I’ve just finished a new manuscript called Uplands. It’s a sequel to a story I wrote about a year ago called Bottomlands. They’re dark fantasy short stories about a witch and her familiar.
I was thinking I might want to write more stories in the series and was grasping for more words that end with -lands. I pretty quickly thought of grasslands and barrowlands, but then I was kind of stumped. I went to do a websearch, but how do you search for -lands?
I poked around for a few minutes to see if I already didn’t have a dictionary file on my computer, but pretty quickly I decided to just download this list of 479k English words for this purpose. The Internet is still useful for a few things.
Then I crafted my regular expression using the unix utility egrep. I went through a couple of iterations to get it just right, but ended up with this:
egrep '^[a-z].+lands$' ~/Downloads/words.txt
It looks through the file for words that end in “lands” and that aren’t capitalized (so you don’t get Netherlands, for example).
I ended up with 53 words. I think that’s more stories than I’ll want to write in this series. Some of the words are pretty good too! (e.g. badlands, borderlands, hinterlands all seem good for dark fantasy). Some don’t seem so useful (e.g. islands, lallands, playlands).
Interestingly, barrowlands wasn’t among the words. Go figure.
Since the pandemic, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has provided a robust online experience for the Nebula conference. It was fully online during 2020 and then resumed in 2022. Since then, there has been a commitment to offering a full (if not always perfectly integrated) online experience during the Nebula Conference. This year, SFWA is trying something new: an online only professional development conference. We’re calling it Quasar.
If you already paid for attendance to either the face-to-face or online Nebula conference, you’re eligible to register for Quasar at no expense. Otherwise, it’s only $50. Register before September 15 to receive the panel participation forms and office-hour surveys.
It will be a weekend of seminars, office hours, and flexible event scheduling with a keynote by the Nebula Grand Master Nicola Griffith.
It should be interesting, informative, and a lot of fun. Anyone interested in writing speculative fiction should strongly consider attending to learn more about the craft and business of writing and to network with your peers. Join us!
Today, I shared one of my Mastodon posts with friends, one of whom commented, “Weirdos posting stuff to social media ” So I took a few minutes to explain to them why I like Mastodon.
I do like Mastodon. I get more and higher quality engagement with what I share on Mastodon than anyplace else these days. But, more than that, I really just like it. It’s peaceful and relaxing. And a few months ago, I realized why: It reminds me of Usenet.
Usenet was a kind of terminal-based messaging system that scientists and technologists used in the earliest days of the Internet and the before times (i.e. when it was still “NSFNet“). It was an amazingly interesting and useful community of people having high-level discussions of topics both academic and non-academic.
My brother, who was an Unix systems-engineer at the time, had told me about Usenet. Honestly, the main reason I decided to go back to graduate school, was so I could gain access to it. Even at my university, it wasn’t easy. The campus IT group didn’t make it available to the general university community, so I had to request a guest account from the computer science department. As a doctoral student, my request was honored and I used that as my primary computer account, and email address, the whole time I was a graduate student. That was also why I started learning Unix, which became a key factor in landing the job that became my career.
As a student, I used Usenet professionally to further my academic career and research. I had high-level conversations about science education and life science. I used it to recruit subjects for my doctoral research, developing a model of expert performance in phylogenetic tree construction. But that wasn’t all I used it for. I also lived in soc.culture.esperanto, the newsgroup for Esperanto speakers, where I could have conversations with samideanoj from all over the world. This was a genuine novelty at the time, where you otherwise might have to sign up with a penpal service to exchange paper letters with people to have similar contacts. (I did this, in fact, and had interesting correspondence, but it often took many weeks to get responses whereas Usenet allowed you to have conversations in just days — or sometimes even just hours!)
Usenet began to die when AOL came online and there was a constant influx of new non-academic people. People called it “eternal September“. The Usenet community worked for busy academics and professionals because most people respected the conventions. You could use it for high-level discussions because it was high signal and low noise. Once those conventions broke down, the really interesting people mostly abandoned it because it wasn’t worth trying to wade through all of the irrelevant crap that novices tended to post. It was very sad.
Thirty years later, I was surprised to join Mastodon and discover that it reminded me so much of Usenet. It has the same high-quality engagement by interesting, thoughtful people. And it has social conventions that make the environment functional and useful. But then I realized that Mastodon didn’t just remind me of Usenet: It’s literally the same people. There’s Gene Spafford. And Steve Bellovin. And many, many others.
A whole bunch of the old, interesting people I remember from Usenet are here! We are pretty old, too. Most of us are retirement age, if not retired. But it’s been wonderful to reconnect with so many of these folks after so many years.
It’s not just that it has many of the same people, though. It’s the thoughtful design of the software environment. And the social conventions that favor high-quality engagement and reduce both the “copypasta” and the viral “oh, snap!” types of engagement that have come to characterize most social media. It’s always a pleasure to immerse myself in a thoughtful community of people engaged in creative pursuits, whether it’s taking pictures of mosses and lichens or sharing story fragments or responding to prompts about writing pursuits.
Two of the writing prompts I follow on Mastodon ask, “How was this month for you, writing-wise?” It was pretty good.
I had a couple of distractions: I went to Worldcon and Philip Brewer came to visit. Those each took about a week away from my writing. But otherwise, I got a lot done.
I’ve just about finished writing a new novelette called Bearly Believable. For several years, I’ve been writing little story fragments about a bear who acts as the fire-safety coordinator at a park. They’ve been among my most popular story fragments (which isn’t saying much, honestly). I think this is the very first one:
I wrote dozens of little scenarios about the bear as I fleshed him out in my mind. He changed a bit along the way and developed a backstory, which is what this story is really all about. Along the way, he was joined by a owl named Forrest who terrorizes litterbugs. And a little girl named Brunhilde who asks him thoughtful questions.
There’s a lot of world building embedded in the story. It has bits about the ecology of terraforming, lifestyles in a replicator-based society, and issues of freedom for non-human biological androids. At the same time, as with my of my writing, it’s silly fluff. I really don’t write anything to be deep.
It’s been fun to write. I just have a few bits to polish off over the next day or two. I would like to get it finished before the semester begins on Tuesday. If I quit writing this post and start working on that, there’s a good chance I’ll make it and finish writing for the month in style.
I have selected my theme for my writing course for the fall of 2025. Each semester I’ve taught the class since 2002, I’ve tried to pick a different theme for my students to research and write about. I can’t say that I’ve never repeated themes, but I always try to think up something different. This semester, I intend for my students to study the biology of Canis familiaris, the dog.
I’ve always tried to select something I don’t know much about. It allows the students to be the experts. And it prevents me from becoming too directive (which happens all too often when I already too much about the subject). It also keeps the course fresh for me and has let me learn a vast amount of biology over the years.
Some themes have worked better than others. Students tend to be strongly biased toward animals, so although I’ve been very pleased with the semesters we studied plants or fungi, students were often less satisfied. I’ve generally shied away from vertebrates, simply because there are a lot of practical and regulatory complications for conducting research on them. So we’ve studied planarians, tardigrades, terrestrial gastropods, worms, millipedes, wood lice, spiders, and many types of insects, which has usually made students happy. (They didn’t like the semester we studied cockroaches, tho. Go figure.) But dogs will be something new.
My thinking was undoubtedly influenced by the excellent panel on dogs I participated on at Worldcon. There’s a wonderfully rich literature about dogs that students can dig into. The real question will be, what kinds of research projects can students propose and conduct? My course asks students to write a proposal — preferably about something they could actually do — and then to select a proposal to actually undertake as a research project.
