Hugos

This morning -- which is this evening at Aussiecon in Australia -- I lost another Hugo. "Act One" lost not to Kage Baker, to whom I lost the Nebula and Locus Award, but rather to Charles Stross's "Palimpsest." Here are the other fiction winners:

NOVEL: A rare tie, between THE WIND-UP GIRL (Paolo Bacigalupi) and THE CITY AND THE CITY (China Mieville)

NOVELETTE: "The Island" (Peter Watts)

SHORT STORY: "Bridesicle" (Will McIntosh)

What disturbs me a bit about this list is that there are no women on it. Female writers consistently win fewer Hugos than our representation in SFWA (which is roughly 40% -- a few years ago I counted). But we win more than 40% of Nebulas, looked at over forty years. I don't know why this is, but it's a long-standing pattern.

I wish I had been at Aussiecon. Win or lose, Worldcon is always fun. Next year -- Reno.

Reprints

Reprint money for short stories is gravy. The writer does no additional work, but someone gives you money anyway. The question is: How much money? What is the second (or third or eighth) printing of a story worth? Especially since the story can often be found on-line in a pirated edition for free? (I have been having more trouble with pirates.)

I have no consistent policy. For very small foreign magazines requesting the rights to translate and print my story for free (i.e. Latvia), I usually say yes on the grounds that (1) I will pick up new readers in Latvia, (2) the magazine is making no money or next to no money anyway, (3) the market is very small, and (4) I think it will be cool to be in Latvian.

Other foreign markets offer small but consistent reprint fees (i.e. ESLI, in Russian), and those, too, do not trouble me. American anthologies usually pay an amount consistent with what the original publisher offers of they decide to put together a bunch of stories from its various issues. The sticky question for me is textbooks.

I recently (yesterday) signed a contract for a very, very low payment to reprint "My Mother, Dancing" in a textbook aimed at college-level English and science courses. I won't say how low because it's embarrassing. But this editor, a professor at a prestigious college, spent eight years convincing a textbook publisher to take on this project, which will be a massive collection. She wrote me, "In order to keep the textbook from costing $120, which students can't afford, I need to do it this way!" I believe her.

Especially since, more and more, I receive university requests to reprint stories for free in "packets" designed for a specific course and usually limited to a run of twenty or so. I say yes, because how much money could be made from twenty copies, and anyway I like the idea of my work being taught in college classrooms.

Does this all make economic sense, in that students will then be moved to buy my novels, according to the Cory Doctorow Doctrine? Or is it just one more way of eroding a writer's always shaky income? I have no idea.

A Cautionary Tale

Two good things to do NOW:

Get a tetanus shot.

Train your dog not to bite under any circumstances whatsoever.

My friend Leslie, who sweetly offered to watch my toy poodle while I was at Armadillocon, was bitten by the Little Darling while moving Cosette's food bowl. The finger became infected, and Les ended up in the hospital overnight on an antibiotic drip. As soon as my plane landed from Austin, I went to the hospital. Les was cheerful and bright-sidey ("It's been an interesting experience") but I felt -- still feel -- terrible. She is home now, recovered. I am looking into behavioral therapy for Cosette. This, it turns out, is very expensive.

A dog's mouth is a messy place. Well, just consider what they do with it! A tetanus shot is cheap. A hospital stay is costly. A friend willing to take canine combat wounds for you -- priceless.

Armadillocon 32 -- Day 2

Things really got underway today in Austin with a reading by Joe Lansdale. In his rich Texas accent, Joe read three short pieces and then told stories about his daddy, an oversize Texan given to saying things like "We were so poor that if it cost a quarter to shit we would've had to throw it up." This entertaining half-hour was a highlight of the day.
I did four hours of programming: two panels, an hour of steadily signing books (astonishing for such a small con), and a "Toastmistress Interview," during which I answered questions asked by the very capable Elspeth Bloodgood in front of a small but appreciative audience. Throw in chatting in the con suite and hallways, and by evening I was hoarse. The atrium of the con hotel:
Dinner cured my hoarseness. Maureen McHugh, Nebula-winning local author, organized a trip to eat Texas barbecue at Rudy's, which is also part gas station. Long wooden tables, concrete floors, oiled sheets of paper as plates, the best creamed corn I have ever had, and slabs of various meats -- brisket, ribs, sausage, turkey -- served with Rudy's own barbecue sauce. It was delicious, and different from the more vinegary Carolina barbecue I am used to. However, the one Vegan among us was reduced to dining on a bag of potato chips. She came along for the company.

Here is Patrick Swenson, laboring away in the Dealer's room:

Back at the hotel, Kasey Lansdale, Joe's daughter, was giving a concert of country and western music. I love C&W and Kasey, a professional singer, was very good. Alas, the sound system was not.

The day finished in the bar, drinking apple martinis and listening to the piano player. Meanwhile, Leslie reports from Seattle that she is taming Cosette, the Terrible Tiny Poodle, through a combination of water bottle squirts, rewards, intensive attention, and a run in the dog park. Leslie's hand has stopped bleeding. But Cosette and Les's poodle still attack each other.

Armadillocon 32 -- Day 1

I am at Armadillocon in Austen, Texas. They tell me the heat wave of last week has broken, which means it was only 97 degrees. However, the hotel Renaissance is cool and dramatic, having both a central eight-story-tall atrium and a courtyard full of stone bison. Here I am astride one of them:

Lunch at Mangia, a traditional pizza outing organized by Lawrence Person, featured some of the best pizza I have ever had, barbecue chicken pizza with a vinegar-barbecue taste. In the afternoon I did an interview with Brent Bowen of Adventures in Science Fiction; this will be podcast sometime in late October or early November. Throughout all of these activities, however, ran a growing nervousness: the Opening Ceremonies marked my first occasion as Toastmistress. Usually I don't get nervous performing in public, but this was a new gig for me and I had prepared assiduously.

