysterWoofer-LsK_ZsjAdUigb2-C (CalamityButtonsAndMoonChildArgue)
https://clips.twitch.tv/FurryCrypticWombatVoteNay-8DWJ5AmRm0Lx85nn (WeShouldTakeTheVesselWithUs)
https://clips.twitch.tv/SuccessfulArtisticPeanutNerfRedBlaster-g34GPEXDoa4kuYeV (Tora-ChanVsMoonChild)
https://clips.twitch.tv/HelplessGoodAnteaterTwitchRaid-WWEulJMClIKHogE-  (MoonChildEatstheSacredBean)
https://clips.twitch.tv/TardyDependableMeerkatFrankerZ-Q_QtSaP85fHdSWix (DrownTheBookAndPissOnTheGrave)

VIDEO/AUDIO:
On March 29, I was on the Skiffy and Fanty Show's Torture Cinema episode discussing Meteor (1979), starring Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Martin Landau, and a bunch of other people. It was honestly better than anyone expected, although the pacing was bad. Shaun Duke hosted the discussion on his alphabetstreams Twitch channel, and it should eventually be added on YouTube and as a podcast.
Meanwhile, here's a clip that ConfigurationQueen made of Shaun and me singing the "Meteor" theme that CQ wrote during the show: https://www.twitch.tv/alphabetstreams/clip/FlaccidSmokyMuleOptimizePrime-FU4vOZYW1o9uD7l1?filter=clips&range=all&sort=time
Unfortunately, our singing was out of sync due to the lag, but you'll get the idea.
(UPDATE 4/15/24: Here's the podcast: https://skiffyandfanty.com/podcasts/766meteor/
and here's the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siz-ZLLVZfs )

AUDIO: I was on the Hugos There podcast released on March 27 that was a tribute episode to Vernor Vinge, who died March 20. Seth Heasley hosted, as always, and the other guests were Rich Horton, Olav Rokne, and Russ Newcomer. https://hugospodcast.com/podcast/vernor-vinge-tribute-episode/

On March 29, Andrew Pontious, David Schaub and I released an episode of Stargate SG-Fun that we had recorded in 2021 and finally got around to editing. This one, "Horse and Serpent Guards," was a deep dive into two episodes from Season 2, "1969" and "Out of Mind." Also, David attached pictures of Vancouver, where the show was filmed, from "1969" and the real 2021.
https://sgfun.space/horse-and-serpent-guards/ 

GAMING: I played a prompts-based science fiction game on the Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord server on March 30. It was a playtest for Foretold: From Earth, which should be available on itch.io next month. It doesn't use dice or character sheets; it's more like a one-shot that is a Session Zero where each player reacts to a prompt drawn randomly from a list (that's the only mechanic), and then everyone else yes-ands their ideas, expanding from what they've said to extend the worldbuilding. I enjoyed it quite a lot, but it needs to be played with a group of thoughtful, creative people, or it could end in stagnation or quarreling.

UPDATE 4/23/24:
GAMING: I played Call of Cthulhu: Poetry Night, a one-shot RPG, on Thursday, April 18, on the Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord. I played an arts-focused Twitch streamer who had permission for the first time to stream a poetry night from the Lakeside Coffee House, a tavern in Colorado. Unfortunately, someone chose to recite something from a forbidden tome. Most of the four characters made it back, only to find the world had changed. Lots of fun role-playing here. The keeper was Joseph.

I also played the Stargate RPG on Saturday, April 20. Andrew Pontious had set up a really fun two-part "season finale" for our team of five players, following the premise that each session of play represented a TV episode. As usual, this was over Discord with audio and video. Everyone got something to do that pulled on our strengths -- for instance, my Aturen character Jileria pulled apart Dr. Anderson's glasses to turn them into lockpicks so we could escape from a Goa'uld holding platform, but that's OK because Dr. A is a secret Tok'ra who doesn't really need glasses and just wears them for show.

