Spec fic writer, poet, autist
My poem “Thule,” a Patreon original, is available to the public now. (Backers get Patreon original poems a full month before everyone else.)
In other news, although it didn’t make it to the shortlist, “I Sing Against the Silent Sun” – a novelette I co-wrote with A. Merc Rustad – appeared on the longlist for the 2018 BSFA Awards. This marks the second time I’ve found short work of mine on the BSFA longlist – the first time was 2013’s “You Have to Follow the Rules.”
At last! Proofs are in, and print ARCs of THE OUTSIDE are printed. Look at these beautiful book babies!
If you like to review books, you can request one for yourself on NetGalley right here: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/157282
Today’s Book: “Dzur” by Steven Brust.
The Plot: Vlad Taltos, a general-purpose assassin/witch/organized criminal, investigates some organized crime doings which are putting his ex-wife Cawti in danger.
Autistic Character(s): Daymar, a Hawklord and powerful psychic who helps Vlad.
Yes, Daymar is back! I have previously written reviews involving Daymar for the books Dragon and Hawk (and the short story The Desecrator), so you should probably go and read those ones first before cutting back to this one.
I didn’t exactly intend to spend another whole review on Daymar, because honestly, his role in this book is pretty similar to his role in the other two. Vlad needs something, Daymar shows up to help him, Vlad is annoyed by him as a person but makes use of his help.
Despite Daymar’s limited role in Dzur, though, I ended up liking it more than his role in Hawk. There are a couple of nuances to Daymar’s lines here that I don’t recall seeing in the other two books. For instance, he seems aware of Vlad’s annoyance with him, and able to take advantage of that annoyance to make jokes at Vlad’s expense (much as Vlad is constantly making jokes at Daymar’s):
He nodded. “A psychic location means finding the story, and where on the story a particular mind is.”
I considered. “Do you know, I think I understood some of that.”
“I’m sorry. I’ll try again.”
“No, no. Go on.”
“I know, Vlad. That was a joke.”
“Oh. I didn’t think you did that.”
He’s also shown more actively trying to process Vlad’s emotions, and successfully pressing for more information about them where needed:
“Vlad, are you angry?”
“No, I’m overwhelmed with joy and love for all humanity, but I’m working very hard to conceal it.”
“That was sarcasm, right?”
“Right.”
“Okay. Are you angry with me?”
I sighed. “Yes, but I shouldn’t be. I should just be angry in general. I’ll work on that. In the meantime-“
And despite his general annoyance with Daymar, Vlad is also more consciously grateful for his assistance than in Hawk, offering to buy him a drink for his troubles.
So this book is definitely better at depicting Daymar than Hawk was, but there are two sides to that improvement, because, as it happens, I’m reading the books all out of order for no real reason and Dzur was actually published eight years before Hawk. For an author I generally enjoy, it’s a little bit sad that Brust seems to have gotten worse about this over time instead of better.
Daymar is also only present in a couple of chapters, so even if you are a big Daymar fan, it’s not necessarily worthwhile to get the book just for him.
The Verdict: Marginal
Disclosure: I have never interacted with Steven Brust. I read his book because I got it as a birthday present.
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The necessary companion to my award eligibility post!
I’m eligible to vote for both the Hugos and Nebulas this year. I seem to vaguely recall that some awards let you nominate five things, and some let you nominate six. I’m gonna make lists of six things in no particular order (I don’t want to single out any of these amazing authors as being #6!)
I’m focusing on short work because honestly, I am shitty at reading whole books in the year they come out. This was my PhD thesis year, so I was even shittier at it than I normally am. I did adore Catherynne M. Valente’s SPACE OPERA, though, and will be nominating it for All The Things. I also loved Yoon Ha Lee’s REVENANT GUN.
Here are my six favorite short stories of 2018:
I’m not eligible to vote for any poetry awards this year, but just for the principle of the thing, here are my six favorite speculative poems as well.
Yes, half of them are from Twisted Moon. I’m trash.
Finally, as I did last year, I’m planning to nominate Bogi Takács (Bogi Reads the World) and Charles Payseur (Quick Sip Reviews) for Best Fan Writer.
My new poem “Culvert Kelpie” is up in Issue Six of The Temz Review today. I’m really delighted that this one is out in the world – it’s the most experimental poem I’ve written to date and that is very exciting to me. Please enjoy!
It’s late for this – nominating for some awards is already almost over – but better late than never!
If you want to nominate me for something, but only want one work per category, here’s what I would recommend.
