Spontaneous ∂erivation

There is one disturbing comment that has been sticking in my mind over and over and over in the Spinrad debacle.

The comment is from Jeff VanderMeer, and in it he says:

Yes, the comment is stupid and ignorant. Rather than righteous indignation, though, perhaps you might’ve had patience and engaged with the rest of it, or even contacted Spinrad first and seen what he had to say, started a dialogue and seen where it took you. I guess what I’m saying is I totally understand why, for example, Nnedi would shake with rage, but you’re farther removed from the center of that comment.

Emphasis mine.

This part of Jeff’s very long comment (which had mostly other stuff in it too, apart from this bit that sticks in my mind) was upon Jason Sanford getting so angry, even though he is not black, and thus not directly affected and thus should not be too angry to engage in discourse with Spinrad.

That is… an ignorant paragraph, even though it’s part of a much longer comment full of other stuff. It’s presumptuous even though you’re Jeff VanderMeer. Sorry. I don’t think it’s surprising for Jason Sanford to be so angry that it distracts him. I don’t think it’s surprising at all if anyone has this reaction to Spinrad’s essay, whatever race or culture they’re part of.

<about me>
And yes… I tend to take the lead from the privileged when it comes to “why so angry?” and I should stop doing that.
</about me>

There have been several more responses to Spinrad’s screed, in addition to Nick Mamatas’ at Haikasoru and Jason Sanford’s initial rant:

• Cheryl Morgan talks about markets and international SF

• Editorial: The Dilemma of the Term “World SF” Redux at the World SF News Blog by Charles Tan — in which he is far kinder than many, but at the same time doesn’t always pull his punches

• Where Is International SF? at the SFWA Blog also by Charles Tan — in which he provides a long list of recommendations for international science fiction that people can really dig into

• N. K. Jemisin dissects a specific point in Spinrad’s essay — and she does not pull her punches.

• Also a comment by Saladin Ahmed about using the downfall of Spinrad to praise other white writers who “really get it” as opposed to, you know, writers from the actual cultures involved.¹

• A Whiff of Colonialism at Publishers Weekly’s Genreville by Rose Fox

And Rose Fox’s post also has a link to Nisi Shawl’s Appropriate Cultural Appropriation, which is light years ahead of anything Spinrad has to say. I wish I had known about it, say, a year ago.

You should really read that instead of Spinrad.

I’m currently popping the Internet popcorn for tomorrow. Sadly popcorn is a bit too expansive for bento boxes. There has been a lot of fuming on Twitter and on comments to currently existing blog responses to Spinrad, and it will almost certainly explode over the next few days.

And, Norman Spinrad?

1. In my opinion, this is like committing a divide-by-zero infinite recursion of fail. It makes no sense and yet is the fail that keeps on failing. [↩]

Note: I set up an unfortunate implication in both the title and the following paragraph that “calm and white” should be listened to over “angry and non-white” posts. I hadn’t yet seen N. K. Jemisin’s highly relevant and very good post when I wrote this post—and it was also stupidly presumptuous of me to have remarked upon “most calm” even before a day had passed vis a vis the Spinrad Incident. Apologies for my own FAIL here. This post is otherwise unmodified, because BAHLETION fixes nothing, and should be read with this note in mind.

Indeed, of all the reactions to Norman Spinrad’s recent fail of the week, Nick Mamatas’ is the most reasoned, informative, and calm. Read his column on Haikasoru, “World SF, Worth Reading BEFORE developing an opinion”:

The problem is that Spinrad is just making an appeal to ignorance. He’s not familiar with the many writers of world SF, so he assumes they do not exist. For whatever reason, though he could be familiar with Japanese SF as some of it has been translated into English, he decided to ignore actually existing Japanese SF. He also utterly ignores Chinese SF, which has been a going concern since 1904 at least. China is also the home of Science Fiction World, the most widely read SF magazine on the planet.

[more at Haikasoru]

I think Norman Spinrad just decided he already knew enough, and didn’t need to do the research. Old dog, tricks, etc.

I really must add a wisdom-of-nick-mamatas tag.

As to Norman Spinrad:

While I was reading some wank on fandom wank¹ I found out that Shards of Honor, the first book in Lois McMaster Bujold’s major SF-award winning series, actually started out a long time ago as a Star Trek fanfic.

