What We Do in the Shadows is a mockumentary horror comedy film which had a theatrical release in 2014. It was directed by Jemaine Clement (who you might know as half of New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk comedy duo Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Watit, who also both acted in the film. The film is structured as a documentary following four vampires who are flatmates in New Zealand, chronicling their everyday lives including flatmate disputes, their feeding habits, their human familiar, their night life, and avoiding vampire hunters.
Vlago, Vladislav, and Deacon are several centuries old and have maintained their human appearances, though the necessity to avoid sunlight has left them very behind the times. The fourth vampire Petyr, who is around 8000 years old, has become more monstrous in appearance and also monstrous in behavior compared to the other three.
I will pretty much see any movie featuring Jemaine Clement without knowing anything else about the movie, because he consistently brings great humor. In this movie he plays Vlad the Poker (because he likes to poke things). All of the casting (including Jemaine) were perfect in their roles, and I had to rewind the movie more than once because I was laughing too hard to catch all the lines–for instance, when the vampires attempt to go clubbing, but can’t get into clubs unless someone invites them in. Probably my favorite bits of the movie were the ones that involved Rhys Darby (who I also knew from the Flight of the Conchords HBO show) playing the alpha of a local pack of werewolves.
I highly recommend the movie. Great, funny stuff. Since it does involve vampires who have to feed on humans to survive, there are some dark parts but I thought they did a good job spinning even the dark moments toward humor.
I did not grow up with Digimon in that I had just graduated college when it started airing, but it was one of the last series I watched as a Saturday morning cartoon. People who haven’t seen it tend to dismiss it as a Pokemon knock-off, for featuring young children with monster buddies, but it did something that Pokemon did not. It allowed its protagonists to mature and grow up.
Digimon had always maintained in-universe that no matter how old you were, even if you became an adult, your partner digimon would always be there for you. Intelligent and able to speak, partner digimon are a pint-sized buddy that can be temporarily supercharged to grow into more powerful versions of themselves. No matter how badly their human screws up (and some of them do), the digimon are loyal for life.
Digimon Adventure tri is the 15th anniversary project originally intended for spring of 2015 and was devised as a TV show until it was revamped as a six part movie series.
It is clearly a nostalgia vehicle for those who had grown up with Digimon, specifically the original Digimon Adventure and its sequel Digimon Adventure 02. The first teaser was addressed to all the Digidestined in the world, a name for the chosen children with digimon partners (and by proxy, the audience), and the opening song is a new rendition “Butterfly,” the opening theme from the first series.
Six years after their first adventure in the digital world, the oldest of the Digimon Adventure kids are now in high school with the younger ones in middle school. For the audience it’s been a much longer fifteen years, but it still feels like coming home.
Reunion glosses over most of the worldbuilding about how/why digimon exist in favor of catching up with the original cast and setting an ominous tone for what is about to happen. While parts of the movie are watchable as a newcomer, the mechanics of digimon evolution and their different forms is not addressed at all, making it unclear why some digimon change forms (even multiple times in the same battle) and others do not.
The movie knows it’s only the first of six, so it doesn’t rush itself, resulting in a pace a closer to a TV show, but without the storytelling beats expected in a half hour episode. This makes it strange that the streaming sites do divide the movie up into four TV length chunks. Episode breaks feel arbitrary as some episodes have action scenes and others don’t, and there isn’t necessarily a climax.
Most of the screen time is focused around Taichi, now in his second year of high school and being badgered by his teacher to think about what he wants to do for a career after graduation, but instead of looking to the future, he’s still caught up in his past.
The eight Digidestined are no longer as close as they used to be. Though most of the group goes to the same high school, getting together isn’t easy. Mimi now lives in America. Jo, the eldest, is consumed by studying for entrance exams for college. Taichi’s soccer game conflicts with performance day for Yamato’s band, which conflicts with the anniversary dinner for Koushiro’s parents. Takeru will go to the concert since he’s Yamato’s brother, and Sora can’t make up her mind whether to go to the concert or the game or attempt both.
Peaceful days are limited though, and the digital world collides once again with the real one when a rift opens and a Kuwagamon (a large pink beetle monster) emerges and begins wreaking havoc on the city.
With the assistance of a secret government agency that seems to have been put together in the years since the previous invasions, Taichi and the other Digidestined are reunited with their digimon partners to again fight monsters and save the lives of others.
But for Taichi, it’s surprisingly harder to go fight the bad guys now that he’s older and wiser. Reunion is unfortunately ham-handed about it, but it’s clear that watching his pet monster chase another digimon through a dense urban development and crashing into buildings everywhere isn’t giving him the same rush. He’s aware now that there could be people in those buildings. Someone could get hurt.
