Every week, SF Signal poses a question to a collection of writers. We answer separately, and the results are posted on Wednesdays. This week I got to participate. The subject: How has reading science fiction and fantasy changed you as a person or changed your life?

The other authors who answered this week’s question are Myke Cole, Evie Manieri, Gillian Polack, James Patrick Kelly, Howard Andrew Jones, Michael J Martinez, Ken Scholes, E.J. Swift, and Abhinav Jain.

Find this week’s Mind Meld here: How Science Fiction Changed Our Lives

This was originally posted on Independence Day 2013, but in this tainted year of 2017 it’s more important than ever to recall the sentiments in these images, so I’m pinning this post to the top of my blog. Happy Fourth of July!

In early May I visited Washington DC for the first time. It was a fantastic trip, and though I still haven’t managed to blog on it, I thought I’d post a few photos to celebrate the Fourth of July.

From the Roosevelt Memorial

From the Jefferson Memorial

…and another from the Jefferson Memorial.

At the Jefferson Memorial

Several days ago I posted on the tired old meme that hard SF is “emotionless” writing. Since then I’ve seen this meme repeated two or three times by other writers, which is both hugely discouraging and infuriating. I strongly encourage you to go read a post by Ronald Zajac called “Can we rethink this whole “hard vs. soft” business?” Ronald’s post looks at the issue from a more historical perspective:

Clearly, if we rewrite our definitions of the genre in a way that lets readers appreciate Lem and LeGuin, Clarke and Delany, together, for their different qualities, we will be doing all of SF a favour. At the same time, perhaps, we’ll be eliminating gender divides that have no place in a forward-thinking genre.

Ronald’s post led me to a twitter debate late last night with @AthenaHelivoy, as we have different perceptions of the problems in and around so-called “hard SF.” My final conclusion to this debate is very simple: whether we like the term or not, the concept of “hard SF” exists as a marketing category, and when sweeping statements are made condemning the subgenre as “emotionless,” those statements hurt me and many other writers who are not remotely guilty of the charge. So I object, and will continue to object.

I suspect I’ll be writing more on this subject soon…

Long ago it was taught to me that within the science fiction genre we should never say “Sci-Fi.” If we want an abbreviation, we use the initials “SF.” Otherwise it’s “science fiction.”

The general reason given for avoiding “sci-fi” was that logically it should be pronounced “skiffy.” (Shaun Duke and Jen Zink have turned this right around by creating The Skiffy & Fanty Show).

Really though, I think it’s a tribal thing. Within the genre, “Sci-fi” was seen as a term used by dilettantes, those who might have picked up a Michael Crichton novel or two, watched some Star Trek or Star Wars, but in all likelihood knew little to nothing about the core of the genre.

I used to wince when someone would say to me, “Oh, I love sci-fi!”

But you know what? Times change. I now freely use the term “sci-fi” — and twitter is the reason.

Twitter allows a maximum of 140 characters per tweet. “SciFi” without the hyphen takes up five. “Science Fiction” requires fifteen. That’s a HUGE difference when I’m trying to tweet something like:

“There Needs To Be A War Going On Somewhere” The Red: First Light is a near-future scifi thriller. Read a sample: http://bit.ly/14Z7KSH

That’s 136 characters. Spelling out “science fiction” would break it.

So why not use “SF” which is even shorter? Because for most people “SF” stands for “San Francisco.” Yes. Truth. I have confused people by using SF in a tweet. I may be an “SF Writer” but I’m not a writer from San Francisco and The Red: First Light is not set in San Francisco.

So I have taken to heart a quotation from Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon:

SHOW SOME ADAPTABILITY

I’ve put aside my tribal prejudice and, on twitter at least, I’ve adopted the use of “Sci-Fi.” I understand this is a kind of heresy, but then, I’m a fiery revolutionary indie publisher…or at any rate, I’m a pragmatist.

Ya’ gotta’ do what ya’ gotta’ do.

You know?

This morning, a post from last summer on women and hard SF got resurrected in my twitter stream. The title: “Being male is not a prerequisite for hard SF.” Well, duh?

Written by Damien Walter, and published in The Guardian, the piece begins:

Despite protestations to the contrary, hard SF is a boys’ club that is undermining its own potential by resisting the contributions of women writers.

It goes on to say:

Women writers are more than welcome in hard SF, assuming they have a background in the hard sciences and value hard logic to the exclusion of all emotional experience.

Wait…what? All my hard SF novels have just been insulted! By this definition, we must conclude that there is no emotion in my work. Shame on me. And there seems to be an implied corollary that men wouldn’t read my books if there were any emotion to be found in them — which is not remotely my experience.

