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Initially Yours, On Beyond Cisgender VI Jeff Baker, Boogieman in Lavender

Initially Yours: On Beyond Cisgender VI by Jeff Baker NOTE: This occasional series was inspired in 2019 by suggestion from A. M. Leibowitz about a reading list for High School beyond the straight, male paradigm. —jsb I am writing this during March 2023, which is Woman’s History Month. So here (a month or so late!) is a short overview of some (not all!) of the women who wrote sci-fi for the pulps and a little later. I fits in well with this ongoing series “On Beyond Cisgender” which started as recommendations for High School reading but these books are fine … Read more

Two Briggon Snow Podcasts – Boogieman in Lavender

Look Up & Roommates – Two Briggon Snow Podcasts Radio drama, the “theater of the mind” is alive and well, in podcast form anyway. Back in the days of “The Shadow” or even the later “Radio Mystery Theater,” there would not have even been a mention of any LGBT people or issues. Not so with modern-day podcasts. Two in particular are produced by actor/director Briggon Snow. “Look Up,” a 2020-21 podcast series from Atypical Artists and created by Snow involves Emmet (Evan Bittencourt) and Lincoln (Snow) in a sci-fi drama. They are two teenagers who encounter each other on the … Read more

“We’re Here” For a Best of the Year. New Yearly Anthology Series – Boogieman in Lavender

What would you have for your last meal? In Ann LeBlanc’s story “Twenty Thousand Last Meals on an Exploding Station,” an engineer on a doomed space station finds herself in a time loop and just has time to eat at a different one of the station’s thousands of restaurants before the end, an end which keeps repeating itself. This imaginative delicacy is just one of the delights in the 2021 edition of the new yearly anthology of Best Queer Speculative Fiction of the Year “We’re Here,” published by Neon Hemlock Press. The series stands as a fine replacement for Lethe … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Unearthed

tardigrade - deposit photos

Any time I can talk about Tardigrades, you can bet good money I’m going to do exactly that. These little “bears” have so much potential in science. They do all the things, and it’s my personal belief that trans-human modification will start with enhancements from gene-splicing with Tardigrades. Especially with the problems we’re still trying to solve with deep space exploration. Macrobiotus naginae are a soil type Tardigrade. At this rate, there will be more types of these suckers than Pokemon. The specialty of these ones is the ability to live in arid conditions. Deserts. Cold ones too. If humans … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Snow

Tubular model for fluid dynamics.

Physics is weird. Of course, I mean that in the most respectful way possible, but physics is weird. Weak forces and strong forces and thermodynamics. Fluid dynamics. Quantum mechanics. I sort of understand most of it, but did science, as a whole field, really have to make the whole thing as opaque and esoteric as possible? For instance, I was reading articles on the probability of snow falling upwards under the ice sheets covering Europa. Super cool stuff. I had to crawl through about six articles packed full of the science lingo before I figured out what was going on. … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: Meltdown

Computer chip

I guess Google had a meltdown? It lasted long enough for people to notice? I must have been at the day job when that happened and missed it. It’s pretty funny how weird that sounds. I first jumped online as a wee teenager back when AOL and Netscape were the major players, when dial up was the only way to get online. When the first Diablo game was super popular. If something like Google crashed back then, we’d collectively shrug and find a different search engine. No big deal. Not to get political about this, but this is why monopolies … Read more

Boogieman In Lavender: Ban This Book!!!!! (Now That I Have Your Attention…)

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AUTHOR’S NOTE: I had planned on running something for Halloween (in fact had it already been written.) But disturbing trends call for something else for this, the October of our discontent. October is in the air. Halloween, falling leaves, football. And book bans and challenges are roaring into high gear. A decade or so ago, Conservative talk radio would grumble about “The American Library Association and their Banned Book Week,” claiming that “no books are being banned” even as they slyly attempted to remove books from libraries and bookstores. Now, with more conservative-friendly judges and organizations energized we see supposed … Read more

U=(N/T)M*G: White

Great White Shark with his nose poked out of the water, grinning.

Something that can eat an orca just blows my mind, but the Megalodon is something vastly different from the standard shark. Scientists call this giant water beast a super-apex predator. Leaving that ridiculous and terrifying thought aside, because seriously I love the ocean and everything in it, and anything that could eat me and not even notice it pretty damned wild, Megalodons are basically sharks on steroids. I love sharks, not gonna lie. Had a baby leopard shark almost bite my finger off when I was a kidlet and I’ve loved these too curious giant babies ever since. Just another … Read more

George Cecil Ives – Boogieman in Lavender

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George Cecil Ives was gay before it was cool and openly gay before that was accepted. He was British and founded a secret society for “Homosexuals” called “The Order of Chaeronea” named after a battle where male lovers of the Theban Band had been slaughtered nearly 1500 years before. Ives co-founded what became the British Sexological Society, one of the first groups to take the study of human sexuality seriously. He knew Oscar Wilde personally and knew Lord Alfred Douglas intimately. And he was a writer. He wrote poetry, one novel and plenty of non-fiction. We know all this, because … Read more