Schroedinger’s Identity, or Why I Identify Mostly As Adjacent

I’ve mentioned Hawai’i a few times, and being from there, although I am not Hawaiian. This is kind of my official statement of ethnicity or lack thereof. 

My birth mother wanted to be an anthropologist. My birth grandfather said no, you are a girl and they just get married, you will be a dental hygienist and that’s the education I am paying for. My birth mother said screw you, parent, I do what I want (an important tradition in our ancestral line), and moved to Honolulu where she got a job at the Kamehameha School, as a dental hygienist, to pay for her anthro degree that she was trying to get at U of HI, Manoa. 

The Kamehameha School is a unique institution set up by Hawaiian royalty for educating Hawaiian people. It’s currently being sued by conservative types upset because white people can’t go there. There’s really nothing comparable on the mainland since colonization worked a lot different there. My birth mother was in a very unique situation; the school had an in-house dentist who would fix the students’ teeth and she assisted, one of a very few haoles (white people) working there. 

When she got pregnant and decided to adopt it (me) out in her second trimester, assumptions were made as far as the child’s father. I didn’t learn the truth until I was over thirty – that she got knocked up having unsafe sex with my attractive womanizer of a birthdad at a romantic Waikiki party whilst drunk. And she moved in with him and tried to make it work, but somewhere in the second trimester she concluded he was a drunk womanizer and she didn’t want to raise a child with him, so I was handed off. To people who assumed that she got knocked up at work, whether or not it was consensual, because she wasn’t talking.

I grew up doing lots of weird things which were often attributed to my heathen nature. I’m a green-eyed blonde, true, but lots of Pacific people are mixed. I was given a Hawaiian middle name, which is a thing that came about when haoles were trying to eliminate the culture and the language, so all Hawaiians were required to have an English first name, and usually they gave their kids Hawaiian middle names. I have one too, Leilani, which was inspired by a Bing Crosby song and is more common among white girls than Hawaiian ones. My white parents did that just in case I turned out to be part of the diaspora, per their suspicions.

When I was in my thirties DNA testing came about, and I located the drunk womanizer. Or actually my half-siblings, since he died young (from drinking) after siring a bunch of us. He was very white, although there’s an intriguing “weeaboo gene” thing happening in that my half-siblings are all fascinated with some aspect of Asian culture. 

But until it was confirmed I’m a very whitish shade of white, and most of the DNA I got is associated with the greater London area, I lived in a headspace where anyone could be my relative, so being a bigot would be pretty stupid. And since I didn’t have an ancestral culture I learned a lot about the culture where I was born – not the Scots-Irish culture of my adopted parents so much as the stories and customs of the people around me, whose ancestors were mixed just like my own were assumed to be. And the music, which sometimes gives me a Hawaiian sucker punch right in the parts of my brain associated with nostalgic homesickness. 

My experience as a Schroedinger’s haole might have ended, but I’ve tried to carry those sensibilities around with me, and sometimes translate them for others, with varying degrees of success.

For one example, there was an asshole named Max Long who was a theosophist that created his own new age religion (“Huna”) based on Hawaiian vocabulary in one of the most audacious acts of cultural appropriation I’ve ever heard of. Occasionally I still run into disciples of Huna passing along memes about how the indigenous Hawaiians want you to know about their cosmic wisdom which just happens to mesh with the cosmic wisdom in all the other Blavatsky-derived new religions. And doesn’t have much in common with the religion of indigenous Hawaiians. When I see that kind of junk I usually try to link people to actual Hawaiian activists and hope they keep their feet on the path that’s about accumulating wisdom rather than power tripping others by representing oneself as a super-evolved guru.

And speaking of power trippers … I get a lot of people who immediately come up with some kind of sexual objectification whenever I mention I’m from the islands, or when I mention enjoying Asian and/or Polynesian style music. It’s usually other white women, telling me “ooh I dated an Asian guy once” or “there’s a hot Asian guy working at the sushi place.” Like the only reason I might be interested in non-white culture is because I’m chasing after sex in an objectifying sort of way. 

The absolute worst was this editor I worked with once, who told me she roleplayed in Second Life as a hapa boy. Like she wanted me to applaud and go “gosh you’re so multicultural” or something other than going "eww" or asking her if she would like to beef. Which is probably what the hapa boys/men/mahu/transwomen/women/girls/etc. I grew up with would say, although I’m speculating and would no more speak for all people of an ethnic background, than I would add ketchup to my poi. Not a done thing, as the haoles say. 

