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Columnists

Sources of Inspiration: The Three Davids

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I saw three statues of the same David in Florence last June. One was the original in the Accademia in Florence, done by Michelangelo. You may recognize him. He’s quite famous. Many fans from many different lands gather at his feet. They crowd around him, trying to get the best shot of his marble magnificence. I particularly liked this angle. I saw his marble twin, his copy down in the Piazza Signoria in Florence later. He was created to face the wear and tear of the elements, along with the abuse of the living. (The winged living can be particularly … Read more

Queer Fantasy Roots: Shapeshifters, Mpreg, and Artificial Gestation in Medieval Welsh Literature

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We don’t often think of medieval romance (in the genre sense, not the emotional sense) as being a hotbed of queer themes, but try this on for size. As magical punishment for committing and abetting a sexual assault, two brothers are condemned to be transformed into pairs of animals–male and female in alternation–to learn to overcome their bestial nature and gain a deeper appreciation of women’s experiences. Cycling through the forms of deer, then pigs, then wolves, they take turns begetting and bearing sons, until all of them–the brothers Gwydion and Gilfaethwy and their three offspring–are returned to human form. … Read more

Asta’s Annotations: The Death of Punctuation, or the Decline of the Reader?

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Anyone who knows me well will know semicolons are punctuation marks about which my views are passionate. Unfortunately, many digital/small publishing houses do not appear to agree. Notes from editors frequently come through to me with requests to remove all (or at least some) of my semicolons since they are ‘specialised punctuation’. My response to this (in my head) is to ask: Since when? Now, this column is by no means intended as a rant against any publishers or fellow editors; I merely use it to illustrate a point. I fully accept that each publishing house has its own preferences, … Read more

Boogieman In Lavender: The Strange Bust of HP Lovecraft

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(I wish to thank the folks at the Gahan Wilson website for their kind permission to use the photo of the World Fantasy Award shown here.) The World Fantasy Awards were established in 1975. The award is a bust of legendary horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, designed by mordant cartoonist Gahan Wilson (himself no slouch as a writer!) For about twenty years there was no fuss, but now Lovecraft is being replaced. More than likely because of racial attitudes which cannot simply be dismissed by the fact that this was a man born in 1890 who lived until 1937. But … Read more

Ayres and Graces: He/She/They

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Pronouns seem to be getting a lot of attention for something that on the surface seems like it should be straight (ha!) forward. So if you’re writing a story about trans, non-binary, or genderqueer people, how do you know which pronouns to use? How do you let your reader know these characters’ identities without bopping them over the head with a grammar lesson? It sounds like it should be easy, but things can get confusing if you’re unfamiliar with non cis-gendered people and how they prefer to be addressed. But not to worry, it’s very simple to know which pronouns … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Planck’s No So Constant

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Something pretty awesome happened recently in the science world that must be driving student and hobbyist physicists and quantum mechanics bonkers. Teams from both Imperial College London and Trinity College Dublin discovered a new form of light. The science is pretty wild. A team took a particle of light and bound it to an electron in a process that I, personally, can’t quite wrap my head around. It’s awesome.  Already, data communication companies are sniffing around this breakthrough because of its implications for faster and more secure transmissions. But that’s just the short term. This new light particle can do … Read more

Angel’s Bits – SF covers retrospective

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We were talking about covers the other day – the good, the bad, and the merely horrendous – which made me think of SF covers and how you can often pinpoint an edition’s decade by the cover art. Early SF cover art was largely the realm of pulp magazines, which then became pulp novels. Cheap art in a time when jobs were scarce and money tight. Oh, the places we’ve been since then… The 1930’s see the beginning of pulp art – flashy, colorful, eye-catching sometimes to the point of being lurid. Thoughts about space travel and vehicles were sketchy … Read more

We Already Have the Wheel: Werewolves and Toxic Masculinity

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John Allenson

We Already Have the Wheel. Werewolves and Toxic Masculinity.  Growing Hair in Funny Places. The western werewolf myth has been incredibly stable for most of its history up until the turn of the last millennia.  Most of the stories, legends, and court cases reflect the same understanding of what it means to be a werewolf going back to the Greek legends of King Lycaon. The main stream of the King Lycaon story, with many regional differences is this:  Zeus (sometimes with Hermes) appears in the city of King Lycaon.  The king doubts that the person claiming to be Zeus is … Read more

Dispatches from Hogwarts G.S.A.: When is queer tragedy cliché?

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Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian

We were recently drawn into pondering this question while reading Kai Ashante Wilson’s The Sorcerer of Wildeeps and looking at the book’s Goodreads reviews. One review stood out because it gushed about the book, but the reader said the tragic ending kept her from giving it five stars because (paraphrased) hasn’t gay tragedy been done enough already? Spoilers: One interpretation is that the main character Demane’s love interest dies at the end, though our take was the story left a sliver of hope he could have survived. Reviews of course are subjective, every reader is entitled to her opinion, and … Read more

Ayres & Graces: Queer Author Ryan Vance

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Writing and getting published is hard for every writer, but queer writers face unique challenges in the publishing industry. Ryan Vance, editor of the e-zine The Queen’s Head and The Island Review, is here today to discuss some of the challenges he’s faced as a gay man in the writing community. What challenges have you personally faced as a queer writer? I’m queer. It informs my experience of the world, and the stories I go on to tell, and those stories have as much worth as any pre-existing norm I might have unintentionally adopted. It’s worth stating from the outset … Read more