AUDIO: About six months ago, I participated in The SFFaudio Podcast #783 – READALONG: Ill Met In Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber with host Jesse Willis and guests Paul Weimer, Scott Danielson, and Jonathan Weichsel. It's an extremely well-crafted urban fantasy novella from 1970. However, some aspects of the characters and plot annoyed me, so soon after that, I reread S.M. Stirling & Shirley Meier’s novel, Saber & Shadow (1992). I compared and contrasted the two works for Skiffy and Fanty in "BOOK REVIEWS: ILL MET AND WELL MET" on Oct. 30, 2023. Now, on April 22, the podcast has finally been released. I haven't had a chance to re-listen to the discussion yet, so I can't guarantee that it won't have any annoying or stupid parts itself, but I do remember enjoying the discussion.

UPDATE 5/7/2024:
GAMING: On April 24, I played "CoC Pulp Cthulhu: Waiting for the Hurricane" on TGFoJE Discord, set in Key West in 1935. It was fun, but it was a private game, so there's no link. I have a couple more private games coming up this Wednesday and Friday, should be fun! In PLAYTEST - Pulp Cthulhu: A Night at The Monolith, I'm playing a parapsychologist in 1935, and in Deep Freeze (Pulp Cthulhu), I'm playing an "egghead professor" in Alaska in 1936.

STREAMING: On May 3, Paul Weimer and I discussed Suzy McKee Charnas' Walk to the End of the World on Shaun Duke's Twitch channel for the Skiffy and Fanty Show. I had remembered it as basically a feminist rant from 1974, and it's certainly angry, but there's also a lot of interesting worldbuilding and really good writing craft. Here's the Twitch link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2136600063
Eventually there will be a podcast, too. UPDATE 7/31 I forgot to post this when it came out, but here's a direct link to the podcast, Skiffy and Fanty #776:
https://ia600401.us.archive.org/34/items/sand-f-776-charnas/SandF_776_Charnas.mp3
Also, here's the YouTube video, which came out in June: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xBPZ7zU9dU

AUDIO: The SFFaudio Podcast #784 – AUDIOBOOK/READALONG: Skull-Face by Robert E. Howard. The podcast starts with the book being read by Connor Kaye (4 hours, 5 minutes), then has a discussion with Connor, host Jesse Willis, Alex, Jonathan Weichsel, and me. 
https://www.sffaudio.com/the-sffaudio-podcast-784-audiobook-readalong-skull-face-by-robert-e-howard/

UPDATE 5/11/24:
GAMING: I played 2 pickup one-shot RPGs this week and one in a campaign. Wednesday afternoon was "PLAYTEST - Pulp Cthulhu: A Night at The Monolith" on TGFoJE Discord, run by Zander, set in the 1930s. The setup was that a hotelier in the Appalachians had discovered a mummy and called in a bunch of experts to examine it. My pregenerated character was a parapsychologist. The game was limited in scope but interested; my biggest challenge was that with just voice and nothing to look at except occasional rolls in the text chat, pure theater of the mind, my attention kept wandering anyway.

Friday afternoon I played "Deep Freeze (Pulp Cthulhu)" on TGFoJE, run by Morpheus, also set in the 1930s but in Alaska. This one had a lot more elements going on, starting out with a car chase across the ice, pursuing Russian mobsters, then a boxing match, then in-town investigation, then a final confrontation at a secret base/temple. It ended up running an hour past the stated end time, although the Keeper said he'd already cut some stuff to shorten it to a one-shot. However, I had a lot of fun. Everyone was really engaged in it. My pregen character had an Irish background, so I put on an accent and did things like praying to St. Christopher, patron of travelers. It wasn't a *good* accent, but the other players appreciated the effort. This one also was voice with no video, but we also used the Roll20 virtual RPG environment. There weren't any maps, but there were illustrated character tokens and some beautiful landscapes/maps (and a chase counter for the first part). It just helped the immersion a lot.