Speaking of people who like to beef, there are lots of mean folks in Hawai’i, and plenty of nice ones too. I was a weird kid like Lilo so I got bullied by my own people, and most of my friends were other introverted nerds of various backgrounds, all of us united by our fondness for numbers and our sensibilities derived from the local mishmosh of cultures, like cleaning up your trash when you go to the beach. I have quite a few people in my life who aren’t Polynesian at all but spent enough time living there to develop those kinds of sensibilities, so we share that bond, growing up watching anime alongside Disney and having super diverse classmates, and lots more familiarity with Asian culture than the average mainland kid. 

It makes me slightly askew in a lot of cultural discussions, because no, I didn’t grow up with the same standards as people growing up in North America. Most people my age lived in a world with far more racial and cultural segregation. I grew up where the prejudices and the colonizing attitudes worked differently. Some of my classmates were actually forbidden by law from speaking the Hawaiian language, which is why the Kamehameha School was such a big deal. 

But my mom wanted to be Indiana Jones, so yeah. I’m adjacent. Sometimes I try to advocate or educate, as part of the responsibility I feel for growing up there. 

I’m Schroedinger-y with respect to other identities too. I still identify as asexual, which puts me in the queer section, except I’m the kind who isn’t interested in queer sex, which isn’t a big part of the queer community, which is already small. I'm adjacent to it though and have had some amazing queer friends throughout my life, and I tend to stick up for them. 

I’m Schrodinger’s neurodivergent too. I went through a period of identifying as autistic, but these days I am more inclined to say I have a few autistic traits and am generally familiar with autism and other forms of neurodivergence. The only one that’s been documented is “gifted” and I see no point in paying perfectly good money to determine whether I’m officially on one side of a border that seems to fluctuate a lot. And gifted is a form of neurodivergence, and I share the experience of weird cognition with my fellow NDs, so I'm proudly adjacent there too.

I just wasn’t built for the identity politics era, personally. Too amorphous and nebulous, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be supportive and occasionally educational or entertaining. 

How Far Do You Need To Go Before Bouncing?

I was thinking about how I “bounced off of” (failed to engage with) (didn’t find intriguing) a story, and then when I guilt tripped myself into going back to try reading it again, I wound up actively disliking the story and writing a bad review. 

Then, later, I got mad at myself for writing that bad review, since the author’s probably one of those exquisitely sensitive people, so I almost took it down, but at the same time, I spent some time thinking about how my dislike for the story seems to keep growing larger. Especially in the context of wondering why the DC Carl books are completely absent from the Hugo ballot. So in light of that, I let it stay up. 

Bad reviews are very unusual in a realm where everyone is constantly giving their pals five-star reviews to game the marketing algorithms. Even if you don’t like a work, you’re well aware that you need to give five-stars if you want people to return the favor and five-star you, and talking smack about fiction has become one of those “just not done” type of activities. I was eagerly playing the five-star game at one point but then I sort of dried up, with no more stars left to give. 

Now I’m wondering if it’s better to nope out after reading a few paragraphs, while my opinion is still rattling around in the “not for me but you might like it” bin. 

So I looked at the movie nominees for inspiration. Besides Sinners and K-Pop Demon Hunters, which I already wrote at length about, we have Andor (Season 2), Frankenstein (del Toro), Mickey 17, and Superman (James Gunn). 

I had to look up Mickey 17, a South Korean film which didn’t do very well over here about clones disagreeing with their other editions. It sounds like an intelligent take on clone tropes so it’s on my inner “maybe if I feel like watching a movie” list. I used to be a big old cinema nerd but lately I only seem to watch a few movies a year, so you might say I’m bouncing off this entire category, although I did see two of the entries. 

I did watch some of Andor, because I really liked Rogue One and was interested in the Cassian character’s backstory. I got all the way through a couple of the Star Wars series, like the first one about Yoda Jr., and I’m usually neutral or positive about the new improved extended universe. I bounced off of Andor after watching a few episodes because it seemed really heavy-handed and plodding. Cassian gradually becomes radicalized while other characters slide towards fascism in kind of an Afterschool Special about the very important issue of fascism and resisting it. 

