Worrying SFnal Rumour

I saw disturbing hints on the net last night (a thread on the Nielsen-Haydens' forum that had spilled over into twitter) that the US right-wingers who tried to hijack last year's Hugo voting (the self-named Sad Puppies - it's apparently supposed to show how pathetic 'social justice warriors' are) haven't just tried again (nominations are out at the weekend), but are actively trying to drag the Gamers-gaters into it. I don't like the idea of trying to politicise the Hugos to start with, but that isn't actually excluded by the current procedures so we can't object beyond saying we find it distasteful, but trying to drag in non-fans known for abusive behaviour, threats, and reckless endangerment (SWATting), strikes me as destroying what little credibility they had.

I hadn't intended buying a supporting membership this year, but if the story is accurate then I may have to just on general principle.

Squee

The inarticulate squeeing from my direction this afternoon was me discovering that the first seven chapters of the next Rachel Peng novel by K B Spangler are out as a free sample,

For those who don't follow the series, they're near future techno-thrillers/police procedurals, Rachel is the liaison to the Washington DC Metro PD for the Office of Advanced and Complementary Emerging Technologies, which mean she's not just a Fed, she's a Fed who's a cyborg with a quantum chip in her head that allows her to make any database anywhere sit-up and beg, gives her reception across the complete EM spectrum, near telepathy with the other OACET agents, and so on. She's also half-Chinese, gay, and blind - the only reason she isn't the Federal poster child for diversity is the fact she's blind is a secret among a handful of her friends, the chip lets her mostly pass, though she has trouble with the simplest of things - reading and faces.

The first two books in the series are Digital Divide and Maker Space and the new one is State Machine, which involves a murder at the White House and a missing maguffin (I figured out what it is very early, though the narrative hasn't quite confirmed that yet), and as a side arc that'll likely please a few people around here, three of the secondary characters are now in a poly relationship.

And of course K B Spangler also draws the A Girl and Her Fed webcomic which shares a universe with Rachel, in fact she's in the current story arc, which is interesting for letting you see the author's imagining of her.