Lightspeed Magazine Issue 49

by Seanan McGuire

  This symposium was invigorating, but it wasn’t perfect; it left me wanting more discussion about pervasive heteronorms and white privilege in SF. Most energizing, however, was a simple realization: this isn’t a new fight, and we needn’t pull any punches. Our fantasies shape reality. As Andrea Hairston bluntly states, “Fuck those people who say you can’t go from being a descendent of slaves to world leader! You have to rehearse the impossible.”

  Science fiction is a thriving genre of utopian futurism, and any lingering backlash is just tinny background noise. That small noise is drowned out by gorgeous, compelling, and sometimes discomfiting words, the music we’re creating together. Just look at this year’s Nebula ballot. The conversation continues.

  We’re dancing on.

  For further conversing:

  Report from Planet Midnight, Nalo Hopkinson

  Meet Me at Infinity, James Tiptree, Jr.

  The Secret Feminist Cabal, Helen Merrick

  Writing the Other, Nisi Shaw and Cynthia Ward

  A few recommendations by Symposium panelists, must-reads and/or works they would love to see adapted as film:

  Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor

  The New Moon’s Arms, Nalo Hopkinson

  Red Wood and Wildfire, Andrea Hairston

  “Stories for Men,” John Kessel

  Fledgling, Octavia Butler

  Air, Geoff Ryman

  Four Ways to Forgiveness, Ursula K. Le Guin

  The Adventures of Alyx, Joanna Russ

  Tracie Welser’s work has appeared in Interzone, Crossed Genres, and Outlaw Bodies. Her master’s thesis, “Fantastic Visions: On the Necessity of Feminist Utopian Narrative,” as well as her current novel-in-progress, suggest that she may be obsessed with the idea of actualizing a feminist future through fiction. A graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, Tracie currently resides in California. She blogs at thisisnotanowl.com.

  How to Engineer a Self-Rescuing Princess

  Stina Leicht

  Science fiction not only taught me how to save myself, it taught me that self-rescuing was essential. Here’s how.

  • • •

  Step 1: Here Be Monsters

  I was two or three years old when I learned that something was wrong with me. It began with a family trip to a natural history museum. I remember a room with a glass case, containing shelves with rows upon rows of human skulls. In my memory, the case was vast. It took up an entire wall. Some of the skulls had dark brown or black patches with numbers on them. Now that I think about it, these were most likely labels for various bones, but being small I didn’t know. I asked my parents what was wrong with the skulls. My two-or-three-year-old brain fixed upon, “Some of the skulls are boy skulls and some are girl skulls.” Thus, I interpreted the answer as “The skulls with the dark splotches on them—the abnormal skulls—are girl skulls.” And that was the first time the thought entered my mind that I didn’t want to be a girl. Girls are wrong, bad, and diseased.

  After that, we entered a room of Egyptian artifacts. The exhibit featured a sarcophagus tilted up against the wall in a standing position. There was no protective glass case. The only barrier between myself and the evil mummy lurking inside the open stone box was a red velvet rope.

  I’d seen Johnny Quest. I knew mummies walked. I also knew that their favorite prey was little girls. Everything on television and film said that monsters targeted girls. I screamed and ran for my life.

  My father (who really did mean well) chased me down and dragged me—literally kicking and screaming—back into that room. He was a mechanical engineer and was determined to raise his child to believe only in reality. None of that fairytale nonsense would fill her brain. Facts need only apply. He insisted that I had nothing to fear, the mummy was dead, and it wasn’t going to eat me. I was in no way convinced. Thus, he demonstrated the mummy’s inert quality by lifting me over the velvet safety barrier and shoving me inches from the dormant monster’s clutches.

  Needless to say, that didn’t go over too well.

