POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: DISCON III – #3 How Speculative Fiction Magazines Are CHANGING

Using the Programme Guide of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON III, which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the Program Guide. I will be using the events to drive me to distraction or revelation – as the case may be. The link is provided below where this appeared!

How Magazines Are Changing:

Twenty years ago, a new age of internet magazines started rising alongside the print favorites. Now there are so many different ways to broadcast, produce, and consume short fiction. How are magazines changing to reflect that? We’ll look at how everything has changed over time, from what stories are popular to delivery methods to submissions rules and processes, and speculate about what may be coming next.

Participants
Brandon O’Brien: FIYAH Poetry Editor (2017-2020)
Jed Hartman: Editor of STRANGE HORIZONS, a weekly magazine of and about speculative fiction
Scott H. Andrews: Editor of BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES (Fantasy)
Vida Cruz: Asst editor of MERMAIDS MONTHLY (Fantasy)
Gautam Bhatia: STRANGE HORIZONS

Fascinating discussion looking at the radical changes from the clear Science Fiction and Fantasy division to what we consider today and call the broad field Speculative Fiction. When did that start? (WARNING: I’m a “hard SF”/traditional Fantasy” reader. It’s not that I haven’t read today’s SpecFic writers – I LOVE Rebecca Roanhorse’ fiction! Ada Palmer…I’m pretty sure I’m not smart enough to understand her writing…Hannu Rajaniemi (Finnish hard SF writer) and relative newcomer, Canadian Derek Künsken, Cory Doctorow (Canadian-British); Peter F. Hamilton (British); and Adrian Tchaikovsky (British).

I DO read David Brin, Octavia Butler, Julie Czerneda (also Canadian), Lois McMaster Bujold (from Minnesota, where I live), Tolkien, Lewis, Donaldson as well as ancient science fiction by Heinlein, Asimov, Herbert, Clifford D. Simak and others.

I also read YA SpecFic, too: Suzanne Collins (of HUNGER GAMES fame); JK Rowling; SKYHUNTER and STEELSTRIKER by Marie Lu and others as my kids and grandkids direct me.

At any rate, I have a clear bias, so take that into consideration as you read my comments!

A few key things they brought up:

“There are more niche magazines today because the limitations of paper magazines have vanished.”

“As a result, BIPOC get to see stories about them…seeing people in stories written about them BY people like them…HOWEVER, those same people need encouragement to submit when they do see themselves.” [I taught in a high school where the population was 65% non-white. I AM a big-old-fat-white-guy (a BOFWhiG), and I asked my students to teach me to be a better listener and to stand against racism. I worked to listen and learn from the students, teachers, and administrators around me. You have no real reason to believe that I was a midwife for several careers of BIPOC (Black/Indigenous People of Color) students; but if you like, I can connect you with some of them. Leave a note in the comments section.]

My biggest problem is that I rarely read online SpecFic…Of COURSE, I read Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora Hardcover edited by Sheree Renée Thomas. I wanted to see my students and friends in the future as well, but until I found this book, I didn’t know HOW to do it. Dark Matter led naturally to Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, and Nisi Shawl, and I’d discovered Samuel R. Delany and Steven Barnes myself (I SO wish Barnes would complete the cycle he began with LION’S BLOOD and ZULU HEART…I somehow thought that world was ready for the first step into space. I would have loved to have read future history! Nnedi Okorafor enticed me into BINTI’s world and I will willingly go there again (right after I reread the novella’s – but I have to buy it again ‘cause I gave my copy to the school’s library.)

The discussion raised a specific question in my mind: “How would I write about the colonization of new worlds by Humans that is NOT rooted in colonialism?”

What did the Zulu do to create their kingdom? “Shaka created a stratified society based on a combination of subtle socialisation and ‘reasonable degree’ of force. At the apex were the king and aristocracy, which consisted of the Zulu ruling house and the groups that were incorporated into the Zulu state during the early stages of its expansion. Closely linked to Zulu royalty and its aristocracy were the more important amakhosi (chiefs) and notables, iziphakanyiswa, who were drawn from the chiefdoms that were subjugated in the early stages of Zulu expansion.”

In Liberia, “Liberia is a country in West Africa which was founded by free people of color from the United States. The emigration of free people of color, and later former slaves, was funded and organized by the American Colonization Society….In 1847, the ACS encouraged Liberia to declare independence…The US…intervened when European powers threatened its territory or sovereignty.[6] As a result, eleven signatories established the Republic of Liberia on July 26, 1847…Liberia retained its independence throughout the Scramble for Africa by European colonial powers during the late 19th century, while remaining in the American sphere of influence…Until 1980, Liberia was controlled politically by descendants of the original African-American settlers, known collectively as Americo-Liberians, who were a small minority of the population. From 1980 to 2006, the violent overthrow of the Americo-Liberian regime led to years of civil war…”

When I was there, I spoke with a few bilingual Kpelle and Lorma Lutherans who spoke both their birth language and English. They said that the first thing the freed American slaves did…was enslave those who did NOT come from the US…

During World War II, the Japanese launched a brutal invasion of China. The Chinese in turn attempted to crush the Hmong people (as they are currently doing to the Uyghur as the rest of us celebrate the 2022 Beijing Olympics…), who were chased to Vietnam, Laos, and finally Thailand. Today, nearly a million Hmong live in Laos; another 152,000 in Thailand…but the second largest population of Hmong people – 260,000 – live in the US. 100,000 of them live in California, and the second largest population is in Minnesota…with several families on my block in the most diverse city in Minnesota: Brooklyn Center (NOT Brooklyn, New York, thank-you-very-much!)

How do I write a different future when so many Humans behave alike? We seem to follow certain patterns no matter our race, religion, or the continent we live on. Near the end, one participant noted that, “Everybody should be able to do what they want to – autocracy, or no kind of government at all!”

Indeed, I DO need to read more of the new magazines to see how they solve the problems inherent in feeding, clothing, and serving a population of (as of January 2022) 7.9 billion. Indeed, yes! (BTW, just for the dystopians: this is the year that the movie, “Soylent Green” takes place. In it, “…Roth brings two volumes of ‘Soylent Oceanographic Survey Report, 2015–2019’…the Books confirm that the oceanographic report reveals that the oceans are dying…[and] also reveal that ‘Soylent Green’ is being produced from the remains of the dead and the imprisoned, obtained from heavily guarded waste disposal plants outside the city.” Would the Earth of this dark future REALLY be able to support the 50 billion people posited by this story, with NO GOVERMENT AT ALL?)

I’m not at all certain it could…but I MIGHT be able to write about it, and write BIPOC characters into my own fiction. I highly recommend the book WRITING THE OTHER by Cynthia Ward and Nisi Shawl (https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Other-Conversation-Pieces-8/dp/193350000X) Using it to guide me, and the quote I’ve got hanging over my desk: “One of our classmates opined that it was a mistake to write about people of different ethnicities: you might get it wrong. Horribly, offensively wrong. Better not to even try.” (1992, Clarion West Writers Workshop). 

Shawl and Ward's response: "...the lawn chair must have sagged visibly with the weight of my disbelief. My own classmate, excluding all other ethnic types from her creative universe! I think this sort of misguided caution is the source of a lot of sf’s monochrome futures."

I do not want to be accused of misguided caution...I want to enrich the world of Science Fiction!

Program Schedule: https://discon3.org/schedule/
References: https://www.southafrica.net/za/en/travel/article/shaka-kasenzangakhona-the-founder-of-the-zulu-kingdom
Image: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQY860vAI2izm2g2mUgxzT14fGVmoGh66B51g&usqp=CAU