And it came out in a world that was actually sliding into fascism, so it was kind of like putting the “dare to keep kids off drugs” lion in a time machine and transporting him to late ‘70s Studio 54 to deliver his abstinence message to Liza Minelli and Bianca Jagger. And that lion probably had even more success than most preachy lecture type entertainment. These days whenever I see any of those “hey kids, don’t snort fascism” propaganda messages from the pre-fascism era, I shake my head sadly. Totally ineffective use of moralizing. Although in the case of Andor, you can also file it under “troubling foreshadowing.” 

I had a hard time with the shame and harangue stuff when I was attempting to slot myself into the creative writing subculture. It felt almost like they were chasing all the strategy-minded people away (the ones who might be giggling at Carl’s adventures) and trying to do some kind of Cathar-like death spiral. I put up with it pre-fascism because I really didn’t want fascism to happen, but now that it has, I have even less regard for the preachy lectures that didn’t do jack to forestall it. STFU Becky, you just wanted to bully Heather and when disinfo gave you that chance, you seized it with both fists. All that glazing about the power of programming to shape mass opinion when, under field conditions, it actually seems to inspire people to say “fuck all this programming including the counter-programming, I’m voting for the evil guy because I’m tired of preachy lectures.” So much for preachy lectures, one might hope. 

(I do feel a lot better now that I’m not trying to run a wholesome YA-writer persona, thanks for asking.)

A lot of my friends loved Andor, for its preachy lecture qualities, but I backed off for the same reason.

Which is also behind the reason I haven’t seen Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein yet. I’m mixed about del Toro. I thought his stop-motion Pinocchio was wonderful and brilliant. I did not like his acclaimed Pan’s Labyrinth because I thought it was yet another grimdark story for kids, baiting audiences with the promise of a magical fairyland and then exiling them in a land of disturbing nightmares. With a light coating of preachy lecture, but del Toro is much better about keeping that part balanced with the story he’s telling. I thought the amount of Grimdark in Pinocchio was just perfect -- nightmarish for sure, but the stop motion decreases the threat. Pan's was more like sadistically getting a rise out of this particular girl and the audience members identifying with her.

So I haven’t seen the film, but I know it probably has opulent period costumes and pays more attention to inclusion themes than prior editions of Frankenstein, because that’s how del Toro rolls. It’s on my maybe list with Mickey 17. I did actually connect the TV to the media services so I can watch things like YouTube on it now instead of just having it run as a spare monitor. Slow progress. 

And finally there’s another Superman. I guess people still need to say new things about Superman. I have no real need to witness this. In fact, I’m bouncing off the entire subject of superheroes. During the pandemic I forced myself to catch up with the MCU and that was plenty, thanks. 

Superheroes reflect a philosophy that bounces me, in fact, like I did with the story I heartily disliked about the moral dichotomy between one’s authentic self and one’s DNA. They’re a good metaphor for musing on the gap between the gifted/talented/rich kids and the kids whose parents let them watch grimdark movies and then beat them for having nightmares. 

I looked up the reviews for this latest Superman and learned it represents the first step in the brand new DCU (shrieking violins), and that it focuses on Superman as moral paragon, so it seems likely to have a high preachy lecture quotient, and I’ve already examined how I feel about that. 

So that’s a bounce based on (1) sounds intriguing but unsuccessful and awarding it in the year of KPDH seems bizarre; (2) familiar enough with the director to be neutral about wanting to see more of his films; and (3) likely to contain themes (superheroes, preachy lectures) that tend to inspire me to write horrible reviews, and the world doesn’t need more of those. 

Even if I try to keep my disses aimed at big corporate media with thick hides rather than small creators who have a few opinions that differ from mine. I’m not always successful though, and I’m going to both leave my bad review standing (and any future ones I feel moved to compose) and respect my inclination to bounce early in the media consumption phase. Before I get the urge to reach for the sarcasm. 

Just A Statement Regarding Reliigion

I just thought I’d nail something to the door. For the heck of it. Since I've mentioned religion a few times.

I grew up with lukewarm Southern Baptists who didn’t force me to go to church but were happy when I did. I hated the clothes and preaching but enjoyed the singing. At one point I decided to lie about being born again just to see if I’d get struck by lightning or whether the adults would notice; following the results of this experiment I decided to stop going to church.

