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.
Tag: WisCon
I’ll be in Madison, Wisconsin from May 26-29th for WisCon. Here’s what I’ll be doing.
• Friday, 9:00 am – 12:00 am, Caucus: Critique Session. I’m running one of the workshop sessions this year, and very excited to do so. This is one you’d’ve had to apply for in advance. If it sounds like something cool and you missed your chance, look for it next year. There are general fiction workshops every year, plus special topic sessions on things like genderqueer writing and romance in SF.
• Friday, 7:30-8:30 pm, Capitol/Wisconson: Opening Ceremonies. Pat Schmatz and myself, last year’s Tiptree winners, will be there to crown this year’s winner, Anna Marie McLemore.
• Saturday, 10:00-11:15 am, room 605: Judging the Tiptree. Current Tiptree jurors discuss the process of judging and selecting Tiptree award winners. Other panelists are Jeanne Gomoll, Aimee Bahng, Kazue Harada, Alexis Lothian, Roxanne Samer, and Julia Starkey.
• Sunday, 10:00 am – 11:15 am, Michelangelos: Burning Up on Re-entry (reading). I’ll be reading some of my fiction, along with Jed Hartman, Kat Tanaka Okopnik, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and David J. Schwartz. This’ll be in the back of the Michelangelos coffee shop around the corner from the con hotel, where I’ve attended many WisCon readings over the years but never before done one.
For its fortieth anniversary WisCon invited three Guests of Honor, Justine Larabalestier, Sofia Samatar, and returning GoH Nalo Hopkinson. Today, which happens to be James Tiptree, Jr.’s birthday, all three have published their Guest of Honor speeches online.
Justine Larabalestier gave a speech about prejudice against YA fiction as a symptom of societal prejudice against teens themselves.
Turns out it wasn’t just the SFF crowd who aren’t fans of YA. (Though I suspect that SFF folk have particularly painful memories of being a teen and being oppressed by other teens.) I heard the following a lot: “Teens are awful. Being a teen was awful. Why on Earth would you write about them?” Often accompanied by visible shuddering.
It was starting to dawn on me that the horrified reaction to my writing Young Adult had little to do with the books and a whole lot to do with lack of interest in, as well as fear and hatred of, teenagers. Much as dislike of Romance is often more about misogyny than the books themselves.
It’s a mystery to me how I failed to notice that many adults hate teens. I’d certainly been aware of it when I was a teen. But somehow I forgot.
I also realised that adults hating teen wasn’t just a personal thing it was also a societal thing. There are, in fact, laws against teenagers in many jurisdictions. There are stores and even whole malls that won’t let teens in unsupervised by adults.
Why? I wondered. Why do we hate teens so much. I mean sure some of them are arseholes but so are some adults. What’s going on?
She followed with a fascinating discussion of just how new an idea it is–less than a century old–to consider “teenagers” as their own category, and how important it is to take them seriously.
Sofia Samatar’s speech was a gorgeous, soaring defense of diverse style and voice within genre, opening by quoting a critic’s line, “Genre is much less of a pigeonhole than a pigeon,” and flying on from there.
In fantasy and science fiction we might ask—why does our longing so often look like Isaac Asimov’s longing? This is the genre of possibility! After all, many people are drawn to the worlds of fantasy and science fiction because they feel like outsiders, they feel like they don’t belong in this world. The tropes of fantasy and science fiction can be powerful vehicles for expressing the sense of dislocation experienced by those who are physically and psychologically on the outside. I myself am drawn to these genres partly due to the experience of growing up between cultures that everything around me insisted could not exist together: half of my family are Somali and Muslim and the other half are Swiss-German Mennonites from North Dakota. What does that make me? It might mean I’m from the future, it might mean I’m a citizen of an alternate universe, but either way it complicates my relationship to this world. It makes me long for ways of being I don’t see in the world around me, and that’s not John Updike’s longing, it’s not Isaac Asimov’s longing, it’s particular and I believe worthy of expression.
