Sidetracks - December 21, 2023

[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. You can also support Sidetracks and our other work on Patreon.

Renay

1. Marines walked through the response from St. Martin's Press about the ongoing marketing boycott of SMP/SMP imprint titles. Summary: response was mid, marketing boycott remains in place.

2. Small Beer Press won't be acquiring new work. COVID is terrible. What's worse is that it didn't have to be this way. We could have taken care of each other as a society, except capitalism got in the way.

3. It's coming...Hugo nomination season. Luckily, there's a a spreadsheet bursting with potential recs to find something great or refresh your memory of what's come out this year. My partner and I are using it to read some of the books I purchased this year so we can, at the least, have a few nominations of things we've enjoyed. You can get a WSFS-only ticket (which is what they're calling Supporting Memberships this year) to participate in the Hugo Awards and they're easily upgradeable if you decide to attend online or in-person.

4. Consultative Vote on Hugo Rule Changes is an experiment Glasgow 2024 is doing to determine how WSFS members of Glasgow 2024 feel about two potential Hugo categories for Best Independent Short Film Award and the Best Independent Feature Film Award. Most importantly to me:

Among the many potential reforms to WSFS Business Meeting procedures, putting proposals and other matters to a vote of WSFS members is an innovation that has often been mentioned. But it has never been tried. In 2016, the idea of an approval vote for Hugo finalists, as a third round in the nomination process, was passed at the Business Meeting but not ratified in 2017. We therefore propose to test the operation of a consultative vote, to explore if and how such a procedure could become part of the permanent rules.

5. The Nebula Awards nominations are open! Obviously only members of SFWA can nominate, but my timeline has been so full of recommendations as people realize they're open that the excitement is catching. It's also been fun to browse the Nebula Reading List and see what work the pros are recommending.

6. I've been waiting for this column to drop and it's finally here! Seven of the Best SFF Romance Titles of 2023 by Jenny! Go read and add some excellent SFF romance to your TBR.

7. Unfortunately for Jenny's feelings about the term "romantasy" in the previous article, I'm not sure it's going to be undone at this point:

As of this writing, hashtags like #romantasy and #romanticfantasy have more than 600 million views on TikTok. Videos of BookTokers discussing their latest reads or simply holding up a beautiful cover garner views in the millions.

8. Where I will live the next few weeks: going through all the links on the best of books lists compiled by Largehearted Boy. I know the Internet is in its video and algorithm era, but the pre-video Internet not fueled by algorithms and instead by the joy of discovery was pretty good sometimes, too. Our reading doesn't overlap much (I am an unrepentant IN SPACE!!! nerd), but I always discover new books I wouldn't have found otherwise from his favorites.

9. This essay about how to fix GoodReads from Charlie Jane Anders is well thought out and presents several great ideas. Unfortunately, I have serious doubts that Amazon (which owns GoodReads) will implement anything that creates less traffic (drama continues to be a big money maker).

I opted to move wholesale to Storygraph in 2021 because a) an indie developer! and b) so many Amazon horror stories from both users and workers. Storygraph doesn't yet have everything I want that I used GoodReads for, but the devs are constantly adding new features and users can give feedback via the roadmap. I know a lot of people don't like Storygraph's UI or the lack of features (although it does have a dark mode now). For those people, combining a collective ask for GoodReads to implement changes to protect users from racist abuse seems like the only way forward. Sadly, their development scheme (do they have one?) is a mystery.

10. I also caught up on Charlie Jane's favorite SFF books of 2023, because I missed it in my feed reader. Added Rouge by Mona Awad to my TBR from this list.

11. This review of Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind by Molly McGhee made me extremely glad I grabbed it off the new books shelf at my library last week.

12. My hold on A Power Unbound hasn't come in yet, so I've been surviving by reading reviews like this, which is a) sweet, sweet torture, and b) incredibly dangerous because I might psych myself out of reading it once I have it, because my brain is a fool. But it's irresistible.

13. Shades of Orange posted her 2023 SFF books.

14. Best SF/Fantasy of 2023 from the Library Journal.

15. Public Domain Day in 2024 is going to be great, but what I expect in the next few years are some (more? Do these already exist and I'm just not aware?) Agatha Christie-esque space opera mysteries.

16. Nerds of the Feather interviews Malka Older.

17. I listened to the episode of If Books Could Kill where they covered The Identity Trap by Yascha Mounk. My takeaway was to: remove any of his books I had on my TBR, add him to my author grudge spreadsheet as "deliberately misrepresents anecdotes'' (otherwise known in the non-Ivy League degree programs I took part in as lying), and tell Storygraph to never recommend him books to me again. I didn't think I would want a podcast that made me actively remove authors from my TBR but turns out that was wrong!

18. This column about Yuletide by Elizabeth Minkel was a great overview. I've never taken part in Yuletide but I have many friends who do, and I enjoy seeing which small fandoms get new treats each year. Also, it's incredibly funny to think that The Untamed was eligible for Yuletide in 2019 since it's so massive now.

19. The The 20 Best Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Films of 2023 from Gizmodo. I've seen only two of these and I'm dubious about this list because it has Wish. I've seen some of the writing in that movie...really?

20. Last week I shared news of a federal bill that would help school districts out with the high cost of all the book challenges they're facing in their libraries. My library is a public one, so it wouldn't be eligible for that help, but it looks like there's a bill to address the trouble public libraries are facing, too, which will be filed by Rep. Pressley. Not sure it's strong enough to protect rural public libraries, but it's at least something.

