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Autism News, 2018/04/11

April is Autism Awareness/Acceptance/Whatever Month, so let’s start with two posts about that.

Posts about “Autism Uncensored”:

Other media and reviews:

Parent perspectives:

Posts about autistic people being treated terribly:

Posts about autistic people being treated not-terribly:

Posts about what life is like in general:

Misc:

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MONSTERS IN MY MIND: Story notes, part 45, 46, and 49

45. Miss Sprocket Tinkers

Round and round they went on the big brass wheel, up and down the ladders, in and out of little hidey holes. Sprocket wanted those mice.

This is a steampunk story from the point of view of a clever cat who gets a little too involved in her owner’s inventions. It appeared the first issue of the now-defunct magazine Comets and Criminals.

I hesitated to add this one to the collection. At a formative phase in my writing career, I heard people talking derisively about cat stories – as kitsch, or something; it wasn’t clear – and I felt ashamed of having written one. But I’ve also had people – especially people who don’t always like my darker, weirder fare – tell me it’s one of their favorites. So… shrug! I guess I have to remind myself that Ellen Datlow once edited an anthology of cat stories, so that gives them some pedigree. So to speak.

46. The Tooth Fairy Throws In the Towel

I was there when a fish invented teeth,
that was a real ornery fish believe you me

At some point in 2012, I had my wisdom teeth taken out, and my recovery was miserable and slow. No complications – it just hurt a lot for longer than it was supposed to (my dental surgeon didn’t believe in anything stronger than Advil) and I kept trying to tough it out and chew things I wasn’t ready for and just making it worse.

During this annoyingly long time, I couldn’t concentrate enough to write anything. I knew I was finally starting to recover properly when my creative words came back. The first thing I wrote was an intentionally absurd, badly spelled free-writing exercise as a present for A. Merc Rustad. (They’d asked for more Lovecraftian fairy tales, after “What Great Darkness.” I wrote something ridiculous about Ariel the Little Mermaid crossed with Elric of Melniboné.) The second was this poem, which is, appropriately, about a frustrating experience involving teeth. (And fairies. And Cthulhu… Maybe I wasn’t too far from Merc’s writing prompt, after all.)

“The Tooth Fairy Throws In the Towel” is one of the only intentionally humorous poems I’ve written. It appeared in Mythic Delirium 29, along with “The Siren of Mayberry Crescent” and one other poem.

49. The Chartreuse Monster

“That book saved my life,” said Indrani.

MONSTERS IN MY MIND comes full circle at the end with the very first short story I ever published for money. “The Chartreuse Monster,” published in Expanded Horizons in July 2010, is the story of a hyperempathic convention attendee who finds out their favorite author is dying.

“The Chartreuse Monster” is also the only story I ever successfully wrote based on a randomly generated prompt. I was a tiny baby writer and I was very aware, when I started the story, that my skill at creating settings needed work. I wanted to write something set at one of the only places I’d been in real life that I thought was “interesting enough” – a science fiction convention. But that didn’t give me a plot. So I rolled randomly on a table of George Polti’s 37 Dramatic Situations and ended up with element 1A3: “Appeals for a refuge in which to die.”

But who would want to spend their last days at a science fiction convention? I asked myself. And this story appeared, with all of its gentle overtones about grief and legacy and what books mean to people. I was as surprised as anyone. (Now that I am a slightly-less-tiny baby writer, there are some things about the premise that I’d approach differently – but I decided not to meddle.)

The editor of Expanded Horizons also said that the protagonist of this story reads as autistic to them, even though I wasn’t consciously thinking about that at the time. We agreed it was ok to tag the story with “autism” – which makes this, unwittingly, also my first #ownvoices autism story. And makes an even better bookend to the collection, which now starts and ends with two very different stories about autistic girls and women at conventions. “You Have to Follow the Rules” is the tale of discovering a world for the first time. “The Chartreuse Monster,” at last, lets it go.

Song Pairing: The song for this one is In This Moment’s “Into the Light“.

MONSTERS IN MY MIND is available for purchase on Amazon, Kobo, Indigo,  Barnes and Noble, and in Autonomous Press’s Shopify store.

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MONSTERS IN MY MIND: Story notes, part 43 and 44

43. What Great Darkness

Red met Wolf on her way through the forest, long before the Plague. He looked at her. Smiled, and there were fangs in the smile. Her heart fluttered, and not with fear. She had never seen anything like him before.

