This was originally published in the Watch The Skies July issue.
The multiverse. A certain MCU character has brought this theory to the attention of the public in recent months. Multiple universe theories, quantum physics, philosophy and all the other Schrodinger equations are generally WAY past my understanding. A version of this theory that I understand is that each choice we make during our lives causes some sort of branch to happen. The alternate choice sort of spins off and becomes another world where our other self continues on that other path. It’s more complicated than that, but that basic thought is the core of this film. What if we made that other choice? Where would that other path have taken us? It’s a thought that runs through most peoples’ heads at some point. I recommend this movie to a science fiction / fantasy based group purely on the strength of using this multiverse theory in an absolutely bonkers way.
What if you could access the knowledge, emotions, life experience of those other lives you might have had? In this movie, a middle aged woman who is struggling with many of the same sort of things any of us struggle with is suddenly confronted with this access… and is told she needs to use this knowledge to save the world. She needs to reach out and draw from those lives and the knowledge those other versions of her have gained.
Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan are absolutely fantastic in their roles. They are all believable, earnest and relatable, even when the entire world around them seems to be going mad. There is a randomness to this film that would be hard to ride if they weren’t just so good. There is action, humor and romance. I don’t know that any single genre or category would do this movie justice. Absurdist fits, but isn’t fair to the beauty of the performances and the depth of the feelings that show through. There is another big name movie star in the film. This big name star is so deeply into the role that I didn’t realize that’s who it was while I was watching.
Do yourself a favor, stay away from spoilers – even the trailer honestly – and just check this movie out. It’s only just leaving theaters and headed to DVD or home streaming, but it’s worth the effort. You should be watching this movie.
That’s a simple view, I know. It’s one of those easy to say, difficult to quantify kind of things – to some degree. There are clear examples of what is wrong. Those are the easy ones. It exists in more than one form, and it relates to so many levels of what we do in the science fiction and fantasy fan communities.
I’ve been sitting on this one for a while. It’s a tough topic. I expect somebody will dig this up and that it will cause me problems in the future. This is why it’s on MY site. I own it. It’s mine. I have taken some time and given this much thought and I think it’s important to continue this conversation. That’s the key to all of this. It’s a conversation. It’s something we need to address now and as we move forward. There is no simple solution and there is no easy way to make this go. We need to keep communicating with each other.
Let’s start with the easy stuff. There are some people out there who think, for some unknown reason, that they should be the ‘real’ fans of Star Wars. They’ve declared some nonsense about how people who are not white Americans can’t and shouldn’t ever be in the movies that have been loved since 1977. They’re easy to spot. They’re terrible. There’s simply no place in fandom for people that can’t accept that people who make up less than 12% of the entire world population don’t rule everything and can’t exclude everyone else. Above and beyond a basic level of stupidity, there is no place in civil society for those who make death threats against actors for portraying a character in a movie. That’s a kind of crazy that slides into another topic entirely (we’ve created our own hell-scape of cults of personality) and isn’t what I want to get at here. If you want to read more, check this article out as a starting point. There are lots of conversations going on out there about it.
The part that’s much more difficult to deal with is at a very personal level. It happens far too often these days and it worries me for the future of fandom for a whole different reason. Toxicity is eating away at the core of fandom – from both sides. The grievance crowd is going to destroy fandom.
Being the vocal minority doesn’t make you right no matter how right you believe you are. When somebody says something you don’t agree with, it doesn’t mean you are allowed to have them thrown out of the building. If your feelings get hurt it doesn’t mean the other person is automatically a bigot, problematic or any other sort of label YOU believe they should carry. When you think you want to lash out at others, you need to ask why you feel this way and maybe… just maybe… take a step back and allow some time to think about things.
We are all guilty of this to some degree at some point in our lives. We are emotional creatures. We react. We want to defend ourselves and those we care for. It’s natural. IF you’ve been the person that has been slighted, ignored, insulted and treated badly all of your life this is something that builds. This feeling turns into something ugly and dangerous. How we conduct ourselves when these sort of things come up matters.