  My mother intervened. We left the museum in shame, and my father grew reluctant to take his kids anywhere where we might embarrass him. After that I had frequent nightmares—any kid would. I became obsessed. I researched mummies in the library and memorized every detail about them that I could. I was possibly the only seven-year-old girl who could recite the exact formula and process used to create an Egyptian mummy in the whole state of Missouri.1 It didn’t stop at mummies. I did this for every monster I could imagine. My motivations were tactical. I wanted to know what the “silver bullet” was. Monsters had weaknesses, and the hero of the story took advantage of those weaknesses. Yes, I understood that the hero of the story was always male. However, I also knew from experience that men couldn’t be relied upon to protect little girls. Worse, as I grew older, I came to understand that sometimes men were the monsters, and like my father and the mummy, other men couldn’t be relied upon to believe in the danger. Therefore, I had to protect myself—even if it wasn’t okay to do so—if I was going to survive.

  • • •

  Step 2: Provide a Role Model

  Somewhere in the middle of all this I found science fiction. I couldn’t have been older than four when I had a babysitter who wanted to watch this new television show called Star Trek. I blame her for making me into a Trekkie. As it happened, this was the night of the first inter-racial kiss on American television. Lt. Uhura (and Nichelle Nichols) became my new hero, and Science Fiction became the place where the world’s injustices—even the ones of which absolutely no one spoke—were openly and thoughtfully discussed. Sometimes even solutions were found. Science Fiction was amazing and powerful. It was The Future! I remember asking my babysitter to draw the starship Enterprise and tacking it to the wall next to my bed. My parents came home and freaked out. The picture vanished, and I was punished for the tiny hole in the plaster.

  Still, that didn’t stop me. I’d found where I belonged. In the third grade (not long after the infamous mummy recitation) my English teacher gave me A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle.2 In it, L’Engle informed me that girls weren’t in any way limited to answering the starship’s phone. Girls in Science Fiction could be scientists. They didn’t even have to choose between being a scientist and a mother. They could grow up to be both. It was like a bomb went off in my head. From that point forward I consumed all the science fiction and fantasy I could find. By the time I’d read The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood I’d learned that not only was it okay to save myself, it was imperative.

  • • •

  Step 3: Reading Material

  First, I’m going to list the stories that I’ve read and have influenced me.

  A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

  The works of Zilpha Keatley Snyder

  The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

  The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley

  Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh

  The Snow Queen by Joan D. Vinge

  Dragonriders of Pern by Anne McCaffrey

  The Darkover series by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

  Push of the Sky by Camille Alexa

  “Transfer of Ownership” (a short story) by Christie Yant

  And here’s the second list, consisting of works that I haven’t read yet but mean to read.

  The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

  How to Suppress Women’s Writing by Joanna Russ

  Up the Walls of the World by James Tiptree, Jr. (aka Alice Sheldon)

  Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler

  The Gate to Women’s Country by Sheri Tepper

  Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy

  The Empress of Mars by Kage Baker

  Vatta’s War by Elizabeth Moon

  Ancillary Justice by Anne Leckie

  Memoirs of a Spacewoman by Naomi Mitchison

  Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor

  The Female Man by Joann
a Russ

  Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Surfacing by Margaret Atwood

  Carnival by Elizabeth Bear

  Heaven Under Earth by Aliette de Bodard

  God’s War by Kameron Hurley

  The Mad Scientist’s Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke

  Fortune’s Pawn by Rachel Bach

  Up Against It by M.J. Locke

  Peacekeeper by Laura E. Reeve

  Inheritance by Malinda Lo

  When We Wake by Karen Healey

  Stina Leicht is a two-time Campbell Award nominee for Best New Writer (2012 and 2013.) Her debut novel Of Blood and Honey, a historical fantasy set in 1970s Northern Ireland, was shortlisted for the Crawford Award. The sequel, And Blue Skies from Pain, is available now. Her shorter fiction is also featured in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s surreal anthology Last Drink Bird Head, and in the anthology Rayguns Over Texas.

  FOOTNOTES:

  1 And quite possibly Texas as well. This led to a rather interesting situation in which my third grade history teacher made the mistake of asking if anyone in the class knew anything about ancient Egypt. She had no idea what was inside the mind of the skinny, little girl in the pink dress and bows. So, of course she picked me when I raised my hand. I was shy. I didn’t do that very often. Imagine her shock when I described iron hooks being shoved up dead people’s noses to scrape the brains out of their skulls. I didn’t know anything was wrong until halfway through my recitation when I noticed the class had grown very quiet and teacher’s face was a little green. Strangely, I seem to recall a parent/teacher conference after that.