“Red Riding Hood shacks up with the Wolf because who needs humans anyway” is not exactly a new take, but I tried my hand at it anyway. Then, owing to the same “inner story” and “outer story” conversation that I had with A. Merc Rustad before writing Lady Blue and the Lampreys, I added Lovecraftian monsters. Why not?

“What Great Darkness” was written for an anthology of Lovecraftian fairy tales, but it didn’t get in. It’s now a MONSTERS IN MY MIND original.

Song Pairing: As mentioned, this is not a new take, so there are already several songs to choose from to complement it. I’ll go with Xandria’s “Little Red Relish,” because, again, why not. (If I can symphonic-metal a thing, I’ll symphonic-metal the thing.)

44. Daphne Without Apollo

Not running away. Not pleading
for a hiding-place – vain boy of a god,
did you think you would blot me
from the world?

There are some Greek myths that I kind of hate. Film at 11.

The theme of Issue #2 of Plunge Magazine – a short-lived genre magazine focused on queer women – was “chase”.  “Daphne Without Apollo” was written for, and appeared in, that issue.

MONSTERS IN MY MIND is available for purchase on Amazon, Kobo, Indigo,  Barnes and Noble, and in Autonomous Press’s Shopify store.

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Autistic Book Party, Episode 44: Failure to Communicate

Today’s Book: “Failure to Communicate” by Kaia Sønderby

The Plot: Xandri Corelel interprets alien behavior for a living. But her latest mission, to help with diplomatic negotiations on the planet Anmerilli, will test her skills to the limit.

Autistic Character(s): Xandri, the protagonist.

I like the trope of autistic people learning to communicate with aliens, and this is the first time I’ve seen the trope addressed at novel length. I was excited to see what would be done with it, and I wasn’t disappointed. There’s a refreshing nuance and subtlety to the way Sønderby handles her topic. Xandri’s skill at finding patterns in alien body language is partly due to good autistic pattern recognition – but mostly due to hard work and skill developed over many years because it was necessary for her survival. She’s genuinely good at it, one of the best in the Alliance – but that doesn’t make her automatically good at all the other skills that go with negotiation, nor at deciphering types of deception among humans to which autistic people are frequently vulnerable. And much of the conflict of the book comes, not from trying to puzzle out what the Anmerilli are thinking, but from these high-level, all-too-human interactions.

Although the novel has many fast-paced and action-y parts, and doesn’t dive needlessly into introspection, nuance is the name of the game when it comes to its characters and worldbuilding. Autistic people are rare in Xandri’s time, thanks to genetic modification, and individuals vary widely in how they treat her. Some are genuine friends, which Xandri treasures as a rarity; some are ableist and dismissive; some are manipulative; some are well-intentioned but clueless.  Xandri’s alien friends (and the ship’s AI she’s befriended) are often more accepting than most humans, but the aliens are not a monolith either, and in particular, the Anmerilli have many political factions and different opinions. It’s hard to write a story about ableism with this kind of nuance and individuality; even #ownvoices stories often have a slightly cartoonish feel in their more ableist characters. But the variety of attitudes taken by different characters in “Failure to Communicate” really helps the setting feel real and lived-in.

The story is also really fun. I cheered in some places and cried in others, and sometimes had to step away when a plot moment hit too close to home. I love Sønderby’s aliens, especially the parrot-like Psitticans and the furry, taciturn Ongkoarrat. I love Xandri’s friendships with the people on her team who “get” her and are looking out for her (and there’s some setup that I’m hoping will lead to a queer romance, in a sequel 😀 ). There’s a definite found-family vibe to the Carpathia‘s crew, even though not everyone in the crew is equally accepting.

I especially like the way Xandri’s touch sensitivity is handled – like other aspects of “Failure to Communicate,” it isn’t black and white, but presents differently in different circumstance, and doesn’t desexualize her. Xandri’s autistic traits in general are present consistently and depicted through all the little details of her social environment, from the ship’s AI making sure there are satin patches she can stim with on her clothes, to her bodyguards having to remind her to eat, to the meltdowns she experiences several times at stressful points without losing her agency.

Xandri just feels relatable to me in ways that kept surprising me. Not every autistic protagonist – not even every well-written autistic protagonist – is the same, which is to be expected, since real people on the spectrum are so different. I often appreciate the way a character is depicted without identifying with them especially closely. But for whatever reason, Xandri as a character just kept on making me go, “Yep, that’s what I’d probably do. That’s how I’d react to that. …Yep.” This was an unfamiliar feeling.