I encourage students to follow their interests. If they’re genuinely interested in some topic that we can’t actually do, they’re welcome to write it up as a proposal. I often use the example of studying the biology of Mars. We don’t have the resources or time to visit Mars to conduct a project. But that shouldn’t stop them from proposing that, if that’s really what they want to do. It’s typically more fun to pitch something we can actually do. And it’s fun when your idea gets chosen by the class for a whole course research project.
I don’t require that the whole course pick just one project. Each group can choose to do their own proposal or any of the other proposals. Or something different altogether, if something more interesting has occurred to them. But it does sometimes happen organically, that one proposal rises to the top and everyone coordinates to conduct 8 or 9 projects all centered around a single proposal.
I wonder what kinds of projects the students will propose. I think there’s a lot we can do. We could observe dogs at local dog parks. Or simply by walking downtown. Some students will undoubtedly have pets. Or we could look for evidence of dogs in the environment.
Before we write proposals, I have the students perform a “METHODS Project” where they make a multi-panel figure that relates to the theme to get them thinking about the kinds of data they might collect. This year, I’ll ask them to collect photographic evidence of the presence of a dog in the local environment. The challenge for this project is how to collect data that is replicable: Can they think of something to photograph that another student can reliably also document? I can think of a few ideas, but it’s tricky. I’ll enjoy seeing what they come up with.
I’m always happy when I come up with an idea that I’m excited about and that I think the students will also enjoy. I think this is going to be a winner. Now I just need to come up with one more idea for next semester, which will be the very last time I ever teach this class.
I don’t generally pay much attention to birthdays. But this year, my friends and family got together and made my birthday very special. It’s wonderful to have supportive family and friends.
The last time I had a special birthday was a dozen years ago when my friend Buzz Hoagland offered to throw me a party for my 50th birthday. He brewed some special beer to toast me and we invited all of my friends, family, and colleagues to come to his house for a party on the lawn. It was wonderful and I still have fond recollections many years later. In the interim, Buzz passed away and my life is much smaller and poorer for his passing.
Buzz was, in many ways, the center of my social life. He was outgoing and gregarious — and maintained a large circle of friends that I felt lucky to be a part of. He was always the one to send out messages to bring everyone together for a party or a dinner or a trip to the brewery. After he passed away, I tried to step into his shoes and set up a signal group to stay in touch with friends.
I called my group the Manly Men. This is a joke because we are probably among the least manly men in existence. We regularly share supportive messages and funny links and organize, occasionally, to get together to hang out and drink beer.
One of us, the Z-Man, is going through a rough time right now and, by coincidence, messaged me the night before my birthday to talk about getting together. (See left…)
He did message the Manly Men and they all agreed to stop by to wish me a happy birthday. The Z-Man came first and we sat out in the tent to chat with my brother, his wife, and my mom. The Ol’ Sprackler came by while the Z-Man was still there and we chatted some more. Then, after the Z-Man left, Bug Rodger called me on the phone and we put him on speaker and chatted for a bit. Daniel came out after a while and joined us. Finally, after the Sprackler left, we went to the Berkshire Brewery for pizza and beer, and then the Sifaka stopped by to chat for an hour or more
It was wonderful to spend pretty much the whole day visiting with friends and family. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. Since the pandemic, I hardly ever see people. I generally stay isolated to avoid exposure to respiratory viruses and, except for when people come to hang out in the tent, I don’t much socialize. But I really value having friends, which have always been an important part of my life.
One of my colleagues at UMass once joked, “I used to have these things called friends…” when talking about the isolation of being a faculty member. Faculty, because they evaluate one another, have a tendency to be unwilling to show weakness or vulnerability. As a faculty member, you feel a lot of pressure to present a carefully curated perspective on your life to other faculty. You can talk about the grants you’re applying for. Or how much work your teaching is and how it takes away from your research. But sometimes, years and years after having met a colleague, you discover that they play a musical instrument in a band. Or do oil painting or watercolors. They don’t share these facets of their lives with their colleagues because they don’t want to be perceived as having “free time” that they’re not dedicating to their research. It’s very sad.
I had a great birthday — one that I will remember for the rest of my days.
Today, the #WritersCoffeeClub prompt at Mastodon asked contributors to “Talk about an affirming experience you’ve had among your writing peers.” This was really difficult, only because it was so difficult to choose. There are so many people and groups that I value and appreciate. After some consideration, I decided to write about Wandering Shop Stories:
I really appreciate my brother, Philip M. Brewer, and my younger son, who serve as alpha readers of my fiction. When I write my initial draft, it’s really useful to have a few eyes to look it over and help me think about story structure and pacing. My brother is particularly good at coming up with ideas to strengthen the story and heighten the drama. And Daniel likes to mock the weak points, in a friendly and supportive way. His raillery always leaves rolling on the floor in hysterics. I am filled with gratitude for their support
In addition to #wss366, which I organize and manage, many other Mastodon writing communities are wonderful and supportive. They include #WritersCoffeeClub, #WordWeavers, #PennedPossibilities, #ScribesAndMakers, #LesFicFri, #WIPSnips, and others. It’s interesting to reflect on the questions, to read the responses that others write, and to receive positive reactions from the community.
I love serving on the Board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). The organization is such a positive force in support of the genre writing community. The Board is really excellent. It’s the best non-profit Board I’ve ever served with, composed of deeply committed people who are both talented and dedicated to supporting the community. When I joined the Board, SFWA was in a crisis with a loss of leadership and staff. Now, we have great leadership and are fully staffed with truly outstanding people. The organization is really hitting on all cylinders. Somewhat perversely, it’s much less work for us on the Board and truly wonderful things are happening all the time. Everywhere I turn, people are commenting how they like the direction SFWA is taking. It’s been incredibly rewarding service.
I also love the Straw Dog Writers Guild. I enjoy serving on the Program Committee and helping organize interesting workshops and presentations. I’ve been able to invite really excellent people to contribute to our programming. And I really treasure my small community at Straw Dog Writes. There are a handful of us that meet nearly every week on Wednesday evenings to write together via zoom and a number of others that drop in and out periodically. Everyone has been very supportive and friendly.
It’s so important to have community to fall back on when things are rough. I really value everyone’s support.
In 2022, I was hospitalized with pneumonia and learned that I have a chronic lung condition that puts me at heightened risk from respiratory infections. Even before, during the pandemic, my family was being very cautious due to my 90-year-old mother living with us. The net result has been that, for us, the pandemic never ended.
For several years, I only attended events where everyone was masked. I attended Arisia, Boskone, Readercon, and Worldon in Chicago, while masks were required. But, as events — one-by-one — dropped masking requirements, I have gradually begun attending events where masks aren’t required. This year, I attended Worldcon in Seattle.
I mask everyplace I go indoors, except for my own house. Or inside my own hotel room. It really kinda sucks. No dining in restaurants, no bars, no nothing. (Unless it’s outdoors.)
At Worldcon, a small percentage of people — perhaps 10% — were masked. The numbers were a bit higher in the science panels I attended. At SEATAC, perhaps as many as 5% of people were masked. At DFW, I saw thousands of people during our two-hour layover as we transited between terminals and only saw one other person wearing a mask.