  2 I still have my Scholastic Books copy, believe it or not.

  Screaming Together: Making Women’s Voices Heard

  Nisi Shawl

  Isn’t this edition of Lightspeed awesome? Aren’t you thrilled by the recent rise of similar projects promoting writing by women? Wouldn’t it be fantastic if this sort of thing—women’s genre stories and poems and genre-related nonfiction being published and read and noticed—happened every single day?

  This article is about how to make it so.

  Perhaps the most basic step is the one you’ve already taken: reading. By choosing to read a magazine issue written and edited entirely by women, you’re supporting women’s writing in a big way. Page hits matter.

  “Screaming Together,” the article’s title, derives from Lilit Marcus’s “What Happens When You Tell People You’re Reading Only Women” (the-toast.net/2014/02/03/what-happens-when-you-tell-people-youre-reading-only-women/). It refers to her idea that to avoid being drowned out by the prevalence of male voices, female authors have to scream. In an earlier piece, Marcus had vowed she’d read books exclusively by women for a year. You could do that, too.

  Libraries buy more copies of books more people borrow. Circulation matters. Sales figures matter. An overwhelming trend in genre readers buying books by women could well lead to larger advances for woman authors.

  In many ways, publicity matters at least as much as page hits, circulation, or sales. If you take Marcus’s vow, use the #readwomen2014 hashtag. Talking, posting, and tweeting about what you’re reading will let uninformed folks know that women do indeed write cyberpunk porn1 and proto-Arthurian epics2 and tales of talking space squids3 and exploits of time-traveling revolutionaries4—all the myriad varieties of horror, fantasy, and science fiction imaginable. Make lists of what you discover. Give away extra copies. Nominate your favorites for awards.

  Did you know that there are awards for women authors and for books written by women? They aren’t genre-specific, but they don’t rule out genre works, either. Just a few minutes searching on the internet revealed to me the presence of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards, and the Women’s National Book Association’s Bookwoman Award. There may be more.

  You can also nominate books by women for non-gender-specific awards within our field: the Nebula, the Crawford, the James Tiptree, Jr., and so on. The Carl Brandon Society’s Parallax and Kindred Awards, for instance, go to writers of color and to authors of any background whose work expands our understanding of race. There is nothing about gender in their mission statements, and yet of the twin awards’ thirteen recipients to date, eleven are women. The percentages of female Hugo and Nebula Award-winners are much lower. That can be fixed.

  In addition to those presenting awards to women who write, many organizations exist to assist women authors in other ways: supporting our works’ publication and marketing; providing technical back-up for podcasting and ebooks; offering educational opportunities and ways to share knowledge. To make this assistance more effective I recommend donating, joining, participating, and/or volunteering. Hedgebrook is the nonprofit sponsor of a genre-friendly women’s literary retreat. The roster of relevant organizations firmly within SFF’s boundaries includes Broad Universe, the Fem-SF listserv, and Aqueduct Press. (Note that Aqueduct identifies primarily as a supporter of feminist issues rather than women’s issues.)

  Of course, there’s a societal background to this activity, and it has its effect on the presence and recognition of women writers. There are a few tropes I’d like to see subverted on that level, though I’m not sure how we ought to go about it. I wish, for instance that the competitiveness of publishing made better allowance for the non-assertiveness to which many women are culturally conditioned. The temporary solution I’ve found is to ask them repeatedly—repeatedly—REPEATEDLY if they’d like to be included in any creative project you have in mind. Conversely, it would be nice if there was more acceptance and even applause for women acting like bitches the way Charles Dickens acted like a bastard. And I fervently hope that someday, mash-ups of SFF with subgenres traditionally relegated to women (romance, “tea-cozy” mysteries, slash) will be accorded the respect given SFF cross-fertilized with traditionally masculine subgenres (police procedurals, military adventures).