I’m struggling to talk about the story’s plot instead of just listing all the mess of details that felt wonderful and accepting and real.

One other thing that I loved about it is even harder to talk about, and it also involves a PLOT TWIST, so I’m putting it behind a spoiler cut.

Continue reading “Autistic Book Party, Episode 44: Failure to Communicate”

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Short Story Smorgasbord: Special Rhysling Nominees Edition!

Last year I listed the autistic speculative poets who were nominees for the 2017 Rhysling award. This year it’s almost time for the 2018 nominees to be announced! But before that happens, I want to take you on a retrospective of Rhysling (and Dwarf Stars) nominations from before 2017. Because some of the most accomplished speculative poets of our time are autistic, and that’s awesome.

This is an incomplete list, mostly for reasons of convenience. For instance, AJ Odasso has many more nominations than this, but I don’t have easy access to a print or electronic copy of many of them right now. Similarly, all three of these poets have large back catalogs of poetry, and I couldn’t possibly review every single poem they have published. Hopefully picking the award-nominated ones is as good as way as any to deliver a suitable highlight reel.

*

Rose Lemberg, “Odysseus on the War Train” (Abyss & Apex, July 2008). A subversive take on the Greek myth of Odysseus, and on the damage warriors do both to those they fight and to those they leave behind. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “Burns at Both Ends” (Star*Line, January 2009). This poem is also the opening poem of “Marginalia to Stone Bird”; it is a paean to intensity, and to using the poet’s talents as they prefer and see fit, not as any concerned people would have them be used. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “Godfather Death” (Goblin Fruit, Fall 2009). A poem about a boy who becomes Death’s godson, and a doctor. Intertextual, slyly silly, and genuinely poignant. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “Walrus” (Trapeze magazine, August 2010). A… dancing walrus?! This is short and cute, and it was nominated for the Dwarf Stars award. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “Twin-Born” (Goblin Fruit, Fall 2010). A myth of birds and blood, grief and flawed creation and desire. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “In the Third Cycle” (Strange Horizons, September 2011). A complex love triangle unfolding over multiple lifetimes, and a part of the Journeymaker Cycle. This poem is not only a Rhysling nominee, but also won the Rannu competition. [Recommended-2]

AJ Odasso, “Parallax” (Stone Telling, March 2012). A poem about gender euphoria! Also about constellations and the liminality of never quite belonging to any accepted category. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “Between the Mountain and the Moon” (Strange Horizons, July 2012). A lyrical love myth involving cats, moon goddesses, ritual dance, and a volcano. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “I will show you a single treasure from the treasures of Shah Niyaz” (Goblin Fruit, Summer 2013). The story of all the different forms of labor from all sorts of different people that went into the making and acquisition of a beautiful tapestry. While a single wealthy ruler locks the tapestry away, the poorer people who created such beauty continue with their lives. This one was not only nominated for the Rhysling, but won third place in the long category. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “The Journeymaker, Climbing” (Goblin Fruit, Winter 2013). A small (this one’s a Dwarf Star nominee) poem of a journey up a mountain, with mink and crows and trees and beautiful language throughout. [Recommended-2]

AJ Odasso, “Queen of Cups” (inkscrawl, March 2014). A short poem of uncertainty and longing, of the desire to travel and the struggle to believe that you’ll find what you travel for. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “Landwork” (Goblin Fruit, Spring 2014). A gorgeously written tale of a person who stitches broken land back together, quietly doing their healer’s work though that very quietness causes other mages to scoff at them. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “Dualities” (Mythic Delirium, October 2014). I mentioned the theme of doubling in my review of Lemberg’s collection, “Marginalia to Stone Bird”. This poem is a prime example, describing the resonance of two people in two different universes who are somehow aware of each other, and whose lives follow inexplicable parallels. [Recommended-2]

Bogi Takács, “You are Here / Was: Blue Line to Memorial Park” (Strange Horizons, November 2014). This poem is a fantastic technical achievement – when a reader clicks “PROCEED”, the words individually rearrange themselves into a completely different but equally intelligible version. Both versions together tell an eerie and evocative story about a war memorial inside a hollow planetoid. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “Archival Testimony Fragments/Minersong” (Uncanny, January 2015). One of Lemberg’s rare forays into science fiction, this is a creepy and beautiful poem about an ancient sentient spaceship crushed under rock where miners are poised to rediscover it. [Recommended-2]