Today I played Star Trek Adventures for the first time since March. This is an ongoing (sporadic) campaign with three other players, some of whom prefer to remain private, but they are really good gamers. This comprises creativity and ingenuity, LISTENING to the GM and each other (other characters' actions and goals), yes-anding them, passing the ball, and remaining engaged.
Today the GM originally intended a quick trip to the political center of the cluster and then on to the next mission, but we went off the rails pretty quickly. My character, Brevet Capt. t'Hrienteh (a Romulan, secretly a Rihannsu from Diane Duane's The Romulan Way alternate universe), held an officers' meeting for evaluations and assessments following our medical mission of mercy that ended up sparking war on the ailing planet. It became clear that NPC First Officer Gordon, who was transferred here at the same time I got my brevet promotion, had been foot-dragging and doing the minimum. This is affecting morale, including that of my new NPC XO, Faust. At the PC Ship's Counselor's recommendation, I ran training exercises, partly to give the First Officer opportunities to either shape up or screw up enough for me to act against him. Meanwhile, the PC Medical Officer, with whom I had a fair amount of friction during the medical mission, has been hovering on the brink of insubordination, but the Counselor appears to be drawing him into a plot against the FO, which helps me. Since the Counselor appeared to be gunning for ME at the beginning of this campaign, this is a little bit of a surprise, but he said to Dr. Siq'Suq that I've been doing a good job as a captain. None of this is helping me to get ready for the diplomacy on Meetpoint Station, though!

UPDATE 6/3/24
AUDIO: I forgot to mention before that on April 28, we at Stargate SG-Fun released Episode 14, "You Don't Have to Choose Your Favorite Child." In this, we ended our Season 2 discussions of SG-1 with an overview, picking our favorite and least-favorite episodes.
https://sgfun.space/you-dont-have-to-choose-your-favorite-child/

GAMING: On Friday, May 31, I wrapped up a two-part Pulp Cthulhu, "The Uncanny! Curse of Sekhmet" that started with my character and others confronting a bank robber on a plane in Italy, continued with rescuing a professor from a band of thugs, and ended with a scenario in Egypt reminiscent of the first Indiana Jones movie. This was GMed by Morpheus, on The Good Friends of Jackson Elias Discord and Roll20, and as usual, I enjoyed the art that came with this adventure, which helped with immersion. Also helping with the immersion were the other characters, who threw themselves into the RP, as I did.

 

 

WorldCon trying a consultative online vote

Scrolling Mastodon on Dec. 19, I saw a post from Nicholas Whyte about the 2024 Glasgow WorldCon planning a consultative (nonbinding) online vote about a proposed change to the Hugo Awards, which would add two categories.  

I was pretty excited about this, and posted threads about it on both Mastodon and Bluesky. I got a few favorites on Mastodon and a lot of favorites and boosts (and a few new followers) on Bluesky. I'll recap here:

This is pretty exciting and potentially important for SFFH fans! Glasgow Worldcon is holding a consultative ONLINE vote between the close of award voting and the start of the convention, about a proposal to create two more Hugo Award Categories. But this will also test online Hugo voting in general.

The onsite-only voting process does require a demonstration of true commitment from voters (I can attest to this, having attended several lengthy Business Meetings). But as I noted, it's far from inclusive.
Per @nwhyte 's press release for Glasgow2024 Worldcon: "In 2016, the idea of an approval vote for Hugo finalists, as a third round in the nomination process, was passed at the Business Meeting but not ratified in 2017. We therefore propose to test the operation of a consultative vote..."

So while this consultative online vote will be nonbinding for this particular Hugo Awards resolution, it could help to eventually lead to WSFS members voting online as a *part* of a future three-step ratifications process (with the other two steps presumably being on-site votes at successive cons).

I'm excited by this idea, which would help make the World Science Fiction Society amendment-ratification process more inclusive every time, instead of swinging between the populations of whoever can make it to the onsite, multi-day WSFS Business Meetings at two successive Worldcons for each change.

I think trying to move to online-only voting (with no onsite steps) would be far too drastic a change to the WSFS amendment process for now. But adding an online voting component absolutely seems appropriate to me. Participation in this nonbinding vote will help bring that future possibility closer.