  None of us can upend societal attitudes all on our own. We can, however, contribute as individuals to the well-being of women authors we know personally. We can give them gifts: meals, money, magazine subscriptions, certificates for housecleaning or childcare services. We who are writers can encourage them in their endeavors—as Nalo Hopkinson and Octavia E. Butler have encouraged me—by taking their vocations seriously and frankly discussing with them the professional problems they encounter. We can even set private deadlines for them, as I do for K. Tempest Bradford.

  Taking that last suggestion further, many of us should consider issuing women writers public deadlines. Though editing is a skill not everyone possesses, you’ll never know whether you can do it or not unless you try. For over three years now, I’ve edited reviews for The Cascadia Subduction Zone, the feminist literary quarterly published by Aqueduct. Most of our coverage is devoted to SFF by women, and most of the reviewers I edit are women. This is my first long-term editorial gig.

  “If you see something, say something,” goes the U.S. Department of Homeland Security-sponsored adage. A number of us have seen something sexist, and said and done things about it. Hence the genesis of this, Lightspeed’s “Women Destroy Science Fiction!” issue, and its simultaneously spawned sister-issues focusing on horror and fantasy. Hence Athena’s Daughters, an all-woman genre anthology edited by Jean Rabe, who resigned as the editor of the SFWA Bulletin due to controversy over the magazine’s cover and contents. Hence She Walks in Shadows, Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s projected volume of Lovecraftian fiction by women created in response to a Facebook post bemoaning the lack of “girls” who “like to play with squids.”

  Here’s another quotation: “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” Or, I’ll add to Toni Morrison’s words of wisdom, you must edit it. Or publish it.

  For what’s the use of editing something unless it’s published? And aren’t the industry’s current gatekeepers more part of the problem than of possible solutions? Well, yes. And no. There
is a heritage of sexism tied to the traditional publishing industry, but that is changing. Meanwhile, numerous small presses have been willing to take the business risks necessary to gain significant ground in the representation of women. Additionally, there are other pathways available to those seeking to get their own work out into the world. Book View Café, a woman-founded publishing cooperative, pays its authors a whopping 95% of their titles’ cover price. Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and other crowdfunding sites allow books’ writers and editors to raise money for their printing, distributing, advertising, and more. You could be a publisher. If you have friends willing to back you.

  The most recent count of non-genre-specific women authors reviewed in non-genre-specific venues is available online here: vidaweb.org/the-count-2013/. It’s not a pretty picture. Similar studies conducted by Strange Horizons (strangehorizons.com/blog/2012/04/the_2011_sf_count.shtml) point to the need for setting our own house in order. With your help, that’s a completely possible task.

  • • •

  Online resources:

  Writing Prizes

  The Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction: womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/

  The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Awards: ronajaffefoundation.org/

  The Women’s National Book Association’s Bookwoman Award: wnba-books.org/wnba-awards-2#Award

  The Carl Brandon Society’s Parallax and Kindred Awards: carlbrandon.org/awards.html

  Organizations supporting women writers

  Hedgebrook:

  hedgebrook.org/

  Broad Universe:

  broaduniverse.org/home/

  Aqueduct Press:

  aqueductpress.com/

  and its quarterly publication, The Cascadia Subduction Zone: thecsz.com/

  Alternate publishing resources

  Book View Café:

  bookviewcafe.com/bookstore/

  Indiegogo:

  indiegogo.com/

  Kickstarter:

  kickstarter.com/

  Nisi Shawl’s collection Filter House was a 2009 James Tiptree, Jr. Award winner; her stories have been published at Strange Horizons, in Asimov’s SF Magazine, and in anthologies including The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and both volumes of the Dark Matter series. She was the 2011 Guest of Honor at the feminist SF convention WisCon and will be a 2014 co-Guest of Honor for the Science Fiction Research Association. She coauthored the renowned Writing the Other: A Practical Approach with Cynthia Ward, and co-edited the nonfiction anthology Strange Matings: Science Fiction, Feminism, African American Voices, and Octavia E. Butler. Shawl’s Belgian Congo steampunk novel Everfair is forthcoming in 2015 from Tor Books. Her website is nisishawl.com.