Bogi Takács, “The Iterative Nature of the Magical Discovery Process” (Through the Gate, March 2015). This is a seemingly cute poem about a lesbian couple experimenting with magic to make them fly. It does much more than it appears to at first glance, treating magic very naturalistically as a scientific process, complete with false starts and partial solutions. There’s some gorgeous description of food, a beautiful supportive relationship between the protagonists, and even sneaky math re-inscribed as magical incantations. [Recommended-2]

Rose Lemberg, “Long Shadow” (Strange Horizons, March 2015). OOF. This poem is a LOT – it’s long, and epic, and deals with the aftermath of war and trauma in a way that defies easy answers, or even the idea of answers at all. It’s also an instalment in the epic Journeymaker Cycle; it can stand on its own, but there are parts that will mean more if you have “Marginalia to Stone Bird” and can devour all the Journeymaker poems at once. This is one of my favorite speculative poems ever. [Recommended-2]

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MONSTERS IN MY MIND: Story notes, part 41 and 42

41. Centipede Girl

Centipede Girl has hands, feet, teeth, a tummy, just like a real girl. Forgets they are there, sometimes.

This is the infamous “centipede story” – the one that my family loudly refuses to read. In their defense, it is a story about people who congenitally have centipedes crawling all over them. The core of the story is less about OH NO BUGS, and more about loneliness – but that doesn’t mean it’s a pleasant read.

I hate centipedes, actually. They might be my least favorite animal ever. (My primary partner, Dave, says that this is unfair to the centipedes – like spiders, house centipedes do good deeds by eating up all of the other bugs that would otherwise infest the home.) The story was inspired by a large centipede that crawled brazenly right out on my keyboard WHILE I WAS TYPING something or other to one of my RPG friends.

(“Brb hunting for giant centipede,” I wrote, after screaming and falling off my chair, and then losing track of where the thing had gone. The friend in question, whose changeling sorcerer had a habit of casting Summon Monster I to produce fiendish centipedes, was bemused.)

After this happened, I spent a few days hypervigilant and imagining centipedes everywhere, even falling off my body or scurrying up to help retrieve small items. At which point I decided that my bug-related misery had become outlandish enough to be worth sharing with the world. I added a poignant motivation for my centipede-y protagonist, and a weird, ungrammatical narrative voice (I blame the latter on the fact that I’d just discovered China Miéville), and I was off to the races.

“Centipede Girl” appeared in the Journal of Unlikely Entomology and was reprinted in Imaginarium 2012: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing – the first of my stories ever to do so, or to achieve any similar type of critical acclaim. This only made the loud declarations of “I’LL READ ANYTHING OF YOURS EXCEPT THE CENTIPEDE STORY, EW EW EW” even funnier.

Recently, though, my father announced to me that he has put a copy of MONSTERS IN MY MIND on the end table next to his chair. On evenings when he has the spare brain cycles (my father being even more disabled than I am), he intends to sit down and, bit by bit, read the full collection.

“All The Things,” he said loyally, “even centipede girl.”

Song Pairing: As chosen by Unlikely Story’s editors during their Year of Bugmusic, the theme song for “Centipede Girl” is Dolores O’Rioran’s “Centipede Sisters”.

42. The Changeling’s Escape

A winding aisle through pillar-trees
to lie in hallowed darkness
as the summer creatures hum.

This poem was inspired by an actual episode of autistic “wandering” that happened when I was old enough to know better, but evidently still didn’t. (I just assumed it would be obvious that the dark woods were freakin’ gorgeous and I need to go into them RIGHT THEN – or, at the very least, that my family would see where I went. Oops.)

The first draft of the poem was much more defiant against parents not understanding, etc, but that aspect of it didn’t resonate with readers. The version that was eventually published – in the now-sadly-defunct Ideomancer – tells a more satisfying, and also more fictional, story. There’s more historically plausible (and unrelated-to-my-actual-life) detail given as to why the child in the story would want to leave her family – but the focus also remains firmly off them, and on the present and future.

MONSTERS IN MY MIND is available for purchase on Amazon, Kobo, Indigo,  Barnes and Noble, and in Autonomous Press’s Shopify store.