What am I trying to say? Let me start with my own example. I have worked on convention staffs for many years. I love helping make something for so many people to enjoy. There are challenges, but anything worth doing has those. I have worked with all sorts of people from all over. Fans are great folks and have made some of the most wonderful memories for me. I volunteered to help with the previous world con, a staff team I hadn’t worked with before. I was trying to find my way and see where I could fit in and help. Then the GOH mess went down and I withdrew my help. Did you catch the part about it being volunteers? Yeah, even if you pay me I’m not hanging around for that. The most worrisome part was this was accepted. Not questioned, just accepted.
I wrote about it in a previous post here. Back in February of 2021 in fact. So here we are a year and a half later and I think the issue has only gotten worse. I don’t want people to think this is some kind of ‘crying out’ because I feel like I’m being repressed or something. I’m clearly not repressed or disadvantaged. I know there is privilege living here and I try to be mindful of it. I’m also don’t want this to be a ‘virtue signal’ kind of bullshit. I can’t stand that. “Look at how wonderful and accepting I am! I’m clearly not the problem you’re talking about…” Ugh!
Maybe I am the problem. I don’t know that without talking to others and having them talk to me.
Here’s where the real challenges start. Yeah, I’m a middle aged white guy. I know a lot of other people who look just like me. That’s who I have always associated with. It’s culturally my background and that has a huge influence on my opinions and bias. I have been told more than once that my opinion doesn’t matter simply because I’m a white male. I’ve been told to get over being told that. I’ve been given the ‘so how does it feel’ bit. I’ve been excluded from conversations and told that project submissions were only open to ‘others who need a chance’. While it wasn’t me, but a friend – there was even something in writing, “Well, you’re an old white guy so you must have done something wrong…”. In writing. From a supposedly professional group.
Really? We can’t find it now, but give us time? You’re a white guy so all the problems are your fault? This is all the wrongs of history that (may or may not have) happened to me so now I’m giving those to you! Take that medicine you horrifying bigot!
So, back to the maybe I’m the problem part. OK. Fine. Maybe I am. I can accept that I need to be more mindful than I am and work harder to be better. I certainly try, but success is relative to viewpoint. There are lots of places looking to get more diverse work out there and I don’t qualify for that in this field. OK. I’ll take it.
This didn’t just happen to me. It’s happening over and over again with people taking advantage of the simple fact that people have started to pay attention to what’s being said and taking action on it. Grievance culture. It’s insidious because how do you argue against things like, “you can’t call that person a freak just because they don’t look like you”? You don’t. You can’t. Even when the definition of the word freak is, “A person, animal or plant with an unusual physical abnormality”. Webster be damned! You can’t point that sort of thing out! How dare you?
Where’s the line? When can you tell anyone else what to say, how to think about something or how to address a situation? We’re all products of our own cultural backgrounds. What if I make a mistake? Am I to be punished and then banished forever? Who is the arbitrator of that judgment? Public opinion is fickle and dangerous. Swaying with and allowing the grievance crowd to simply take over is going to destroy volunteer run conventions… faster and more certainly than aging out or poor attendance ever had a chance to.
Don’t believe me?
At this past Balticon (#56) a woman of color living with a debilitating physical condition, parent of a trans person, and long time panelist and guest was summarily chucked out due to a complaint. A single complaint.
I was there when they came to get her. It was the panel I was moderating. I was standing there. I can’t speak for how others feel, but the lone staffer seemed quite respectful when asking her to gather up her things and accompany him to con-ops. He wasn’t loud and he did not make any accusations while there. He didn’t express anything other than, “please come with me, we’ll talk elsewhere”. It was a very simple and quiet thing that most had no concept about anything happening at all. I feel that the characterization of being treated ‘criminally’ is inaccurate, but again – that’s from the outsider point of view. In the end, that little bit that I witnessed isn’t important but it gives context for the rest of my message. They weren’t coming for me… this time.
I regret not digging into things more while I was there. I attempted (successfully) to steer clear of personal drama. I attend and work cons as a matter of enjoyment, and I find that type of drama stressful rather than enjoyable. Maybe I needed to do or say more… but there’s a problem with that. The grievance crowd. How can I help when my opinion doesn’t matter or is discounted or ignored out of hand?
