2020 Democratic Primary Candidates

There’s a lot of time for my opinion to change, but I want to document where I am right now on the candidates for the Democratic nomination.

Firstly, I will vote for any of these people over Donald Trump. I’ll advocate for a specific platform during the primary, but the 2020 general election is about defeating a GOP that has embraced racist authoritarianism. Any of the Democratic primary candidates is preferable to the wannabe dictator currently in office.

Here’s broadly what I want from the Democratic candidate for President in 2020:

  • Progressive policies — I want a candidate concerned with causes like wealth inequality, climate change, universal healthcare, mass incarceration, women’s rights, regulatory capture, a taco truck on every corner, etc.
  • A meaningful record — even if a candidate’s stated positions are all ones I agree with, I’m disinclined to support them without a record of efficacious action on those positions, preferably on a national scale.
  • Experience with pre-Trump Washington — there is so much rebuilding to be done in the wake of the Trump administration’s dismantling of governmental structures, I want a candidate already familiar with what has been destroyed.
  • Preferably not an old white dude.

One of the thresholds for participation in the primary debates is polling at 1% or above in three or more polls. These are my preferences among the candidates currently meeting that threshold:

  1. Elizabeth Warren — She has a long, progressive voting record. Her policy proposals are more detailed than those of the other candidates. In creating the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau she is responsible for more actual redistribution of wealth than anyone else in the race. She has been incredibly consistent and vocal about getting corporate money out of politics. She correctly identifies domestic policy as the origin point for foreign policy. Judging people by their enemies, the financial industry hates her with a special passion. (Note: I have donated to the Warren campaign, largely because I want her to qualify for the primary debates, a result currently in doubt on the fundraising side.)
  2. Bernie Sanders — Has a very lengthy record of progressive policies and votes. Unabashedly identifies as a democratic socialist. Supports most of the same policies as Warren, and co-sponsors legislation with her. Has the drawback of being an old white dude. Has a poorly-behaved fan club.
  3. Kamala Harris — Good, though short, voting record in the Senate. Is in favor of the Green New Deal, expanding the earned income tax credit, increasing teacher salaries, decriminalizing marijuana. Said good things during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. But her record as Attorney General of California is troubling.
  4. Kirsten Gillibrand — Has a good voting record, but no stark policy positions. Most notable for championing #MeToo.
  5. Amy Klobuchar — Fairly mainstream liberal politics. Good on women’s issues, statehood for Washington D.C. Is reportedly verbally and sometimes physically abusive to her employees.
  6. Cory Booker — Seems like a nice guy, but is overly cosy with pharmaceutical companies and the finance industry. Likes charter schools. Fairly centrist.
  7. Julián Castro — He was the Mayor of San Antonio, my hometown, and then HUD Secretary. He’s fine, though doesn’t have a lot of policy substance, and has no national voting record. After he gave the keynote speech at the DNC in 2012 it seemed like he wanted to be Hispanic Obama, but the moment passed him by.
  8. Beto O’Rourke — I voted for him for the Senate, as he’s massively preferable to Ted Cruz. He’s socially liberal in some laudable ways. But his voting record in the House is more conservative than average for a Democrat; in last two years he’s been in the top fifth of congressmen voting against their party’s majority position. He’s campaigning on an outmoded idea of bipartisan appeal. A Washington Post profile makes him seem like kind of a jerk to his family.
  9. Joe Biden — Old white dude who proudly identifies as a moderate. Senate voting record is not remotely progressive. Oversaw the Anita Hill hearings. Openly disdains Millennials. Running primarily on Obama-era nostalgia.
  10. Pete Buttigieg — No national record at all. This reading of his book makes him seem like a centrist elitist pretending to be a progressive populist.
  11. Andrew Yang — No political record at all. Supporter of universal basic income, but with few clear policy details. Tech startup guy. Weirdly obsessed with malls. Disturbingly favored by the alt-right.

¡Gracias, Manu!

My favorite basketball player ever is getting his jersey retired by the Spurs tonight. There will be a ceremony after the game against the Cavaliers, and I fully expect to get weepy watching.