Masks are really not that uncomfortable. They don’t interfere with your breathing at all. When you wear them for hours, however — especially when it’s hot and humid — the increased humidity on your face is irritating. And if I have to do any serious exertion, my mask will become soaked with sweat, which is even worse. It also causes my glasses to be less stable, especially if I’m looking down. I’ve had my glasses literally fall off my face. And don’t get me started about when I use the Portable Oxygen Concentrator (which I need in order to fly) and have to run the oxygen tubes behind my ears too.
Wearing a mask is stigmatizing. People can’t hear you as well and can’t see your facial expressions, which makes you more difficult to understand. It’s isolating because you can’t respond as effectively to social cues. It’s especially bad when you’re one of the only ones masking. It makes you stand out in a bad way.
The modern Summit Convention Center in Seattle has very high ceilings and, reportedly, very high quality air filtration. But I still masked everywhere.
Even masked, I avoided crowded events. If there were a lot of people in a room, I don’t go in. Or I got out.
One of the main reasons people go to Worldcon is to attend parties in hotel rooms and suites. These rooms generally have very poor ventilation. There were a lot of parties on the same floor as our hotel room. We could hear the sounds of merry making in our room every night. SFWA held two breakfasts in their suite. I attended the first for about 10 minutes, when the room completely filled up with unmasked people and so I left.
The net result is that I can only get about half of the experience of going to a convention.
When I returned home, I watched the #disease-self-reporting channel of the Worldcon Discord as reports of cases came in. On my publisher’s Discord, people who had worked in the dealer’s room began reporting positive results too. Every time I saw another report, I would have psychosomatic symptoms. Is my throat scratchy? Why did I just cough?
I finally ran a test this morning, four day after departing the convention. Negative.
It appears I’ve dodged the bullets again. But that’s literally what it is: dodging the bullets. It’s constant and it’s exhausting.
The 2025 Worldcon in Seattle was generally good. I served on a lot of panels, had a good reading, and (for me) met a lot of people. But I had one unpleasant experience that left a bad taste in my mouth and left me feeling rather mixed on the whole convention.
I had a reading. At first, I realized they had scheduled my reading for Sunday when would have already left. But they were graciously able to reschedule it earlier in the Con. It was, in fact, in the second reading slot for the convention. I worried that it might not get any attendees. After Boskone, I said I would be happy if my reading had any attendees. But there were six people, two of whom came specifically to see me. I joked afterward that it had a non-zero number of attendees and some of them were not even related to me by blood.
I also served on seven panels at Worldcon. Seven is rather a lot, but I like to be busy. I moderated one panel and was a panelist on the others. Many people came up afterward to praise my performance both as panelist and moderator — and to express interest in my books. And some even came to the dealer room later to find me and buy copies.
The panel I moderated, An Hour of the Strange, Unusual, Creepy, went very well. One of the participants had emailed everyone within a day or two of the panel being proposed to start organizing it and asked everyone to introduce themselves and describe what they wanted to do talk about. I responded to the email and then, a day or two, followed up gently with the email I normally sent to panels that I’m going to moderate that introduces me as the moderator with my usual information requests, that includes how to pronounce names and solicits questions that will allow each panelist to make the points they want to make about the topic. A few days before the panel, I sent the list of questions I’d come up with. Our presentation went well and I think everyone was able to participate well and say what they wanted to say. The guy who’d tried to take over as organizer apologized after the panel for jumping the gun. He said he’d served on another panel where the moderator never reached out or did anything (which has happened to me too). I said it was no problem. I was pleased that everyone seemed happy with the result.
Most of my other panels were about biology. On Life as we know it, I got to serve with Frank Wu again. We were on a similar panel at Boskone. In the lead up to the panel, I pointed out a couple of new unusual life forms that I had heard about that Frank hadn’t yet seen. He was super excited about them and I think I earned a lot of points with him. In both Can biological research ever be independant? and Human evolution and our influence on it were well-stocked with real expertise and I felt like I could play effectively off points other people were making to add useful information and nuance.
I was on two ‘non biology’ panels. One was about self-publishing for poets, which went well where I got to show off my Esperanto books and the ‘zines I’ve made. The other was about Makerspaces. One of the participants didn’t show up for that one and so it was a little thin. But we had a good time playing off the audience’s questions and letting them to contribute useful information.
My favorite panel was Biology and Evolution of the Dog that had a perfect mix of expertise and personalities. The moderator was a PhD Doctor of Veterinary Medicine who had been deeply involved with sequencing projects. There was an evolutionary biologist and a dog training expert. And me. Since everyone else could play to their expertise, I could just be the weird author and talk about boxer dogs and my story with a character who is a NeoBoxer.
The panel got off to a rough start when it turned out that there was no projector to share the slide presentation the moderator had constructed. I suggested that we could run a zoom session that the participants could join and the moderator could share the presentation that way. In the 15 minutes before the start, I set a zoom session, everyone joined, and it worked. (Mostly. The convention center was experiencing some network issues and the moderator got dropped from the zoom session a couple of times. But we rolled with it, reorganized a couple of the points, and got through everything.)
I also had several SFWA events. I attended a board meeting, served at the SFWA “fan table” a couple of times, and attended a breakfast (for a few minutes: it was tightly packed in a small, poorly ventilated room so I left once it got busy to reduce my exposure to COVID). They had a networking reception that I unfortunately couldn’t attend, because I was on a panel at the same time. But I got to introduce myself as the Secretary to a bunch of SFWA folks, including John Scalzi, while I was serving at the fan table and selling books.
I was too busy to spend a lot of time selling books in the dealer room, but I was there much of my free time. We had brought some books (my own and others from my publisher) and dropped them off before the dealer room opened. I managed to sell most of the books I’d brought and ended up bringing home only a handful. I didn’t manage to sell any of my Esperanto chapbooks, which kind of surprised me. But not that much.
Everything went very well with one exception. One of the other authors with my publisher decided to try to chastise me on two separate occasions for things they misunderstood about what I was doing. In both cases, I felt that they were very aggressive and kind of an asshole about it. I reported the conflicts to my publisher and said that, as things stand, I will not work with this person going forward. But it made me somewhat upset and rather colored the whole Worldcon experience for me.
I should recognize my son Daniel for coming along with me. He was a boon companion and made sure I got at least one good meal each day. Plus he helped me schlep the books all the way there. I really enjoy having him come along with me for many reasons but also because, honestly, I don’t quite trust myself to manage all of the travel details anymore, and so having second set of eyes on everything is reassuring.
We checked out of the hotel around 6am Sunday morning and spent the whole day traveling home: light rail to the airport then two 3-4 hour flights with a long layover in DFW. We finally got home around 1am. I’m rather glad I’m not traveling again until November for LOSCon.
My son, Daniel, and I brought ~90lbs of books (two full checked-bags) for Water Dragon Publishing to sell in the Dealer Room at Worldcon in Seattle. So we took the books to the Dealer Room during the set-up time to drop the books off. There was a little old man wearing a convention center staff uniform standing at the door to prevent unauthorized entry.
He peered at our badges and said, “You’re ‘members.’ Members aren’t allowed in until 2pm when the Dealer Room opens.”
We had been listed as dealer-room staff by Water Dragon, so we should have been able to get into the Dealer Room but, due to a snafu, we ended up with “member” badges that didn’t list our role as dealers.
While we were standing there another person came up and then another with the same issue. The guard kept saying the same thing, “You’re badge has to say ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.’ I can’t let anyone in unless their badge says ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.'”