On a personal note, I'll certainly be participating in this vote. I'd been planning to attend the Glasgow Worldcon this summer, and participate in the business meetings, until I found out that neither masks nor vaccinations will be required. Now I'm torn, but at least my opinion will be seen online.

For the record, I'll be voting against the proposed change to the Hugo Awards, which would add two more categories to an already long list of awards. But I think adding an online component to the voting process is a great idea.

Duolingo 2023 Year in Review

 Duolingo sent me its 2023 Year in Review assessment (despite there being nearly a month left of 2023, grrr). I'm a top 1% Spanish learner! My streak of days in a row doing language exercises now stands at 576. 

This year, I focused on Spanish. In 2022, I had started off dabbling in Latin and German, then switched solely to Spanish after being laid off, partly in hopes of making myself more marketable. That hasn't produced any professional results yet, but I'm enjoying the process and keeping my brain sharp with this course.

The chart says 3,838 words learned, but that's a bit ambiguous. First of all, it's total words learned, not just Spanish; second, I think Duolingo means individual words, not lexemes (e.g. "be" would be a lexeme that includes am, are, is, was, were, etc.). So female and male versions of adjectives would each count, as well as each variant (person and tense) in a conjugation. Spanish also has declensions in pronouns, for subject vs. object vs. possessive. So what I really have learned so far in Spanish is probably between 2,500 and 3,000 word variants. 

Experts differ on how many words it takes to be considered fluent; I've seen anywhere between 1,000 and 5,000 words for basic conversational functionality, from 4,000 to 10,000 words to live and work in another country, and 10,000 to 20,000 to be considered native-level fluency. I am not sure whether this means words or lexemes. Anyway, I have a long, long way to go toward fluency, but I am confident I could visit a Spanish-speaking city and get around as a tourist without too much trouble, after adjusting to whatever accent is prevalent there and getting people to "hable más despacio, por favor" (speak more slowly, please).

Besides Duolingo, I've started watching some shows and movies with closed-captioning in Spanish, where that's available, to try to increase my familiarity with the sounds of the language. So I'll hear the dialogue and try to match it with what's printed on the screen.

Meanwhile, my phone has started showing me some ads in Spanish. Sometimes I understand a whole sentence, but more often I'll just catch a word or two. I think it'll be quite a while before I try the reverse audio exercise of watching an English-record show in Spanish with English captions -- unless I start watching something made originally in Spanish. I'd rather not just try random telenovelas, so recommendations are welcome!

 

 

Book Review: Uncanny Times, by Laura Anne Gilman (with light spoilers)

Skiffy and Fanty was offered an electronic Advanced Reader Copy of Uncanny Vows (The Huntsmen, Book 2, out today, Nov. 28) for review, but I hadn’t read Uncanny Times (Book 1) yet. Although I strongly believe that a book up for an award should stand on its own, I think a reviewer should try to experience a book in context, rather than jumping into the middle of a series and then complaining that they don’t understand what’s happening. 

Of course, a mid-series novel should contain enough back-references for someone plucking it off a library’s New Books shelf to be able to enjoy it without feeling lost, but most people read a series from the start. I think that’s better for reviewers, too, when possible.

Luckily for me, my lovely local library had an audiobook of Uncanny Times via Hoopla, so I was able to listen to it first, before starting the sequel.

I ended up feeling slightly lost anyway. I was a little annoyed by the beginning of Uncanny Times, which started off “Four. By the time the Harkers made their way back to the boardinghouse, darkness was creeping its way back through the treetops.” Rosemary and Botheration were named, so it seemed like these were the Harkers, but then “they” took Botheration to his kennel. So Botheration was a dog -- or a watch-wher, for all I knew at the moment, but that was enough to be going on with. Then "Aaron" laughed, so he was the other Harker, but it took a while longer to understand that Rosemary and Aaron were brother and sister rather than husband and wife, and even longer to figure out why they were at this boardinghouse (to investigate a mystery in the town).