Here’s a page on nba.com about his remarkable career, with testimonials from teammates and coaches. Here’s another with video retrospectives of key moments. ESPN put up a clip about how he changed the game by popularizing the euro-step. The classic article about him is probably still Zach Lowe’s “Welcome to Manu’s Basketball Familia,” well worth revisiting. And evergreen is Michael Lewis’s aside about Manu in his 2009 piece on Shane Battier and basketball statistics, “The No-Stats All-Star:”

The San Antonio Spurs’ Manu Ginóbili is a statistical freak: he has no imbalance whatsoever in his game — there is no one way to play him that is better than another. He is equally efficient both off the dribble and off the pass, going left and right and from any spot on the floor.

I saw him for the first time in 2002, in person, at a Spurs game I attended with my high school girlfriend. He came off the bench and was immediately enthralling. I was screaming “Ginobili!”—a name I had to find on the roster to figure out who #20 was—before the game was done. He continued to amaze me for the next sixteen years.

What I loved most about him was that, while among the most creative and unpredictable players in the league, his intelligence wasn’t limited to basketball. Off the court he was curious and engaged, an inquisitive soul who would educate teammates about the placebo effect, engage his twitter followers on amateur astronomy, and write ecotourism articles. He was the first player I ever heard use the phrase “regression to the mean” during a postgame interview, and in a more statistically advanced NBA culture he would have been a perennial All-Star despite coming off the bench.

His willingness to give up individual stats for the good of the team, when he could have been James Harden before James Harden, remains one of the most astonishingly selfless things I’ve ever known an elite athlete to do. In his prime Manu was one of the very best basketball players in the world—he lead the Argentinian national team to the Olympic gold medal over Team USA, the only time another country has won gold in basketball since NBA players started competing in 1992. But he legitimately cared about winning more than individual accolades, something many stars claim but few demonstrate. It’s impossible to imagine Kobe Bryant sacrificing individual stats for the good of the team, but Manu (whose per-minute productivity was just as good) spent his whole career doing just that. It limited his awards, his earnings, the public perception of his talent, but it got him the thing he wanted most: through sixteen NBA seasons he won 72.1% of the games he played, the highest percentage in league history for players with over 1000 career games.

There’s never been a player I had more faith in with a game on the line. For my whole adult life I’ve gotten to watch Manu Ginobili do whatever it took to get the win. Timely steals, impossible passes, contortionist layups, game-sealing blocks, and buzzer-beater threes. Where Tim Duncan was steady and unshakable, Manu was the perennial X-factor, turning himself into exactly what the Spurs needed over and over again. When we thought we’d seen everything, he’d invent something new. The only sure thing was that, whatever he did, it would be remarkable. Popovich put it best:

Online SF Workshop at The Writing Barn in 2019

I’m teaching another class for The Writing Barn. This one will be a six week writing workshop for science fiction and fantasy. It runs weekly from March 21 through April 25. Here’s the description:

Are you a writer who dreams of other worlds? Fantasy and science fiction stories let us leave realism behind to explore new viewpoints and experiences. They offer storytelling tools to match the infinite possibilities of the imagination. Learn how to use those tools in this six-week course, where author and educator Eugene Fischer will lead students in workshopping stories and examining the mechanics of genre. Whether you’re just getting started or polishing work for publication, this class will help you bring your worlds to life.

If you want to be one of the fifteen students workshopping with me in the spring of 2019, you can sign up here.

2018 World Fantasy Award Winner for Best Anthology: The New Voices of Fantasy

I woke up to the lovely news that The New Voices of Fantasy has won the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology!

Congratulations to Jacob Weisman and Peter S. Beagle and everyone at Tachyon for creating this wonderful book, and to all the other authors whose stories made it such a delight.