Nalo’s speech was structured around lines curated from her own exercise music playlist, and focused on the rhetorics of the genre fiction community. She looked at the reasons people are angry, and how they act in their anger, and the predictable responses that her analysis would cause.
Listen: If I’ve learned anything in this past little while, it’s that there are people who will warp one’s message, in violation of one’s principles. I know that soon after this speech goes public, there will be those who will either mock it, or appropriate its language for their own ends. They’re going to say that I’m modelling the very things against which I’m advocating. That kind of flipping the script has become a popular tactic. I’ve begun to take it as a measure of success, in part because said appropriation is reactionary, not originary. They envy a particular sound bite or concept, so they try to make it their own, or, failing that, to make fun of it.
I don’t know what to do about that, but I do know that snark is easy, maybe too easy. It’s easy to ridicule others, for good or for ill. It’s easy to encourage others to join your dogpile, to create an atmosphere of fear, anguish and self-doubt in your preferred victims. Yet it’s not a bad thing to urge people to question their own beliefs and behaviours. Anger and conflict have their uses. But what are we doing on the other side of the ledger? I’m hearing from far too many people who would love to be part of science fiction, but who are terrified of the bullying. So what are we doing to foster joy and welcome to this community? What are we doing to cultivate its health and vibrancy? What are we doing to create an environment in which imperfect people (as all people are) who are trying to be good people can feel encouraged and supported to take the risk of a misstep, perhaps learn from it, and come back refocussed and re-energized, eager to try again?
Following up that thought, Nalo proposed doing a specific thing: the creation of an award for kindness, given to people determined to have made positive change within science fiction communities. She calls it the Lemonade Award, and even discovered an SFnal object to inspire the trophy. I think incentivizing prosocial behavior in our field is an excellent and timely idea, and hope that her award takes off as well as the Tiptree Award–also proposed in a WisCon GoH speech–did.
This post is long overdue, having been constantly delayed by other life stuff. But WisCon 40 was special, and I want to record some of it here. WisCon is always special to me; it was my first con and the one I still attend every year. Attending as a Tiptree winner though is a unique experience, and one I’m very grateful to have had.
I made it to Madison on Thursday just in time to race to the hotel and change into a suit for the Tiptree Motherboard dinner at Cento. I was very nearly on time but still the last to arrive, which produced the weekend’s first moment of atypical celebration when the already assembled group applauded my arrival. I took a stunned and bashful moment, then asked them to do it again so I could snap a picture. I was sure to take time during dinner to move down that long table and introduce myself to everyone, and met many people I was to keep interacting with for the rest of the weekend.
The next day was the official start of the convention, with my first programming of the weekend: a reading with Meghan McCarron, Jen Volant, and Anthony Ha. My co-readers shared some great stories, and everyone laughed at the funny parts of mine and seemed interested in the philosophy bits, so I think it went fairly well. After that was dinner, and then the Opening Ceremonies. As it was the occasion of WisCon’s 40th anniversary, many people spoke of what the con and its community meant to them. Then the three guests of honor, Justine Larbalestier, Sofia Samatar, and returning GoH Nalo Hopkinson were introduced. To close things out I was presented with the Tiptree tiara by founding mother Pat Murphy, and crowned by Eleanor Arnason, the winner of the very first Tiptree Award.
Saturday was my day without any programming, allowing me to simply float about and marvel over how absurdly kind everyone was to me. Cath Schaff-Stump invited me to do an interview for the Unreliable Narrators podcast, which you can listen to here for a sense of how overwhelmed by it all I was. There was a cake for me to cut featuring a mashup of the cover of my Asimov’s issue and the cover of Lizard Radio, the other Tiptree winner. There were many long and pleasant talks with friends. And, for the first time, there were my parents, who showed up that evening and took me out to a steak dinner at Rare, a fancy restaurant around the corner from the hotel. After that was the Tiptree auction, where my mother won me a first edition copy of Patternmaster. The night finished, of course, with the Floomp, perennially a WisCon high point.