If you saw the trailers and wondered what happened to the new characters introduced in 02 or if they were retconned out, don’t worry. The first few minutes make it clear they’re still part of continuity. My feeling is their introductions are being held back for a later movie to avoid having twelve returning lead characters to catch up with at the same time.
There is also a new girl, Meiko, who has a digimon partner, and by virtue of being new, she is probably the crux around which the new events are happening. I’m not sure how well her inclusion will work though, since as a character she has to match up against all the nostalgia value of the other eight. She still doesn’t quite fit in by the end of the first movie, though arguably it’s because there has barely been the screen time to get to know her and the revelation that she even has a partner is only towards the very end.
Overall, I enjoyed watching Reunion because with the exception of Taichi, it felt like visiting an old friend and finding out we still click, but I find this difficult to recommend as an entry point for new fans. There is too much to catch up on, which is too bad since I would have liked a more grown up Digimon series to introduce people to. For previous fans though, it plays like a Digimon Greatest Hits.
Digimon Adventure tri is currently streaming subtitled on Crunchyroll and Hulu.
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner ofWriters of the Futureand since then her work has been published inGalaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and theYear’s Best YA Speculative Fiction.
Journal is a dialog based narrative story game by Locked Door Puzzle released in 2014. The story follows a young girl who has discovered that the pages in her journal have gone blank and she sets out to try to find what happened to them. The game plays out as she talks to different characters in life, and asks them about the journal, and different interpersonal conflicts arise–her mother, her father, her classmates, teacher, priest. The game is a little bit of exploration as she walks around a larger area and finds new people to talk to with each level of the game, but mostly the game comes down to dialog choices. When her best friend accuses her of not being a good friend, does she apologize or deny it? When her teacher asks her if she cheated on a test does she own up to it or cover it up? Making the “right” choice doesn’t always produce a happy outcome–as with many things in life. As the game goes on she’s always kind of feeling her way around things that she doesn’t really want to remember.
I thought the idea for this game was interesting. I liked how it didn’t go the straightforward After School Special route where if you do the right thing then everything will turn out happy for you. I thought the art was nice enough, and the voice acting good. I picked up on the sense that the narrative was kind of feeling around the empty spaces where other events in her life would be revealed to be, which I thought was an interesting technique.
But I found the narrative frustrating. It seemed like at every turn I was being asked to resolve a situation that had been made by some poor choice the girl had made off-camera before the game started. In some cases the poor choice happened during the game narrative but in a way that I had no control over. I get what the game was going for, she is having a difficult time of it and her choices are not always the right ones and that’s just the way life is. But the way the game was structured I felt like I was playing the role of a friend who is always cleaning up after their friend’s poor decisions. I think it would’ve been more effective if I could’ve been somehow drawn into the poor decisions themselves, somehow. As it was, I felt like the character was going out of her way to mess things up and expecting me to clean it up for her, which I found frustrating more than entertaining.
Visuals
I thought the hand-drawn visuals were nice enough, but found the “twitchy” nature of the background annoying (that is, it looks like the background was drawn several times in similar but not identical drawings and then cycles through those drawings so the outline of many objects are constantly twitching.
Audio
Nice voice acting.
Challenge
Nil. The narrative progresses no matter what you choose and there’s not specific outcomes you’re aiming for.
Story
More story than anything else.
Session Time
Can save and quit at any time, which is handy.
Playability
Easy. The only thing I occaisonally had difficulty with is that it’s not always obvious with the way the screens are laid out how to move from one screen to another–I felt that could’ve been arranged a little more clearly. But other than that.
Replayability
Different dialog choices affect the outcome, so you could replay a few times trying for different outcomes to conversations.
Originality
Well, it didn’t remind me overmuch of other games I’ve played, at least.
Playtime
I think it took me about an hour to play through once in no particular rush.
Overall Interesting idea, dialog choice based narrative game where you try to sort out your life in a difficult time, but one that I found frustrating because I always felt like I was cleaning up after someone else’s mess. $10 on Steam.
When I first started watching anime I wasn’t too picky, because there wasn’t much available, so I watched a lot of genres that I wouldn’t anymore.
One of those early series was a direct to video supernatural action series called Ushio and Tora. It was fairly violent, but made tolerable by its endearing leads, the titular Ushio and Tora. Only ten episodes were animated, but the popular manga series eventually ran a whopping 33 volumes.
Fast-forward almost twenty years and in mid-2015 a new Ushio and Tora TV series was launched, spanning 39 episodes and covering the entire storyline. Despite being 20 years old, Ushio and Tora quite frankly doesn’t care and runs with with the same cheeky attitude (and wild hair!) that it did in the 90s.
At the start of the series, teenage Ushio discovers a hidden cellar in his dad’s monastery while being condemned to do his chores. However, once he opens the cellar he discovers a living demon pinned in the cellar by an enchanted spear. After an amusing conversation during which the demon promises to eat Ushio as soon as he frees him, Ushio shuts up the cellar door and plans to ask his dad about it later.