Then in my 20s I thought it was intellectually lazy to dismiss religion without doing a thorough investigation, so I started studying it, and that is what led me to being in a social circle adjacent to people like Helen Parsons Smith and Marion Zimmer Bradley, as well as a whole lot of non-droppable names who represent the people I actually hung out with rather than people I met a couple times who probably glanced at me and thought "that young woman certainly is inebriated, I hope she gets home okay." The fact I’m not originally from North America helped inspire me to learn about religions other than monotheism, and Dungeons and Dragons played a part too.

Eventually I resumed not going to church, but these days I describe myself as an agnostic, because “I dunno” is a better answer than “affirmatively yes, let’s fight!” or “affirmatively no, let’s fight!” in my opinion.

 A lot of people in my generation stopped going to church, but some went back. The singing is pretty awesome, and so is the opportunity to spend time with one’s family and community sharing good vibes and looking at art. To my mind, that’s the main draw behind religion: a place where people can socialize outside of work and school. Most of the time people do not socialize outside a narrow group consisting of co-workers and immediate family, and religion gives them a place to mix, as well as formal rules against fisticuffs or arguing over competing worldviews.

 These days I find myself mostly aligned with Pope Leo. Which is not where I expected to be in my senior years, but I also thought there would be universal healthcare, and more trains, and look what life handed us instead. There is a loophole in the Christian religion that allows for one to get away with a lifetime of sin as long as we sneak in a confession and a few rap performances prior to expiring, and that’s what I’ve been aiming for.

 I consider myself culturally Christian in that I’m familiar with the scriptures, the idioms like rich men passing through needle eyes, and not throwing stones, I know a handful of Christian hymns and can hum along with several others. I went to church when I was a kid. Lots of people would classify me as Christian based on that experience, regardless of what I currently believe (or claim to).

 Despite admittedly lying about being born again, the fact I was not struck by lightning and in fact went on to have a life that has been perfectly delectable in certain aspects although certainly not all of them, I don’t consider myself Christian in the evangelical sense; those people support too many liars and I refuse to stand next to them. At the same time, I lead kind of a modest humble life with a low carbon footprint that doesn’t include a lot of lust or gluttony or other deadly sins, like some kind of nun from an order that’s mostly about reading books with occasional treats of almond-sprinkled yogurt and J.S. Bach. 

 I have a lot of alignment with the current flavor of secular humanism which is popular with my political faction as an alternative to formal religion, but it’s not complete. I will separate my recyclables, and I am willing to switch to vat grown cruelty-free chicken nuggies as soon as they appear on the market, and also my carbon footprint is likely lower than yours because I don’t drive. Plus recycling’s kind of a scam, and so is shifting the burden of climate change onto individual consumers.

Sometimes my beliefs and opinions clash with the status quo. For instance, there are many types of feminism, and I’m down with the one about how people should have the same rights regardless of what’s between their navel and their knees, and whom they wish would touch it (which I do not wish to know details about).

There have been lots of flavors of feminism over the years, all basically agreeing it’s better if women have rights and are not oppressed. That thought could probably be extended to liberalism – it’s better for us all if we don’t enforce structural barriers related to things like race, class, gender.

I really can’t deal with a few variants, such as the extreme subjectivity kind though in which people are encouraged to shriek their idiosyncratic spin on truth at me. Screw that. I’m also not in favor of the “organics versus tech bro” conflict because I think there will soon be advertisements for robots with 100% organically-sourced fake skin (I will bet you cash that’ll happen by 2050 if not sooner). 

I’m a pedantic sourpuss raised by math nerds, trial lawyers, and godless heathens, and the quest for accuracy is part of my innate nature. If there’s an endeavor where my innate nature disqualifies me from participation, such as pro basketball, so be it. I owe no intersectional duty to beliefs which conflict with this drive. 

And that pedantic thing so far keeps me out of religions both traditional and secular, because there’s always a shaky belief or two that one is required to lip service or be flayed by one’s peers, and I seem to have a broken filter with regard to figuring out where those limits are, let alone how to code switch between crowds.