This isn’t about me, but this whole post is to explain where I’m coming from. The only thing any intervention by me would have done is muddy the waters (at best) or cause a significantly bigger issue (at worst). I have been seeing a distressing trend in fandom – pushing people away rather than working with them and trying to relate to them. I have been called a racist, accepting of racists, problematic and told flat out to my face that I’m a white, straight (assumed), middle aged man and therefore part of the problem and that it’s not possible for me to be part of the solution. I have been marginalized by my appearance and had power taken from me on that basis. What it looks like to me, in a deeply oversimplified way, is that those who have suffered that treatment before are now taking any and every opportunity to do that to others rather than working to make things better for everyone. Sort of a ‘how do you like it’ approach to being in power.
Conventions are not my direct livelihood, nor to they help or hinder my day job. My reputation in the convention circuit doesn’t stop me from putting food on the table for my family. Conventions are some people’s livings or a significant portion of them. Their standing and reputation there matters. If somebody came at my job in that way I’d be more than angry – and rightfully so. The person in question is a pro and while I have found her point of view odd at times, I have never felt that it wasn’t important. I love the stuff she brings to panels. Having diverse opinions matters. Having authors like her, and so many others is vital. I’m sorry that she won’t be back (and if I were her, I wouldn’t be either).
The culture of con running is in trouble. This is not the first time I’ve encountered a mess like this. It’s the reason I won’t work on con staff for other cons anymore. There’s part of me that’s very sad about this. I do love doing all these wonderful, creative things.
So long as I’m unfailingly polite and professional there’s nothing to latch onto as a complaint. Maybe I need to say more. I deeply believe that the science fiction and fantasy community needs to be more accepting and welcoming. I said, specifically at the panel I moderated, “If you can’t find that person, be that person…” and gave some examples. I will continue to go to Balticon (and others) if they’ll have me (I understand that I’m a ‘D’-lister that just fills space). I think there’s a dangerous culture growing around the idea of ‘you didn’t say exactly the right thing’, and I fear for the future of convention staffs across the board. I hope by continuing to attend that I can in some way be part of the solution. I told people I wasn’t going to virtue signal and I don’t want this to sound like that. I am, however, going to reach out to people about this when I have the chance. I want to stand up for others. I want the toxicity to go away. I’m sick to death of the grievance crowd. I want fans to be able to keep doing the things they love. I hope to be able to continue to have important and meaningful conversations about making cons a safe and accepting place for everyone. I hope you’ll join the conversation too.
The workshop I ran was the last of my panels at Balticon.
The workshop was GMing for Beginners. It’s exactly what it sounds like. If you hadn’t run a game before, but wanted to. IF you had, but you stumbled or wanted tips to get to the next level sort of thing. In short, my wheelhouse. I’ve been doing this for years.
Turns out the hardest part of all that is going back to the start.
It was a very small group of folks that showed up in person. The panel description stated it was aimed at a younger demographic and that’s precisely the folks that showed up. They were fun and creative and our hour melted away and then some. We were still sitting there when the hotel staff came and asked us to give up the space for the next event.
There was a part of me that really wanted to do pictures and notes and all sorts of things related to what we did, but I think that would take something away from the folks that were there in person. I was absolutely delighted to share with them. I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did (and they did seem to). I will probably ask to run that workshop again next year, though perhaps earlier in the weekend to give folks that want to try things out more of a chance to hit the game room.
In the end, the con was very successful for me. I’m glad I went. I’m glad to be getting back into the con circuit and working on being creative again. It’s been a rough couple of years for everyone. I’m looking forward to going again. I’m looking forward to meeting new people and seeing my old friends again.
The last actual panel I had was on Sunday morning. There was a workshop to run later in the day, but this was the last of the traditionally formatted panels. As it turned out, I was also scheduled to be the moderator. As a moderator, I didn’t prepare notes in the same way I would have for other panels. I went for questions. My job was to get the other panelists to talk about the topic and keep things moving.
Finding Your People:
Whether you are a writer, gamer, costumer, maker, filker, or LARPer, there is a thriving community for you. Panelists will discuss opportunities for attendees to connect with like-minded others outside of Balticon.
How did YOU find your people?
Best ways to track like minded folks down in general? (discord, failbook, message board at the game shop, others?)
Should we ponder the future of in person conventions?
What if you’re painfully bad at all the social stuff? Plans are hard, and going out fills me with anxiety.
Have you had any experiences that put you off to a group? Any tips on avoiding that kind of thing?