Sunday was the big day. I spent the morning in my room working on my acceptance speech, then went downstairs for my first ever WisCon panels: Exposition in SF/F, and Writing Near Future SF. While I was empaneled, my aunt and uncle drove up from Chicago to join my parents and myself at the dessert banquet and subsequent ceremonies. First came the three excellent Guest of Honor speeches, including Nalo Hopkinson’s establishment of the Lemonade Award for kindness in science fiction communities. Then, when those were over, the Tiptree Award presentation. This included receiving the award, a check, a box of chocolates, a commissioned artwork based on “The New Mother,” and a serenade from audience. Some pictures:
Then it was time for me to give the speech I’d spent the morning writing. Just as with the the picture of my loss of composure in the gallery above, John Scalzi managed to snap an action shot:
This is an overwhelming honor. I owe so much gratitude to so many people for the success of “The New Mother”—readers, jurors, friends old and new— that, even if I restricted myself to just people who are in this room, I would outlast any reasonable person’s patience before I could individually thank them all with the thoroughness their generosity merits. Doing so may well be less the work of an acceptance speech and more a permanent life project. Special recognition is due, though, to my parents, Jean Stein and Michael Fischer, who traveled from Texas to be here tonight, who raised me in a house full of science fiction novels and have been the most constant supporters of my own writing. Beyond that, I’d like to briefly explain how instrumental the entire WisCon community was in enabling me to write “The New Mother.” When I attended Clarion in 2008, I had already been sitting on the idea for this story for two years, certain that the concept was strong, and equally certain I didn’t have the knowledge or skill to do it justice. During the last week of the workshop I mentioned to Nalo Hopkinson that my recent, brief visit to San Diego Comicon had given me a panic attack, and that I was unsure the whole con thing was really for me. She told me that not all cons are like that, and specifically made me promise to give WisCon a try before I made up my mind. I attended for the first time in 2009, and when I got home I sent Nalo flowers in Canada to thank her for pushing me in this direction. I’ve been coming every year since, listening to all of you and your important, challenging ideas. I could not have written “The New Mother” without access to the vibrant polyphony I encounter annually in this building. So I thank you, WisCon, both for celebrating me this weekend and for educating me over the last seven years. I hope to continue learning from you for a long time to come.
After that came hugs and laughs and, as I recall, a very great deal of tequila. My hangover the next morning was pristine, the sort of hangover where anyplace you put your body feels like littering. Fortunately it began to abate by the time I had to make my way to the airport shuttle, because I ended up sharing that ride with Pat Murphy. We were on the same outbound flight, and so I got to cap my Tiptree experience by debriefing with the woman who was there from the very start. A more perfect close I couldn’t imagine.
For the very first time in years of WisCon attendance, this year I’m a scheduled program participant. All of my previous stints at the front of a WisCon room have been cases of standing in for missing folks. Here’s my schedule.
No One May Ever Have The Same Knowledge Again – Friday, 4:00-5:15, Conference 2. “Works of fiction rigorously documented by Meghan McCarron, Jen Volant, and Eugene Fischer (current Tiptree Award co-winner)”
Exposition in SF/F – Sunday, 2:30-3:45, Conference 5. “From ‘infodump’ to ‘the edges of ideas,’ readers and writers of science fiction and fantasy have a number of ways to describe exposition. But how do we actually *write* it? What’s the difference between an ‘infodump’ and a well-written description? What does ‘show, don’t tell’ actually mean? What are the specific exposition challenges that we face as writers of speculative fiction–and how do we solve them?”
How Does One Write Near Future SF? – Sunday, 4:00-5:15, University C. “We are looking at global warming, resource wars, the migration of large numbers of people, a fragile world economic system and a world political system that seems unable to deal seriously with real problems. How does a writer extrapolate from this mess into the future?”
I will also be at The Floomp on Saturday night, and the dessert salon and GOH speeches Sunday evening. Plus all the usual aimless floating around. Look forward to seeing everyone.