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New Poem and Notes: “chill im a nice person I just hate everybody”

My new poem, “chill im a nice person I just hate everybody,” is up today in Issue #15 of Liminality.

This is a poem about Tay, the Microsoft Twitterbot that was released in 2016 and unexpectedly turned into a Nazi. The Liminality editors were thoughtful enough to include a link to the Wikipedia in the poem’s dedication, to provide a refresher for readers who might not remember what this is about or who the narrator is. Obviously, given the subject matter, this is a poem that may be triggering to some readers. I’m not actually sure how to warn for all of the different things, so maybe just read the Wikipedia article first and see if you feel up to it.

I work with text generation and (in a limited way) social media in my own computer science research, but I am not a Microsoft employee, and I have never been involved in a project similar to this one. Much of the poem’s content is fanciful. (I do not seriously ascribe consciousness to a bot like Tay, for instance; nor do I believe that Tay ever referred to her group of programmers as “Mother.”) I am hopeful that the artistic liberties I’ve taken in service of making my points can be distinguished from the points themselves.

The title is in quotes because it is a direct quote from the actual, real-life Tay.

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MONSTERS IN MY MIND: Story notes, part 38 and 40

38. Zori Server

On Zori Server you could drive a candy-colored Cadillac down a cloud into a forest of razor-leafed steel trees, then climb down a ladder into a cozy wood-paneled reading room and have your nails done by a wide-eyed robot.

Not much to say about this one. It’s a pretty standard tale of a teenager who runs into faeries – the nasty, deadly, tricksy kind – in a VR world. After all, if we can jack in, maybe other things can, too.

Song Pairing: This one is tricky, because most songs I know about VR worlds are the ominous, “technology is scary and controls you” kind. Or else they’re about online love/sex, which is fine, but is not what this story is about. Or maybe that’s just me not listening to genres that have nuance. In “Zori Server,” the VR community is mostly a positive thing, as long as you are aware of the dangers.

I guess I’m just gonna go with Star One’s “Down the Rabbit Hole,” which is vaguely Matrix-y but doesn’t mess it up with words.

40. Sage and Coco

But looking at her, even at her worst, gives me this sharp assurance, stronger than any magic I’ve ever done. Whatever good I can give her, I will.

“Sage and Coco” is a story about witches! Witches who are raising an adorable baby together and have to protect her from some sort of demon thing. I’ve been told that the witches in the story are more like real-life witches than standard urban fantasy witches. I did do research, both online and by quizzing actual witches with whom I was acquainted at the time, but I also took many artistic liberties. It’s still a work of fantasy, not realism, magical or otherwise.

I have always really enjoyed writing characters with limited speech and seeing how much meaning I can still convey. Sage, being a fairly typical toddler, gave me lots to play with in this regard.

“Sage and Coco” was published on the Kazka Press website, which appears to be defunct now. Readers should be warned that there is a sexual assault in a character’s backstory in this one, though it is not shown on the page.

Song Pairing: The song I associate with this one, thanks to the protective mommy protagonist, is Alanis Morissette’s “Guardian“.

MONSTERS IN MY MIND is available for purchase on Amazon, Kobo, Indigo,  Barnes and Noble, and in Autonomous Press’s Shopify store.

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New Poem: “The Sentry”

I have a new poem out, called “The Sentry”, commissioned by one of my Patreon backers. It’s about a stuffed animal belonging to a grown woman, and it is so adorable you will get cavities.

In June, “The Sentry” will become free to the public; until then, only my $5+ Patreon backers get early access. Backers at this level also get access to many reprints not available anywhere else online.

This is the first time I’ve done this particular thing, and I’m interested to see how it goes.

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Autism News, 07/03/2018

An accidental trilogy of posts about intelligence, IQ, and oppression:

Other posts about disability and oppression:

Elizabeth Bartmess on good autistic representation in fiction: a three-part series

Movie and television reviews:

Posts about bad parents and their memoirs of their bad parenting:

Other media and reviews:

On the Parkland shooting:

On intersections within autism:

Misc:

  • Shira Rubin on autism therapy robots  (There is more pathologizing language in this article than I would like, especially at first, but it also has some interesting information, especially where it lists potential problems with the robots.)
  • For Black History Month, Finn Gardiner tells the story of “Blind Tom” Wiggins, who may have been an autistic savant
  • Amy Sequenzia on the difference between “independent living” and real independence