I do have a hard time judging people by their religion, since I've known both good and bad people who subscribe to various religions (including secular worldviews that aren't technically religions but resemble them in certain aspects). That's what my investigation really brought me to: a place where I can't say "all the people in that religion are bad" and remain honest with myself. The person I was previously was a lot less tolerant. 

If there’s anyone around who embraces the religious-type belief structure that inspired me to do my whole Lucifer-like rebellion from religion, I just want to say that reading my words isn't sinful because I have had believers like you stand next to me and pray, and also I can say the Lord’s Prayer and go inside churches without bursting into flames or having ghosts spurt out of my eyeballs. So if I was ever possessed by demons, I got better. I realize I’ve listened to an awful lot of heavy metal with secret encoded devil messages in my time but I usually also play a lot of angel music like J.S. Bach which cancels it out by encouraging angels to come over and mosh with the devils so they can’t lead anyone into sin. And I think your worldview is a little basic but as long as you don’t go around bullying others over it I’m pretty tolerant.

 

Reaffirmation of Bounce

 I tried to do the nice thing by re-reading one of my bounced-off-of stories in a better frame of mind but it turns out it was still pretty grumpy, and I wrote a bad review more grounded in philosophy than literary merit. 

I ain't gonna fall for that twice. Both The Millay Illusion by Sarah Pinsker (It's not bad, just not for me) and When He Calls Your Name” by Catherynne M. Valente (Maybe it'll surprise you) shall remain forever on my Mt. Tsundoku like those brightly-clad corpses on the ascent to Mt. Everest that have been lying there for years because the rich assholes paying a crapload of money to take a selfie at the summit don't have enough spare oxygen to remove the ones who didn't make it. Serving as a warning to me that I probably shouldn't sign up to be a Hugo reviewer again since I'm much too grumpy for this. Couldn't resist that tax-deductable trip to Disneyland though. 

I will wait and be patient about the voter packet, and hope it includes Martha Wells, and maybe even some of the YA novels as well as representative info dumps from the nominated websites. 

Review: The Girl My Mother Is Leaving Me For by Cameron Reed

I was having misgivings about bailing out of this category. Just to recap, I read the Kaiju story and pronounced it slightly amusing but intended for an audience 10-20 years older than me who remembers the Kennedy assassination and enjoys spotting political jokes in Bullwinkle. Then I read the No Vegetables one and got upset because it reminded me of yet another incident where someone did an angry emotional explosion at me for ephemeral reasons, which is something that happens to me a lot in this particular subculture and is high on my list of reasons for backing away from it. Probably has to do with religious differences (see below). 

Then I wondered if I’d be perceived as transphobic if I avoided reading stories with transpeople in them. I’ve been mentioning inclusion info in my brief synopses because it’s front and center these days, and I do agree representation is important, even though I'm not seeing a lot by categories that I'm adjacent to, like neurodivergents and Pacific Islanders. I applied to be a panelist at Worldcon, kind of half facetiously; I’ve done it before at other cons but I’m not even sure if I’m promoting anything at this point since the dino anthology isn’t out yet. Anyway, they make you fill out a questionnaire as to whether you have any marginalized identities.

I don’t, unless you count growing up in the South Pacific. A lot of younger people see that I’m from Hawai’i and assume I’m rich, since their entire experience with the place is from the recipient side of the tourist industry, but all those tourists have more dough than my dad, who was a beach bum from LA who liked the vibe in Hawai’i and managed a store that sold suntan lotion and chocolate bars to people like Georgia O’Keefe. We left when I was ten due to my dad’s poor financial choices and my mom’s longing to move back to the mainland, but until then I was one of a handful of white kids in schools where I was outnumbered by Asians. Which I actually kind of enjoy, because I appreciate Asian culture, and I still would rather live around lots of Asians. I like their music, food, sense of humor, and cartoon mascots (I have a strong preference for Labubu over Hello Kitty).

 And I like their feminism. In South Korea there is a flavor of feminism that includes female-centric things. Such as female-gaze entertainment (e.g. K-Pop Demon Hunters, where female characters are unapologetically central and free to do things like looking gluttonous or mean, or objectifying men) and a lot of the female bonding which occurs around things like K-Pop fandom. So my feminist expression these days leans toward the practice of encouraging women to socialize at events where men aren’t centered, so they can make friends and have fun. Crafting, collecting, listening to music, reading books, doing femme stuff. Other parts of this worldview involve not dating men or having children, but I’ve aged out of the ability to do those things voluntarily, so I’m trying to focus on the part about encouraging women to have a social/public/intellectual life that isn’t about dating, mate hunting, or accommodating men’s desires.