I am not a reader who demands to be spoonfed information. Part of why I love speculative fiction is the enjoyment of figuring out how a world works; for example, I felt shocks of joy when things started coming together and making sense in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice and Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit. However, when reading a gaslamp fantasy, what I want to be figuring out is the mystery, not the book’s structure.

What could have been a perfectly good framing device was only revealed later in the book, in Chapter 1 (the second in the book, after 4) – the brother and sister received a help-me letter from someone who’d aided the Huntsmen organization before with information. But for some reason, Gilman opened the novel after the story was already in progress.

It’s fashionable these days to start novels in the middle of the action: a fight, a chase, an argument. This method reveals some of the tone of the book, and promises that it’s not going to be too heavy on exposition. Preferably, there’s enough revealed during this action scene that the reader can start caring about the result, rather than just waiting impatiently to find out why it matters. But simply moving Chapter 4 to the first position in the book strikes me as a very bad choice.

I was also annoyed by some other early elements in the book. The Harkers appear to unquestioningly accept all the lore and governance handed to them by the Huntsmen, in whose service their parents had died when they were fairly young, and seem completely accepting of the view that humans are mostly good and everything else is unnatural/evil. However, I loved Gilman’s complex and nuanced Devil’s West trilogy (Silver on the Road, etc.), which is why I had jumped at the chance to review Uncanny Vows. I couldn’t believe that everything was going to continue so simplistically black-and-white, so I kept reading, and my patience was justified.

MILD SPOILERS FOLLOW:

It turned out that the mysterious killings that drew the Harkers to this town had some human complicity, and the villain had gotten involved out of entirely understandable motives. The Harkers got assistance from some totally unexpected quarters, and their final report to the Huntsmen ended up shading some of the truth to protect some allies.

So I was pleased to see the Harkers’ worldview expanding, and I fully expect to see more of that in the sequel.

I did quite enjoy the relationship between the Harkers, with their love and trust, and making allowances for each other’s bad habits, intermingling with teasing, small frictions and secrets. Their relationships with each other and with the Huntsmen reminded me more than a little of Sam and Dean Winchester and their (looser) association with the Hunters in the Supernatural TV series.

So far, I’m not as impressed with the opening of the Huntsmen books as I was with The Devil’s West, but Uncanny Truth was an entertaining light read, once I got past the beginning. And anyone who would like to read something that feels like early Supernatural episodes certainly might want to give the Huntsmen series a try.

Content warnings: Violence, deaths, drug abuse, era-accurate sexism

Comparisons: Supernatural TV series (early seasons)
 
Disclaimers: None (library book) 

UPDATE 12/14/23: My review of the sequel, appears at Skiffy and Fanty. "I’m sure I’ll continue to like the Harkers’ relationship, and although Uncanny Vows ties up most of its plot elements in a satisfying way, there are plenty of intriguing hints left to be explored in future books."
https://skiffyandfanty.com/blog/book-review-uncanny-vows-by-laura-anne-gilman/

Review: Marcie R. Rendon’s Cash Blackbear mysteries and forced assimilation

I saw Marcie R. Rendon’s Murder on the Red River on the New Books shelves at my lovely local library (written in 2017, republished in 2022), and picked it up and wolfed it down. I whizzed through the series via Libby, continuing with Girl Gone Missing and Sinister Graves.

I don’t have much in common with the protagonist, Renee “Cash” Blackbear, at least in the beginning, but I found her compelling. As the series starts, in the 1970s, she’s a freelance farmworker in the Red River Valley who loves playing pool. A 19-year-old Ojibwe, she was taken from her reservation so young that she barely remembers anything from there, and her time in the foster-care system was so traumatizing that she now drinks herself to sleep most nights. But she’s friends with Sheriff Wheaton, who helped her when she was younger and still checks in with her every once in a while. She helps him to identify the body of a Native American found in a field, and this leads her to get involved in other mysteries.

Despite Cash’s trauma, she is capable of empathy and more. She tries to save some orphaned kids from getting split up into the foster system; when she starts going to college in the second book, she starts making friends, or at least acquaintances, and leads some strangers out of serious trouble.

