Clarkesworld, Issue 59, August 2011

A really interesting issue which even includes a translated story…

Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee (a Korean-American woman)

After Gord Sellar’s musical tale in the previous issue, we have another stylistic experiment in the pipeline, but this one actually works, and works very well. Yoon Ha Lee’s previous story in Clarkesworld sort of grew on me after a while, but this one I loved from the outset.

The plot is inspired by Sumerian mythology – the main character is identified as Inanna right at the outset, so this is hard to miss. Inanna’s descent to the underworld becomes a video game, with an inventory of items and a second-person narrative. I always think of text adventures when I see second-person viewpoints in prose (and I suspect many of my generation do), but very few works of non-interactive fiction exploit this association. I’m very pleased to see this one does.

Conservation of Shadows is a clear candidate for my Hugo nomination… I’ll try to put up my Battle of the Stories page soon IY”H (it still needs a button graphic), and then you’ll see the rankings so far.

The Fish of Lijiang by Chen Qiufan (a Chinese man), translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu

A translation! An actual translation! Rejoice! (Note the lack of an irony marker. We could certainly use more translations of world SF into English.)

This is a pushy, aggressive story. With Pantone colors. (Not kidding this time either.) It has the driving force of cyberpunk, with a brash, angry male protagonist. The plot uses experiential time to address issues of capitalism, the labor market, etc. It’s a very interesting read, though I wasn’t completely satisfied with the pacing, or how the main character needed everything to be spelled out for him. There was also a throwaway “I’m not a telepath” line that I resented. (I thought that was an American thing, having to reassure each other that they were not telepaths… pfff.)

One of the characters describes “robots playing Naxi folk music” as “a donkey braying with its balls cut off” and says that humans were much better. So here is some Naxi folk music, played by humans… All the online videos seem to be from the same tourist show. I picked a segment with an instrumental solo on a Jew’s harp-like instrument. (Incidentally, I can play the Jew’s harp, even though it has nothing to do with Jews.)

Due to health problems and work-related issues I haven’t been able to post much lately… I’ll try to make up for the delay, G-d willing. First, a bunch of links I thought would be worth sharing–

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An article where two YA authors talk about their experience trying to sell a YA novel with a gay protagonist has caused quite a furor lately. “The agent offered to sign us on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation.” A huge flamewar erupted with some people essentially claiming the authors were lying. Here is a summary.

Flamewars of this kind make me uneasy irrespective of my viewpoint being represented… but some people linked to resources I was previously unaware of, and these are definitely worth sharing.

I’ve found a list of YA spec fic with major LBGTQ characters, collated by LJ user tanuki_green. This particular entry looks especially interesting, to me at least: “Guardian of the Dead, by Karen Healey. An ambitious urban fantasy making thoughtful use of Maori folklore. A major supporting character is asexual.” (Edited to add: Wow, this review is… discouraging, to say the least. Sigh!)

And in case people were wondering about the state of queer YA, here is a post with actual statistics. A few quotes: “Less than 1% of YA novels have LGBT characters.” “50% of LGBT YA books are about boys, with only 25% about girls.” [The rest feature LGBT parents, multiple characters, etc.] “only 4% of LGBT YA books are about transgender or genderqueer characters.” – I assume asexual characters would be included in this category? (Edited to add: Dash made the point that it made little sense to group these categories together – I agree)

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Something completely different, here is a video game project I’ll be keeping an eye on. Warco is a first person shooter, except you shoot film, not guns: you play as a news correspondent in a war zone. I loved the photojournalist theme in Beyond Good and Evil (the game, not the book!) and this looks similar, except it’s set in a realistic setting.

Alas, with this type of game everything hinges on the storyline. It can be a gritty drama where you learn something about real-life war zones beyond “ooooo third world country getting destroyed!” (sigh) or it can be something totally failtastic, or something else entirely…

I think this would be a good opportunity to link to Binyavanga Wainaina’s satirical article on writing about Africa. (It also has a sequel!) …wow, I’ve even found a crowd-sourced “how to write about poor people”.

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And a third topic, here is a poignant essay on Martin Luther King’s impact, by HamdenRice. It struck really close to home because it’s related to what I see people go through in my own ethnic group – of course there are differences, but it’s close.

In Hungary most Jews are afraid to admit they are Jewish, because they do not want to be on the receiving end of verbal and yes, physical violence. They are in the closet for this very reason. When I decided in my teens that I would become more religiously observant (and eventually Orthodox), I knew I could not remain in the closet without constantly lying. Why won’t you eat this – just a bite, why won’t you go out with us on Friday evening, why won’t you shake my hand etc. – I would’ve had to lie in response to all these questions. You can’t really live a religious life in the closet because it affects every little thing you do.

But this meant I became the token Jew everywhere – even when there were lots of other Jews in the group, since they would not tell the non-Jews. Sometimes they would not even tell me, and I’d find out about it through mutual acquaintances.

And yes, I became a target. I’ve been in situations where I had to defend myself physically, where I had to run, I’ve even been in a situation where a policeman walked away from such an event. People say at least anti-Semitic violence is not institutionalized in Hungary (implication: you shouldn’t complain) – well, if a policeman refuses to protect you, i think that’s exactly what’s going on. Two of my friends decided to pursue similar cases through official channels, with quite negative results – one of them was even told to drop the case or they would prosecute him.

But you know what: it’s not that bad. What’s the worst thing that can happen? “They will kill us” – newsflash: they’ve already tried and we’re still here. We need to be proud of who we are.  If we all did it together,  eventually we would not have to live in fear. …and it would certainly be easier on me, the token Jew!

I made a page listing my articles, reviews, etc. in Hungarian and put it in the sidebar. It only includes recent articles and at present I have no plans of making a backlist – I’m sorry, but it would simply take too much time. The upside is that from now on I’m going to list absolutely everything someone hired me to write. Blog posts are not included, unless someone hires me to blog!

I have to say upfront that Google Translate does not really work with Hungarian yet; sometimes you can get the gist, sometimes you get the exact opposite! (Sometimes you get nonsense, but nonsense is not as misleading as when a sentence gets translated to the opposite of its intended meaning.) I’m mentioning this because some enterprising friends of mine have already tried to read my Hungarian-language articles using Google Translate and were quite baffled by the results!

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Most magyarul is elmondom – csináltam egy oldalt a magyar nyelvű cikkeimnek (főleg tudományos-technikai ismeretterjesztő cikkek és kritikák), érdemes megnézni és olvasgatni. Mindenkinek különösen ajánlom a Beszédfelismerés a videojátékokban 2. részét, történeti áttekintéssel – van benne többek között beszélő hal Spock kapitány hangjával, sikítozós Pikachu-terelgetés és a világ talán legnagyobbat bukott játékkonzolja! (Nem, nem a Virtual Boy. )

Just a small post -

First of all, Expanded Horizons has a new issue out, I just finished uploading the content. Make sure to visit! It also has an autism-related story.

Second, I registered on Playstation Network, my username is “prezzey”, add me and I’ll probably add you back – if I don’t have the slightest idea who you are, first send me a message, leave a comment here, etc. you get the idea. (BTW I have the same username on Xbox Live.)

Third, I was very angry to see when I came online after the chag that the Pesach robots video has been removed – here is a writeup of the contents in case you were wondering. This video has been online for a year and I had no idea it would disappear over the holidays… *sigh!*