WorldCon 76 Recap and Book Haul

Last weekend, I attended my first WorldCon!

For years I’ve been wanting to attend, but haven’t been able to travel to the many wonderful destinations the event appears at around the world. So, when I saw that WorldCon 76 was going to be in San Jose, California (practically my backyard), I jumped at the chance to finally attend — and not only attend, but participate in a reading!

During WorldCon, I still had to work my day job, so I didn’t get a chance to fully experience the event. But even just going in the evenings and on the weekend, I had a fabulous time. I ran into several writer and reader friends, chatted it up with some lovely strangers, and shopped for books and other goodies to my heart’s content (and pocket book’s misery). Here are a few highlights from my first WorldCon.

Watching the Hugo Awards

Rather than going into the grand ballroom, some friends and I gathered in Callahan’s to watch the live stream together — which allowed us the ability to grab some beers and snacks while we were watching. While the ceremonies as a whole were great, one of the best moments of the night was N.K. Jemisin winning the Hugo for Best Novel. She’s the first person to ever have one this award three years in a row, and her acceptance speech was a moving and funny and powerful. I cried seeing it at WorldCon and I cried again rewatching it on video. Check it out. It’s amazing.

Breaking Out of the Margins

Panel with Michi Trota, JY Yang, Foz Meadows, Caroline M. Yoachim, and Sarah Kuhn (moderator)

Breaking Out of the Margins was probably my favorite panel at the event. All of the authors were brilliant, pulling from each of their experiences to form a thoughtful, intelligent discussion on the subject of identity in relation to creative endeavors.

Both Michi Trota andCaroline M. Yoachim noted that when they were young writers, they had defaulted to putting white people as main characters. As they grew as writers, they began including characters who were more like them, representing their own experiences and backgrounds.

Sarah Kuhn noted the people will often ask why the author made the character black or Asian or gay, which reflects the default white straight perspective. But when an author makes a character white, straight, cis-gendered, this also is a choice that they’re making, although it’s not seen as such.

Kuhn also brought up the concept of “Rep Sweats” the stress of watching, reading, or creating a work that is the sole representation of a culture or group of people. Suddenly, there’s a lot of pressure for that work (she used Fresh Off the Boat as an example) to be perfect — in part because if the show fails, then it could be a years before anything like it comes around again.

Foz Meadows replied that when there’s a lack of diverse content in the world, then the little bit of content that is produced has a greater weight to it. So, the solution is to have a wider range of representation that allows authors and creators to have the room to fail.

Meadows also quoted a tumblr post talking about Jupiter Rising, which stated that it’s garbage, but it’s your garbage. The point being that some of the fun of fiction and film and such is being able to enjoy fun trash with characters who represent them.

“Yes,” replied JY Yang. “I just want to make stories about kissing and shooting things in space!”

In the end, “Let us write trash,” became a gleeful rallying cry — and I’m hoping we will all get to read some fantastic new trash from these authors in the future.

Research Rabbit Holes

Karen Joy Fowler, Andy Duncan, Lawrence M. Schoen, Ann Leckie, Irene Radford, and Sarah Pinsker (moderator)

Research Rabbit Holes was a delight of a panel, presenting for the most part stories of the ways the authors had fallen into such holes, how those holes had revealed surprising inspiration for their stories, and a multitude of fun facts they discovered over the years. I unfortunately wasn’t able to retain all of these stories, even though they delighted me.

The panel pointed out that there are two kinds of research — the brainstorming stage (before you start the story) and the plug-in-a-fact stage (when you just need to know one specific thing while you’re writing). The brainstorming stage is the hardest to know when to stop and each writer had their own take on when that moment is. Ann Leckie noted that you don’t need to know all the details before you start writing, while Lawrence M. Schoen explained that he likes to feel fully immersed in the research, knowing he won’t be writing it all out, but that that immersion allows details to come out naturally in his writing.

On being afraid of getting it wrong, Karen Joy Fowler said, “When someone sends me an email saying ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about’ because I’ve intersected two streets in a story that could never intersect, I just think, ‘I gave that person more pleasure by getting it wrong than if I had gotten it right.'”

Petrified Trees, Enchanted Mirrors: The Gothic Universe of Female Mexican Horror Writers

Raquel Castro, Andrea Chapela, Gabriela Damian Miravete, and Pepe Rojo (moderator)

The three panelists — each of whom write horror themselves — provided some fascinating insight into the long tradition of female Mexican horror writers. This is a horror that is specifically feminine, with women using the genre to explore the circumstances of their lives and the stereotypes and repression of women within the country.

There is something about horror that has to do with control,  explained Raquel Castro, a control that women don’t have. These stories help women deal with the horrors of their everyday lives that they don’t have control over — providing a way for them to exorcise these feelings. “I’ve heard so many stories of the women’s lives around me, and these stories haunted me,” said Castro. “I wanted to tell these stories — but coded through horror.”

