Uncanny Magazine Issue One

by Uncanny Magazine

  A stairwell descended into darkness. The steps themselves were carved from the stone of the hill, each one bowed and worn with generations of passage. There was no light at all below, but the air smelled of roses and grave dust and meat.

  It was an invitation.

  A vector of change now, aimed at the deathless heart of the unchanging, Addison touched her woolen vest, fingered the seam of her denim skirt, and set off into the darkness below with an ache in her chest and her grandfather’s memory in her heart.

  Mother will learn patience now. If the monkeys know anything we do not, it is that death is the greatest teacher life can set before us. I am not one of the mabkin, but I have sat at the borders of Mother’s realm so long I might as well be one.

  That a monkey came for me is one of those blessings which can only be the world playing with its own sense of humor. Her stove burned me a little, but I got the hot tea off and into my belly. It will be strange, eating their food, but I have a ticket that will take me somewhere else.

  Change is coming Below, where change has never been welcome. I wonder who set the Locke and the Keyes on their course, or if that is just another of the world’s little jokes upon itself.

  Leaving the flame behind to light the night, I follow Addison Keyes’s scent back down from the high hills. As Above, so Below. Mother’s fingers may be like whips, but they will never tear at me now. Mother’s eyes may be like razors, but they will never cut at me now.

  I thank my sister, I thank myself, and I sing a song of crabs and cats as the bracken whips at my hiking boots and my monkey pants and I bounce down into the wider world armed with bright teeth and a copper knife.

  I am coming. I might even become a Mother myself someday, in Addison’s high Wyoming hills.

  Are you afraid? Or are you laughing?

  “Her Fingers Like Whips, Her Eyes Like Razors” copyright © 2011 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. Originally appeared in Postscripts, 24/25, 2011. Reprinted in Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection (Tor, 2014).

  (Editors’ Note: In this issue, Lynne M. Thomas interviews Beth Meacham about Jay Lake and his work.)

  © 2011 Joseph E. Lake

  Jay Lake was a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. He lived in Portland, Oregon and lost a six year battle with colon cancer on June 1, 2014. Jay was a prolific writer and editor and blogged regularly about his cancer at his website jlake.com. His books for 2013 and 2014 include Kalimpura and Last Plane to Heaven from Tor Books and Love in the Time of Metal and Flesh from Prime Books. His work has been translated into several languages including Czech, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese and Russian.

  Mars (and Moon and Mercury and Jupiter and Venus) Attacks!

  by Sarah Kuhn

  This year, I achieved an important milestone in my own personal Heroine’s Journey: I cosplayed for the first time.

  Okay, so yes, I suppose you could also count the time I threw together a raggedy pink gingham ensemble in order to portray Lily Tomlin in Big Business for a friend’s birthday, but that was definitely amateur hour. This time, I was serious: I’d targeted that seething amoeba of humanity known as San Diego Comic–Con as my venue; I’d reserved a sizable square of costume space in my already overflowing suitcase; and I’d even purchased a pair of those cheerleader shorts–underwear hybrids so my ass wouldn’t fall out of my tiny red skirt.

  I was going to be Sailor Mars, bitch. As I adjusted my tiara and multiple bows in the mirror, I felt my energy shift, as if the air around me had actually morphed into a sparkly transformation bubble. For the first time in years, there was no cloud of anger, trepidation, or weariness surrounding the geekdom I was about to participate in.

  I only felt joy.

  It’s entirely too cutesy to say it’s hard out there for a geek girl…but man, is it hard out there for a geek girl. These past few years, it seems as if we’ve reached multiple tipping points with regards to women in fandom. There’s always some new article or blog post that ignores us, dismisses us, or mocks us as interlopers and attention–seekers. Every time a woman in geekdom speaks out about, well, anything, she’s pretty much guaranteed a slew of threats, ranging from the “joking” to the “will make you sick to your stomach and force you to call the police.” I tweeted recently about Wonder Woman being a feminist and immediately received profanity–laden responses from some dude who had created an entire account purely to search out any woman who’d ever mentioned superheroines and equality for women in the same breath and send them charming 140–character “truth bombs” about the state of their reproductive organs. And on the Grand Scale of Shitty Internet Harassment, that’s pretty mild.