One woman was quite irate, “Can I speak to Amy? Can you get Amy? I need to drop off these books.”
He replied, “Your badge says ‘member’. Members aren’t allowed in until 2pm when the Dealer room opens.”
The woman became nearly apoplectic with rage when Amy happened to come by. She listened to us and then promptly directed us to bring in our stuff and drop it off.
When I was leaving, I thanked the guard for his service. He said, “I just can only let people in if their badge says ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.'”
“Yep. It’s waaaay above your pay grade,” I said. “Thanks again.”
Privately, Daniel commented to me, “I’ve never seen someone go full NPC before.”
I commented that he didn’t have much experience with the military because that’s what they train you do to: follow orders.
Later, I was on a panel where someone with a dealer badge said, “Where do you get those name placards?”
“They’re in your participant packet,” someone said.
“Participant packet?”
“Yeah. That white envelope you got when you got your badge.”
“I didn’t get one!”
When I got my badge, I just said my name and gave them my ID and assumed they had everything cross correlated regarding the various roles people had. But evidently their system only tracked one role. So you were either a member or artist or dealer. That’s just my hypothesis.
Later in that day, I was able to get a dealer ribbon that now gives me access to the dealer room during set-up time. So it’s all good.
Mastercard and other payment processors, under pressure from right-wing groups and the government, are forcing vendors to remove works with a wide variety of perfectly legal, but in some way sexually explicit content, from their listings. This neo-Puritanism results in Authors and Artists being branded with a new kind of Scarlet A. To recognize and respond to this, I’ve created a Scarlet A graphic you can use to show that you’re an Ally and oppose having the neo-Puritans restrict what legal content you can access.
You can get the image three ways [PNG] [PDF] [SVG].
Put it on your website! Share it via social media. And please link it to this page so people will know what it means.
Other things you can do:
Sign the ACLU petition. The ACLU is collecting signatures to show that the issue matters.
Call Mastercard. They began these actions in response to a well-organized campaign by a small pressure group. We need to show them there are more of us.
Call your congresspersons. This is just one skirmish in a larger war by neo-Puritans to restrict everyone’s access to adult materials in the guise of “protecting children”. Congress has been proposing one ill-considered measure after another. Push back!
My first significant work of fiction, The Mary Stories, is now available via Theo Reads! It’s a “rural fantasy” story that blends Eastern and Western elements. I’ve grown a lot as a writer since I finished this work, but I still enjoy re-reading it. It has a lot of charming moments and the wry humor that a number of people have told me they like about my writing. I think that people who like my writing will also enjoy it. Here’s the description:
“An older man moves back to his childhood home in the country and rediscovers the imaginary friend he had as a child, who is not so imaginary. Reconnecting after a lifetime apart, they begin to trust one another again. And, together, they confront a mystery that spans the past and the present, and that threatens them both.”
When I first started trying to actually write something for publication in English, this was the first piece of greater than short-story length I ever completed. It was a serial of ten episodes that each had a minor story and, together, covered a larger overall arc. It includes many of the elements that characterize my work: a blend of East and West, episodic story telling, interactions between human and non-human characters, ecological and environmental themes, and trans people finding acceptance and love.
It’s not my strongest work. I’ve grown a lot as a writer since I wrote this. The story structure and pacing is uneven. And there are some “darlings” and “mary-sue” parts that I like to think I have gotten somewhat better at killing. Or, at least, disguising. But I still like the stories and I think they’re fun romp.
After I finished writing the stories, I shopped them around a bit but found that few publishers were interested in serialized work from new authors. In spite of that, I kept pushing to write serialized work and found success at Water Dragon Publishing when Revin’s Heart was serialized. After submitting the Mary Stories a few times, I set them aside to work on other things. Then I heard of Kindle Vella.
Vella was an experiment that Amazon did in serialization. I published The Mary Stories at Vella as It’s Complicated. It didn’t attract much interest there. I read that people that were successful at Vella — and there weren’t many — had generally written more than a hundred chapters. And the more successful works tended toward erotica, which wasn’t really what I wanted to write. But Vella itself didn’t pan out either, and they shut it down in February 2025.
Theo Reads is an interesting project to commercialize serialized writing. It’s more of a platform than a publisher. They’re still developing the technology and the processes. But it’s fascinating to see a bit behind the scenes as they try things out and work through the various challenges. Among the authors are a number of familiar — and well known — faces in the SFF community. They’re currently particularly interested in erotica — or works adjacent to erotica. But they’re interested in broadening the types of stories they publish.
I have several other works that might fit that I could choose to publish via Theo Reads. I have one serial just sitting there that I had thought I had found a home for, but has been languishing for more than a year. So, for me, this is a useful opportunity to try out Theo Reads and see if my work might find an audience there.
In Thin, White and Right: The Ideal Christian Woman the speakers describe how it’s currently “in” in Conservative circles to be fit. One of the biggest, weirdest successes of the so-called Conservative movement is how they’ve convinced people to judge and hate who they themselves are. This is something I’ve never understood. Obesity and poverty are huge problems everywhere in the US, but in the South, especially. But a vast number of those same people have been persuaded that these things are their fault — some kind of moral failing. And they hate and mock people for being like that.
They say, “Poor? You’re a loser and it’s your fault. Fat? You’re a loser and it’s your fault. Addicted to drugs? You’re a loser and it’s your fault. Can you believe those woke people not hating poor, fat, drug addicts and telling them that it’s OK to be like that? What a bunch of leftist freaks!”
We now know, of course, that treating these things like they are moral failings doesn’t work. There are systemic reasons for obesity, poverty, drug addition, and many other things that we could work together to solve for everyone. Blaming people for being unable to individually solve them is purely hateful.
Of course, they also hate people for sexual orientation and gender identity which is similarly not a moral failing. Furthermore, we know that, among them, there a lot of people — maybe 20-25% — that would be much happier being able to express other orientations and identities. Instead, they live out their lives hating themselves and feeling like there is something wrong that needs to be hidden, bottled up, and repressed.
All I can say is that it’s deplorable that people would rather go through life hating themselves and engaging in self-abnegation. If that’s actually how you want to live, maybe you really are a loser and it is your fault.
Early this spring, at a meeting of the Faculty Senate Rules Committee with the Campus Leadership Council (the Chancellor, Provost, and Vice Chancellors), a key campus administrator mentioned that they didn’t understand why it was so difficult to recruit people to serve on the Faculty Senate. I was able to enlighten them with a story.
I read to him an excerpt of what my department’s Personnel Committee wrote about my service on my Annual Faculty Review (AFR) from 2023:
Recap: Dr. Brewer was a member of the biology awards committee, the biology climate committee, Chair of CNS lecturer review & promotion committee, Presiding officer of faculty senate, a member of the rules committee of the faculty senate, a faculty senator, an ad hoc reviewer for the journal American Biology Teacher, and serves on the Program Committee of the Straw Dob Writers Guild, an organization that supports writers in Western MA. Although not part of his job responsibilities, Dr. Brewer also published several short stories, novelettes, and flash fiction works.
Evaluation: Dr. Brewer’s service contributions meet departmental expectations.
