My Life Needs Hot Sauce

[ase]

I regret to say that I ate cheap lunchmeat turkey. I have discovered exactly what mushy cardboard tastes like, and regret not keeping tabasco in the house. Fortunately I had K's leftover pork chop with raspberry chili sauce, mashed potatoes, and spinach to warm my belly on this rainy day. Real food is awesome.

I gave my presentation last night and it went... pretty well, I guess. I actually got a "good job!" from the professor. Now, if only he'd give a rubric with a grade on it (for anything), I'd be a lot more reassured about my class standing. Tuition reimbursement doesn't kick in until I pass!

I could do a bedtime story about double-sided tape, shared reagents, and the tragedy of the commons in lab work, but anyone who's ever shared one small, critical item between three or more people knows how this one goes.

The Hugo nominees are out. I am trying to figure out how to congratulate all the nominees while also observing that only four of the 20 nominees in the four standard fiction categories are not men. Because yay, Hugo nomination: awesome; however, significant problems within the community are highlighted in the ballot. I am especially tickled by Y: the Last Man: Whys and Wherefores making the graphic novel cut, because I finally read it earlier this month and, other than massive tragic spoiler, I thought it was awesome and a fitting end to the series.

Comments

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

So, I wonder about the Hugos: I haven't really kept up with them for a while (so if I am completely off the wall, I apologize), but aren't they traditionally more hard-science oriented? In particular, I wonder if it's more a problem with women-in-science than women-in-the-science-fiction-community-writers. Even the women hard-ish-SF writers I like a lot (e.g. Tiptree, Bujold, occasionally Kress and Butler) are less interested in the very hard bits and more on the human interest side (as opposed to, say, Stross or Doctorow). I can't think of any woman SF writer offhand who I would criticize for being too idea-oriented (as I would criticize, say, Stross or Egan, if I didn't enjoy their stuff as much as I do). ...But since I'm not really keeping up with the community, perhaps this is all wrong. But I do question how much of it is the SF community in particular and how much is general science-environmental-non-SF-related.

(Only tangentially related: I am rereading some L'Engle this week, and her physics makes me cringe. A lot. Just because quantum theory says observing something changes it does not translate into "therefore, we can't isolate ourselves from the world." It only means we can't isolate ourselves from someone who has decided to bounce photons off of us.)

Would love to talk to you about Y sometime. I liked part of the last book a lot (not happy about the tragic spoiler of course!) but very mmuch did not like the indeterminacy of the big question, which I felt they did not bring off (though presumably you disagree), so much that it had rather a big negative impact on my view of the book.

[nwl.livejournal.com]

aren't they traditionally more hard-science oriented?

People say that every year, but it's not accurate. The Hugos are for SF and fantasy works no matter where they fall on the spectrum. The works also have to have been published in the last calender year. I'm never sure if timing is a factor, but I suspect it is.

You know, there used to be an SF community, back in the '70s when I got involved. The new books weren't as numerous and it was a smaller community. Over the years, SF has expanded to include anything a person points at and declared to be "SF" or "fantasy." There has been a lot of discussion on when SF fandom expanded beyond what it had been, but it was definitely when Star Trek and Star Wars became main stream. The real question is will SF fandom last.

When we started reading SF, computers were just being invented. I'm living in the SF world I read about as a kid. How many modern fans feel that way?

Well, I'll stop. Thanks for listening.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

People say that every year, but it's not accurate. The Hugos are for SF and fantasy works no matter where they fall on the spectrum.

Okay, thanks for letting me know :) I am so clueless about SF fandom... if only I had known about it when I started reading SF in the 80's, but I didn't. So are about half of the nominees for the Hugos fantasy, then?

Yeah, it's really neat to read SF from the 70's and before, and be able to say "Hey, I'm living that life! Only better!" Especially reading all the Golden Age stuff about supercomputers in huge rooms and being all "yeah, my laptop can do all that."

[ase.livejournal.com]

The Hugos touted as SF/F, but it's interesting to notice how the nominations actually skew. Has anyone looked at sub-genres (space opera, "hard" sf, AUs, fat fantasy epics, etc) lately?

[ase.livejournal.com]

So, I wonder about the Hugos: I haven't really kept up with them for a while (so if I am completely off the wall, I apologize), but aren't they traditionally more hard-science oriented? In particular, I wonder if it's more a problem with women-in-science than women-in-the-science-fiction-community-writers.

Yes and no? I like the idea, but I think the field's gotten a lot softer and more human interest-y in even the last ten years. However, the self-selecting nominating community may not be changing as much.

What I do not understand is why, considering how many women are involved in the SF community, and who go to Worldcon, more aren't nominating softer SF.

L'Engle! Which ones are you reading? I give her points for trying, but trying to read morality into your science is rarely a good idea. I see your quantum entanglement and raise you a social Darwinism.

If I don't remember to ping you in email, hit me. I filed the indeterminancy under the Gimme Clause (writer says, "gimme this premise" and I say, "I will suspend my disbelief for this and no more, if you do something awesome with it") and also found the Big Reveal a little more metaphysical than I like my reveals, so I sort of blew it off. Anyway. Email!

[filkferengi]

Especially ever since reading Tamora Pierce's memorable LJ post "Where Are The Women?" recently, I've been noticing this, too. I count the emails on shows we watch. My poor spouse is probably getting rather tired of hearing numbers & kvetches, but I remind him that his gender & genitalia aren't routinely used as insults in casual conversation.

[ase.livejournal.com]

Misogyny, racism, and other -isms haven't gone away: they're less overt, and less immediately damaging, but there's a gap between "not being treated as property" and equality that America lives in today. It's a lot better than it was, but it's not as good as it could be. As evinced by small things like the Hugo numbers.