But things don’t stay that simple. Just by opening the door, Ushio released 500 years’ worth of demonic energy that has been building up and his home is suddenly attracting yokai of all kinds. The only way to drive them off (and save his classmates who came to visit) is to free the demon who promises he can take them out.
The demon does try to renege on his promise, but there’s a slight problem in that since Ushio pulled out the enchanted Beast Spear, he’s now the wielder of it, and the Beast Spear gives him the power to not only fend off the demon, but beat him back in line.
And this is the start of the frenemy partnership of Ushio and Tora (“Tora” being the name Ushio gives to the demon).
They make a fantastic duo, with Ushio being the constant optimist and Tora the pessimist. Ushio wears his heart on his sleeve and says he would gladly cry tears if it means someone else won’t have to. Tora can’t admit he cares about anyone but himself (though his actions say otherwise). One of the ongoing jokes is Tora promising to eat Ushio one day, and as time goes on, finding excuses not to do it (yet).
The violence is censored somewhat for the TV run, using shadows and discretionary shots that the original did not bother with, but it doesn’t detract since blood and gore isn’t as much of the point as the action and the buddy dynamics between the two leads. If the snark between them wasn’t so good this series wouldn’t have made it as far as it does, but even if the characters aren’t too deep, they’re entertaining to watch.
And that’s a good thing considering that the series starts off in a monster of the week fashion, which is unavoidable when following the manga. A fair bit of it is streamlined to fit the 39 episode run, but there are still a lot early one-off episodes that only later play a larger role as the series progresses. Because of this, Ushio and Tora is not particularly binge-able at the start, you can tell at the time the manga was created the artist was still trying to get his storytelling legs under him, but once the greater plot comes out it makes for fine viewing.
The source of all the woes in Ushio and Tora comes from Hakumen no Mono, a nine-tailed fox so powerful and malevolent that even other demons fear it. Hakumen has no redeeming qualities and is impossible to sympathize with, but it’s so damn freaky that even when it’s ranting about death and destruction it works. The audience isn’t meant to understand how such a creature is possible, it just is.
Veteran voice actress Megumi Hayashibara is unrecognizable as the voice of Hakumen no Mono, and initially her casting seems odd. Usually such a demon would be voiced with a deep bass, but Hayashibara gives us a scratchy and hissing Hakumen no Mono in a register where it’s not possible to guess a gender. And because it’s not the voice we expect, it feels wrong, just like it looks wrong.
A nine-tailed fox should be beautiful, but Hakumen is twisted, with eyes that are too big and a body that is too thin.
Between Hayashibara’s excellent performance and sparing visual use of Hakumen itself, the show does an excellent job of building up just how terrifying the fully unleashed Hakumen no Mono ought to be. I haven’t seen such a good build up of an earth-shattering, apocalypse level villain in a long time. Hakumen feels unstoppable, even though it’s imprisoned for the majority of the series.
Ushio and Tora isn’t going to win awards for its plot, but as a shounen action series it’s good fun, and since it’s based on a completed manga, it has no filler. Everything gets used eventually by the end. If you like shounen material, and don’t want to sit through 100+ episodes to get to the end (if the end is even there), Ushio and Tora is worth checking out.
Number of Episodes: 39
Pluses: entire storyline is animated and filler free, Ushio and Tora are entertaining and compelling leads, Hakumen no Mono is an incredibly good villain
Minuses: slow pacing at the start of the series, characters and plot aren’t particularly deep, filler removal creates the impression that everyone Ushio meets has to be involved in some way
Ushio and Tora is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled. Sentai Filmworks has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner ofWriters of the Futureand since then her work has been published inGalaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and theYear’s Best YA Speculative Fiction.
I read thousands of fiction guidelines of all genres every year as part of my work at The Submission Grinder, in order to distill those guidelines down into their basic components for market listings. After reading so many guidelines I wish that there were guidelines that editors had to follow when they’re writing their guidelines pages. Writers can be criticized for using tired cliches, but editors would do well to turn that critical eye on their own guidelines. Note that none of these are meant to single out any particular publisher or market, and don’t affect the availability of listings. But are, rather, general impressions I have after reading so so many guidelines.
GUIDELINE NECESSITIES
I wouldn’t have thought the listing out necessities would be a thing that needs doing, but I see important information omitted quite often.
Pay Rate
Most short fiction sales have a non-negotiable pay rate, and most short fiction markets post the rate right in their guidelines so authors can decide before they submit what level of pay they consider reasonable compensation. It can save both parties hassle in the long run because the authors should have already known the pay rate before the acceptance letters are sent out and that shouldn’t be a point of contention. If you don’t provide information about pay rate you give the impression that you don’t pay. If you really don’t pay, be upfront about it and just state clearly that you don’t pay. If you do pay you should state that clearly also.