  It feels like it keeps getting worse, too, this toxic attitude toward nerd women. I don’t know if it’s just that my awareness has increased over time, but to me, it feels like we’ve gone from disbelief that female geeks exist to outright hostility toward anyone who dares string any variation of “woman” and “nerd” together. We’ve gone from “Are you a fake geek girl?” to “Actually, I don’t even care, just get out.” We’ve gone from quizzes over credentials to death threats.

  Not to go all “When I Was A Kid” on this, but if I compare the current state of things to the state of things when I was a kid: There was no internet, and I had to travel at least an hour outside my miniscule hometown to go to an equally miniscule Star Trek convention, and you can bet I totally did that, but even if there were more Spocks than Major Kiras in attendance, I never really got the idea that I didn’t belong there. Once I got older and expanded both my fandom and my geographical reach, I started getting The Tests: Do you really like the X–Men? Can you name them all? Do you get what that shirt you’re wearing means—no, what it really means? I developed the feeling that my presence was a surprise, but still not necessarily an unwelcome one.

  These days? I feel unwelcome.

  I feel unwelcome when I’m at a convention and some guy behind me yells at a Game of Thrones cosplayer: “Hey, Daenerys, I’ve totally seen you naked! So take it off, bitch!”

  I feel unwelcome when men chime in loudly to tell female comic book fans they’re wrong to even consider being upset about that Spider–Woman cover where her ass is all up in the air.

  I feel unwelcome when yet another friend shows me a rapey string of tweets she’s been subjected to after she posts an article about sexism/posts a picture of herself/commits the unforgivable act of being a woman on the internet.

  And all of these things brought up a recent moment where I asked myself: If I feel so unwelcome, why am I here? Why do I stay in geekdom? Why am I fighting so hard to be part of something that seems to actively not want me?

  In the past, two things have helped me power through these kinds of feelings. One was my near–constant underlying simmer of rage: How dare you tell me where I do and do not belong? How dare you quiz me on the freaking X–Men when you just told me you were “more of a DC fan” and can only name like two of them? How dare you try to deny my love of these things I’ve clung to since childhood, these things that shaped me as a person? I am here and so are countless other women and I’m going to keep saying it until you shut up.

  The other thing was the love that brought me to fandom in the first place: Passion for the kickass women of the X–Men comics, adoration of Major Kira’s combat–footed stomp, the ability to fall headfirst into an obsessive analytic inner monologue about Princess Leia’s various hairstyles.

  But even that pure love was starting to wear thin. One reason I’d gotten into sci–fi/fantasy and comic book fandom in the first place was the abundance of awesome female characters, as well as the thought that their numbers and awesomeness would surely just increase and improve over time. Instead, the newer X–Men movies tend to shunt the female characters to the side; what was once Kitty Pryde’s story is now Wolverine’s. The Star Trek film reboots have given wonderful Uhura maybe half a story arc. And when that new Star Wars
cast was announced, there was only one new lady in the mix, and pointing that out meant you were a fun–hating killjoy. (Yes, they later added a few more. Still.)

  As for the aforementioned rage? I was starting to just feel tired.

  As is usually the case, it took wise words from a friend to snap me out of this funk. And those words were, “Hey, so I finally found really high–quality Sailor Scout costumes, and we should totally buy them. They come with tiaras.”