I’m overwhelmed to announce that “The New Mother” has won the 2015 James Tiptree, Jr. Literary Award, alongside the novel Lizard Radio by Pat Schmatz. In addition, I’m sharing an honor list and long list with so many writers and artists and critics I admire that I don’t even know where to start. Just click through the link, and look at all the wonderful work that the Tiptree jury have highlighted this year. I’m sure I’ll have more to say soon, but for now I’m just gobsmacked and grateful.
This was my first SF convention, and was something of a test to see if I could enjoy conventions of any kind. Last summer, while I was in San Diego for Clarion, I went to ComiCon, which managed to awaken an inner agoraphobe the existence of which I had not previously suspected. But a week later Nalo Hopkinson made me promise to attend WisCon, assuring me I would find it a valuable experience. Boy, was she ever right.
Day 1:
Kat, Keffy, and I drove to Madison from Minneapolis, in Kat’s VW Beetle. I rode in the back, and slept part of the way, waking up in time to see our entry into the city. We checked in to the Concourse hotel, then wandered out into downtown until we found a restaurant that wanted to fill us with post-road-trip margaritas. Then it was back to the hotel, where we visited the Dealer Room (where I discovered that attempting to talk to Ted Chiang turned me into a stuttering fool, albiet one able to correctly identify literary influences), then wandered around until it was time for the opening ceremonies. I managed to catch Geoff Ryman, Guest of Honor and one of our Clarion teachers, as he was coming in the door, and we monopolized his attention until the stage manager for the opening ceremonies came and asked if we wouldn’t mind terribly letting the GoH go to take part in the Con programming. There was a skit, which was mildly entertaining but was completely overshadowed by Geoff and Ellen Klages spontaneously making out with each other.
After the opening ceremonies, Keffy had a panel. “TYRANNOSAURS IN F-14S!!!!” on the topic of SF that is so bad that it’s good. The discussion focused mostly on television and movies. The consensus opinion was that books generally don’t fall into the “so bad it’s good” category for most people because (a) books lack the audiovisual component that, when done well, can act as foils for a weak story, and (b) the time investment required to read a book is usually enough greater than the time to watch a movie that they are held to a higher standard. After Keffy’s panel the programming of interest was over and we were off to the parties, where we met Jed Hartman and had a reunion with Mary Anne Mohanraj, another of our Clarion teachers. We didn’t stay at the parties long, though, as we were all exhausted.
Day 2:
Breakfast was had at a coffee and crepes place we found called Bradbury’s, which struck us as an appropriately SFnal name. Then Kat and I went to Ellen Klages’s Guest of Honor reading while Keffy went to another panel. We met up again in the Dealer’s Room to find, among other things, the new issue of Sybil’s Garage, which contains Keffy’s first publication. Then Kat went to have lunch with Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, Keffy went to moderate a panel, “Keeping Up With Science,” and I went to another panel, “What’s in the Air?” with Geoff, Jed, Neil Rest, and Kristine Smith, which was about how techonlogy will be changing human society in the near-term future. My favorite comment from that one was made by a textile preservationist named (I think) Laura who observed that a post-privacy technological society might have more in common, in terms of interpersonal relationships, with a pre-technological small town than it does with the modern day. When that panel was over I went to a reading by, among others, Ellen Ku. and Delia. The reading was notable as the only Con programming at which I encoutered people being assholes: a pair came in late and sat behind me, whispering loudly about how it was “happening again” and “rude to the real writers.” As it happened, the Con program was printed before the full lineup for the reading was finalized, and the first reader wasn’t listed (though her name was on the sign outside the door). So the natural thing to do, at least in the minds of the people behind me, was to stand up and interrupt her mid-sentence to say, “When are the writers who are actually scheduled going to be reading?” Ellen Kushner smacked them down.