I based my questions on things I believed would be useful from my own experiences. I wanted the folks I was working with to be able to express their thoughts on connecting with others and providing a way for cons and game groups and costumers and all those crazy folks to still be able to get together and enjoy our hobbies like never before. Interestingly / sadly this was also the panel where I caught the fringes of how this all goes wrong. I’ve got a lot of thoughts on the subject, so I’m going to dedicate an entire post to that at a later date. Other than what amounted to a minor ‘blip’ for me, the panel seemed to go well enough. A lot of the answers tended to circle back around to finding connections via the web, but that’s the world we live in these days.
Do you have any great answers for the questions above?
Saturday’s list of panels wrapped up with one on recommendations for reading. I was ready, but also worried for this panel. While I have read a lot, my reading has suffered lately. The volume of words I have consumed has dropped off sharply. It’s been a struggle to read sometimes. The weight of things going on around me has made even the escapism of a good book work. Couple this with the folks on the panel were clearly experts in the field, while my qualifications amounted to being part of a fan group with a long reading list. As it turned out, a really skillful panel moderator made this one run! At the end there was only one request for finding “something else like this” we couldn’t come up with an answer for. At the end of the day, I think I held my own. The things I go back to the most tend to be older works and not the most recently released stuff, but I managed. Here’s the description and the panel notes I had going in.
What Should I Read Next?
While it’s easy for us to be bombarded with automated algorithm-derived suggestions, it’s important to get book recommendations from a dialogue with a real person. Our well-read panelists will listen to what you like and don’t like and suggest something you haven’t heard of… we hope.
— Hope is right – this tends to be a very well read crowd.
I keep a list of books shelved in the dining room. They are books that I go back to over and over again when talking about books. Some examples are:
Magic for Sale (short story collection) Light of Other Days (Stephen Baxter / Clarke) Bimbos of the Death Sun (Sharon McCrumb) Pandora’s Legions (Christopher Anvil) Song in Stone (Walter Hunt) Rollback (Robert J Sawyer) Bureau 13 (Pollata) Griffin & Sabine (Nick Bantock) series of mysterious letters Immortal warrior Kane (pulp fantasy series) Karl Edward Wagner House in the Cerulean Sea (T.J. Klune) Written in Red (Anne Bishop)
Find a small press!
Talk with booksellers (Cupboard Maker Books in Enola PA is my favorite by far!)
Watch the Skies has a 20+ year reading list. You can always jump on and chat with us! Connect with us here!
After a couple of solid panels on Friday I was ready for the Saturday schedule and really wanted to dig in. There was a lot of great stuff lined up, starting with games.
Help Me Find a Game I Will Enjoy
Are you new to playing board games, card games, or party games? How can you tell if any particular game will be fun for you? Come to this panel to ask experienced gamers what you should try next based on your own likes and dislikes.
Finding a board game you like is partially about the game itself and partially about the people you’re playing with. Both parts matter.
Board games are by their very nature social. The single biggest challenge is finding a group, or a series of groups of people that you really, truly enjoy gaming with. The people are the key to it all.
As for the games themselves, part of that is learning the language of games. What IS a worker placement game vs. a party game vs. a resource management game? What kinds of those things do you enjoy?
How many people do you want the game to handle?
Do friends recommend the game?
Can you find a YouTube video on it (and do you trust that person’s opinion)?
The best part of this panel for me was the crowd participation. That normally isn’t true for me, but having my dear friend and serious game fan John right up front was really special for this one. Myself and the other panelists enjoyed a good discussion about all the things I listed above in my notes and then some. It was a really great start to the day.
Side note – I highly recommend digging up a board game and finding some folks to play.
The second panel of the weekend for me was about maps. I was really into the idea of the panel, but I was unsure of how it would all work out. Here’s the description and what I had prepared.
Mapping the Landscape
Every science fiction and fantasy reader has their favorite book with a map in the forward or appendix. Besides helping audiences keep track of where things are taking place, what roles do maps play in fiction and gaming? How does a creator go about creating a clear memorable map, from both narrative and visual perspectives?
______
Ask yourself if a map is really needed? Being a very visual person, I LOVE maps and building layouts, but does your book / story actually need it?