That’s where I’m coming from when I moan about all these trans stories exploring the deeper nature of one's inner duality, while I’m busy trying to help girls ignore men better. Swimming in different directions.

Anyway, The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For disappointed me in paragraph three: “People whose minds are put into enhanced bodies always say they feel the same as ever. But maybe they just don’t remember what it’s like to feel at all.”

I’ve written many grouchy words about my dislike for psionics and bodyswap and other science fiction themes that reinforce the idea that minds and bodies are as separate as turntables and vinyl. Bodyswap is a persistent human fantasy though, and tales of people getting transformed into different sorts of people, or animals, or mythic figures, are widespread.

Here’s a Hawaiian one for you that I used to hear as a kid in school. Sometimes the teachers would just have us all sit there cross-legged, outside, listening to local stories, and there was once this guy who could turn into a shark. It was pretty obvious since he had a shark mouth right on his back, but he always wore a cape over his back (made of feathers, which meant he was wealthy enough that people didn’t tend to challenge him to a fight, since apparently he’s got connections).

He lived in a small town with a good beach, and on nice days he would park himself on a trail leading to the beach, waiting for visitors from other parts of the island, where they didn’t know about him yet. He would say “hello, isn’t it a nice day, where are you headed?”

And if the visitors said “we’re going fishing” or “we’re going swimming,” the shark man would tell them to have a nice day, and then he would sneak around through a shortcut, jump into the waves, transform into a shark, go find those visitors, and eat them.

However, if the visitors said they were going to do land-bound things, like hunting pigs, or searching for plants, the shark man would get bored and wander off to take a nap. It wasn’t long before savvy visitors learned that one must lie to the shark man in order to get uninterrupted beach access. Which led to the very important local tradition that if some nosy rich asshole asks where you’re going, lie. Maybe he’s a predator. Better to be safe, yeah?

The shark man never did a full Jack L. Chalker style bodyswap though. He was always a were shark, and you’d know it right away if you saw him naked.

Maybe in some alternate universe there’s a world where all the science fiction I dislike is true. People are telepaths, who beam their thoughts at one another and sometimes spy on each other (because everyone has an inner dialogue and there are no neurodivergents in their world). They bodyswap every other Thursday (because your mind and personality are totally unrelated to the body you’re inhabiting -- yes, transfolk still do take hormones in this story's world but they're apparently super strong ones that can make you grow a uterus). And when they’re not doing that, they make clones, which are a magical sort of person existing in their own unique caste, in a world where human rights got bifurcated into Clone-Applicable Law and Non-Clone Applicable Law so that clones exist in a unique class with their own rules, like suddenly having to give up a kidney without asking why.

So yeah, clones as unique class and bodyswapping (and they don’t even have shark mouths on their back to give you a clue as to who is REALLY inside that body) are enough to get my no vote. However, I already bypassed one story in this subgroup for the ephemeral reason it reminded me of an argument I once had (in which I still feel a tad pissy, I tend to remember stuff like that forever), and I’m trying to be fair and give things a chance, so I pressed on.

 Then there’s a Boys From Brazil reference about how this corporation perpetually clones their CEO “and raises her in just the same way the Founder was raised” in order to theoretically assure conformity. And right here the science intrudes, and I feel like asking the jury if they know anybody who speaks with a different accent from their parents. I once knew a family who moved a lot; the dad sounded like Scotland, the mom like Boston, the kids like New Jersey, California, and Chicago. It was wild.

 But yeah, people in this Mythic Science Fictional Headspace where we have Clones As Unique Class and Minds Slotting Into Bodies tend to also have this view that 95% of us is directly inflicted by parenting, with trauma such as reading horror novels responsible for the rest. It’s almost a secular religion, if I can sneak in a reference to Jack Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard again.

 I have this weird fundamentalist strain to my science fiction fandom (that likely relates to a lot of my friction with the crowd) in that I was so disappointed when psionics turned out to be a load of crap I developed this fetish for scientifically-accurate-science-fiction. Either that or science fiction that flat out admits it’s actually a magical fairy tale, like Star Wars.