After the reading I went to “How Should Magazines and Anthologies Review Submissions?” with Mary Anne, Susan Marie Groppi (EIC of Strange Horizons, a letter from whom I have framed on the wall of my office), John Joseph Adams, Sumana Harihareshwara, Deb Taber, and Adrian Alan Simmons. The best thing about this panel was getting to meet Susan, Sumana, and Deb, with whom I would find myself interacting more as the Con progressed. I also learned from J. J. Adams that when F&SF takes a long time to get back to you, it is generally a good thing. (As of this writing they’ve had a story I sent them for eight weeks.) After the panel the group got together again for the Tiptree auction, which was one of the most entertaining events I’ve ever attended. Highlights included a Geoff Ryman striptease act and a group recitation of a hilariously queer award from Ellen Klages’s childhood.
Day 3:
Again began the day with breakfast at Bradbury’s. Then Keffy went to “Keeping the S in SF,” and Kat and I attended “The Kids’ Books That Made Us,” after which we went to the art room to pick up a print Kat had purchased. I ended up buying a different print by the same artist, Ingrid Kallick. “Giant” whispered to me as I walked past it that it was actually a short story masquerading as a piece of visual art, and really needed to come home with me so I could write it.
As we were leaving the art room, Ellen Kushner invited us to lunch with her and Delia. We tracked down Keffy and headed out to an Afghani restaurant. On the way we ran into Mary Anne, Ben Rosenbaum, and Mary Kowal, and the group grew. And then seemed to grow some more, until Ellen turned around and announced, “I don’t do twelve person lunches.” The final tally ended up at nine. From lunch Keffy went to be on “The Obligatory Workshop Panel,” and Kat and I went to hear Geoff’s Guest of Honor reading, after which was what turned out to be my favorite event at WisCon: the Strange Horizons Tea Party.
At the Tea Party I managed to drop all of my social anxiety for perhaps the only time during the Con. I finally met my editor on “Husbandry,” Karen Meisner, who I had been looking for all weekend. We hit it off quite well. I excitedly related my Con activities, and she, amused, told me that I was imbuing ubiquitous experiences with the wide-eyed wonder of a neophyte. She also tracked down and introduced me to Meghan McCarron, who I had been wanting to meet and of whose writing I am a huge fan. I stayed for the whole party and then some, sweating profusely and chatting incessantly. I also met Alice Kim, Eric Vogt, and Jennifer I-Didn’t-Get-Her-Last-Name. Sadly, the Tea Party did eventually end, and I went back to my room to clean up for the Guest of Honor speeches and Tiptree presentation.
Before we went to WisCon I decided that my friends needed to experience the joy that is a polyester robe with dragons on, so I got them each one as a gift. We donned them before heading down to the ceremony, in preparation for the fancy dress party later than night.
We wandered into the big conference hall which had been set up like a dining room, and Ben Rosenbaum gestured us over to the table where Jed, Mary Anne, and Sumana were already sitting. We listened with them to the speeches, and then to the presentation of the Tiptree award to Nisi Shawl (Patrick Ness was unable to be there to accept his; Geoff read a letter from him). Then, this years Guests of Honor having been given there full due in accordance with WisCon tradition, the Guests of Honor for next year were announced. They will be Nnedi Okorafor and… Mary Anne Mohanraj! We all completely lost our shit, gawking at each other and, when she came back, hugging Mary Anne. We trailed along behind her, taking pictures and freaking out for about the next hour, then bounced around the parties for perhaps another hour or two before heading back to the room and crashing.
Day 4:
Due to the exigencies of flight schedules and other non-WisCon committments, we got up early and left without taking part in any of the final day’s programming. But I think we all felt that we got our money’s worth. I pretty much can’t wait to go again next year.
I haven’t been posting much lately, mostly for lack of having anything new to talk about. (I have remained pretty active on Twitter — link in the sidebar.) But this past weekend I went to WisCon with Kat and Keffy, my first SF convention. I had a blast, and will be heading home tomorrow. I’m about to pass out, but watch this space for tales of my amazing first-con experience.