Novelette: I Sing Against the Silent Sun, co-written by me and A. Merc Rustad, came out in Lightspeed this year. It’s one of the most powerful pieces I’ve had the privilege of working on, and it’s already garnered a mention on the BSFA Shorter Fiction Award longlist (thank you!)
Short Story: Variations on a Theme from Turandot appeared in Strange Horizons. It’s the most ambitious short story I’ve ever written, and still one of my favorites. I would be honored if, in your nominations, you’d consider this one too.
I also published two bits of flash fiction this year which some people have enjoyed:
There are fewer poetry awards floating around than short fiction ones, but in case you are voting for one, here’s the poetry I published this year.
I also published several original poems on Patreon:
I’m eligible for Best Fan Writer on account of Autistic Book Party, which posted a review (or a Smorgasbord) every month this year.
I also wrote the essay Everything Is True: A Non-Neurotypical Experience With Fiction, as part of Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction! A number of non-neurotypical readers have told me that this essay spoke to them on a deep level.
I’ve also been keeping track of my favorite fiction and poetry that I encountered from other authors this year. Hopefully I’ll have time to post that list before long, but until then, you can also see my recs throughout the year in my “Cool Story Bro” posts.
Thanks!
Today’s Book: “Every Mountain Made Low” by Alex White.
The Plot: Loxley Fiddleback, a disabled woman in a strange dystopian pit of a city who has the ability to see ghosts, sets out to avenge her only friend’s murder.
Autistic Character(s): Loxley, our protagonist.
I want to talk about Loxley first, before I talk about anything else. Loxley is a fascinating character. She also illustrates one of the problems I have with how autistic characters are marketed (or not marketed) to the public. The back cover of “Every Mountain Made Low” says:
Loxley isn’t equipped to solve a murder: she lives near the bottom of a cutthroat, strip-mined metropolis known as “The Hole,” suffers from crippling anxiety and doesn’t cotton to strangers.
“Crippling anxiety” is such an inaccurate description on the publisher’s part that I’m still mad about it. There are some autistic people who could forgivably be mistaken for anxious NTs. People who mostly pass, but are afraid to leave their house or socialize because they don’t know how it works, etc. It is very apparent even from the early pages of the book that Loxley is not one of these people.
Indeed, while nobody in this book seems to know the word “autism,” Loxley doesn’t pass at all. Her movements, speech, and thinking are visibly different from those of the people around her, in ways that result in other characters calling her slurs (including the R-word) with depressing frequency. Under stress, she often stops understanding speech altogether. Loxley is not a “low-functioning” stereotype – she works three jobs! – but all of those jobs would be impossible without informal accommodations made by pitying NTs, and the pitying NTs aren’t usually nice about it. Sensory overload makes functioning in many everyday environments impossible for her, and even carrying on a conversation in the expected way is difficult, let alone making friends.
(At some point a character also calls Loxley a “mongoloid,” which suggests that she might have both Down syndrome and autism; or maybe that character is just an extra special bigot. It’s not clear.)
I’m not even sure I would classify Loxley as having anxiety (in the sense of an anxiety disorder) at all. She is fearful when she encounters new things, overloading things, ghosts who she believes will literally kill her if they get too close (although the reality turns out to be more complex), and things that contradict her worldview. She experiences sensory overload very intensely, but overload and fear are not the same emotion. Otherwise, much of her behavior in the book is actually quite bold.
Loxley’s narrative voice consistently does a thing that I really enjoy. A lot of books from the POV of autistic characters focus on trying to explain to NT readers why the autistic character behaves the way they do. This can be bad (an othering Autism Voice) or good (as in the case of books like On the Edge of Gone, which humanize their narrators by explaining exactly what about a given situation is so stressful for them).
“Every Mountain Made Low” seems to gleefully do the opposite. Loxley’s thought processes are shown the way any narrator’s would be, and there is certainly an internal logic to them, but it is a logic that doesn’t seem to care at all if NT readers will find it logical:
She kept her hands close together, humming and picking at the plastic as quickly as she could. She had to get that tape off. No one should tape stuff to themselves, because now, instead of skin, she had tape there. She had to get her skin back. She wanted to explain, but all that came out were jumbled noises, probably because of the tape.
This kind of thinking feels real and familiar to me, especially from times when I am more overwhelmed, but it’s something I rarely see narrated in this way and I love it.