She’s sensitive, although she mostly hides it, acting out on occasion, and intelligent, although this too gets her into trouble. She also has dreams, visions, and occasional out-of-body experiences, which are not always as effective at warning her as she would prefer. It could be argued that she may not have mystical powers and is just putting facts together subconsciously, but at least while reading, I prefer to take her word for it.

By the end of the third book, she has cut down on her drinking, moved through a couple of empty relationships and found someone who seems to truly understand and appreciate her for what she is instead of just using her. She has made some other life changes that seem very positive, although I won’t give any more spoilers than I already have. If these three books are all we get of Cash Blackbear’s story, I’m satisfied with her arc.

Besides Cash’s story, a major throughline of Rendon’s books is the mistreatment of Native Americans, particularly children. Individual crimes against individual Native Americans are easily swept away and unnoticed. Broken foster-care systems in the Midwest are depicted as a pipeline for forced agricultural labor, and abuse is routine.

In foster homes, there were days and nights that were hell on earth–times she would fall asleep hoping to not wake up, or almost convincing herself life was a dream and dreamtime was the real time. Her one respite during all those years was compulsory education. That was a rule even the foster families didn’t dare break. – Sinister Graves

Of course, compulsory education has itself been used as a systematic tool of oppression and erasure of Native American culture. Between 1819 and 1969, more than 500 indigenous boarding schools were operated in the U.S., many with explicit goals of assimilating children into majority-white society, by taking children from their parents, renaming them, forbidding them from speaking any language but English, and disallowing their local hairstyles and clothing; moreover, many of these schools were also associated with churches and missionary societies and exerted considerable pressure for Christian religious observances.

A 2022 U.S. Interior Department investigation “found that 19 boarding schools accounted for the deaths of more than 500 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children but the number of recorded deaths is expected to increase.”

The Author’s Note at the end of Sinister Graves says it was written before 215 children’s bodies were found in unmarked graves at the Catholic-run Kamloops Boarding School grounds in Canada. Thousands more died while attending Indian residential schools in Canada, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

Coincidentally, around the time I was finishing Sinister Graves a few weeks ago, news broke on multiple outlets about Tibetan boarding schools that appear to be enforcing assimilation into Chinese culture. According to the Associated Press, “China has shuttered village schools across Tibet and replaced them with centralized boarding schools over the last dozen years.”

About a million Tibetan children, which is most of the school-aged population, including preschoolers as young as 4 years old, are estimated to be studying at these schools. Chinese authorities claim that’s voluntary, but with former local schools closed and penalties for non-attendance, it’s not much of a choice.

I doubt that international calls to disband these boarding schools will have any effect on Chinese policy, any more than protests have had against their Uighur re-education camps. It took the U.S. and Canada well over 100 years to realize how wrong they were to attempt forced assimilation of indigenous populations into the dominant cultures, and unfortunately, many people still believe in this policy, or at least see little harm in it (e.g., efforts to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act).

Books like Rendon’s help bring the impact of this horrible policy into emotional reality for readers. Moreover, this series is interesting and occasionally very exciting. Sometimes the villains are a little predictable, and I’m not so sure that things would always turn out as well for Cash as they do, but she earns it. On the whole, I’m cheering for Cash, and I recommend these books.

Review: Random relevancies in two stories by Beagle and Lovecraft

Yesterday, I happened to hear two podcasts in immediate succession that had some unexpected congruencies. The first was LeVar Burton Reads' rendition of "Mr. McCaslin" by Peter S. Beagle. The second was The Drabblecast's version of "Cool Air" by H.P. Lovecraft. These stories have no relation to each other, yet it turned out that their coincidental pairing drew some interesting highlights. I'm going to give plot summaries for them both, so if you've never read them and want to avoid spoilers, please listen to them first.

I'd never read "Mr. McCaslin," but I'm a longtime fan of Beagle, from his classic fantasy "The Last Unicorn" to other books including "A Fine and Private Place" and "The Innkeeper's Song," to short stories like "Underbridge," about a wandering adjunct professor who has an unusual encounter. Many of his stories involve people in modern times encountering elements of the fantastical. Some of his early stories are a bit callow, like "Lila the Werewolf," but many are richly deep and moving.