 The aspect of science fiction that is more like a secular religion absorbed things like psionics back when they were potential science. The subject was interpreted by numerous science fiction authors, some of them quite brilliant, to the extent where psionics are sciencefictional [sfnal] canon while not being established science. An element people expect in a certain kind of science fiction that’s more about extrapolation in this spiritual tradition than bouncing off current science.

 It's sort of like people still writing about the dangers of miasmas because some Victorian wrote a miasma fic that was so awesome it rocked everyone’s pre-existing philosophy precisely thirty-seven degrees, and now you can go to SF cons and attend panels on The Current State of Miasma Fic even though everyone knows miasmas are bullshit. So much great miasma writing though! (And now you understand how I feel about religion.)

 So anyway, here I am, three pages into this review, ranting about how I’m reviewing science fiction because I hate science fiction, which is pretty weird, so I’ll get back to the business of reviewing a fable from a religion I don’t follow for its other qualities.

 Our main character is having a surrogate pregnancy of the Founder’s latest clone, and she also gets the honor of being the Founder’s wife and raising her latest clone to age eighteen, after which she gets to fake her own death and fade into the background. But she has trouble conceiving, so a new girl with simiar hair/eye color is found (Colleen) and she and the narrator fall in love. And come up with an escape plan to keep the baby from having the old vampire Founder mindswapped in.

 At this point I felt like I could see the ending coming, and I cruised through some Return to Oz kind of stuff where people shop for objectified bodies. I sort of thought there would be an epilogue where the baby, the first of her line raised by parents who are Truly In Love, turns out to save the world just like Harry Potter, but no, it ends with Colleen in her third trimester and the narrator burbling “We’ll have to learn to see her for who she is, not who she looks like or what her genes want her to be.”

If I was reading this in hard copy it would be flying right about now, since this tract from a religion I do not follow is winding up with an earnest summation of its philosophy, about how there’s an authentic you as well as a false you that your DNA wants you to be. Like the author sat down to write a story about clones in which DNA is the villain. And I’m not buying it. I couldn’t find much to like about this story but it seems like the kind of thing Hollywood likes -- smoothly written, discernable characters, plot involving chase scenes -- so maybe it’ll end up being a movie. Sorry Cameron. You're probably an awesome person and I'm sure lots of other people will love your story a lot. Maybe one day you'll write one that I like better. 

Here, go see for yourself.

 

Overthinking and Overviews: Fanzine, Semiprozine, and Someone Else’s Review (Writing About SF in Related Works) (and the YA entries, that too)

 I cruised through the nominees for Best Fanzine and Semiprozine, and couldn’t really engage sufficiently to form an opinion. It felt like I’d have to read a whole lot of the fiction on these sites to get a good grasp of what they do, and how well. And I’m already feeling overwhelmed by the idea of reading two regular novels and multiple YAs so I can render a vote. Possibly the longer fiction too although I’m not feeling particularly enticed.

I did find a review for one of the other Related Works that I thought I would link here; I didn’t go as far as to read the book about writing about writing science fiction, but I did go through the review. 

It made me (over)think about this category people call science fiction, and my reluctance to count myself as part of it. There are times when my answer is an enthusiastic yes, like when I was reading my favorite short story entry this year, or when I’m reading older stuff that resonates, like Octavia Butler, or Robert Sheckley. 

And then there are times when science fiction feels like this closed fortress where people have interminable discussions about some TV show I’ve never seen. I’ve been thinking of that while enjoying the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, imagining some straw interminable science fictional person (of undetermined gender but they are wearing a lumpy oatmeal-colored sweater and Birkenstocks) sneering at me if I were to try writing something that blatantly fun. Or, more likely, somehow parsing my more innocuous behaviors in an attempt to find a core of subconscious evil political affiliations (left version) or satanic cult involvement (right version) (they both smell similar).  

Probably lots of us are examining our beliefs lately, about lots of things. I’m a solid, dull, healthcare-and-trains liberal. Never liked postmodernism, blame it for lubing the ascent of fascism. 

Although I have a gender, and pronouns, I've never really done' much self-reflection about them other than "I'm female so this thing I'm doing/wearing/liking can't be exclusively male." 