The Hole where Loxley lives is more or less literally a hellhole, arranged in nine concentric circles of increasing squalor and misery. The misery comes from unfettered capitalism and social inequality, not from any divine source, but the Hole also holds many secrets, and ghosts are not the only supernatural thing Loxley will encounter before the book is done.
The sheer dystopianness of “Every Mountain Made Low” can make it a difficult read, especially in the first few chapters, in which Loxley goes about her daily life and terrible things keep on happening to her – including an attempted sexual assault. The assault at first felt gratuitous to me, but I realized later in the book that it is actually a pivotal moment in Loxley’s character arc. Her mother, long dead when the story begins, gave Loxley many rules about what was and wasn’t safe; when Loxley is assaulted by someone her mother told her to trust, she begins to realize that what her mother told her is not always true. While Loxley has realistic trauma from the assault, it’s also a moment she returns to as she grows: while her previous life crumbles around her, she learns to discard the rules she was taught and make her own. It’s a difficult but important arc to see for an autistic character, when in real life we’re so often given oversimplified social rules that don’t actually keep us safe.
The setting never stops being dystopian as heck, but it begins to feel less oppressive after the first 1/3 or so, as Loxley becomes are more active character who navigates the Hole as she wishes and determines her own destiny.
In fact, it can be startling how active a character Loxley becomes once her friend Nora dies, and once she sets herself to avenging Nora’s murder. In one of the first such moments, trapped in a car with the head villain and his henchmen, Loxley calmly informs the head villain that she is going to kill him. It isn’t bluster, nor even a threat in the usual sense; in Loxley’s mind, it is a fact, and there is no reason not to state facts when asked.
These moments continue throughout the rest of the book. Loxley has an assertiveness, once her mind is set on a course of action, that is entirely and wonderfully autistic; and she has the capacity for violence, when cornered, to back it up. If I refer to her actions as startling, it’s because of how rarely a character like Loxley in fiction is allowed to be violent and assertive. If Loxley were a neurotypical man mourning the death of a woman, her actions would be entirely within the bounds of what action/thriller stories of this type allow. But for someone like Loxley to take on the role of the vengeful, punishing action hero is entirely unexpected and wonderful. It’s an approach that doesn’t win Loxley many friends, but one that ultimately leads to her victory.
Another ability Loxley has is that, as she interacts more with certain ghosts, she starts to have flashes of memory from their point of view, and to be able to call up some of their skills when needed – including social skills. For example, she calls up Nora’s insight in order to ask a favor from her employer more effectively:
She sounded just like Nora. She wasn’t Nora, but she could conjure all the turns of phrase and speech of the dead woman. She could hold her body in such a way as to make it more appealing. It wasn’t as though she could draw forth the ghost’s memories, but she could sense its subtle influence on her mind. She could look at Don’s face without trying to puzzle through the multitude of muscles that created his expression.
It can be dangerous to give autistic characters skills like this – magical abilities that can make them less autistic when the plot requires it. (I previously complained about the use of such an ability in “Mouse.“) Here I think it works a bit better than it did in “Mouse,” for a couple of reasons. Loxley doesn’t overrely on her ability; it’s one tool in her inventory, and one that comes with a heavy, exhausting cost. It also has longer-lasting, subtler consequences. Loxley sometimes behaves, under the ghosts’ influence, in ways that she didn’t expect to. Rather than clarifying everything, the ghosts’ perspective often leaves her with difficult questions about the world that she inhabits and the people she thought she knew in life.
There is one major flaw with this book, however, and it’s to do with the treatment of race.
One of the beliefs Loxley was taught by her mother, and has to eventually discard, is that black people are untrustworthy. Early on in the book she refuses a black man’s help for precisely this reason. Just as with her mother’s other erroneous teachings, she eventually learns better, even ending up with a black friend and a black love interest who are two of the most sympathetic characters in the book. But this doesn’t happen until much later, by which time many readers of color will already have been thrown out of the narrative.
When she does get the chance to interact with a group of black people, Loxley unthinkingly parrots several of her mother’s statements about them. The only pushback she gets is a mild, “Your mother was kind of a racist, wasn’t she?” Loxley learns that her beliefs about black people were incorrect, but she doesn’t learn that they were wrong in any ethical sense, nor does it seem to be important to any of the black characters that she learn this. At another point in the book, Loxley is startled and distressed when she learns that Nora had unspoken ableist attitudes, but she never makes the inference that her racist thoughts, spoken or unspoken, might have been equally distressing to her black friends. Nor, for that matter, does it present any obstacle to her romantic relationship with a black woman who says her own set of casually ableist things.
