What I Wrote in 2015

2015 was a vast improvement on 2014, but also a full and difficult year for me personally. I published two conference papers and traveled internationally to present both of them (in computer science, unlike most academic fields, conferences are where most of the action happens). I defended the equivalent of a thesis proposal. I ended a seven-year-long romantic relationship, and there turned out to be messy fallout and consequences to having done so. I finished the draft of a novel I had been working with, on and off, since 2012 (it is now out with beta readers). I started a new relationship, which did not last, but which instead became a wonderful friendship. I adopted a cat. I worked, constantly, on repairing my mental health, and enjoyed both successes and setbacks. These are just the things I feel comfortable mentioning in a public post; there was much more. Unlike in 2014, I did not enter the year with a backlog of finished and publishable work that I could use to disguise the times when I didn’t feel able to write.

I was going to use this list of things as an apology for not having published more. Then I thought about that. Why should I? Many people had even more difficult years in 2015 than I did, yet published more than this. And the reverse. There are many authors I deeply respect who have had years – sometimes more than one year in a row! – of publishing nothing at all, with no explanation given. It does not make me respect them less or like their work less. It does not make me wonder if they are still “real writers”. It’s just a year with less work from a person whose work I enjoy. It happens. When it’s not me, I understand this. So if I don’t think less of writers who publish less than me – why on earth should I assume that anyone who matters will think less of me?

So, here is what I wrote that was published this year. Quod scripsi, scripsi.

Short Story

The single fiction story I published this year was “Lady Blue and the Lampreys“, in The Exile Book of New Canadian Noir. It is weird fiction involving a gender-flipped Bluebeard, some three-headed soul-eating lamprey-people, and Verdi’s Requiem.

Poetry

I also published a few poems:

Ekpyrotic Theory” in Lakeside Circus. Love, astrophysics, and the beginning of time.

Octopi Viewing a Submersible” in Strange Horizons. What it says on the can, and in alliterative Germanic verse to boot.

A third poem, “Kraken Quatrain” (again, what it says on the can), will appear in Issue #62 of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine. This issue has been assembled and gone to the printers, but is not yet quite released. Hopefully it will be out before the end of the year – but, if not, then I suppose I’ll simply have a head start on my publication credits for 2016.

I already have a few works lined up to be published in early 2016, including more poetry and a steampunk story with an autistic protagonist coming up in GigaNotoSaurus. I am continuing to work, and I feel hopeful and optimistic that I will be able to increase my visible output from here.

Autistic Book Party, Episode 19 and a half: Short Story Smorgasbord!

Jim C. Hines, “Chupacabra’s Song” (Kaleidoscope anthology, 2014; also available by itself on Amazon and Smashwords)

A story about Nicola Pallas – a minor character from the Libriomancer series – her father’s veterinary clinic, and her discovery of magic. Nicola is visibly different, humming, waving her hands, and going nonverbal under stress. She’s also shown as significantly more human, and more compassionate, than the apparently NT wizards she encounters, and she ends up outsmarting them. There’s a theme of acceptance here, but it doesn’t hit you over the head. [Recommended]

*

Bogi Takács, “The Need for Overwhelming Sensation” (Capricious, issue 1, September 2015)

[Autistic author.] Autism is not foregrounded in this story, but I did read the narrator as autistic due to eir sensory seeking, intense anxiety when confronted with uncertain/unfamiliar things, the use of a weighted blanket, and other things. Regardless of whether you read it that way or not, it’s a nice story of a nonbinary-gendered person in a queer D/S relationship on a magical spaceship, who gets swept up in events when a political dignitary abruptly requests passage on eir ship for mysterious reasons. I enjoyed it. [Recommended]

*

Addison Trev, “The Beachcomber of Dong Hoi” (Breath & Shadow, volume 12 issue 4, fall 2015)

[Autistic author.] This is the story of a mentally disabled beachcomber and his weekly routine; a speculative element emerges only near the end. It is a story which is told with precise detail and empathy, and which takes the title character’s concerns seriously. Many developmentally disabled people do end up in life roles like this one, in which they vaguely eke out an existence on the margins of society. It’s important that these characters be portrayed with the kind of dignity that Trev’s narration provides. I did find the ending a bit facile, and some of its implications unfortunate – but it’s the ending that hammers home that yes, this really IS intentionally an autism story. [YMMV]