Gabriela Damian Miravete said, “Horror is a place for of creativity and life. Even though it speaks of grim things, it is a safe space. It can give you comfort, as you read it, knowing there’s daylight and that in the end, you can put down the book and escape the haunted house. It’s a joy we must recover.” Miravete also pointed out that as horrors in real life increase, the horror genre tends to decay — but that she hopes that we can reverse the flow, compensating with genre.

The panel named a dozen or so female horror writers in Mexico, but unfortunately I had a hard time getting all the names down. However, The Outer Dark podcast will be sharing the panel in a future episode and plans to provide a list of all the writers and stories suggested. So, I’ll be sure to link to them once that list appears.

Poetry Readings

On Sunday, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA) hosted a reading of speculative poetry. I always find joy and inspiration in hearing poems read, and I was honored to have been read alongside G.O. Clark, Sue Burke, John Phillip Johnson, Mary Soon Lee, Denise Clemons, and Alan Stewart (author website included where I could find it).

The SFPA Readers
The SFPA Readers (L-R) G.O. Clark, Sue Burke, John Phillip Johnson, Mary Soon Lee, Denise Clemons, and me. (Alan Stewart not pictured)

Several of the SFPA crew were also on the Science Fiction Aesthetics panel that followed immediately after the reading. I was able to pop in for half of the panel before running off, but enjoyed the discussion while I was there.

Book Haul

The first night I came home from the con, my roommate stared at me in confusion. “Where’s your usual stack of new books?” she asked.

I laughed. “What do you mean? It’s only the first day! I’ll have plenty of books by the end, I promise.”

And I certainly lived up to that promise. Here’s what I grabbed.

book stack

  • My Life, My Body, Plus… by Marge Piercy
  • The Atheist in the Attic, Plus… by Samuel R Delany
  • Skies of Wonder, Skies of Danger: An Isle of Write Anthology, edited by John Appel, Jo Miles, and Mary Alexandra Agner
  • The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss
  • The Long Way to a Strange and Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
  • Three Messages and a Warning: Contemporary Mexican Short Stories of the Fantastic, edited by Eduardo Jiménez Mayo & Chris N Brown
  • The Book of the Unnamed Midwife by Meg Elison
  • Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys

Reading the 2018 Hugos: Best Novelette Noms

Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, July-August 2017) — Thuan and Kim Cuc disguise themselves as houseless in order infiltrate and spy on House Hawthorn, a mission that is complicated when a magic curse begins to attack the house in which they are being tested. That’s the simple description anyway, since there are many layers to this story, which hints at a wide, well-detailed world — not surprising as this story fits into the Dominion of the Fallen series. It’s excellent on its own, and definitely has me itching to read more of this world.

Extracurricular Activities,” by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017) — Jedao is an operative in the Kel military, with a long list of successes in his mostly classified battle record, who is assigned a mission to investigate the disappearance of another operative and his ship that have disappeared. The story is as much about how Jedao relates to the crew of the ship he’s assigned to as it is about the investigation. He’s clever and capable in his work, which is always fun to read, and the story comes together in a thoroughly satisfying ending.

The Secret Life of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017) — A group of humans are on a mission to save Sol using an old derelict starship — problems abound with all available bots working to repair the ship. In this midst of this Bot 9, the oldest on the ship, is brought online to hunt down an biological entity, which is all well and good except Bot 9 has some its own ideas of how things should be handled. As the story continues we get insight into the inner lives of the bots’ existence when they’re not working. This story is charming and I am so in love with Bot 9.

A Series of Steaks,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, January 2017) — Helena is a forger of beef, with a careful artistic attention to detail. Her work is going smoothly until an anonymous caller places a demanding order for 200 T-bone steaks — a job she might have refused, if the caller didn’t insist on blackmailing her into the work. This story is great fun and I loved the unique idea of using 3D-printing to forge meat. It also has great characters in the form of Helena and Lily, both of whom are smart, capable women, and an ending that made me smile with glee.

Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May/June 2017) — Finley, a young transgender man, gets bitten by a vampire while having a night on the town. Facing death, he elects to become a vampire himself. Exploring what it means to transition from a number of angles — emotionally and biologically (with a look at how vampirism might specifically affect someone who is transgender and taking hormones) — this story is compelling. It’s also rather sexy, with the relationship between Finley and Andreas (the vampire who bit him).

Wind Will Rove,” by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, September/October 2017) — A history teacher and fiddler on a generation starship comes into conflict with one of her students who believes learning the history and stories of the world they left behind is pointless when he will never visit that world. This is an incredibly beautiful  story of fiddlers, music, and the value of memory keeping. I love this story and was so absorbed that when I finished, I found myself blinking in surprise that the real world was still here.