21. Book Bans Encourage More Book Bans: New PEN Report summarizes the findings of a study by PEN America. You can also read the full report here.

22. Related to the above, When Do Parents Trust Their Children With Materials at the Library? is a good read, too. But this additional report shows some troubling trends. The culture of surveillance and end of privacy continues to infiltrate childhood, too. I was so heavily surveilled at different points when I was younger and ended up with way too much trauma because of it. I really feel for kids today trying to navigate figuring out who they are in a world that's ready to tell them who they should be through oppressive parenting.

23. The amount I owe on my student loans is now $10,000 more than what I originally borrowed. I'm constantly low-grade angry about it, especially because it's the main thing keeping me from going back to get my full history degree (I only have a minor because I determined that I couldn't swing the additional two semesters I would need) and maybe take some art/business classes. I wasn't surprised to read this article on what restarting student loan payments meant for the holiday season. But my main takeaway was: I wish I knew the mom mentioned in the article because I know if the internet could find a GoFundMe, we could at least make one person's life a little less stressful.

24. The reintroduction of wolves in Colorado is giving me life right now by Justine Calma at The Verge. There is a video of the wolves being released, a critical inclusion.

25. Abortion will be on the ballot in several states next year.. Ballot initiatives are a lot of hard work, and every helping hand when it's time to collect signatures and encourage people to vote for the initiative is critical. If you have large social networks, consider keeping up with any ballot initiative in your state and helping out when the time comes.

26. 2023-2024 Anti-Trans Legislation Tracker Released.

27. In yet another study, the results suggest that giving poor people or those without housing money to spend how they want is the way to solve poverty. I guess we're going to keep doing these studies in perpetuity because time and time again they prove that giving people money solves all the problems that other assistance programs attempt and fail to solve, badly, with means-tested rules. The humiliation and extra labor built into the process is just a little treat for the neoliberals.

28. You know how you read SF novels and go, "Wow, technology in the future could be COOL!" and then you arrived in the future and reckless, unregulated capitalism destroyed all your dreams? Yeah. There's not any RiteAid stores in my city, but maybe consider moving if you use one!

29. After reading Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content, it sounds to me like the owners are sympathetic to Nazis and pretty okay with stochastic terrorism. If I were running a newsletter hosted there, that would be a dealbreaker. I'm bummed I'm going to have to unsub from some of my favorite newsletters because it's not tenable to keep using the service at this point.

30. Last week's Full Lid (the last for 2023) included an essay on Star Trek as well as it's always strong Signal Boost section for finding cool stuff people are doing online.

31. I didn't watch it, but I did send my Star Wars-fan partner a five hour video, The Decaying Monomyth of Star Wars when I saw it mentioned on BlueSky. In response, he got up from his computer and came into my office to ask, incredulously, "Did you just send me a FIVE HOUR Star Wars video?" As if I wouldn't have.

32. The 13 Best Memes of 2023. I have very few critiques about this list, honestly. Pretty on point, and they're spot on with the "save the best for last" decision.

33. USPS is going to have Dungeons & Dragons stamps. I don't play this game at all (it's too much like charades for me, someone who hates any scenario where there could be Public Humiliation of me or anyone else), but I love this stamp idea for myself. I love a fun stamp! I have friends who I send letters to who either play D&D or also love fun stamps. This is a perfect development for me, specifically.

34. The music the One Piece adaptation used was great. My favorite song, which was not a surprise because it has AURORA (who I have loved since I discovered a song via Mass Effect: Andromeda's credit sequence). Also, it's the theme song of one of my favorite character's arcs, Nami. I was a goner as soon as I understood the lyrics. This feels like a perfect vidding song, too.

Watch on YouTube

Comments

[petrea_mitchell]

Is there any particular Substack-like platform out there gathering momentum which does ban Nazis?

("Substack-like" would need to include following the dictum that money flows toward the author, so ghost.io and similar don't count.)

[renay]

I don't know a ton about Substack's under the hood features like payment so I'm not positive about this. But! Several people who used Substack switched to Buttondown and have had nothing but good things to say. I know that the service is lacking some features, but the developer stated they're going to shift the roadmap given the new interest in the service (in regards to comments specifically). There's a good comparison list here, and the BlueSky feed for the service is full of discussion, feature requests/whether they're feasible, etc.

I looked up ghost.io and my jaw on that comparison chart and my jaw hit the floor. I know it's expensive to send email but yikes!

[petrea_mitchell]

Thanks, I've taken a look! I can't find any kind of content policy on their site, unfortunately, so I cannot count them as a Nazi-free alternative.

[renay]

They are, actually! It may just be their content policy is out of date because of how fast everything with Substack went down. Here's one reference and here's another.

[dragoness_e]

For item #1, could you summarize the tiktok video? I have a hard block on tiktok.com and all its servers for security reasons.

[renay]

She outlines the asks for the boycott by summarizing from the boycott page and the petition. She also addresses some misinformation that's going around TikTok (for example, the boycott isn't asking for anyone to be fired like some are claiming, the publisher isn't silent because it's illegal to mention internal investigations, they're silent because they were clearly unprepared to be held accountable for an employee's racism, especially one that works with marginalized creators). She shared the response from the publisher which didn't address any of the boycott concerns so they're going to respond and reiterate their asks. The marketing boycott continues: don't review or coverage any SMP or imprint title.