Look at your map at 3”x4”. If you can’t read it then it is too small to print in a mass market. Consider adding extra maps that show blowups of things you actually want readers to know about.
Cheat. Take a known map and turn it upside down, then relabel everything.
Don’t be afraid of looking for inspiration in the old. There are a number of museums that have digitized their collections of historical maps and have them available for viewing online. This goes for plants and monsters too. The biodiversity heritage library has 150,000 images out there. University of Chicago Press have created a history of cartography collection with downloadable PDFs.
Think about what your map looks like relative to your story. What does a fantasy map look like exactly? What does an urban fantasy map look like by comparison? How will it look when it’s squished down to 3 inches wide by 4 inches tall in a paperback?
How much area are you mapping? 2D or 3d for your map?
The panel itself ranged all over the map (see what I did there LOL). The panelists had a wide variety of backgrounds and it was a really neat discussion. I grabbed a couple of notes of my own, and was surprised (though I probably shouldn’t have been) when discussions ranged into technology and things connected with my day job. Turns out that architecture is essentially building mapping – and that includes site context.
It was a very enjoyable discussion and the folks that attended seemed to be really happy with what we delivered.
I posted my schedule back before I headed to the con, so it would seem only fitting to post notes from each of those panels. I often prepare far more than gets used when it comes to panel information. Sometimes this is a question of not having enough time to shove it all in, sometimes it’s a question of sharing panel time and other times the panel just doesn’t go the way I thought it was going to.
I’m going to load these up one at a time so I can give each panel its own space – and even try to tie together with the virtual space!
My first panel of the Balticon weekend was Rating Books in the Algorithm Age and it was in fact my only virtual panel for the weekend.
Here’s the description and what I had prepared as notes~
Rating Books in the Algorithm Age
Do numeric rating systems such as “X out of 10” lead to a loss of nuance? Can the ubiquitous five-star rating system (as used by Amazon and Goodreads) lead to grade inflation? Is a well-written entertaining work deserving of top ratings, or does it also need to be groundbreaking? When a rating is going to be amalgamated without context, what are a reviewer’s ethical responsibilities?
Yes, any scoring system with limits like x out of 10 has a loss of significance. It’s designed and designated specifically to be ‘shorthand’. Can it help? Sure… to a point.
Grade inflation can (and does happen). Of course I’m going to give my book 5 stars. So’s my mom cause I asked her to (no, she won’t read it). It’s unethical to ‘stuff the ballot box’… or is it? Is campaigning for you book and getting your friends to pump it up and get attention?
Well written and entertaining is completely subjective. I have a particular prize winning work that I LOATHE and I know more than one person that thinks it’s amazing. It’s terrible, but the story of how the story got published caught me more than any rating. It was all about how the friends and family of said book got it out there to my attention.
When I do reviews for the things I read, I state up front if I got the work for free (pretty sure there are rules about this, but I genuinely don’t know them). I will say things in the very first line of the review like, “OF course it gets 5 stars… it’s mine after all”.
I have taken a long time to recognize and understand what I like about stories, and have started to apply that knowledge to how I talk about the books I really like. If you like something I like, and that continues to happen, then maybe you can trust my opinion about a book. I have one friend (Molly) who knows that if I love a book, she’ll hate it. Our tastes tend to be diametrically opposed. She knows this and takes all of my reviews with that thought in mind.
How you feel about the author can (should it?) effect how you review a book. I know a number of authors. I recommend the work of my friends.
Will I recommend a book, no matter how good, after I met the guy and he was a total dick to me? NO.
Will I recommend a book, no matter my political feelings about an author, if that guy was SUPER nice to me? That’s way more complicated.
This past Memorial Day weekend I was lucky enough to go back to being a panelist at a live, in person science fiction convention. I was and am very happy to be able to get back to that sort of thing. I’ve missed it. At this point, with so much time passing between the event and the actual writing of my post(s) I suspect there will be details that are hazy and that will make the summaries shorter than they may have once been.
The con took place May 27 – 30, 2022 at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace hotel. Right in the middle of Inner Harbor. The location was (and continues to be) something of a sore spot for many people. The hotel itself is expensive. Parking is generally expensive as well, but the con made arrangements for a deal with the parking company and that worked out really well. I was able to save a fair amount of money compared to past years by setting up my parking in advance. The area itself, the places around the con seem to be struggling. All but a very few businesses in the area are gone. The restaurant choices were thin and did not lend themselves to quick con based meals. All the other shops, including the shopping mall previously below the convention are are simply closed and gone. The absolute lack of options was one of the most challenging aspects of attending. The room, the amenities and the rest of the hotel related things were pretty standard.