You can kind of see, in the first few pages, the skeleton of a Star Fleet officer and a Klingon warlord Meeting Cute², but it’s actually good. I can see it now, and remembered thinking about Aral as “wow, I’m observing a Proud Warrior Race Guy in the wild.” Yet the “file numbers”³ had been filed off so well that I could only see the fanfic skeleton when someone mentioned it.

And shortly after the introduction of the two main characters, the story quickly veered away from “Starfleet and Klingon” and took its own course, with some vestiges here and there. And the entire saga after the first book definitely went its own original course; no more fanfic skeleton, or if there is, it’s been completely disassembled. It gained wings it never would have as a Star Trek fic.

Which just goes to show that (a) fanfiction can be good, (b) but original fiction can be much better.

So many people forget (a). Many fanfic writers forget (b).

1. The type of wank currently featured on top is part of an entire tag/category: “writers are often pompous douches.” [↩]
2. Tropes are neither good nor bad; it depends on how the creator handles them. This is one that can easily be handled in a mediocre or boring way. [↩]
3. File numbers: original characters you’re either using directly or as very obvious expys. [↩]

When interacting with people on the internet these days, I do my best to remember these tenets:

1) Will what I’m about to say end up on Fandom Wank, and not in a good way? If so, what I’m about to express is RAEG!!1!! and not legitimate anger.

2) The only proper way to react to RAEG!!!11!! is to grab the popcorn and wait for the show to appear on Fandom Wank.

ETA: These rules also apply to stupid as well as RAEG.

Being able to discern what falls under RAEG!!!1!!!1! and “rage” means hanging out on Fandom Wank for a while and processing/analyzing what you see (make sure you don’t fall into RAAAEEEEG!!!11!1!! because wanking on wanks definitely falls under tenet #1).

Make sure you’re not drinking anything during this time.

For historical study, check out the Fandom Wank Wiki.

These are just all the episodes, including the Christmas Special; all the other specials will be coming in their own pack, maybe next week, because I need to turn my attention to tea tasting now.

  Shadow Unit - Season 2 Episodes - MOBI [Kindle, Mobipocket] (1.1 MiB, 111 hits)
  Shadow Unit - Season 2 Episodes - EPUB [Sony Reader, Nook, etc] (910.7 KiB, 94 hits)
  Shadow Unit - Season 2 Episodes - LIT [Microsoft Reader] (666.3 KiB, 69 hits)

This batch, unlike Season 1, is done with the New and Improved S∂ Method for Constructing Ebooks, which is quite fast and reliable, except that I end up having to correct a lot of HTML because Adobe Digital Editions is very fussy. If I tune my scripts better, it’ll be faster, but I’ve been a bit lazy (which of course, ends up with more work…).

Anyways, I hope you enjoy them. I don’t know when Season 3 will start, but it’d be nice if I tuned my scripts before then….

This was made possible via Calibre, which has a rather spiffy converter from Mobipocket files (suitable for Kindle) to EPUB files (suitable for Sony Reader and Stanza).

Note: This is, as the file name indicates right now, a beta version. Please file complaints as appropriate (preferably as comments to this blog entry). Once I get the kinks straightened out, I’ll put out a final EPUB version, a new Kindle version (not that much different), and a Microsoft LIT version. The conversion turned out not to be as seamless as I hoped, especially in the case of

extra

pagebreaks.

Sorry about that.

  Shadow Unit - Season 1 - Beta EPUB (1.0 MiB, 111 hits)

If you’re a stanza user, you can add the following URL as a library: http://www.spontaneousderivation.com/stanza/ .

By the way, if you’re a Kindle reader and you haven’t read Shadow Unit yet, Season 1 for Kindle (and other Mobipocket readers) is available.

  Shadow Unit: Season 1: Kindle/Mobipocket (1.5 MiB, 1,518 hits)

As Cleolinda points out, Van Helsing talks… a bit… randomly.

Captions only slightly modified from the original Dracula.

Click here to read more »

She is gone.

Green Man Review
SFWA Announcement
News on John Scalzi’s Whatever

Marty Halpern’s lovely tribute to Kage

Added:

The Bohemian Astrobleme by Kage Baker
Or Else My Lady Keeps the Key
The Empress of Mars

Added:

Kage Her Page (Internet Archive)
Kage Baker on Wikipedia