*

Rose Lemberg, “The Shapes of Us, Translucent to Your Eye” (The Journal of Unlikely Academia, October 2015)

[Autistic author.] This is a sharp and biting commentary on Western academia which will have academic readers glumly nodding their heads in recognition. An autistic student, or perhaps the ghost of an autistic student, plays a brief but pivotal role. It has to do with the politics of who is and is not welcomed in academic spaces, rather than with who the student is as a person – but is still, I suspect, of great interest to the kind of person who reads Autistic Book Party. [Marginal, but I liked it]

*

A.C. Wise, “And If the Body Were Not The Soul” (Clarkesworld, October 2015)

I, for once, was dense and did not read the protagonist in this story as autistic – but his asexuality and unusual sensory/bodily experience are impossible to miss. A lot of commenters, including autistic commenters, did see autism. (It could be because my own experience as an autistic person does not include Ro’s kind of touch-phobia – but it is a real and common experience for many!) Whatever you want to call Ro, he’s portrayed with nuance and respect. He is not protrayed as broken or less than the characters who enjoy touch, even if he is insecure enough to feel that way at times – and his insecurity, while providing background tension, is not the driving conflict of the story. Instead, Ro gets to do cool things, make decisions with agency, get involved in racial politics, and figure things out about aliens. [Recommended]

On Mary Robinette Kowal’s Convention Accessibility Pledge

I was aware of this pledge when it first came out, but I didn’t talk much about it at first. For those of you who have been out of the loop: it is a pledge, much like the harassment-policy pledge that went around a year or two ago, that the people signing will not attend a convention unless it has an acceptable accessibility policy. This is in response to a long-term pattern of many conventions failing to meet basic accessibility needs even when directly asked.

Even though I talk about disability stuff all the time here, I was hesitant at first. I felt defensive. Conventions are hard for me, as an autistic person, but they’re not impossible. I’ve invested a lot of energy in finding ways to attend that are possible for me – that is to say, ways that are draining and that fall well short of the level of participation I would like to have, but that I am physically capable of doing. Not every disabled fan is so lucky, but was I supposed to give up what I had worked for? Was I supposed to just… pretend that I couldn’t do those things, and quietly vanish, because I don’t deserve to be at a convention unless they already decided to be good at disability stuff without me?

Then I read this post by Rose Lemberg, realized how much of my objection was just me parroting other people’s ableist stuff back at myself, got over myself, and signed the stupid pledge.

It’s disgraceful that we talk about being an inclusive fandom and wanting ~*diversity*~, but still do not provide for people’s basic needs. It needs to change.

If you have gotten anything useful out of my disability-related posts here, I would ask you to thoughtfully consider also signing.

Updates

These were meant to be my end-of-November updates, but either life happened, or I procrastinated; I am increasingly unsure if there is a difference. It seems that every meaningful activity takes time that could be used by some other meaningful activity; this does not negate its meaning. Life is, by and large, going well. As my mental health and personal life slowly and painfully improve, as my ability to get things done at school slowly improves, as my private writing life also improves, my ability to be present and available in my writer persona on social media has deteriorated. I do not know why.

Anyway, my poem “Octopi Viewing a Submersible” has garnered some positive attention. Charles Payseur at Quick Sip Reviews had some flattering things to say about it. Diane Severson Mori at Amazing Stories also gave the poem a nod in her “Women Destroy Hard SF Poetry” post (which is not affiliated with Lightspeed Magazine’s “X destroy Y” series).

Charlotte Ashley has also posted an interview with me to help promote the Friends of the Merril Short Story Contest. In this interview, I discuss my story “The Mother of All Squid Builds a Library“, which won the contest in 2013, and went on to be published in Strange Horizons. I also say a little about what is going on in my writing life now.

Autism News: 2015/11/17

Some book news to start us off this news cycle!

The CDC recently revised its estimates of autism prevalence to 1 in 45, which is a higher prevalence than the previous estimate after a long period of prevalence estimates continuing to rise.