My personal and entirely subjective ranking:

  1. “Wind Will Rove,” by Sarah Pinsker (Asimov’s, September/October 2017)
  2. “A Series of Steaks,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Clarkesworld, January 2017)
  3. “The Secret Life of Bots,” by Suzanne Palmer (Clarkesworld, September 2017)
  4. “Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time,” by K.M. Szpara (Uncanny, May/June 2017)
  5. “Children of Thorns, Children of Water,” by Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny, July-August 2017)
  6. “Extracurricular Activities,” by Yoon Ha Lee (Tor.com, February 15, 2017)

All my Hugo related posts are under the 2018 Hugos tag and you can check out the complete list of nominated creators and works here.

Reading the 2018 Hugos: Best Short Story Noms

WorldCon is coming to my hometown, giving me the opportunity to attend for the first time. I’m super excited to check out the event

As a result of this development, I get to have the added benefit of being able to vote for the 2018 Hugo Awards (of course, I could have done this by just purchasing a supporting membership (or even just reading the list without voting), but now I have added incentive because nothing inspires me more than a deadline (and lists (and yes I’m nesting parenthesis within parenthesis (because I can)))).  This is sparking a flurry of reading, as I’m trying to read as many of the books and stories and journals nominated, so that I can be a fully informed voter.

A few of the nominated works I’ve already read (one of my favorite books from last year was N.K. Jemisin’s The Stone Sky), and I haven’t decided if I’m going to write about them further.

At any rate and without further adieu, here’s my first batch of Hugo reads:

Nominated Short Stories

Carnival Nine,” by Caroline M. Yoachim (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, May 2017) — Zee is a clockwork girl who has been granted more turns of her spring than most, and as a result has more energy to consider the possibility of adventure. Her extra energy leaves her to abandon Closet City for the oddities of the carnival train, where she grows to understand love and the burdens of caring for family. The construct of a story in which characters are granted a limited number of turns per day provides a beautiful metaphorical basis to explore how the energetic enthusiasm of youth can be ground down by the burdens of adulthood. Such a moving tale.

Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand,” by Fran Wilde (Uncanny, September 2017)  — A strange guide (the narrator) leads a visitor through a museum of curiosities, strange objects abundant in their many cases. The experience changing the visitor in odd and fundamental ways as they journey through. Written in second person, the narrative draws the reader directly into the unsettling experience of exploring the museum. It’s richly detailed with darkly surreal undertones. I’ve read it several times and have noticed new details every time.

Fandom for Robots,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Uncanny, September/October 2017) — When an archaic robot existing as an exhibit in a museum learns of the anime Hyperdimension Warp Record, it begins to take a dive into fandom, eventually creating its own fanfic and forming a creative partnership. This is a delightful fun story of creativity and fandom.

The Martian Obelisk,” by Linda Nagata (Tor.com, July 19, 2017) —  In the face of an Earth growing steadily worse and in hopes of leaving something lasting in the universe, Susannah is constructing a giant obelisk on the planet of Mars using the left over refuse from a failed planetary mission. But while in the midst of her work, she discovers a secret on Mars that could change everything. This story questions the value of creativity in the world (does building an obelisk matter, if no one will ever witness it?), while providing a beautiful exploration of loss, grief, and a fraction of hope.

Sun, Moon, Dust” by Ursula Vernon (Uncanny, May/June 2017) — Allpa inherits a magic sword from his grandmother, a sword with three warrior spirits ready to train him from adventure on conquest. But Allpa only wishes to cultivate his farm and grow his crops for the community. I adore this story and the way it twists fantasy adventure tales on their head, presenting a hero who believes serving the community with good food is enough of heroism for him. It’s clever and humorous and delightful.

Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™,” by Rebecca Roanhorse (Apex, August 2017) — Trueblood works in a a tourist trap that sells simulated experiences, such as vision quests and the like, to white tourists. These experiences require a bending of historical accuracy toward the stereotypical Indian in order to be salable and Trueblood (a name he selected to be more “authentic”) is good at his job. But he begins to find his own life bend around him when he befriends one of his tourist clients. Written in second person, this story draws the reader in deep, using the idea of digital simulations to question what is “real” or “authentic” about the world that is presented to us.


My entirely subjective ranking (based as much on what emotionally moves me as it is on technical craft):

1. “The Martian Obelisk,” by Linda Nagata
2. “Carnival Nine,” by Caroline M. Yoachim
3. “Sun, Moon, Dust” by Ursula Vernon
4. “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™,” by Rebecca Roanhorse
5. “Fandom for Robots,” by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
6. “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand,” by Fran Wilde

What are your favorite stories on the list? Or alternatively, what’s a story from 2017 that you feel should have made the list but didn’t?