What was it Robert Burns said about the best-laid plans? The speech was well-received, but the jokes depended on my cell phone ringing at certain intervals and my then answering it and pretending to talk to Google. Jack Skillingstead, seated in the audience, was primed on when to call me. Unfortunately, the half-underground ballroom failed to find a T-Mobile signal. Michael Bishop helpfully shouted RING! RING!, which helped some, but... And so it goes.

Here are the con guests that I introduced between non-rings, from right to left: Special Guest Michael Bishop, Editor Guest Anne Sowards, Artist Guest Cat Conrad, GOH Rachel Caine, Special Guests Andrew and Ilona Gordon, Fan Guest Elspeth Bloodgood, and the befuddled toastmistress, waiting for the phone call that never comes.

Opening ceremonies were followed by a Meet the Pros party, then a late dinner with Jack and Patrick Swenson of Fairwood Press. Meanwhile, back in Seattle, poor Leslie Howle was coping with my dog. It was not going well. Cosette and Leslie's poodle, Luke, hated each other on sight. Cosette was disoriented from having been carted to two new locations within ten days. When Leslie tried to move her food dish, Cosette bit her. Leslie, an old hand with dogs, was not too perturbed, but I am. This is no way to keep friends. Maybe I'll just stay permanently in Austin.

NO SMILEY FACES

Barbara Ehrenreich (NICKLE AND DIMED, BAIT AND SWITCH) is always an interesting observer of contemporary culture. Her latest book takes on the cult of happiness in this county, and BRIGHT-SIDED: HOW THE RELENTLESS PROMOTION OF POSITIVE THINKING HAS UNDERMINED AMERICA is thought-provoking.

Ehrenreich's basic thesis is this country is caught in a relentless barrage of "put on a happy face." Upbeat is not only the new beat, it's the required one. Employers want to hire positive-thinking, upbeat employees. Churches insist that God wants you to be happy and prosperous. Self-help books as well as professional counselors tell us to shed those people in our lives who spread gloom and doom. A positive attitude, the belief goes, is an aid to health, long life, and fighting disease. Have faith in the future and you can conquer all difficulties.

One by one, she takes apart these stances. The positive-thinking employee is valued over the dour and competent one, but in the long run it's competence that keeps business moving. The nay-sayers in your life may actually be providing important reality checks. A blind faith in the future, whether assisted by God or not, is part of the cause of the current economic collapse, through all those people signing for mortgages they could not afford because "Dare to dream in the present and the future will come through." There is no scientific evidence that health responds to a positive attitude. Worse, the idea that if you stay positive you can fight off, say, cancer, means that all those people who die of cancer just weren't positive enough. It is therefore their own fault.

Ehrenreich sometimes overstates her case, but so does the other side, and she offers many studies to corroborate her views. My favorite is a 2001 study actually conducted by a proponent of positive psychology, David Seligman (AUTHENTIC HAPPINESS), which found that among older people, pessimists were better able than optomists to weather a major negative life event such as the death of a family member.

Sometimes the emphasis on positivism can turn absolutely ghoulish. Popular positive-thinking guru Rhonda Byrne stated about the 2006 Asian tsunami that disasters like a tsunami can only happen to people who are "on the same [thought] frequency as the event."

The result of this kind of thinking, Ehrenreich argues, is a culture of forced, false illusions that blames victims of illness, poverty, and -- yes -- even tsunamis for their own misfortunes. As such, it turns away from social cooperation that might change things, from compassion for others, and, finally, from reality itself. Be happy! Don't worry! Visualize good things ten times each day and they will come to you!

Sometimes they don't, and sometimes there are things out there to worry about. You can only cheat reality for so long.

Cranky At the Movies

When you fall asleep at a movie and begin to snore, that constitutes a review. When no one around you goes "shhhh," that constitutes another.

But in case my snoring at the Majestic Bay Theater is not sufficient, let me say why I hated EAT PRAY LOVE. I hadn't expected to hate it, because I found Elizabeth Gilbert's book (with commas, which somehow disappeared on the way to Hollywood) highly interesting. It's an inner journey, from an exclusively secular romantic despair to a state in which the equally secular author is finally able to accept and blend physical pleasure, a spiritual practice, and a realistic love affair. The journey starts in New York and ends in Bali, with Italy and India in between.

Gilbert is a nuanced writer with high awareness of her own motives and reactions, both of which are usually a complicated mess. In the book we are privy to all this complexity. The movie, however, downplays the spiritual journey and instead concentrates on Elizabeth and men. Either God is simply not as interesting as sex, or else He is too explosive and unsettling a topic for any movie that doesn't just take pot shots at Christian fundamentalists. Granted, watching people meditate for hours in an ashram does not make for much dramatic action, but the movie could have tried a little harder to show why Elizabeth bothers, what she gets from it, and why it matters to her. Instead, we get bantering with a male ashram-ite from Texas.

Julia Roberts does the best she can with this shallow stuff, and she is lovely to look at. The food in Italy is lovely, the saris in India are lovely, the scenery in Bali is lovely. Even the men (Stephen, David, Richard, Ian, Felipe) are lovely. But neither scenery nor loveliness a movie maketh. Skip this one and read the book instead.