For comparison, in many departments service on a single departmental committee would be considered sufficient to “meet expectations”. By contrast, I served on two departmental committees, I CHAIRED a personnel committee for the College (which is a particularly heavy load and for which many faculty would secure a release from other service), and I served as one of the two highest, elected positions that lead the Faculty Senate. I have to preside over the Senate meetings plus my service on the Rules Committee is heavier than most departmental committees. Moreover, I do additional outreach outside the University. (It’s Straw Dog Writer’s Guild, btw.) In short, I did a fuck ton of service that year. I’m not sure what I would have had to have done to get an “exceeds expectations” — maybe win a MacArthur Genius Award or something.
For 2024, BTW, my assessment was the same, even though I didn’t chair the College lecturer review and promotion committee. But they didn’t even mention the General Faculty Meeting that was one of the most difficult and challenging things I’ve ever done in my life (which I did prominently cite on my AFR — they just didn’t mention it). But departments just don’t value Faculty Senate service much. And that’s why it’s hard to recruit people to serve.
Several weeks after this happened, I happened to be awarded an inaugural Delphi Leadership Award by the Center for Faculty Development, which recognizes exceptional leadership in service to non-tenure-track faculty. It was nice to have my service recognized by someone, even if my department does not.
“Steven D. Brewer is recognized for his sustained leadership in the Massachusetts Society of Professors (MSP) and in the Faculty Senate in improving working conditions for NTT faculty. In MSP, Steven has served as an Officer, on the Executive Board, as the only NTT member on the MSP bargaining team, and multiple bargaining subcommittees to establish NTT promotion ladders, continuing appointment status, and the professional development fellowship. Steve was the first NTT member of the Senate Rules committee and now serves as Presiding Officer of the Faculty Senate.”
I’ve always known that my department did not really appreciate my university service, but it never stopped me from serving. I’ve always believed that faculty governance is critical to a university’s independence from outside influences. The faculty need to be involved in order to push back against efforts to control the university. Without a strong culture of engagement with faculty governance, there would be little to stop the university from being taken over. So, even though I knew that my service efforts would not lead to recognition at the department level, I believed it was important enough to do anyway. And it’s gratifying to see that service recognized, even if not by the colleagues in my department.
There is one kind of service I’ve stopped doing. For 25 years, I served as Director of the Biology Computer Resource Center and, during that time, I did extensive university service related to information technology (IT), serving on the Faculty Senate University Computing and Electronic Communications Committee (the euphonious FSUC&ECC). When I served on the Rules Committee the first time, I was involved in rewriting the charter for the committee to elevate it to become the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC), which had a larger charge and higher level administrative representation. During those times I worked ceaselessly to try to make the University IT responsive to the needs of departments and the faculty. But when the department rewrote my job description so that I wasn’t responsible for information technology anymore, I dropped all of my service related to IT. It’s not my job anymore.
Next year, I will complete my phased retirement and then none of it will be my job anymore. It’s been an wonderful career and I’m looking forward to one more wonderful year. But I’m also enjoying my transition to new challenges.
I’ll bring my own books plus a selection of other books from Water Dragon. The weather looks spectacular and I hope we’ll have a great showing. I hope to see you there!
I agreed, with the welcome support of my son, to set up and run the Readercon dealer tables for Water Dragon Publishing and Small Publishing in a Big Universe (SPBU) again this year. I had a number of observations when I ran it last year. I reviewed those and tried to put some of them into effect this year.
We only had one table each for Water Dragon and SPBU this year that were at a corner. As I understand it, there were originally two authors scheduled to use the SPBU table (plus some of my books are considered SPBU), but only one actually attended. So I used the rest of the SPBU table for my books and other Water Dragon titles.
Last year, I observed we had too many titles featured. I had considered getting some bookshelves that could let people browse, but didn’t manage to accomplish that. But I did change how the books were organized on the table. This year, rather than having essentially every title on a book stand, I had most titles laying flat on the table and only put a handful of featured titles on book stands. Over the course of the three days, I switched which books were featured, so that different books had a chance to stand out and be seen. Except the books by authors who were present: their books were on display for every day of the convention.
Water Dragon Table, Day 1Water Dragon Table, Day 2Water Dragon Table, Day 3
Three authors, besides me, were available to represent our table: two other Water Dragon authors and one SPBU author. I tried to spread the books by different authors out around the tables so that there was a chair where each of the books was positioned so that the author could stand behind their book to sell it. I was pleased when someone was looking at an author’s book when the author was near the table. I was able to point the author out for them to ask a question which then led to a sale. It’s amazing what a difference it makes to be present for selling books. In point of fact, reaching out to people when they’re at the table to call attention to your books makes a huge difference as well. At least half of my sales — maybe more — are directly attributable to my reaching out to people at the table to pitch books. If your books are just “there” people are much less likely to notice them.
One thing that surprised me this year was who I didn’t see in the bookstore. I’ve often enjoyed being in the bookstore because it’s an opportunity to see everyone that comes through. But not everyone visited the bookstore at Readercon this year. I might not have noticed, but I was particularly struck because a number of the most prominent, instantly-recognizable, authors and other members of the SFF community never came into the bookstore at all, which I found personally disappointing. At some other conventions, there are a number of inducements or other activities planned associated with the bookstore (or “dealer room”) that encourage people to visit. Maybe something like that would help here.
I got to pilot-test the 任せて DNA Analysis tool and Human DNA ribbon. Readercon only started using ribbons last year and there is not a strong ribbon culture. I developed a pitch centered around the tool that I introduced occasionally after my usual pitch. It was sometimes effective. Nobody seemed to find it problematic. A few people independently noticed the QR code irrespective of the pitch. (Or actually codes because I actually had two: one that led to the “Book” page of my website.) Although it didn’t seem interesting to everyone, some people really loved it. I still need to work a bit on the follow-up mini lecture about the human genome, to tighten it up and to bring it back more effectively to sell the book.
I finally paid for the pro version of Independent Analytics that provides traffic analysis for my website. The free version really provides enough. But I like the system well enough that I wanted to provide support for them to encourage further development. I purchased a permanent license.
My author website is (mostly) the first site I’ve tried to build in WordPress. (Although I did set up a Comic Press site for Doctor Emery’s Nightmares back in the day.) In my previous career, I set up hand-coded websites in HTML and was an expert with Drupal which I used to set up websites for a bunch of organizations. But, when I wanted to build an author site, I decided that WordPress was probably the best fit for what I was trying to do. (In large part because my hosting service, Dreamhost, did the install and does the maintenance for the system. It’s not like I can’t do that for myself, but it means I spend less time worrying about tracking and applying security patches.)
After I set up my website, I was interested in getting usage statistics, but WordPress doesn’t really provide any natively. I looked around a bit and settled on the Independent Analytics plugin as the best fit for my needs. It is attractively designed, provides almost all of the basic functionality that you might want, and has some gentle teasers for advanced functionality you can unlock by purchasing the “pro” version.
The main thing you can do with the pro version, is run “campaigns” that let you collect data to compare and test different approaches. It also provides a very pretty overview dashboard with the basic statistics. It’s probably overkill for what I’m trying to do. But, as I say, the free version is really plenty to provide the basic functionality anyone would want.
I love fountain pens. I don’t actually write by hand much. But when I sell books at conventions, its expected I sign books, so I always make a point of having a nice fountain pen that is appropriately inked before I go.
Several years ago, when I needed to get a new fountain pen, I had gotten a beautiful Jinhao pen with a porcelain barrel with an image of delicate plum blossoms that I’d been extremely pleased with. I looked again a few years later, and couldn’t find the same pen, but I found a similar pen (pictured above) which was absurdly cheap, so I bought two:
When the pens arrived (after about a month, shipped surface via container ship) they were perfectly satisfactory. But I noticed that they had some Chinese script that, interestingly, wasn’t shown in the promotional image. It made me wonder… What does it say? Is it the name of a bank? Does it say “Death to America”? I kept meaning to get it translated but not getting around to it. This morning I finally found time.