Update: Comments here and on twitter have made me realize that these quotes I’ve picked are leading to a misunderstanding. There is a tired old meme that says hard SF is emotionless writing. Damien is taking this meme as truth. He’s not advocating emotionless writing; he’s railing against it. So my first objection to the piece is that I simply don’t agree that hard SF is emotionless writing. But Damien says that it is, and goes on to say that the work of women is accepted by hard SF readers if it values “hard logic to the exclusion of all emotional experience.” I feel my work has been accepted as hard SF, but I don’t feel it’s devoid of emotion — so I find the argument quite insulting on multiple levels.

The tone of the piece seems intended to provoke a reaction — “hard SF” is redefined as “chauvinist SF” and on we go from there — so it’s successful in that.

I’ve been working on my own post on hard SF. I guess I should finish that up and publish.

Occasionally I hear women complaining about being called “Ma’am.” It makes them feel old. Or something. Personally, I like it. If you don’t know who I am, if you don’t know my name, “ma’am” is a perfectly respectful way of addressing me. There are far worse alternatives.

This afternoon I was flying from Honolulu back to Maui. I had an aisle seat and got up to allow the window-seat passenger to sit down. He changed his mind at the last second, and went forward to trade seats with someone else. I was left standing in the aisle. Hawaiian Airlines takes their “on time” reputation very seriously and a flight attendant immediately appeared behind me, asking if something was wrong.

“I don’t know,” I said, waving my hand to indicate the young man. “He was going to sit here.”

“If you’re going to switch seats,” the flight attendant called to him, “you need to do so right now.”

The group sent someone back to take the window seat, and the flight attendant told me, “There you go, sweetie.”

There you go, sweetie? Seriously?

The term is “Ma’am.”

“Sweetie” is an infantilizing term. You can probably safely use it with young children, or with your sweetheart (if this isn’t safe, you’ll hear about it), but do not use this form of address with strangers. I don’t mind “sweetie” quite so much if an older woman uses the term in a very general way, but when a younger person uses it, the implication is they are addressing someone in their “dotage”–childlike and infantilized. Sorry, sweetie, I’m not quite there yet, and even if I was, you should still address me respectfully, and save the intimacies for intimate relationships.

The term is “Ma’am.”

Last week I was in Laramie, Wyoming for the 2012 Launchpad Astronomy Workshop. I heard about the workshop from Vonda N. McIntyre and Deborah Ross, who both attended in earlier years and were very enthusiastic about their experiences. It’s described as a semester of astronomy crammed into a week. Sounds like fun, right? I applied in the spring almost as soon as the application period opened, though I didn’t really expect to get in.

Launchpad is a workshop designed by Mike Brotherton and Jim Verley to educate writers, film makers, game developers, etc. in real astronomical science and space technology, in the hope that what they learn will be reflected in their work, and will in turn help to educate the general public. Naturally, the bigger a writer’s audience, the bigger the outreach effort. I assumed other writers, with larger readerships, would be ahead of me in the selection process, but to my surprise I was offered a slot, and I eagerly accepted.

It turned out to be a great week of fascinating lectures by Mike Brotherton, Geoffrey Landis, and Christian Ready, enhanced by group dinners, and two field trips. This year’s workshop was funded by the National Science Foundation. Funding for next year is uncertain, but hopefully it will come through. If it does, and if you’re a writer/film maker/game designer with an interest in astronomy (and if you don’t mind living in a college dorm for a week, at elevation of 7000-feet!) then you should apply.

Here are a few photos:

Here’s the lecture hall where we spent many hours (and where we were very well fed by the Launchpad staff — thank you, Nicole!)

It’s been a long time since I was in college. During the lectures I learned of a new way of taking notes–photographing the power point slides!

The University of Wyoming has a beautiful campus, with lots of native plantings that were thriving in midsummer.

There is even a menacing T-rex on campus!

A view of Laramie’s old-style downtown. Laramie itself is a terrific little town, with a vital downtown, full of good restaurants.

We went on two field trips. One was an evening expedition to WIRO, the Wyoming Infrared Observatory, and the other was to Vedauwoo, a forest service area with amazing rock formations. From left to right in the photo above are Jodi Lynn-Nye, myself, Matthew Rotundo (in back), our fearless leader Mike Brotherton, and guest lecturer, Christian Ready.

And here we are all together for our group photo.
Row 1 (kneeling): Geoffrey Landis, Christian Ready, Mike Brotherton, Jim Verley.
Row 2: Doug Farren, Mary Turzillo, Nova Ren Suma, Farah Mendlesohn, Ellen Datlow
Row 3: Jodi Lynn Nye, Christi Yant, Tiffany Trent, Robin Wasserman, myself, Sandra McDonald.
Row 4: Robin Christian Peters, Matthew Rotundo, Merrie Haskell, Matthew Kressel, Jake Kerr, Michael Kurland
Photo courtesy of Ellen Datlow

If you’re going to DragonCon you can sign up for a mini-version of Launchpad.