Checking in this year was the smoothest it’s been in a long time. There was one minor blip, but in general worked and I was in and out of the registration area very quickly. The set up / arrangement of the convention spaces was very similar to years past, with the notable exception of splitting the dealer’s room into two different spaces. This worked for me, though it’s questionable what the vendors themselves thought of the arrangement.
One of the bigger changes as an ‘in person’ panelist was the addition / continuation of virtual panels. I’d brought my own laptop along and set it up in my hotel room. This turned out to be a good thing. There was mention of a space being available on site for folks to participate in the virtual panels, but from what I witnessed of that it was less than successful. Running all the tech for all the panels AND having a place for a panelist to just drop in and use ‘extra’ equipment didn’t seem to go well at all. I don’t think any mention of availability should have been made for the panelists and I think the panelists should have been far more prepared than the ones I witnessed were. Thankfully, my connection went off without a hitch and I got to participate in a virtual panel to go along with my in person sessions.
The pandemic made a lot of other things feel slightly different or out of sync with what I have become used to over the years. Attendees were there, and wearing masks as was the rule. They were generally friendly and happy to see others in person, but the numbers seemed down. I understand the hesitation of many, so this wasn’t entirely unexpected but I hope it’s not a sign of the death of in person cons (and that death has been rumored for many, many years of course). The other aspect of this con for me was a profound shift in who of my friend group were there. My family didn’t attend. People I always went to dinner with didn’t attend. People I’d sit and share a drink with or bump into between panels weren’t there. Even things I did get to do with friends seemed muted and worn. Yes, I went to dinner. Yes, there were games and chatting and all of it seemed… slightly surreal. I was adrift and on my own and that is certainly not my convention experience in the past.
It was a good con for me. I did a bunch of panels, ran a workshop and bought a handful of things from wonderful creators. I also managed to (mostly) avoid con drama. I say mostly, and that deserves an explanation, but also that deserves its own post. All in all, it was good to be back. I hope and look forward to doing it all again next year.
This was originaly published in the June 2022 edition of Watch The Skies.
I don’t think I can overstate how much I am taken with this art.
I went back through the list of shows that I have recommended in the history of these articles and was stunned to see that I had not brought up Love, Death & Robots. I don’t know how this has escaped previously, but no longer.
Love, Death & Robots is an animated series, but this is very specifically aimed at adults. The creators original intent was to have something similar in nature to the animated film Heavy Metal (from 1981). Do not for a moment think this is a children’s cartoon. It is NOT. It is brutal, sexy and mind rattling in varying degrees throughout. Netflix loaded up the first season of LD&R back in March of 2019. There were 18 episodes for the series, each coming in with a viewing length under 20 minutes. The second season of 8 was released in May of 2021, and the most recent season of 9 episodes launched just last month (May of 2022).
The stories for these animations all come from some of the best writers in modern science fiction, fantasy and horror. Names like, Bacigalupi, Asher, Scalzi and Sterling. There’s even an episode showing a story written by Harlan Ellison. These stories carry weight and have real punch in such a short time frame. The set up to the closure, if there is any, come right at you. The first two seasons each won an Emmy. The story telling is only rivaled by the pictures that accompany the stories.
IF you dislike ‘cartoons’ for some reason, I challenge you to watch these and NOT become a fan of animation. The art, the shear beauty of so many of these works will make you question how they were created. Admittedly, they are not all hyper realistic, but even the goofiest stories are well animated. The colors, the smoothness, and the pure vibrancy of even the darkest pieces still amazes me. I have some that I re-watch for the story and many that I re-watch just to see them. Just to experience their beauty again. I don’t believe they needed more marketing, but the third season has actually done something neat to accompany all this art. There were some clues hidden in certain episodes of the third season. If you followed the clues, you’d find your way to some computer art from the show. The hunt, and the clues have continued on various social medial platforms since the third season was released.
I highly recommend this show. You should definitely be watching.
