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Showing posts from April, 2017

We're All Mad Here: Thoughts on Legion

The superhero genre has been the dominant mode of our pop culture for at least ten years.  Which has turned out to be a bit of a problem, since, even by the relatively modest standards of blockbuster entertainment, superheroes do not lend themselves to particularly deep or thought-provoking ideas.  This is, after all, a genre that is still furiously debating the oh-so-provocative question, "should there be jokes?"  And so, as the years have passed, as character types have repeated themselves, as CGI spectacles have grown tedious and familiar, and as writers finally grew tired of rehashing 9/11 for the millionth time, we have inevitably reached the point where creators start experimenting, trying to prove that there's more to this genre by changing its preoccupations or storytelling methods.  In 2016, this meant political superhero stories, many wondering how civil society will cope with the emergence of superpowered people--which, for the most part, fell flat on their fac

The 2017 Hugo Awards: Thoughts on the Nominees

Yesterday saw the announcement of this year's Hugo nominations .  Usually I write an essay about the nominees and what state of the field they reflect, but these were announced just as I landed from a week-long trip to New York into several work and life obligations.  So instead, here's an itemized list of the reactions I had to the nominations when they were announced, not necessarily in the order I had them: Happiness , at finally being able to announce that I am once again a nominee in the Best Fan Writer category.  Thank you very much to everyone who nominated me and to the award's administrators and staff, and congratulations to my fellow nominees, Mike Glyer , Natalie Luhrs , Foz Meadows , and Chuck Tingle .  But not Jeffro Johnson, because fuck anyone who willingly associates with a racist turd like Vox Day and tries to ride his coattails to an award they haven't earned.  Enjoy losing to No Award, my man. Relief , because even though I was fairly certain tha