Sidetracks - December 15, 2017

[helloladies]

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag. For more links and commentary you can follow us on Twitter, Tumblr. You can also support us on Patreon.

Ira

Hello friends! I am back after aaaages with some grouped things and some sort-of-related-strays!

1. A while ago renay alerted me to Algorithms of Oppression, a book about how search engine algorithms encode (figuratively and literally) racism and perpetuate it. While I waited with bated breath for this book to come out, there was a whole bunch of noise about facial recognition software being able to tell if you're queer, which I actually didn't want to link but I guess a piece about how controversial those claims are is okay. I didn't connect these two conversations in my head until I saw two these two articles: How white engineers built racist code – and why it's dangerous for black people and Rise of the racist robots – how AI is learning all our worst impulses. Lady Business is not exclusively a speculative fiction blog, but spec fic is certainly relevant to our interests. I myself am a developer and have been doing various kinds of programming/coding for almost 20 years. I am deeply interested in how prejudices and assumptions are encoded into the actual code that we write, and how we are writing — raising — generations of software that reflect those worldviews back at us. This is, of course, deeply connected to the diversity problem in tech fields. All of this could be excellent fodder for some deeply dystopian speculative fiction writing, but it's not a dystopia I want to actually live in — or contribute to.

2. Meanwhile on this very blog, forestofglory wrote a piece concerning the recent conversations about short fiction. She also linked me to this article at LitHub, which talks about the attention economy as it relates to short fiction — or doesn't actually because that's not how short fiction works — and the ways in which genre short fiction has adapted better to changing times and tastes. The article talked a lot about how short fiction cannot be either consumed or reviewed the same way that longer works can, and how much short fiction is about the lacuna, all of which I can get behind, but the article loses me on... I guess on the definition of a review. I know the article is talking about general trends and popular conception, but being a Lady Business editor, to me the line between "book review" and "literary criticism" is very, very blurry. I've written multiple posts that incorporate both angles of approach, and I really do not think they are mutually exclusive or even as sharply defined as the article seems to think.

3. However, that article led me to another: On Book Publishing's Drinking Culture: What if We Didn't Drink at Every Single Event?, which in turn linked to a trade survey about sexual harassment in the industry. Given the current groundswell of reports of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other predatory behaviour, this is very important stuff about our culture and habits. There's been a lot of self-examination going around lately in SFF and general publishing circles and I mean... that's a good thing. I don't object to drinking — seriously anyone who has met me knows that — but I am and for a long time have been weirded out by how this one drug mostly represented as being consumed by white people is generally socially endorsed while all other drugs have had maybe a war waged on them for a while? Like it's actually called that? And I do think there is a certain slipperiness that it facilitates in various industries. To be clear I don't mean "if women didn't get drunk then they wouldn't get raped". I mean the opposite of that. I think the industry builds bad habits, especially among the people higher up the ladder who facilitate and endorse this culture, and I think it creates a hostile environment for the marginalized. Like, we can't pretend alcohol doesn't play a role in creating hostile environments.

So, you know. There's that.

Anyway here I am back again! =D

Jodie

4. 20 Authors I Don't Have to Read Because I've Dated Men For 16 Years is peeeeerfect.

5. Seanan McGuire wrote a great thread about "foundational" SFF texts and the SFF community's drive to push everyone to read Heinlein, Tolkien etc.

6. Here is a fascinating thread explaining the evolution of pyramid design (and why the Egyptians definitely did build the pyramids).

7. Kerry Washington and Rashida Jones are teaming to make a Goldie Vance film.

8. I very much enjoyed the 'plums in the icebox' meme that did the rounds recently and the Medea riff is probably my fav (although I really like the Leonard Cohen version too).

9. HBO is producing a 'Miss Sherlock' TV show which will air in Japan in April (but no one seems sure if it will come to Europe - gaaaaahhhhh).

10. Kameron Hurley got a new dog called Pepper.

11. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan also got a new puppy.

KJ

12. Natalie Luhrs wrote an essay about the influence of Mystery Science Theater 3000, aka MST3K, on both herself and the world of reviewing and snarky comedy. Though I haven't watched much of the show myself, I found her take both fascinating and moving.

13. Alex Brown colllected everything we know about the various portal worlds in Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children novellas.

14. I found this comic biography of Ayn Rand to be both fascinating and enlightening.

15. Season 2 of Jessica Jones has a premiere date! March 8, 2018.

Susan

16. THE TRAILER FOR THE NEW SERIES OF CARDCAPTOR SAKURA DROPPED AND I CANNOT STOP ALL-CAPSING ABOUT THIS.

17. There is going to be a sequel to Karen Memory, called Stone Mad!

18. A new KJ Charles book dropped! It's a penny dreadful inspired story full of cannibalism!

19. New volume of Yona of the Dawn! New volume of Yona of the Dawn!