I took the picture above and fed it into Google Translate. I usually leave Google Translate set to translate to Japanese and it does provide a translation in Japanese, but what it said seemed rather cryptic:
Mai Muroto Ikatoide
Plum Blossom Palace Jiku Kanta
I set it to Detect Language and let it try again. Then I set it to Chinese (Traditional) to confirm that they were the same:
The sword dance in the room is sharpened by the deer.
Plum Blossom Palace is cold and beautiful.
The first seems like some kind of proverb or saying, but one that the English Internet seems unfamiliar with. Plum Blossom Palace similarly doesn’t seem to return any obvious hits.
So now I know, anyway, for whatever good that does. I still like the pens and it makes people happy to have me use a pretty pen to sign their books.
Representing disability is important in fiction. Many years ago, I saw someone who said that, rather than calling some people “disabled,” we should call everyone else “temporarily abled.” Because if you don’t have a disability now, you will. If you live long enough, almost everyone will go through some period of their life with a disability: a broken foot, gout, a bout of depression, etc. After I was hospitalized, I discovered that I have a disability: a chronic lung condition that limits my life in significant ways.
Today, my wife and I attended a flag raising for Disability Pride Month. The Town Council of Amherst wrote a proclamation and raised a flag to recognize and celebrate people with disabilities. And to commemorate the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has been transformative for ensuring access for disabled people. It was an opportunity for to me to reflect on the writing I’ve done representing disabled characters. I have several stories that represent characters with disabilities, both physical and mental. But one character stands out.
One of my favorite characters in the Revin’s Heart series is the Professor. Revin’s first meets him when he sees a glider fly from the mountain top of the island where the pirates have their base and land on the beach.
[The glider] skidded to a stop, and then flipped over. Revin, with his sharp eyes, could see someone strapped into the device with a harness.
Revin sprinted down the switchbacks of the trail to the sea. A few of the most athletic pirates got ahead of him by running straight down, bypassing the switchbacks. But five or six of them arrived at more or less the same time to see the man — for they could see now it was a man — with wild white hair and a gray beard scramble out of the harness. But Revin could see something was terribly wrong. The front half of him was crawling out of the harness, but he was leaving his legs behind.
“Aaaa! What’s happened to your legs?” Revin asked in shock.
“Those aren’t my legs,” the man growled. “Those are just for balance.”
“But you don’t have any legs! What happened to your legs?” Revin persisted.
“Airshark got ’em,” the man replied, gravely. “Have you ever seen an airshark? Terrible creatures.”
Revin was dubious. He started to open his mouth, then realized that all of the pirates were standing in a circle, watching his facial expressions, and trying not to laugh. He turned bright, bright red and they exploded with laughter, rolling on the ground. Gently hazing the new cabin boy was a popular pastime among the pirates. And now the strenuous efforts of the pirates to get there ahead of him were explained.
The backstory of how the Professor came to not have legs is never described in the books. Revin discovers soon, however, that the Professor brilliantly supervises the team of pirates that maintains the airship and keeps it airworthy. He uses hand-braces to move around and is clearly a genius inventor, scientist, and engineer. He’s blunt, plain-spoken, and gruff, but you soon learn that he really cares about Revin and the other pirates.
Grip […] sent Revin to the Professor to request he construct a practice sword with similar properties to the real sword. He looked at the sword, then looked at Revin fiercely from under his bushy eyebrows.
“You’re going to get yourself killed if you play with these things,” he grumbled.
“I want to be able to protect my friends,” Revin said.
“Worry about yourself first,” the Professor said. “You can’t help anyone if you’re dead.”
“Please?” Revin said, sweetly.
“Ugh. It’s your funeral,” the Professor said. “We’ll have something for you by tomorrow.”
It isn’t until much later that Revin learns that there’s larger backstory to the Professor than he realizes. They travel together on a secret mission when Revin discovers that the Professor is actually a famous member of the Royal Academy. Everyone in academic circles knows the Professor.
[Revin] stood conferring with the Professor about what to do for the night when someone said, “Professor Grexin? Is that you?”
“Eh?” the Professor said, turning toward the newcomer, a middle‑aged academic wearing University garb.
“It is you!” the man continued excitedly. “You probably don’t remember me: Niles Ender. I saw your talk five years ago on hydrogen generation using algae and we spoke for a bit at the reception that followed. What are you doing back here?”
“I’m just visiting my nephew,” the Professor said, clapping Revin on the back.
“Wow! You must be so proud to have a famous uncle like Professor Grexin!
When they’re attacked by highway men, Revin learns that there is more to the Professor than meets the eye.
Revin and the Professor got ready to sleep. They were about to get into the bedrolls when Art [their coachman] appeared around the corner of the wagon accompanied by two other men. With their swords drawn, they charged toward Revin and the Professor.
Revin drew his sword and put himself en garde. Considering the Professor no threat, Art and the two men bypassed him to attack Revin. Revin began to panic, wondering how he could possibly defend himself against all three of them. Suddenly, the two other men staggered and, with their eyes rolling up in their heads, collapsed. Art looked surprised and distracted at the sudden loss of his allies. Revin lunged forward and caught him in the throat. Art fell over clutching at his neck and expired with blood spurting through his fingers.
Revin stared wild‑eyed at the Professor, who stood with his arm braces raised.
“What just happened?” Revin gasped.
“I keep each of my arm braces loaded with a poisoned dart,” he said. “They must have figured me for no threat. But they were wrong.”
When they arrive at the Hermitage (a research institute), the Professor is again recognized as the famous scholar he is and they are invited to attend a formal dinner, Revin learns yet something new about this enigmatic character. When a toast is proposed that celebrates using science for war, the Professor pours out his glass on the floor and hand-walks out of the room.
With the toast out of the way, Revin was concerned that his lack of knowledge about polite dining would make him stand out. But he needn’t have worried. The scientists couldn’t care less about etiquette and appeared to use forks and spoons randomly — or not at all — which allowed Revin to relax and enjoy the meal. Watching the servants, though, he began to awaken to how easy it was to become complacent about your station in life. And to become complicit in sustaining inequalities. His respect for the Professor went up, to be willing to be true to himself and publicly demonstrate his commitment to his principles. And he began to see how the Professor and Will, a captain of pirates, had found common ground.
The Professor is one of my favorite characters in Revin’s Heart. He continues to show up in the (as yet) unpublished sequels to Revin’s Heart. In Ecorozire, Revin visits the Hermitage, where the Professor has retired after the pirates disbanded.
“How is your second retirement going?” Revin asked.
“Oh, it’s wonderful!” the Professor said. “I just come in, sit around, and argue with people all day.”
“Not getting bored, then?” Will pressed.
“Oh, no. No boredom here!”
“Well, then,” Revin said. “I guess you wouldn’t want to go investigate these mysterious coins with eternite in them.” Revin pulled out the necklace shook it at him
This year, I decided to try to attend the Business Meetings of the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) to learn more about the organization. I’ve served in numerous other governance roles, so my perspectives here are largely trying to make sense of these new experiences in those contexts. Here are some preliminary observations.