In "Mr. McCaslin," some boys in New York City help their cranky old neighbor fend off death, or at least his family's traditional messenger of death, for a few days during a hot summer so that he can get one final task done. The Black Dog is a monstrous creature in Irish legend, but here the Black Terrier is not too terrifying, although unnaturally cold; the boys are actually able to catch it and confine it in their apartments until it eventually escapes and carries out its psychopompic role. Afterward, the narrator grows into a man, and occasionally thinks he hears the terrier's claws clicking nearby, although he's not too bothered by it.

As for "Cool Air," I had read it before, along with many other Lovecraft stories. I think all of his works are nominally set in the real, modern world (well, modern in the 1920s and '30s), although there are eerie and horrific things happening. But since he loved archaica and history, and many of his stories contained references to shadows from the past, along with his blatantly racist and classist attitudes, they tend to feel even older. (For a modern sequel to this story, from the perspective of the Mexican landlady's family, you may want to listen to Pseudopod's reading of "Bitter Perfume" by Laura Blackwell.)

"Cool Air" is actually one of his most modern-feeling stories, as one of its most prominent features is the futuristic (for the 1920s) air conditioner that keeps a New York City brownstone apartment cold during a heat wave. The narrator, who lives in the apartment below, is annoyed by an ammonia leak from upstairs, but later has a heart attack and is helped by that upstairs neighbor, Dr. Muñoz. When the doctor's air conditioner breaks, the narrator tries hard to get it repaired, but is too late; he makes the horrifying discovery that his neighbor had died years ago and had been keeping his apartment cool to keep himself from decaying. Afterward, any "draught of cool air" leaves the narrator shuddering with horror.

So, each story is set in New York City during a heat wave, each one is narrated by a helpful (or would-be helpful) neighbor, and each one involves someone trying to delay death (or its results). However, the tone of each is very different.

In "Mr. McCaslin," the boys are friends and part of a vibrant community. Their neighbor may be a cranky old guy, but he's THEIR cranky old guy. The boys work together to fulfill their pledge to help him for a few days, so he's able to write a letter to his daughter (it takes him a long time because he's not used to writing to her, but he needs to tell her something), and then finally to let the Black Terrier in, and be at peace when he dies. Despite being about death, the story is actually fairly lighthearted and hopeful.

In "Cool Air," the narrator, a writer, is isolated and rather contemptuous of most of the immigrant residents of his building, and he and Dr. Muñoz are drawn together partly because they feel superior to their fellows. Although the doctor has harmed nobody, and helped many before he deteriorated too much, the other neighbors and workers who come to the apartment become so terrified or disgusted that they refuse to help (and won't even deliver ice), so the doctor's end is lonely and awfully pathetic. (His long fight against death is apparently for no other reason than that he doesn't want to die, which is reasonable but not exactly altruistic.) The writer's lingering horror implies that he's sorry he ever got involved, or at least that he's sorry he found out the truth.

According to "The Cool Air" narrator, "the abnormal always excites aversion, distrust and fear." This may be sadly true of much of humanity, and certainly of Lovecraft. However, I much prefer Beagle's vision of people who take an oddity like a supernatural death dog in stride and focus on the task of being good neighbors, with no regrets. 

I was pleased to hear during LeVar Burton Reads' podcast that Beagle will have a new book coming out in 2024. I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons is about someone who hates the exterminating job that he inherited, and finds himself dragged into royal complications. It was originally supposed to be published in 2008 or so, but that publication deal fell through; now it's getting a new chance. Good luck to it and to Beagle!

Review: The Hopkins Manuscript, by R.C. Sherriff

I spotted The Hopkins Manuscript on the New Books shelves at my local library. This is actually a 2023 trade paperback version of a 1939 novel. I'd never heard of the author, R.C. Sheriff, or The Fortnight in September, the other book of his that's mentioned on the cover, or other books by him. However, he worked on scripts for a bunch of movies I've seen and found pretty interesting: The Dam Busters, No Highway, That Hamilton Woman, The Four Feathers, The Invisible Man, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, among others. 