Even though several black characters in the latter half of the story are quite sympathetic, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth that the “good” black people are portrayed as being people who don’t challenge Loxley about her racist statements – and who, incidentally, both end up making immense personal sacrifices for Loxley’s sake.
Loxley’s racism doesn’t feel necessary to the story. It doesn’t seem to be an inherent part of the setting, at least not to the degree that Loxley experiences it (a scene from Nora’s perspective merely neutrally notes that “people of all colors” are present in a room, while Loxley at the beginning of the story appears to be entirely unfamiliar with interacting with black people). And while it serves as an example of an incorrect belief of her mother’s that Loxley needs to unlearn, there are plenty of other examples that already do that job in the narrative.
Readers who like the sound of “Every Mountain Made Low,” but want a better book where race is concerned, might instead try the equally gritty “An Unkindness of Ghosts” by Rivers Solomon.
Despite these missteps, my overall impression of “Every Mountain Made Low” was positive. It’s a memorable book with a tense and compelling plot which was hard for me to put down once it got going, and it features a strong autistic protagonist of a type I’ve never seen before. The world of autistic SFF characters is richer for having Loxley Fiddleback in it. I’ll certainly be looking out for more of Alex White’s books.
The Verdict: YMMV, but I liked it
Disclosure: I have briefly corresponded with Alex White online.
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It’s been that time of year, where people are frantically posting lists of everything they wrote in 2018, and everybody who has work coming out in December cries because the lists start in November and 2018 isn’t over yet, dammit.
For me, my best discoveries in November came from reading back over the year’s worth of some of my favorite publications, and some intriguing things I’d bookmarked early in the year, but hadn’t gone thoroughly over yet.
Here are four late-year recommendations from me – three of which are poems.
*
Stefanie Elrick, “Prism” (Apex Magazine, Issue 111, August)
This story is absolutely mesmerizing. Hypnotic and hallucinogenic, tinged with the intensity of both magic and love. The narration manages to evoke some of the best aspects of cosmic horror without feeling anything like Lovecraft at all; it straddles that delicious line of coherence where it’s not clear for much of the story if the narrator is in touch with reality or not, but where their motivation is drawn in such sharp bright lines that you’re rooting for them either way. This author is new to me, and I’ll definitely be looking up more from her.
*
Mary Soon Lee, “How to Betray Sagittarius A*” (Strange Horizons fund drive special)
I really like the alternative take on black holes here – instead of personifying the hole itself, Lee focuses instead on the intense radio signals emitted by Sagittarius A*, viewing them as a scream and a testimony to danger which the rest of the universe may or may not bother to believe. There is no sexual violence here, but it is certainly an appropriate astronomy poem for the #MeToo era.
*
R. Mac Jones, “The Service Agreement Does Not Cover What Happens During Sleep” (Strange Horizons, November 5)
A poem about a couple who have their bodies modified to incorporate birdlike traits – not only physical traits like birds and feathers, but also flocking instincts. I don’t think that this kind of tight, instinctive synchronization is what I would want in my own close relationships, but I love the way it is described.
*
Beth Cato, “smile” (Uncanny, Issue Twenty-Five)
A tiny little revenge fantasy about men who tell strange women they should smile more. Apparently I am juuuust mean enough, as a person, to enjoy things like this.
