Black Men Reading Speculative Fiction. Tempest Bradford put it best:  "Like it Says on the Can." Zig Zag Claybourne invited me to read in formation with some real truth seekers and heat speakers: Maurice Broaddus, Gerald L. Coleman, Errick Nunnally, and the Milton Davis. I read from my work in progress, my current obsession, Burn It All Down: The True Story of Hurricane Jane.

It's an alternate history weird western that crosses borders and empires. For the last five years, it's buried me up to my neck in the histories and mythos of West Africa, Mexico, Europe, and Native American nations, particularly the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois). I think I have about seven thousand more words to write before I start revisions. But I haven't been this excited for a story since Day Dreamer.   The reading went well.

Solarpunk everything is a topic I am deeply invested in. If we are to have a future that is not a gestalt dystopia, this is it.  In the past five years, I have written several essays on the subject: ​

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• Promised Land for the New Modality: Solarpunk is, generally speaking anti-organized religion; even though the majority of people effected by climate change are black or brown, and profess some kind of faith. I discuss ways around that using Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower as a framing device. 

• The City is a Hot Place to Be for Solarpunk Magazine: I believe solarpunk ideals and genres should be  popularized and I think noir, specifically a solarpunk noir would be a fantastic vehicle to do so.  I give the contours of such a genre in this issue.

That last topic, solar punk noir, is still a work in progress. Since writing the essay, I have sold a novelette to Lightspeed Magazine via their collaboration with Dartmouth College's Speculative Fiction Project. Publication dates are still in the works, but in the narrative I was able to work out first tenants of solarpunk I'd previously outlined:  

• Urban life reimagined: It moves beyond modernist and post-modernist conservative symbolism and psychology that has dominated our thinking on cities.
• Near future: It makes little to no break with the usable past.
• Capitalist: Since we are discussing the present, the dominant economic ideology and how one deals with it or the mechanics of getting beyond it need to be taken into account.
• Public Policy: Stories that delve into and detail the complexities of the public good, and how they can be worked for or against us.
  
• A focus on political violence: All violence stems from people trying to hold onto power vs those trying to change economic and man-made ecological systems for the better.
• Systemic Hope: The hero may lose, but we do not. We make good decisions and deal with the consequences.
• Power: A lesson learned from Octavia Butler. These stories are about people taking power and powers consequences.

I have another essay in the works to follow up on the Solarpunk Magazine piece because this is what I want to see more of in the world. Hopefully the novelette is published before the next essay, but that's not up to me. If you find that you have written a solarpunk noir story, please let me know! 

Participants:    Rob Cameron (me), Alex Shvartsman, Trisha J. Wooldridge, Anne E.G. Nydam, Sarah Smith

Hey Everyone,

Saturday, February ninth, I'm moderating the Language in SFFH panel at BOSKONE.  As I've done in past panels I moderated, I will create a live document of the event with the commentary I found most interesting  along with the people who said them. I'll add links and recommendations later. People who are live in the audience will be able to add their questions and comments to the document. So, if you're interested in language, linguistics, speculative fiction, AND you're in Boston tomorrow, you should show up!

Hi All,

I shared the stage with a mix of academics and writers, Mark Painter (m), Daniel José Older he/him, JR Dawson, and Roxanne Reddington-Wilde. This was my third panel of the convention. In some ways my most challenging. There is a lot to be said about the how and why of researching history. What does the author get out of the process? What's the correct relationship between the research and the needs of the story?

There were some lovely points made that are worth remembering. Daniel José Older compared the writing of history into a story to writing music: the historic details are the chorus. Both he and JR Dawson talked about the people history forgot, except perhaps in the footnotes, and the joy behind giving them a voice, and making them real again at least on the page. In some ways, you are immortalizing them. There is fluidity and flexibility in the process of choosing just right details to use, regardless of the likely massive amounts of research you might have done to prepare and build your world. There are many access points that you have to the story.

One thing I didn't bring up is a practical concern. If you are writing for yourself or self-publishing, the barriers between you and your audience are minimal, but that also means there are fewer trained people to help you refine your writer's voice and tell you what is and isn't working. So be careful. If the point of your story is to bring to life as accurately as possible to a beloved moment in time, then you run the risk of it creating a fascinating heuristic, which, while having great instructional value, may end up being less entertaining to a larger audience, because it misses the fundamental point of why we tell stories. 

If you are writing to be seen by an agent and then editor, the more you can do to clarify the point of your story, the often discussed "third rail," the easier you will make it on yourself and on them. It's this emotional core that drives your story from scene to scene, moment to moment, from beginning to end. Knowing this will make it much easier in the revision and rewriting phase, which (IMO) is where the real writing truly begins. Instead of rewriting 100k words, you will only have to rewrite 30k.

One more thing about research. There are plenty of people whom you can reach out to who know more about a subject than you do. Academics love to talk about their work, and the ones who can do it well are often easy to find. Approach them with respect, don't be thirsty, and you will save yourself a ton of frustration, get insights from somebody who has had years to process the information and distill it down to really interesting insights. You may even make a new friend!

PS: Because I said I'd do it, here is a resource for writers wanting to accurately represent language, real or made-up (but mostly made-up). It's a great book and infinitely helpful: The Art of Language Invention by David J Peterson. 

Sin and Syntax by Constance Hale is another great resource, but for completely different reason. It's ostensibly a grammar book, but in showing you the correct function of part of speech, Constance actually teaches you how to choose the just right detail. It approaches the problem sideways and I'm here for it. 

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 I guess I'm a liar. Not on purpose though! Life has been  coming at me like an avalanche. So let me run it down.