One caveat about my comments. These are simply my personal observations and should be taken with a grain of salt. If anyone has corrections or suggestions, I would welcome comments to help me learn more.
Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention (which I’m attending this year) is governed by the World Science Fiction Society. WSFS is basically an entirely volunteer organization that is constituted of the local group that is organizing to put on the Convention each year.
The business meetings use the Lumi virtual meeting platform. Another organization I belong to (the MTA) has used the same platform for their annual meeting. This platform works pretty well. It uses Zoom at the backend, but runs in a browser window, so it is a bit clunky. In practice, however, it works pretty well to provide access to the documents, let you see who is speaking, and offer a seamless voting interface.
Outside of Lumi, they also set up a Discord server for chat while the meetings are going on, with separate channels for on-topic and off-topic discussion. And the obligate channel for pictures of pets, of course.
There are five meetings scheduled: A preliminary meeting, three business meetings, and an in-person site-selection meeting to be held during Worldcon. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the preliminary meeting. But I did attend the first Business Meeting and it was rather like being thrown into the deep end.
The first business meeting was conducted entirely in executive session. The public agenda was “Report from the Investigation Committee on the 2023 Hugo Awards.” Since the meeting was held in executive session, I can’t discuss the content of the proceedings. But that’s not my goal in this post.
The Presiding Officer is supported by three additional roles. A Parliamentarian advises on points of order, a Timekeeper kept track of time used for debate for and against motions, and an assistant Presiding Officer manages the on-screen presentation. This allows the Presiding Officer to focus on running the meeting without having to refer to external documents or deal with the technology. As someone who’s served as Presiding Officer for many years (of the UMass Amherst Faculty Senate) it looked like the system worked pretty well.
The meetings are highly structured using Robert’s Rules, with very strict time limits established for debate for each of the topics. When the Presiding Officer presented a motion with the proposed time limits and asks the body if they can be accepted without objection. With more than a hundred attendees, basically nothing could accepted without objection. The net result was that we then had to have a formulaic vote on each of the time limits. They all passed handily, of course. So objecting (as is typical) just wasted 10 or 15 minutes of time in the meeting. That’s the goal of Robert’s Rules: to allow the meeting to move forward expeditiously while giving people who object the opportunity to make their objection known, even if that objection is not shared by the majority.
One of my goals in attending the meetings is to get a sense of the key players. Some of the people I’ve heard of before. But many are new to me. You can pretty quickly get a sense for who are the people that respect the process and try to make the best of use time. And those who are there to try to derail the proceedings and gum up the works. It’s the same in every organization.
One of the most peculiar aspects of WSFS is that the organization only “exists” during Worldcon. Each year, people buy a membership in WSFS (as part of attending Worldcon or separately) and there are business meetings in the weeks leading up to the convention. The membership gives you the right to attend the business meetings, to vote in Hugo Awards, and to vote for the following years’ site selections. But there is no leadership or on-going meetings during the rest of the year. Several times (both in the meeting and on the Internet generally) I’ve seen people use this as an excuse for why problems can’t be addressed or solved.
There are typically thousands of attendees at Worldcon (~8,000 in Glasgow in 2024) and even more people who purchase memberships to be able to vote (a total of 10,000 memberships). But there are only about 150 people attending the business meetings. It’s time consuming to learn enough about any organization to understand how it works and participate meaningfully.
I currently have no plans to try to get more involved in the governance of WSFS. I’m already serving as Secretary of SFWA and that’s plenty of service, thank you very much. But I’m always interested to see other models and there are enough connections between SFWA and WSFS that learning more about the organization and the key players seems useful.
For several years, I’ve considered attending LOSCON in Los Angeles. This year, I’m going to go!
A few years ago, I was accepted as a participant, but due to my health circumstances at the time, I declined. I was still recovering from being hospitalized and was only attending conventions where masks were required. Now, almost no conventions still require masks. (Readercon, next weekend, is a welcome exception!) And I have recovered from my hospitalization. Well… As much as I am going to recover. So I’ve decided to apply to LOSCON again.
I’m particularly interested in attending this year because next year’s Worldcon is also going to be in Los Angeles. Many of the relevant people will undoubtedly be at Worldcon this year too (which I’m also attending). But it will be a chance to meet the LA folks specifically.
They asked for proposals for panels, so I drafted one that I haven’t seen at conventions before.
Poetry and Songs in Speculative Fiction
One of the enduring traits of Tolkien was his use of poetry, rhyme, and song as essential characteristics of his world building and the lore of the world he created. This panel will explore innovative uses of the lyrical arts to enhance speculative fiction and some of the challenges of adding this dimension to your works.
I hope the panel is accepted. Many of my own stories have had examples of music and/or poetry (e.g. Better Angels: Tour de Force, Something Else to Do in Modern Magic, and others). I think it would be fun to put a panel together to get authors to talk about the topic.
LOSCON takes place over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend. I’m looking forward to going!
The final(ish) Schedule for Worldcon has come out and I am on the program! My experience with Worldcons seems to be either feast or famine. I had eight appearances as a participant in Chicago, for my first Worldcon, and then was totally declined as a participant for Glasgow. This year, I’m excited to moderate one panel, appear in six more, and I also have a reading. Here is my schedule in chronological order.
Let’s face it, we conduct science in an inherently for-profit environment, which leads to all sorts of biases. How do we work around these built-in barriers to create truly independent science? Without breaking too many laws, of course.
From chapbooks to zines, poetry has a rich history of self-publishing. Whether your goal is merely to get your poems into more hands or to craft an online presence as a poet, this workshop will help you learn how to market, sell, and self-publish your poetry. From blogging to Instagram to Amazon, we’ll dive into the important details of crafting a bestselling poetry collection. Learn how to format poetry, how to find the best distribution sites for poetry books, and how to market a collection from advertising to book reviews.
Nothing in fantasy or sci fi is original (no, don’t rage-quit); it is all amalgamations of things we have seen or heard of. So would we recognize life that is truly alien?
Just because we’re at the top of the food chain doesn’t mean that humans are done evolving. Can we predict what is in the future for our bodies? Which creators’ visions are realistic?
Human’s best friend, best creation, and best companion: What was the evolutionary path of the household dog? Was humanity the worst thing to happen to wolves?
A makerspace is shared workshop or group of workshops where people can use the tools and facilities to work on their own projects. Some are membership-based, and some are in public libraries. Assume that any major city will have at least one. Our panelists will discuss their involvement with makerspaces, what they recommend, and how the user can get the best experience from a makerspace.
A Familiar Problem. Becoming a powerful demon’s familiar might just be the best thing ever. But what’s the catch? Rory Soletsa is supposed to find his magical familiar, but he doesn’t want something trite, like a cat; or stupid, like a bird; or ugly, like a toad. Amazed when he is captured and becomes the familiar to a powerful demon who presents as a voluptuous, beautiful woman, Rory discovers how much more powerful his magic is with her. And he’s ecstatic when the demon tells him she will train him in advanced offensive and defensive magic. But just what is she training him for?
When I attended my first WorldCon, I created some Airship Pirate ribbons to promote the serialization of Revin’s Heart. It was (from my perspective) a wildly successful promotional campaign. It was a huge amount of fun, gave me an ice breaker to discuss my book as people walked by the table in the dealer room, and was surprisingly (to me) gratifying to see dozens of strangers all over the convention wearing my ribbon. Since then, I’ve thinking about what I could do to meet or surpass the standard I set then. I think I may have done it with a new ribbon to promote the Better Angels.
