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Stunning piece from Marieke in which she takes SFF to task for always embracing Eugenics when it comes to looking at a future for disability.
Rose Lemberg has a really very good article about Bothari and the way Bujold handles disability in the Vorkosiverse (I'm not sure that 'early' strictly applies given they also talk about Mark).
However, the essay is discussing Bothari, and his arc includes a lot of very unpleasant, if not outright disturbing stuff, so trigger warnings are provided for
- Ableism
- Abuse
- Child sexual abuse
- Mental health issues
- Rape/sexual assault
- Shaming
It's very thought provoking, and I'd personally have added the artificial way Bujold lumbers Miles with a seizure disorder just at the point his fracture disorder is rendered no longer quite as limiting via bone replacements. Good writing should make disability incidental to the plot, not blatantly pitch in another layer in order to retain your character's unique selling point.
The article can be found here.
A wee bit of a twitter firestorm broke out earlier when the World Fantasy Con panels were posted and one of them was called "Spicy Oriental Zeppelins" Apparently the title was based on a 'joke' that had only every been made by the WFC Head of Programming, Darrell Schweitzer, and he'd been repeatedly warned it wasn't funny in advance.
With just about every SFF author on twitter going WTF WTC? that was quickly changed to "Outrageous Aviation Stories, Flying Pulp Oddities."
What got a lot less attention, and has been more subtly changed was another panel:
"7. Freaks, Sideshows, and Human Oddities. From “Hopfrog” to Freaks to Geek Love. Is this the last taboo, the final frontier of bad taste, or something (perversely?) alluring even yet?"
Which became
7. Freaks, Sideshows, and Human Oddities. From “Hopfrog” to Freaks to Geek Love. Is this the last taboo, the final frontier of bad taste, or a persistent archetype in literature?Schweitzer had been warned in advance about this one as well, and specifically that it was ableist. I'm glad to see it has been changed, but I still think it's deeply problematic and I'm horrified something so negatively objectifying about disabled people ever made it out as a formally released program item.
And it's not as if this is the first issue WFC has had with disability in the last year. WFC 2015 had major access fails, never mind they had a disabled guest who had talked to them about her access needs, and then earlier this year WFC 2016 instituted a significant price rise despite disabled people telling them they couldn't book until they had published their disability access policy. The price rise had no sooner gone into effect than they published their access policy, which looked to have been written in five minutes on the proverbial back of a fag packet. I got the distinct feeling that was sheer spite.
ETA : File 770's on the story: Outrage Greets 2016 World Fantasy Con Program
Really good David Perry interview with Daniel Jose Older and others on the need for diversity in SFF.
SF Signal's Disability Car Crash
Feb. 5th, 2016 06:43 pmI noticed a tweet flashing past last night indicating activist and fan Elsa Henry (@snarkbat) was seriously pissed off with something. So I went to check what, and found it was a new post on SF Signal, the SF/F news/magazine site. It was in their 'Special Needs in Strange Worlds' column (a title I loathe) and it was the most utterly bizarre and offensive post I've seen in a long time.
( Content warnings for: cure narratives, erasure, offensive stereotyping (especially of autism) magical crips, locking the crip in the attic, and generally being utterly 'special' about us. )
( Content warnings for: cure narratives, erasure, offensive stereotyping (especially of autism) magical crips, locking the crip in the attic, and generally being utterly 'special' about us. )
Accessing the Future ToC
Feb. 5th, 2015 07:45 pmThe table of contents for Accessing the Future, the anthology of disability oriented SF is now up, see here.
And apparently being told they really liked your story (they kept it until a couple of weeks ago), but not quite enough to publish, sucks even more than a plain rejection :(
And apparently being told they really liked your story (they kept it until a couple of weeks ago), but not quite enough to publish, sucks even more than a plain rejection :(