An ABA therapist published an article on a site called Autism Daily Newscast about “perks kids with autism get from bullying”. The article, rightfully, got a lot of critical responses from autistic people who had experienced bullying as children. Here are some good ones:

Here’s some pan-disability stuff:

Misc:

Autistic Book Party, Episode 20: The Children Star

The Book: “The Children Star” by Joan Slonczewski

The Plot: A religious colony on an inhospitable world – and the mysterious intelligent life that might exist on that world – are threatened by corporate machinations.

Autistic Character(s): ‘jum, a young orphan who is brought into the colony at the age of six.

“The Children Star” is an environmentalist plot with a large cast, similar to Slonczewski’s slightly better-known book, “A Door Into Ocean”. (In fact, it occurs hundreds/thousands of years later in the same universe, though knowledge of the previous book is not necessary.) ‘jum, despite appearing in the book’s very first scene, is only a secondary character; the main protagonist is Rod, a grown-up monk who helps manage the colony.

What can we say about ‘jum? Not too much. She’s methodical, curious, and has a savant mathematical ability. She’s also deeply traumatized (she was impoverished, a child laborer, and a target of street violence to begin with, and then the entire rest of her family died of a prion plague). She’s suspicious of other people, and makes a habit of carrying rocks in her pocket to throw in self-defense. That’s about the sum of what we know about her for most of the book. She gets screen time (even as a POV character), learns/discovers things, gains skills, forms allegiances, and seems to have plenty to do. I’m having trouble explaining why, despite this, I feel like something big is missing for ‘jum.

Maybe, in order to talk about what’s missing for ‘jum, I need to talk about what’s missing for Rod. Rod feels great love and protectiveness towards children, and is always trying to save just one more (which is how ‘jum gets in despite being over the recommended age). As soon as we touch down in Rod’s colony, though, we start to see problems with how he puts those feelings of care into action.

Two of the boys were running out, ten-year-old Chae and four-year-old T’kun… Then little Gaea dragged herself through the dust on her arms, her paralyzed legs trailing behind her. Gaea had spina bifida–Brother Geode had thrown up his woolly arms when Rod picked that one, but so it was. The colony would have enough to fix her, someday.

So. Uh. Yeah. Accomodations? What are those? Apparently this colony’s way of dealing with disability is to take disabled children in, cross your fingers hoping you can cure them at some vague point in the future, and until then, they can just LITERALLY CRAWL ON THE GROUND, no big deal. That’s what everyone does when they’re low on resources, right?

The colony’s attitude towards ‘jum is not much better. Of course they love her! She is one of the family! But when it comes to understanding or accommodating ‘jum’s autism, very little actually happens.

‘jum has problems adjusting to her new surroundings, as any traumatized child would. The biggest problems come from her interactions with the other children. ‘jum either warily avoids them, or crosses her eyes when they approach in order to study her own perception. In response, the other children laugh at her, taunt her, even physically shove her. Which results in her throwing rocks. It’s not a very good interaction.

So what is Rod’s response to this interaction? Not much. The other children’s behaviour gets shrugged off without correction or discipline. ‘jum herself is basically told to try harder and stop avoiding the other children. In Rod’s opinion, it is ‘jum’s social withdrawal that is the root of the problem, not the actual bullying.

As a strategy for fixing a bullying situation, this works about as well as it’s ever worked in real life. Which is to say, not at all:

“‘jum still keeps to herself too much,” Geode went on. “She won’t look at another child without crossing her eyes. Of course the others make fun of her. And then-” Geode shook his head.
“She hit Pomu’s leg this time,” said Haemum. “He needed three stitches. I’m sorry–I’ll watch her better.”

None of which actually convinces Rod that maybe he should enact some sort of actual anti-bullying policy, or help the children to mutually resolve their differences and understand each other, or anything like that. Instead, he comes out with this gem:

Suddenly, Rod wished he had left her to die on Scarecrow Hill. She was half-dead then; a day or two more would have ended her misery, and never brought the colony the burden of this traumatized child. The depth of his own feeling surprised and shocked him. Whatever good he might do was all useless in the end, if he could feel such hardness toward one suffering human being.
But the girl was alive, here; and somehow she had to be dealt with along with the tumbleround and the defunct lightcraft. A voice from long ago welled up within Rod, the voice of his old Academy Master. He held ‘jum by the wrists and made her face him. “Listen. You are one of us, and you will live by our rules. Do you understand?”