And don’t forget to check out Mike Brotherton’s science fiction novels: Spider Star and Star Dragon.

Long, long ago I read a short story that still sticks with me. I have no idea who wrote it, or where I read it, but it involved a colony of human telepaths who’d been stranded for years and years on a planet, with no outside contact. They weren’t worried about it. They were happy and things were fine. Then one day a new expedition arrived, and suddenly they were forced to see themselves through the eyes of others—literally, because they were telepaths, remember—and the consensus reality they’d enjoyed for decades exploded. They looked at each other through new eyes and realized they were no longer those sexy twenty-year-old beauties they’d once been. Instead they were seriously old, and the beautiful home they’d made for themselves was basically falling apart and filled with spider webs.

I don’t remember the conclusion of the story—I think it ended well enough—but I cannot shake the image of this consensus reality—or if we narrow it down, our personal realities, because it’s true: so much of our success and joy and self-satisfaction depends on who we think we are and, often, on how good we are at resisting some of life’s cold reminders that “it ain’t necessarily so.”

When my Dad was eighty-one and suffering from many disabilities, he turned to me one day and said, “You know, I’m getting old.” I blinked. I bit my tongue. No one, looking at my dad, would have any doubt that he was old, and that he’d been old for a while, but he had such a determined nature that I think he hadn’t quite realized it until then. The man he perceived himself to be was not the same man that other people saw. He had his own vision of himself and it kept him going for a long time.

A few months ago I was leaving the gym just steps behind an elderly couple who were both still quite spry. He said to her, “You know, eighty isn’t old.” She seemed startled for a moment, but then she emphatically agreed, “Of course, eighty isn’t old at all!” I suspect they hadn’t been together long, but I loved their attitude, and their consensus reality.

Of course it works the other way too and consensus realities aren’t always positive–but it’s the healthy side of delusion that fascinates me, and the way it can perpetuate joy, hope, and vigor—though we should all probably bring in fresh eyes now and then to check for spider webs.

If anyone recognizes the story described above, I’d love to hear about it.

“Not All Those Who Wander are Lost” — JRR Tolkien

On the other hand, some of us are — lost, that is. Oh, I don’t mean that we don’t know where we are in the world, it’s just that we don’t know where we are in the grand scheme of things. But then, maybe there’s a very good reason for that.

Not long ago, in a random conversation, a friend mentioned the name of a race car driver—I have no recollection of why we were discussing race car drivers—but he felt this particular driver was a natural. “He was born to drive race cars.”

You hear this expression all the time. “He was born to be a blogger.” “She was born to climb mountains.” Or sing arias, or be a politician, or be an engineer… The expression indicates the perfect convergence of inborn skills and inclination, with a challenging task or a creative endeavor. When you’re “born to do something” the least encouragement will launch you on a lifelong mission to gather the necessary skills, to make the contacts, and to meet the mentors who will help you along the way to becoming a master of your craft. It’s synchronicity in action, and a glorious thing to witness.

But when my friend mentioned this man who was born to drive race cars, I found myself replying, “It’s lucky for him he wasn’t born in, say, 1602.” Which led me to wonder: What if the race car driver had been born in 1602? Then he never would have found his ideal life’s task. What would he have done instead? What do all those people do who just happen to not be born at the right time (or the right place or in the right circumstances) to discover and find fulfillment in their ideal life’s task?

At a guess I’d say a lot of them wander through life trying their hand at different things without ever truly meshing with any of them. Do you know any people like that? Are you someone like that? Hesitantly, I raise my own hand.

All through college I thought I wanted to be a wildlife biologist, then I wanted to be a writer, then I spent nine years as a programmer. Now I’m a writer again, but I’m also a publisher, and this combination makes me feel like I’m as close as I’ve ever come to the thing I was “born to do.” And still…I can’t escape a nagging suspicion that there is or was or will be something else for which I would be ideally suited—or maybe some of us are just never satisfied?

As for those of you who know why you’re here, realize that we envy you. And please don’t take it the wrong way when we wander around in middle age saying things like “Someday I’ll grow up and figure out what I really want to be.” We’re not trying to be annoying; it’s just that we really don’t know.

Here in Hawaii we’ll get around to the New Year in a few more hours. Most everyone else has already rolled over into 2012, but we like to linger. I don’t mind. For me, 2011 has been a good year. I learned a lot, and not just about how to run my own little publishing company. I learned how to write again, and I learned that I really do want to be in this business after all, so long as I can do things more-or-less on my own terms. That’s not asking too much, is it? 😉

Happy New Year to everyone out there! May 2012 prove a terrific year for all.

For myself, I’m looking forward to tomorrow.