I didn't know that when I checked it out, and I don't know why the book has been republished now (although, having read it, I certainly can see some relevancies to current times in governments' behavior and citizens' reactions), but I thought the description on the inside front cover looked interesting: Edgar Hopkins, a retired math teacher and member of the British Lunar Society, learns that the moon is on a collision course with the Earth. He's sworn to secrecy, but eventually the truth can no longer be denied.

I always find these conspiracies of silence a bit maddening, whether they're in books or on TV, about looming environmental/astronomical catastrophes, alien invasions, or whatever. Various governments in the book take some proactive measures, such as digging shelters (but saying they're against bombs, for the next world war), but they don't want to people to panic or have their lives spoiled. 

A little more than half the book is devoted to the lead-up to the event. Everything is filtered through Hopkins' eyes, as he goes to meetings, reads reports, and tries to influence events, while breeding chickens and winning shows. As it turns out, he has little effect on what happens.  He thinks a lot of himself, but other people don't see him as much of a leader. He's really rather narrow in his viewpoint, snobbish and classist, although he means well. He proudly keeps the secret and merely drops some advice that is ignored, since nobody knows he has inside knowledge. 

Once the looming, reddened moon is apparent to the naked eye, Hopkins' neighbors fall into three basic groups:  Those who think it's all just a scare and won't affect England at all, those who think the moon will graze the Earth but not cause much damage, and those who think the end is nigh. Some people quit their jobs and run wild, but many Keep Calm and Carry On (so to speak; that didn't actually become a slogan until the real-life World War II, and actually the saying wasn't really popularized until the 21st century), or join the digging projects and other preparations.

As it turns out, England is not destroyed by the moon, although there are great changes in the world. This is not a spoiler, since the opening frame in the "foreword" of the book is that Hopkins' manuscript recounting the lead-up, the event and its aftermath has been discovered by a scientist from a subsequent civilization, long after Hopkins' final days, sealed in a thermos and hidden in a wall.

After the event, much of the second half of the book is taken up with recovery and rebuilding efforts. Hopkins, who has always been a solitary man, builds a small community. However, although people work together at first, the world once more slides toward war, in a seemingly inevitable competition for resources and access, with tensions stoked by politicians to gain power, or simply out of fear and pride.

There's actually a lot of wry humor in this book, comparing Hopkins' views and expectations with what actually happens. There are moments of quiet heroism. Relationships range from condescension to mild hostility to respect to quietly affectionate caring. However, the end is certainly a bit depressing, even though given some of the events of the last decade, it does not seem at all unrealistic. Sherriff, of course, would have seen the rising tensions of his own time, as World War II began in Europe the year this was originally published.

The Hopkins Manuscript fits the "cozy catastrophe" label for the most part; indeed, I've seen it listed as an influence on John Wyndham's later "cozy catastrophes" such as The Day of the Triffids. Although events affect the world, the narrative is tightly focused on one man's point of view; moreover, although things go badly for many mostly unnamed people, humanity does survive.

I can't recommend this book for everybody. If you're interested in period pieces between World War I and World War II (with a somewhat ironical flavor of classism), if you're interested in disaster fiction, if you're interested in the genre history of science fiction, you may want to give this a try. It's definitely well written; it's just a very particular flavor. Many people will find it dreadfully slow. But I enjoyed it.

Content Warnings: Offscreen deaths, classism, insularity.

Comparisons: John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Poison Belt.

Disclaimers: None.

 

UPDATE 9/18/23: I really enjoyed the conversation about this book at https://www.sffaudio.com/the-sffaudio-podcast-752-readalong-the-hopkins-manuscript-by-r-c-sherriff/, by Jesse, Paul Weimer, Bryan Alexander, and Terence Blake, except for about 10 minutes of anti-vax diatribing by the host, about 2.5 hours or so into the podcast, after the main discussion had finished and they were digressing.