Look. Just.

If you are writing a book about a person caring for an autistic child, and your caretaking character is supposed to be sympathetic, DO NOT DO THIS. Do not show your character wishing their child was dead. It is not okay. Why not? Because when people believe that wishing autistic children dead is normal and reasonable and something any sufficiently stressed-out character would do under the circumstances, they end up actually murdering their autistic children. Okay? Just… don’t do this, even rhetorically. Don’t. Please.

(Also, do not physically grab autistic children and push them around so you can yell in their face, and do not use yelling in their face as a solution to an ongoing problem which basically consists of them being bullied and trying to defend themselves. But by this point in the review, I think those are givens.)

In case you are worried, things do end up getting better for ‘jum. Mainly because she ends up no longer living with stupid Rod and instead doing interesting scientific research with a lady who is not part of the colony. The same lady also manages to cure Gaea’s spina bifida with magic plants, so, yay.

It’s an ensemble cast, and I don’t think it was the author’s intent for us to think that Rod is always right about everything. He’s a flawed protagonist who tries hard, suffers a fair bit, gets in his own way, and is sometimes (very gently) called on his bullshit by other characters. He is critical of himself, in these cases, and takes the correction. However, no one – even the lady who ends up adopting ‘jum – ever ends up calling him, even a little, on the way he treats ‘jum. Nor is ‘jum shown having any particularly interesting internal thoughts about the matter. Of course I can’t read Joan Slonczewski’s mind, but one ends up with the strong impression that, rather than being an intentional depiction of an ableist society, these parts of the book are simply an authorial blind spot.

‘jum herself is okay, I guess, but readers who have any experience of autism should probably pass this one over.

The Verdict: Not Recommended

For a list of past/future/possible Autistic Book Party books, or to recommend a new one, click here.

Short Story Spotlight: “Geometries of Belonging”

The Story: Rose Lemberg, “Geometries of Belonging” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, October 1, 2015)

A year and a half ago, when I reviewed “Twelve Seconds” by Tina Gower, I commented on how the story surprised me by subverting the cure decision narrative when I didn’t think that was possible. “Geometries of Belonging” subverts it in yet another way – or, perhaps more accurately, averts it.

In “Geometries”, Healer Parét, the protagonist, is a mind-healer who can magically cure people of all sorts of mental ailments. But Parét’s cures are imperfect, and impermanent, and often have to be repeated – and, most importantly, Parét never heals without the patient’s consent.

This gets Parét into trouble when he meets a genderqueer autistic teenager named Dedéi – a patient whose parents and grandparents want a cure (both for their gender and for their neurotype), but who desperately and emphatically does not want to be cured, and is capable of saying so, loudly and repeatedly.

Approximately zero story time is spent on the decision of whether to perform or not perform a cure. It is obvious to Dedéi that they do not want to be cured, and it is obvious to Parét that he will not perform mind-healing on a patient like Dedéi who does not want it. The conflict in the story comes, not from agonizing over what it would be appropriate to do with Dedéi, but from the fallout and social consequences of Dedéi and Parét both sticking to their principles. Dedéi’s grandfather is powerful, and the suggested cure is actually a proxy for political machinations which turn out to be quite complex, devious, and sinister indeed.

Aside from the bones of the plot, it’s worth studying the way Parét talks about Dedéi, as a narrator who sees much more about minds and the brokennesses of minds than most people, and who accurately assesses Dedéi’s abilities and differences, yet remains respectful in his descriptions:

She is not calm—her hands shake a bit on the vine, but she is strong, and she maintains her grip. Her speech is mostly flat, but there is intonation. She speaks clearest when she is uninterrupted, and says the most about a topic she loves. She repeats, yes—it seems easier for her to repeat than to make new sentences—but it is not nonsensical. We are having a conversation. She attends to my words and responds in turn.

I see nothing in Dedéi that would merit shame and secrecy and threats of remaking. And just how isolated has she been?

(Note on out of context pronouns: Parét refers to Dedéi as “she” because the language in which Dedéi and their family speak lacks gender-neutral pronouns; later in the story, this decision is reversed, and Dedéi is referred to more properly as “they”.)

