[Ed. note: Over the weekend, our own Daniel José Older found himself on a plane with nothing to do but watch Batman v Superman (which is now available digitally and will be released on blu-ray in two weeks). His tweet thoughts have been collected below. Enjoy.]
#BatmanvSuperman really was dumb as shit tho. For me not to enjoy a movie on a plane it has to be an utter waste of time.
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Daniel José Older (@djolder) July 02, 2016Ladies and gentlemen: the cover and jacket for my first Young Adult novel, Shadowshaper, which comes out in July from Scholastic’s Arthur A. Levine Books. Behold the gloryyyyyyyyyy after the break.
Originally posted at Ghoststar.net
Lovecraft scholar S.T. Joshi posted a rebuttal to my petition to change the World Fantasy Award statue to Octavia Butler, and I want to respond to a few points in it.
In the latest video, I give a talk about what makes endings great and what works and doesn’t work about the Penny Dreadful finale, including the Apache Pinkerton race-fail.
In this week’s video, I talk about internal/external conflict and decision-making conflict vs. kill-all-the-bad-guys conflict using the BBC America science-fiction series Orphan Black and the Disney/Pixar film Brave as examples.
Last week, I started vlogging on YouTube. The first video is a brief talk about the process of editing my forthcoming Young Adult novel from Scholastic, Shadowshaper.
In the latest video, I give a brief discussion on storycraft by discussing two things that the television shows Penny Dreadful and Breaking Bad get right when it comes to backstory.
Continue reading “On Backstory in Penny Dreadful and Breaking Bad“
Originally posted at Ghoststar.net
In January 2009, I decided to write a book. I’ve always written, always made up strange worlds and sent characters hurdling into them, always dreamt of monsters. But until that day, I was scattered: a screenplay here, a few essays there. Some poems. None of ‘em went very far.
I’d read all the Harry Potters and loved them, loved how they immersed me in the world so thoroughly and stayed grounded and exciting. And I wanted something more… I’d just finished Junot’s Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao and Walter Mosley’s Six Easy Pieces and the combined ferocity of those two singular and relentlessly truthful voices lit a fire inside me. Octavia Butler’s work stoked that fire and Stephen King’s On Writing reminded me that writing a book was something that can be done, long as you sit down and do it.
So I did.
Originally posted at Salon.com
Perpetuating stereotypes isn’t just immoral — it’s bad TV. That’s why shows like Sleepy Hollow are so crucial.
When I was seven, I asked my mom if I could dye my hair blond and get blue contact lenses. It’s probably the first serious conversation I ever had about my appearance and all I wanted to do was look like Luke Skywalker. I wanted it so badly. She was appalled and I couldn’t understand why. Star Wars was Everything. There were no Latinos running through the halls of the Death Star, blasting storm troopers. Of course I was caught up.
Continue reading “Whitewashed TV isn’t Just Racist, It’s Boring”
The #DiversityInSFF hashtag gave a solid signal boost to the longstanding, often-ignored, ever-trolled, much-needed convos about race and gender, privilege and science fiction/fantasy that have been going on since the dawn of time. For a few weeks twitter was all aflame with debates, links and related shenanigans. We have these convos, increasingly in depth, at cons and across the blogosphere. Backlash against those who speak out has come in the form of death and rape threats, hate mail, doubling down on sexist/racist/homophobic/ableist material, and mind-numbingly nonsensical counterarguments. And, of course, comments sections. Still, we move forward, take breaks to recuperate and then move forward some more towards a vision of SF/F that isn’t just another white male savior fantasies, a diversity that’s more than fake smiling multicolored dress up dolls.
This month Rose Fox and I have been wrapping up the selection process for Long Hidden, an anthology of speculative fiction from the margins of history. It’s busied me up and kept me from banging my head against the keyboard trying to piece together a coherent response to some never-ending fuckery and maybe that’s a good thing. My words are coming, but sometimes the best counterattack is to simply reroute the conversation to creativity, to create something new, a new space for voices that don’t get play in mainstream venues.
Read on to find some links to recent conversations about race and SF/F:
