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syncope at 04:41pm on 12/07/2008
syncope at 04:41pm on 12/07/2008It's not just for the internet. Who knew?
*
But first, I'm going to Comic Con on Thursday to stalk Cathy a bit. Will you also be stalking Cathy? If so, let me know and we can perhaps do that together.
*
A round up of the crazy rejection letter thing.
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mecurtin made the comment "notice how they're all men?" and I laughed at that, because I'm sort of a sexist, but then the hard reality of WHY that is sort of soured me. There are a lot of women in publishing now, in editorial and beyond, but the truth is that military fiction appeals to men and is mostly written men. You don't see a whole helluva lot of men writing romance novels (however this does happen more than I will [totally randomly] assume women write violent speculative fiction). It used to be that all of science fiction was a man's game, and some men are not so thrilled this is no longer the case.
Sometimes, because fandom is so very dominated by women and so many of us grew up reading scifi/fantasy that the history of the genre sometimes gets obscured. There are a lot of angry men out there who feel a bunker mentality towards all the "encroachment" into their little fantastical world of giant robot bugs and wizards. Lately, because of the rhetorical language in such theaters as Fox News, some of these men think it's ok to "reclaim" their voices and denounce "PC" language. Even in the venue of creative writing, which is amazing. One would think that in the arts artists might have more ability to stretch their thinking and be sympathetic to those unlike themselves--especially in a genre where aliens are often used as a metaphor for average alienation and discrimination. One would be wrong.
A lot of publishing industry blowback and politics s embedded in this brouhaha. So many people are so scared of endangering their careers that they often refuse to take any kind of stand for fear of making someone's black list. Who this ultimate arbiter of black listness is, I'm unsure, but I see writers often quivering for fear that they might land on the Book of Souls and will be unable to sell another word. Keep in mind that Stephen Fry is still working when you get your knickers twisted over that. (I actually like Stephen Fry, but that is an extreme example to illustrate my point that nothing is so very set in stone as you think.)
Mr. Sanders falls for this mistaken idea of the black list. Letting a crazy crackpot set any sort of agenda, much less an ethical agenda, is really disheartening/reprehensible. Dude, way to cede the field to the lunatic fringe. I walked away from that post thinking that this story was *worse* than the rejection letter, that these two guys were peas in a pod, both ignorant and thoughtless--one a panderer and the other the sort of guy who sets the national agenda to begin with. The fact that their very dodgey comments and beliefs also get tangled up in publishing ambition just brings it to the attention of an articulate audience who have access to pockets of readership. I'm pretty sure their worldview is actually pretty representative of a country that did sort of elect George Bush to the White House (twice).
It's harder to stand up and say "no, that's racism" when the racism is directed at a group of people who are almost universally denounced by your own society. The question is, what the FUCK do we do about that? I think xenophobia towards Muslims is actually extremely acceptable in mainstream society, and what these guys said was pretty tame compared to what goes down on Fox News. If I was still a philosopher I'd probably have some critical commentary to make about privileging the written word over the spoken word and how even though far worse is said on television daily it's much easier to quote written communication, plus all of the postmodern analysis of intent being divorced from written communication. More commentary than of course writers/readers get very inflamed about something written down, but I think I've heard Congressmen say far worse, so where does that leave us? Certainly in a shitty situation.
*
But first, I'm going to Comic Con on Thursday to stalk Cathy a bit. Will you also be stalking Cathy? If so, let me know and we can perhaps do that together.
*
A round up of the crazy rejection letter thing.
mecurtin made the comment "notice how they're all men?" and I laughed at that, because I'm sort of a sexist, but then the hard reality of WHY that is sort of soured me. There are a lot of women in publishing now, in editorial and beyond, but the truth is that military fiction appeals to men and is mostly written men. You don't see a whole helluva lot of men writing romance novels (however this does happen more than I will [totally randomly] assume women write violent speculative fiction). It used to be that all of science fiction was a man's game, and some men are not so thrilled this is no longer the case. Sometimes, because fandom is so very dominated by women and so many of us grew up reading scifi/fantasy that the history of the genre sometimes gets obscured. There are a lot of angry men out there who feel a bunker mentality towards all the "encroachment" into their little fantastical world of giant robot bugs and wizards. Lately, because of the rhetorical language in such theaters as Fox News, some of these men think it's ok to "reclaim" their voices and denounce "PC" language. Even in the venue of creative writing, which is amazing. One would think that in the arts artists might have more ability to stretch their thinking and be sympathetic to those unlike themselves--especially in a genre where aliens are often used as a metaphor for average alienation and discrimination. One would be wrong.
A lot of publishing industry blowback and politics s embedded in this brouhaha. So many people are so scared of endangering their careers that they often refuse to take any kind of stand for fear of making someone's black list. Who this ultimate arbiter of black listness is, I'm unsure, but I see writers often quivering for fear that they might land on the Book of Souls and will be unable to sell another word. Keep in mind that Stephen Fry is still working when you get your knickers twisted over that. (I actually like Stephen Fry, but that is an extreme example to illustrate my point that nothing is so very set in stone as you think.)
Mr. Sanders falls for this mistaken idea of the black list. Letting a crazy crackpot set any sort of agenda, much less an ethical agenda, is really disheartening/reprehensible. Dude, way to cede the field to the lunatic fringe. I walked away from that post thinking that this story was *worse* than the rejection letter, that these two guys were peas in a pod, both ignorant and thoughtless--one a panderer and the other the sort of guy who sets the national agenda to begin with. The fact that their very dodgey comments and beliefs also get tangled up in publishing ambition just brings it to the attention of an articulate audience who have access to pockets of readership. I'm pretty sure their worldview is actually pretty representative of a country that did sort of elect George Bush to the White House (twice).
It's harder to stand up and say "no, that's racism" when the racism is directed at a group of people who are almost universally denounced by your own society. The question is, what the FUCK do we do about that? I think xenophobia towards Muslims is actually extremely acceptable in mainstream society, and what these guys said was pretty tame compared to what goes down on Fox News. If I was still a philosopher I'd probably have some critical commentary to make about privileging the written word over the spoken word and how even though far worse is said on television daily it's much easier to quote written communication, plus all of the postmodern analysis of intent being divorced from written communication. More commentary than of course writers/readers get very inflamed about something written down, but I think I've heard Congressmen say far worse, so where does that leave us? Certainly in a shitty situation.