Corinne Duyvis, “Rule of Threes” (Crossed Genres, 2011)
[Autistic author] Duyvis’s most popular work revolves around the idea of apocalypses – who is and isn’t left behind in one, and how we can reimagine our survival strategies so as not to sacrifice each other. This story, published several years before any of Duyvis’s novels, deals with the same theme, but from the reverse perspective. It’s a horror story about a woman who is determined to make difficult sacrifices when desert creatures overrun her town, and who arguably goes too far. An interesting early effort which pulls tensely along to an ending that feels both awful and inevitable. [Recommended-2]
*
Lesley L. Smith, “The Number Two Rule” (Daily Science Fiction, October 2012)
[Autistic author] A time traveler stranded in the past is expected to kill herself to avoid accidentally changing the timeline, but she can’t quite bring herself to do it. It’s very interesting to me that the traveler in this story is asked if she has Asperger’s. She doesn’t, but her frantic efforts not to ever interact with anyone, however innocently, strike me as a lovely and sad metaphor for the social anxiety of some depressed autistic people. On the other hand, the relentless focus on suicide will make this a tough read and too close to home for many. [YMMV]
*
A.C. Buchanan, “MAKET, or, Alternative Endings for Ivan Ivanovich” (Unsung Stories, October 2016)
[Autistic author] As part of a test flight during the Soviet space program, a mannequin is launched into space. Buchanan imagines fanciful scenarios that might have happened to the mannequin after its voyage. There is no autism in this story, but it is a wonderful theme to explore from an implicitly autistic perspective. The story resonates partly because of the common autistic tendency towards animism and extending empathy in unusual directions. But its poignance comes from the equally common autistic tendency to be seen as inhuman, as not quite a person, by the NT world, and to long for the possibility of acceptance – or escape. [Recommended-2]
*
Bogi Takács, “A Superordinate Set of Principles” (Ride the Star Wind, October 2017)
[Autistic author] This is more or less an outright parody of Lovecraftian horror, set in the Eren universe. Autistic people don’t appear, at least not explicitly. What does appear is a surprisingly sympathetic race of betentacled, biotech-happy, hive-mind-y aliens, who think of math exclusively in terms of fractals and other organic shapes. They are horrified when they encounter a group of humans brandishing sinister TRIANGLES and RECTANGLES. Anybody who likes math, and who rolls their eyes whenever Lovecraft starts going on about the horrors of “non-Euclidean” shapes, will probably fall over giggling at this story. It is great. [Recommended-2]
*
Yoon Ha Lee, “Obscura” (Strange Horizons, January 2018)
[Autistic author] Eerie and uncharacteristically understated, this is an urban fantasy about a teenage girl and a mysterious stranger with a magical camera. Although the narrative seems simple, there’s a lot to unpack under the surface, about absences and disconnections, and about seeing things as they really are. [Recommended-2]
(ETA: Yoon Ha Lee appears to have been misdiagnosed with autism, and has asked to be removed from Autistic Book Party.)
*
A. Merc Rustad, “The Sweetness of Honey and Rot” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, June 2018)
[Autistic author] A super-creepy fantasy with evil sloths and even eviller sentient plants. Also bees. Merc pulls off their usual trick of coaxing a resolutely hopeful ending out of an intensely grim beginning, middle, and general premise. You will never want to eat soup again, though. [Recommended-2]
*
Sunyi Dean, “John Kills Jenny” (Sub-Q, August 2018)
[Autistic author] Sunyi Dean is a new discovery for me in this issue. She has several stories out, all from 2018, which were all emotionally charged, compactly effective delights. “John Kills Jenny” is a dark and thought-provoking interactive story about a convicted murderer playing a “rehabilitation game.” But what does it mean to be rehabilitated? Is there any choice in any game that can erase the effects of the past? This one will make you uncomfortable, but in a good way. [Recommended-2]
*
Rose Lemberg, “The Fear Tree” (Sycorax Journal, Issue One, November 2018)
[Autistic author] A poem about immigration, living in a world that is actively hostile, fear, and strength. I really like the way the narrator’s fear is honored in this story. Not simply an unwanted emotion, but a toweringly strong instinct for survival and protection in a world that doesn’t especially want for the narrator to have survived. [Recommended-2]
*
Ruthanna Emrys, “The Word of Flesh and Soul” (Tor.com, November 2018)
A lovely, Lovecraftian tale about scholars of an ancient language that transforms those who speak it. Polymede is the first woman to be accepted as a scholar of this topic, and her lover Erishti secretly studies it too, despite being deemed ineligible. Erishti is autistic, and “madmen” – including autistic people – are not considered capable of perceiving the language clearly. Nevertheless, Polymede and Erishti have made a discovery that could overturn some old assumptions in their field. I love the way Erishti is written in this one: a non-neurotypical scholar whose differences are evident and whose intelligence and insight are strong, without falling into exaggeration or stereotype on either point. I especially love the matter-of-fact affection between her and Polymede.
My very, very favorite exchange is this one:
“Rallis wanted to be like his advisor, and for his students to want to be like him.”
Brain still fuzzy, I say, “You must be used to that, huh? People trying to get you to think like them.”
“People do that to each other all the time. I just know it’s impossible.”
This story also functions as a biting critique of many of the traditions of academia; readers who are interested in that angle might try reading it alongside Rose Lemberg’s “The Shape Of Us, Translucent To Your Eye.” [Recommended-1]
“Held Tongue,” a poem about fearing the impact of one’s own words, is free to read now on Patreon.
Patreon backers get to see these poems early, and at high levels, even commission their own poetry. Check it out and enjoy!