If you want a copy of this newly award-winning anthology, which includes my short story “My Time Among the Bridge Blowers,” head on over to Tachyon’s site and pick one up

Scintillation 2018

Above is the view from my hotel window on the 45th floor. I’m in Toronto, en route to Scintillation in Montreal. It’s my first time in the city and I’ll soon be heading out to explore. But for anyone else headed to Montreal this weekend, here’s my con schedule:

Saturday, 3:30 pm — Reading

Saturday, 9:00 pm — Panel: So What’s a Short Story, Anyway?

Sunday, 11:00 am — Panel: Our Real Influences and Why We Lie

Sunday, 4:00 pm — Panel: Where Are the Books Like Pandemic?

Long article on Bryce Milligan’s treatment of Hailey Johnson, Denise McVea, and Gabrielle Marcus

The front page of the San Antonio Express News today carries Lauren Caruba’s article “Unwelcomed Inspiration: Women recount disturbing encounters with SA’s ‘muse poet.'” I was interviewed for and am quoted in the piece, as are my parents and several other of his former students. If you want a thorough overview of his years of skeevy behavior toward young women, this is the link for you.

I recently heard that his house in the King William district is now on the market. Wherever he’s headed next, may his reputation precede him.

Class on Writing and Selling Short Science Fiction at The Writing Barn

On September 13 at 7:00 pm CST I’ll be teaching an online class on writing and selling short science fiction for The Writing Barn. This is a course for writers new to science fiction publishing, and will examine topics of both craft and commerce. If that sounds up your alley, click through and sign up! You might also want to check out the many other classes that The Writing Barn offers, ranging from half-day events like mine to full, six-week courses.

My GenCon Schedule

GenCon is coming up in a few days, and I’m going to be there. Here’s my programming schedule. Last time I checked the first two were sold out, but there were still tickets available for the rest.

Thursday

12:00 PM Boston Artificial Intelligence and Speculative Fiction
1:00 PM Atlanta Convincing Aliens
4:00 PM Atlanta Using the Scientific Method in Spec Fic

Saturday

12:00 PM Boston Dealing with Professional Envy
3:00 PM Ballrooms 3-4 The Long and Short of Fiction

WisCon 42 and the Tiptree Award

WisCon 42 has come and gone without my writing about it, but it was a lovely time. After spending a year on the Tiptree jury I intentionally kept my schedule for this con programming-light. I ran a fiction workshop again, something I always enjoy, and did two panels talking about the process of judging the Tiptree and the works we selected for various honors. I got to reconnect with several friends, including Nueva Madre translator and current Tiptree Award juror Arrate Hidalgo, and longtime con buddy Brit Mandelo whom I hadn’t seen in several years. Much missed though were many friends and WisCon regulars who were unable to attend this year. At the end of the weekend I played a role in the award ceremony for Virginia Bergin, pictured above with her commissioned art piece and flanked by myself and 2017 jury chair Alexis Lothian. Virginia is a delight, and getting to know her was a highlight of my con. I hope I get to see her in Madison again in the future. Her winning book comes out in the United States in November from Sourcebooks under the title The XY.

More People Abused by Bryce Milligan Come Forward

There has been a great deal of local news coverage of Hailey’s initial accusation, as well as her many classmates who have come forward to corroborate her accounts of Bryce’s behavior. Now two more women have published their stories of Bryce Milligan physically assaulting them. Courtenay Martin shares an account that, disturbingly, indicates people in the San Antonio literary community knew about Bryce’s inclinations well before he was hired to teach high school students. Denise McVea shares an experience that is both a confirmation of Hailey’s account and yet another portrait of Bryce using professional contexts to make unwanted physical advances on women. (I notice a particular similarity in Denise’s story—Bryce, when challenged, explaining away his actions by saying weight issues had made his a sexless marriage—with my own family’s experience of Bryce attempting to excuse his relationship with Hailey by saying he was impotent due to alcoholism. When called out for his improprieties in private settings, he seems to have a repeated tactic of oversharing personal sexual difficulties in an attempt to garner sympathy.)

These additional accounts undermine the feeble attempts that Bryce and those few speaking in his support have made to dismiss Haley’s story as a fabrication. Taken together, these stories depict a pattern of behavior going back decades.