  Now let me just take a moment to discuss the Sailor Moon element of this whole thing, because it’s an important one, although it took me a while to realize how important. I loved Sailor Moon (originally envisioned by a female creator, manga writer–artist Naoko Takeuchi) when I was younger, but it wasn’t necessarily one of my primary fandoms. Still, I was constantly inspired by it: The magical girl element, the team of girl superheroes element, the amazing costumes with matching accessories element. But when the property made a definitive resurgence earlier this year—classic, remastered episodes on Hulu! Also, episodes of the all–new show, Sailor Moon Crystal! New fans, old fans, it’s a total Moonaissance, everyone loves Sailor Moon!—I found myself completely and totally obsessed. I thought about Usagi Tsukino constantly. I wondered if my heavy bangs made me more of a Mars or a Saturn. I considered how a team of tempestuous teenage female superheroes is such a simple, delightful, wonderful concept that seems created for me yet has never been replicated in such a perfect way. And then, happily, a few friends and I started a long, extremely involved email chain about any and all aspects of Sailor Scouting, Sailor Crafting, Sailor Storytelling. Every time one of these emails popped up, I’d get a little frisson of happiness.

  For whatever reason, I didn’t connect this resurgence in my own Sailor Moon fandom to my bigger geek–type fandom. It was just this separate little wonderful thing. It felt new and shiny and fun and like the friends I was participating with were getting as much untainted delight out of it as I was.

  It felt like that moment in childhood, when I first became a fan of anything.

  As I gleefully sorted through the ever–growing email chain—wherein we were now discussing the various attributes of the Scout costumes we were thinking of ordering and whether Mercury also wanted to spring for a blue wig—I realized something.

  We weren’t the only group of female fans doing this.

  And by “this,” I don’t specifically mean, “Participating in a really long and increasingly detailed and involved email chain.” I mean finding awesome female characters (often created or shepherded by female creators) and championing them and enthusiastically engaging in fandom with a pure, unadulterated joy that keeps sending the message I mentioned earlier: I am here and so are countless other women and I’m going to keep saying it until you shut up.

  I thought about the Carol Corps, a sprawling, powerful, and very visible group of fans (of all genders, though the ladies really seem to take the lead) dedicated to Captain Marvel (aka Carol Danvers) and her comic book series written by Kelly Sue DeConnick. If a con’s happening, you can bet my Twitter feed’s about to be taken over by the #carolcorps hashtag and a bunch of amazing Instagrams of wildly creative Captain Marvel costumes and reports from the group’s various meetups and panels. And the Kamala Korps, a similar fan group for Kamala Khan, star of the G. Willow Wilson–penned Ms. Marvel. And the countless female–led fan groups around pretty much any nerd thing you can think of that I see gathering every year at GeekGirlCon.

  I thought about how, when I look beyond the beloved genre tentpoles of my childhood, I’m seeing and experiencing major excitement over new female heroes starring in their own stories: Katniss Everdeen and Elsa of Arendelle and Abbie Mills and Maleficent and Lizzie Bennet and the Lumberjanes. I thought about how whenever some new sexist bullshit happens in geekdom, it seems to get more sexist and more bullshitty every time…but there’s also always a backlash. I thought about all the amazing women in geekdom I’ve met in person and online, how their combined voices are loud and powerful and inspiring. How hopefully, the female characters they’re championing will continue to rise and make way for more characters and creators worth getting excited about.

  How even when I feel angry and tired and fed up, I am never alone.

  The larger geek community may feel unwelcoming these days, but these are the communities that matter, the communities celebrating Usagi and Carol and Kamala. These are the communities that represent the future of fandom.

  These are the communities I will always want to be part of.

  As I was sashaying my way through Comic–Con in true Sailor Marsian fashion (I opted for sequined boots over the spiky red heels, thinking Mars would probably understand that conventions involve an epic amount of walking), I heard a voice behind me:

  “Mars! Hey, Mars!”

  I turned with a bit of dread, wondering if it was going to be someone catcalling me—like the guy who’d demanded to see Daenerys’ boobs.

  Instead, it was a beaming, well–outfitted Sailor Mercury, waving a camera.

  “Let’s take a picture!” she said. “I’m collecting photos with fellow Scouts!”

  We took one, Sailor Smiles bright and shiny.

  “Have fun, Mars!” she sang out, giving me a wave. “I’m glad you’re here!”

  “Thank you!” I called, grinning as I watched her twirl off.

  And then, even though she was already gone, I added: “I’m glad you’re here, too.”