Parét himself is not exactly neurotypical (probably allistic, but deeply depressed, reluctant to heal himself, and in need of prompting from his romantic partner in order to take initiative in most matters). His thoughts on minds, magic, and brokenness in general are very interesting. This is a good story on its own merits; but it’s especially worthwhile reading for anyone who is playing with magic systems and wants to understand how mind-healing magic and acceptance of neurodiversity could respectfully coexist.

The Verdict: Recommended

Can*Con 2015 notes!

A big hello to everyone I met at Can*Con 2015 in Ottawa these past 3 days – both the people I met for the first time, and those who recognized me from elsewhere. (Sorry I couldn’t stay for the Sunday programming – I’m literally typing this on the train back home because I live quite a ways from Ottawa these days and have some work obligations on Monday.)

I promised book/story recommendations to everyone at the autism panel, and then we ran out of time for me to list more than a few – so, for the benefit of Derek Newman-Stille and everyone else who was interested, here’s a quick list of Stories With Well Written Autistic Characters Who Do Things Besides Being Autistic. (I think it’s very important, in addition to saying “here’s what we want more of,” to point out the people who have already been doing it.)

First, I will start with a few mainstream SF novels. Fitz Wahram in “2312” by Kim Stanley Robinson is an autistic person who does lots of cool things like being a future politician, solving a mystery, and having a romance with another (not autistic, but not neurotpical) character. Similarly, Kio Masada from “This Alien Shore” by C.S. Friedman is an autistic computer expert who comes from a planet where everyone is non-neurotypical in some way, and where their entire culture is structured around this. Both of these authors (IMO) write their characters very well.

Rose Lemberg has several short stories out this year, in her Birdverse setting, with well-realized autistic characters. “Grandmother nai-Leylit’s Cloth of Winds” contains a minimally verbal autistic child who is treated with respect by their family, while a major plot point in “Geometries of Belonging” involves an autistic teenager who successfully resists a family that wants to force them to be cured. Both of these were published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Meda Kahn writes very hard-hitting short stories about autistic adults dealing with prejudice and institutionalization. Her stories “Difference of Opinion” and “That’s Entertainment” were both published in Strange Horizons.

Erika Hammerschmidt’s book, “Kea’s Flight”, centers around a group of autistic and otherwise non-neurotypical children being raised together on a spaceship.

Luna Lindsey’s short stories “Touch of Tides” and “Meltdown in Freezer Three” both have well-written protagonists in various places on the autism spectrum who do interesting jobs and have adventures.

Tina Gower’s short story “Twelve Seconds” is an interesting subversion of cure stories, starring an autistic man who works at a police department and who both benefits and suffers from the treatments and accomodations available to him.

Except for this last one and the two big books in the first paragraph, all of these were written by authors who are openly autistic themselves.

If you want more than this, the full list of books and stories I have reviewed – both positive and negative – is available here. If you want EVEN MORE, you might want to have a look at my Autistic Book List.

My Can*Con 2015 Schedule

Yep, I’ll be at Can*Con 2015 in Ottawa this coming weekend. I sadly won’t be able to stay to the end of the weekend due to work obligations, but you should be able to catch me Friday night or most of the time Saturday. I’ll be around.

Saturday, 10:00 AM: Amazing Short Fiction You Really Ought To Be Reading. The internet has given short fiction a real shot in the arm, and forms up to novella are making a big come-back. Panelists discuss remarkable works you’re missing out on. Nathan Burgoine, Ada Hoffmann, Amy Sisson, Amal El-Mohtar (m)

Saturday, 12:00 PM: Computational Creativity. Ada Lovelace said that a computer can’t create anything new. Today’s AI researchers are challenging that assumption by creating computer systems that can paint pictures, write poetry, compose music, and more. Are these computers creative, or does the creativity belong to their programmers? What would a computer have to do to be “really” creative? In this talk, we will see paintings made by robots, hear music improvised by them, and other cool things that challenge our notions of both art and intelligence. Ada Hoffmann

Saturday, 1:00 PM: Autism and its Portrayal in Fiction, TV, and Movies. What is autism and how accurately or inaccurately is it portrayed in the various fictional media. Ada Hoffmann, Leo Valiquette, Derek Newman-Stille (m), Robin Riopelle, Jennifer Carole Lewis