The Better Angels are non-human biological androids. That means that they have no human DNA — they are the product of clean-room biological engineering. They are molecularly assembled to spec, fully grown (well, as pre-teen girls), and have a personality module that has programming to govern their behavior. So, although they look like pre-teen girls, they are not human. They were not born. They don’t grow or develop. And they are programmed with a stack of modules that provide all of the functionality for their behavior, from basic autonomic physiology to language and higher-order behavior. In the case of the Angels, they can be singing-and-dancing pop idols or ruthless, cold-blooded covert-military soldiers (Or more! Read the stories to see what else they can do!)
This time, I’ve created a ribbon people can wear with a space to write in their percentage of “human DNA.” You might ask, “How do you know your own percentage of human DNA?” What a great question! To answer that question, I’ve created an app (well, just a webpage, actually) that analyses your DNA and tells you what percentage is “human.” The Better Angels, of course, have zero percent “human DNA”, but how much do you have? Luckily, the app can tell you!
The 任せて Human DNA Analysis app is simple to operate. You scan a QR code to open the app on your mobile device and tap the fingerprint icon on the screen. The app runs, emits several progress messages, and finally reports your percentage of “human DNA”. Sometimes the first time it runs, it may give you anomalous results. But if you run it a second time (or more), it gives you “more accurate,” precise, and consistent results.
Note the disclaimer at the bottom of the page, however: “Accuracy of 任せて DNA Analysis ±100%”
Also note that, yes, of course I could link the app here. But you’re going to have to come visit me in the dealer room to get the QR code. (smiley-face)
I used to write little web apps like this all the time. For most of my career, I was the Director of the Biology Computer Resource Center at UMass Amherst. I created dozens little web apps for teaching or infrastructure for the Biology Department. But I haven’t done anything like that for a few years. I had to solve a variety of minor technical problems to make it work, and I was tickled to find that I haven’t completely lost my touch.
I invested a fair amount of time investigating what to use as a plausible value of percent human DNA. The simplest answer would have been 99% or something like that. But that wouldn’t have given me a context to talk about the structure of the human genome, which is delightfully weird and complex.
Most people know there are these things called “genes.” And a lot of people know that genes contain the “code” for proteins. When Francis Crick and others “cracked the genetic code” there was great optimism that we would quickly be able to read the “blueprints of life.” But genomic structure turned out to be way, way, way more complicated.
It turns out that only a tiny part (1%-2%) of the DNA in your genome contains coding sequences to make proteins. There are lots of other sequences in there, many of which are still only poorly understood. Each coding sequence is paired with regulatory sequences that control when it is transcribed. There are also bits that code for RNAs that aren’t translated into proteins (transfer RNAs, etc). As much as 8% of your genome includes human endogenous retroviral sequences. Retroviruses (like HIV, varicella-zoster (aka chicken pox), and herpes) have been sticking their DNA into eukaryotic genomes for billions of years. Then there are structural and repetitive sequences, that include things like centromeres, telomeres, and microsatelites, that may comprise as much as 50% of your genome.
Humans are primates and mammals and tetrapods and vertebrates and eukaryotes. The amount of “uniquely human” DNA is actually vanishingly small. Almost all of our genes are literally identical with bonobos (our closest primate relatives) and are functionally identical with all mammals and tetrapods and eukaryotes. Some proteins (like ubiquitin and cytochrome C) have been honed by billions of years of evolution and are virtually identical across all living organisms.
In the end, I met with a couple of professional biologists to ask them what percentage I should report as “human DNA” with the goal of being able to tell a fun story about genomic structure. They were pretty amused by the idea, once they got past the science fictional elements (One said, “What! They don’t go through development!?”), and we agreed to pick something something around 60%.
The ribbons are currently scheduled to be delivered in time that I should have them for Readercon! And I will bring plenty to Worldcon. (Well, a goodly number, anyway. These things don’t grow on trees, after all.) I’m excited, because I suspect they’ll be a hit and, when people see others wearing them, they’ll want to stop by the table to get one of their own. And, who knows, maybe even pick up a book!
So if you’re coming to Readercon or Worldcon, come find me at the Water Dragon Publishing table and get your DNA analyzed.
I call this “fluffy military space opera”. It’s about a group of non-human biological androids that look like pre-teen girls and act as a magical-girl singing-and-dancing troupe, but they can change up their programming and become a covert military force.
“That sounds fantastic!” the girl said.
“I should tell your mother,” I said, “that although this book doesn’t have adult themes, it does have some violence. The contrast between the Angels being cute little girls and ruthless killers, when they turn on their soldier programming, is what the Japanese call ‘gap-moe’ and is what I was going for as an author.”
“Oh, violence is just fine,” the girl said. “I read that all the time.”
“But do you have ten dollars?” her mother said.
The little girl’s little sister piped and said, “She has a HUNDRED DOLLARS.”
“No, she doesn’t,” her mother said.
“But, Mom!” the little girl protested, as her mother dragged her away.
June was super busy, with the Nebula Conference and the two Pride bookselling events. July looks to be quieter. There are a bunch of events I could have attended, but I’m currently only scheduled to go to Readercon. Look for me in the dealer room where I will, again, be running the tables for Water Dragon and Small Publishing in a Big Universe.
If you’re an author planning to attend Readercon and you don’t have a place to sell books, there is probably still time to request a spot at the Small Publishing in a Big Universe table. It costs very little and gives you a place to tell people to buy your books. Plus you can stand behind the table yourself to meet with readers and sign copies. It doesn’t work so well for authors who are not in attendance but, if you’re there in person, you can really make a lot of sales that way.
I was so busy in June, I didn’t get much writing done at all. Some people can snatch moments here and there to write. For me that can work alright for the little story fragments that I write for #wss366, but it doesn’t work for making progress on my serious writing projects. I did, finally, get back to writing in the past week and wrote the final, climactic scene of one of the storylines in The Ground Never Lies. I had been putting it off for months. Now I only have one or two world-building scenes left to write and then I can try to merge the two storylines. After that, I hope to pass it off to my trusty beta readers to see if the whole thing hangs together. It will need a lot of revising, but July should be perfect for that.
In August, I will be attending Worldcon in Seattle. The schedule has not been finalized, but my draft schedule looks great. I’m currently scheduled for seven panels (serving as moderator on one) and a reading. The reading is from my forthcoming book A Familiar Problem which has been delayed since January. I’m really hopeful it will be out in time for Worldcon. (Of course, I also really hoped it would be out for Boskone and Watch City and the Nebula Conference and Readercon, but… Well… Sigh…)
I finally bought our plane tickets. The most convenient airport for us is Bradley, in between Hartford and Springfield. It’s nice because it’s a somewhat smaller airport and only half the distance to Boston. But Boston tends to have more direct flights. When I fly to Europe, I’ve usually flown out of Boston. I did a search and found that there were no non-stop flights to Seattle from Bradley. There were two from Boston. When I checked, however, they were operated by Alaska Airlines and the cost was nearly twice as much as having one stop. So, we’re flying out of Bradley.
After Worldcon, I will be busy with family and then getting ready for the fall. The fall… Sigh… I have to teach the writing class two more times (in Fall and Spring) and then I will finally be able to retire and be done with working. Then I can dedicate myself to writing full time. I’m really glad I did the phased retirement, but I’m looking forward to wrapping it up.
” So I took a few minutes to explain to them why I like Mastodon.