  © 2014 Sarah Kuhn

  Sarah Kuhn is the author of the forthcoming Heroine Complex trilogy, starring Asian American superheroines, for DAW Books. She also wrote the geek romantic comedy novella One Con Glory, which has earned kudos from io9 and USA Today/Pop Candy and is currently in development as a feature film. She has written about everything from financial aid to Vulcan mating rituals for such fine publications as Apex Magazine, Back Stage, IGN.com, Geek Monthly, The Hollywood Reporter, Creative Screenwriting, and StarTrek.com. She also contributed an essay to the Hugo-nominated anthology Chicks Dig Comics and has served on such popular panels as San Diego Comic-Con’s “Geek Girls Exist.” In 2011, she was selected as a finalist for the CAPE (Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment) New Writers Award.

  Worldcon Roundtable Featuring Emma England, Michael Lee, Helen Montgomery, Steven H Silver, and Pablo Vazquez

  by Uncanny Staff

  Editors’ Note: This roundtable discussion was convened to offer an insider’s view of convention running and Worldcon culture from experienced con runners and volunteers. This discussion was in part a response to the Daily Dot article by Gavia Baker–Whitelaw, with the goal of creating a constructive dialogue regarding the differences between Worldcon culture and other types of SF/F conventions. This discussion was conducted via email.

  Uncanny Magazine: Welcome to Uncanny’s first roundtable discussion! Please introduce yourselves and share a little bit about your convention background and connection to Worldcon.

  Michael Lee: I’ve been involved with running and attending conventions and fan clubs since high school, first getting involved with Doctor Who fandom and then also attending general science fiction conventions such as Minicon in Minnesota.

  When Minicon made some radical changes that weren’t very well accepted by a large majority of people in the local community, I immediately got involved with the then–new convention CONvergence. I served in a variety of roles there over sixteen years, including six years on the board of directors.

  Because of that local history, Worldcon was a very remote thing for most of my time as an active fan. My thoughts were a bit tied to the sour taste that I had after Minicon’s collapse and the rather odd status of the Minneapolis in ‘73 tradition in Minnesota. Some elements of the Worldcon community did themselves no favors online as well, so I didn’t feel like that would be my thing for a long time, and I prioritized other conventions.

  Eventually, through my outreach for CONvergence, I met enough people who were involved with Worldcon that I real
ized that the people who spent the most time on the internet being difficult weren’t representative of the group as a whole. Because of my involvement with CONvergence, I knew that the best place to begin with a convention was to help volunteer, so when I started to go to Worldcon, I signed up to help in tasks right away. I had always intellectually appreciated the Hugo Awards, but attending the ceremony got me emotionally involved as well. So I continued to volunteer as I had time, and I got involved with the Helsinki in 2017 Worldcon bid.

  Emma England: I’ve been a fan for nearly thirty years and going to conventions for twenty, almost always related to TV. Although I set up the SF club at my university, I had only volunteered as a gopher/steward at a couple of events and I hadn’t been involved with con organizing until Loncon 3. However, I have organized lots of academic conferences, and that is how I got involved with Loncon 3, my first Worldcon! I jumped straight in the deep end, as an Area Head for the Academic Track. (A special issue of the Science Fiction Foundation’s journal Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction will come out next year with selected articles from the event.)

  Somehow I then persuaded the Program Division Heads to let me run a full program aimed at the kind of fans not usually associated with Worldcon—Tumblr users, fanfiction readers, so–called “media fans.” This “transformative fandom” track was controversial and often sensitive, but the sessions were packed, and the panels themselves got positive reviews, even from the harshest critics of Loncon 3.

  For Loncon 3 I ended up with a hodge podge of other roles, including running the Program admin team and creating and setting up the Fan Space—an area in the Fan Village which became a safer space for many of the “transformative” fans. The extra roles meant I ended up with the title Program Manager and a funky Loncon 3 Hero medal. A tacky bit of plastic shouldn’t mean much, but somehow feeling so supported and appreciated made all the difference and increased the feeling of community that much more. Now I can’t envisage a time I could be without Worldcon, so much so I am now the Promotions Director for the Dublin in 2019 campaign.