Sometimes it’s the culture. For example, where I grew up, women can play musical instruments. A lot of people from North America have a really difficult time with that idea unless it’s parodied or sexualized, and even then it should only be about supporting her singing rather than shredding on solos. In many countries women musicians are everywhere, but we had to invent the concept of “blind audition” before women could work as symphony musicians, while other musical genres were doing things like ignoring Rosetta Tharpe. So as far as I was concerned, playing a guitar the way nature intended was not so much an expression of longing to engage in a gender-coded expression as much as a repudiation of gender codes. And I’m really glad to see lots more young women picking up instruments these days. 

It took me most of my life to commit to finishing a novel. Even then I refused to submit it to a publisher, preferring instead to test drive the life of a self-pubbed science fictionizer before jumping in the deep end. I wasn’t really happy that it came out science fiction in the first place since I had always thought I’d end up writing fantasy. 

A lot of this commitment phobia had to do with imagining myself being a part of the crowd. hen I first began to engage with science fiction, it was full of sexism, including positive pedo energy, and I  felt like an outlier as I shuffled through stories like A Boy And His Dog. Then I watched the next generation balance the creepy old predator energy with newfangled inclusivity, and a determined effort to make things less of a boys’ club, but this went along with the overthinky discussions about gender, and culture, and I felt the same kind of alienated Goldilocks feeling. So I concluded it was me, and I lean toward the ambiguous and nuanced take. 

I stepped far back and that seems to be my old reliable avoidance pattern, and that’s likely why I’m commitment phobic with regard to cultural areas. People are always trying to get me to declare for Team Righteousness or Team Evil, when I’m on Team There Should Be More Trains, And Free Ibuprofen Too. 

And also free reading material, goshdarnit. I am awaiting the Hugo Voters’ Packet in hopes it will contain some, because I am seeing BTS three times next month and have therefore put myself on financial probation: no new books aside from DC Carl 8 (pre-ordered) and the Tchaikovsky novel if it’s not included (I already have Nnedi’s). There was a Martha Wells story in the category where I snubbed most of the entries and I didn’t want to pay for it, but I’ll read it and maybe even vote for it if it’s free. I like Wells and her Murderbot character a lot. 

Meanwhile, here are the YA entries with brief synopsisesses that I found on Amazon and Goodreads and Reddit and places.  

Among Ghosts by Rachel Hartman (Random House Books for Young Readers)
Fantasy; a transkid avoids dragons, etc. 

Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee (Feiwel & Friends)
Sapphic portal romance. 

Holy Terrors by Margaret Owen (Henry Holt; Hodderscape UK)
Book 3 in a series about a thief with theme of whether people can change. 

Oathbound by Tracy Deonn (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
Also book 3 and one reviewer mentioned “Southern Black Girl magic”.

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic Press)
Latest in the Hunger Games series; I already own it but haven’t read it yet.

They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran (Bloomsbury US; Bloomsbury UK)
Body horror set in Vietnamese shrimper community with gender identity themes 

I'm willing to read any/all of them that show up in the voter's packet. Typically I prefer books about teenagers murdering each other (Hunger Games, Outsiders, et al.) than doing their awkward teenage romances. Romeo and Juliet is a tough act to imitate. 

More Non-Reviews -- I Bounced Off These Novelettes But You Might Like Them

 First one: “The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For” by Cameron Reed. Another clone romance story, with lots of domesticity and a trans POV character. I just couldn't engage. Your mileage may vary. 

Next, The Millay Illusion by Sarah Pinsker. I recall bouncing off of a story by her about cowpersons hunting escaped hippos in I believe the late 1800s, and this is also a period piece, with Victorian magicians, so I'm   starting to mentally file her away as that person who writes adventuresome Victorian-era stories with gender exploration. This one has a girl dressing as a boy for a magic act, and I thought the character was cool but then the narrative turned mostly infodump about magic acts and my engagement checked out. It's not bad, just not for me.

And finally, “When He Calls Your Name” by Catherynne M. Valente. I read the first couple paragraphs, instantly thought "is she riffing on _____?" Started skimming and at approximately 1/3 of the way in, there it was. Yup, saw that coming. Okay dad, nice job, I'm gonna wander back to Carl for a while. Maybe it'll surprise you. 

This leaves only the Martha Wells story, which costs money (as if!!) so I will wait for the voter packet before finishing with the novelette category.