Genre/Style/Subject of story
In the absence of genre information, you might simply mean that you want contemporary fiction aimed at a mainstream audience. You might, or you might not. An author might assume differently than you. Why not just say explicitly what kinds of things you’re interested in? Maybe you want only “literary” style, or maybe you want nothing of that style. If you don’t say something you can’t blame writers for submitting it. If there’s some subject material you want absolutely nothing to do with, whether it’s a heavily used trope like zombies or a real life thing like child abuse, just say so.
Word Count Range
Some guidelines say that submissions of any length are acceptable, others say that any short fiction is acceptable. But where does it become unreasonable for an author to submit? What is “short” fiction and what is “long” fiction? If you give at least a ballpark of the boundary you’re thinking of, then authors who read the guidelines can avoid sending something you know you won’t be able to use.
Reprint/Multiple/Simultaneous Submissions
Whether or not you take reprints (stories that have been published already), multiple submissions (more than one story submitted to you from same author at a time), or simultaneous submissions (same story submitted to you and another publisher at a time), just say so. The default guess for most savvy authors will be no on all three, but it’s not like guidelines words are rationed.
Timeframe for querying
Even if you intend to stay on top of submissions and reply to them in a timely manner, there may be circumstances where you get behind or an email gets eaten by the internet. So it’s important to state a time period after which an author can feel free to query about the status of a submission–long enough so that you are not constantly pestered about statuses but short enough that the author isn’t left hanging for a very long period of time (30, 60, or 90 days are common values).
Any peculiar specifics
Be sure to list any specific requirements peculiar to your process. Requirement for anonymity and any extra hurdles that requires, file formats, etc.
Easy to find guidelines
Some sites hide the submission guidelines like they’re some kind of dirty secret. Preferably a writer should be able to find a link to the guidelines page linked right from the home page of the site, marked with a name like “Submit” or “Guidelines” or “Contribute”.
THINGS TO AVOID
There are certain trends that I’ve noticed that may raise my eyebrow about whether a publication is writer-friendly. Think twice about putting these in your guidelines and be aware you are driving some writers away with them.
Contests that use first rights unpaid
If you have a contest, and you want people to vote on entries to decide which stories win, put it in a private section of the site. Otherwise you are using up the writer’s first publication rights for no benefit to them. If you insist on doing this, at least explain in your guidelines that the writer is giving up their most valuable product without certainty of compensation. Along similar lines, if you claim to be a paying contest, pay for every work that is published. The exceptions often take the form of saying that the winner will be paid and published, and that runners-up will be published with no mention of payment on the latter. If you insist on doing this, make it clear in your guidelines that writers are gambling their first publication rights with a chance of nothing in return.
“Pay” in anything that is not currency
You can’t pay for groceries with exposure. You can’t pay your mortgage with contributor copies. So don’t claim you are “paying” in these things. If you’re not paying, say so.
Saying that you can’t afford to pay writers, but also requiring first publication rights.
If you can’t afford to pay writers, it’s worth considering why those writers should give away the most valuable aspect of their story–first publication rights. Do you actually have a platform that will provide them more exposure than posting on their blog or self-pubbing on Amazon would offer?
“Send only work of great quality”
Writers can’t judge the quality of their own work accurately, so don’t ask them to. Often as a writer develops in skill their opinion of the quality of their own work will actually lower as they come to understand how far they have to go yet–probably in part due to Dunning-Kruger effect. Presumably this statement is put in guidelines in an attempt to decrease the volume and increase the quality of slush. But it doesn’t work and might, in fact, have the opposite effect. You’re an editor, do your job and handle the slushpile (either by yourself or with slushreaders)–if you don’t want to do that then perhaps you are in the wrong occupation.
Condescending language
Even if you don’t like romance, or you don’t like literary, or you don’t like science fiction, or you don’t like whatever else, there’s no need to talk down about it in your guidelines. Keep in mind that there are many writers who write in many different genres, and some might write well in both genres you prefer and those you don’t. Talking down about “genre fiction” is especially telling because “literary” is also a “genre”–everything fits into one or more genres, and speculative fiction can be literary in style.
Nitpicky formatting requirements
Guidelines often refer to “standard manuscript format”, but since there is no centralized source of standards, there are more than one “standard” you’ll see. Some will specify that you use a different font, different spacing, tell you to set Word to indent your paragraphs instead of pressing Tab. For a short story writer to make sales they have to continually send and resend their stories to different magazines. This takes time, but what would take way more time is rejiggering the manuscript every time it goes back out because different markets have different preferences. If you want something different, as long as you can read the story, any nitpicky formatting can wait until the acceptance is sent out, at which point there’s a clear motivation for making the effort. An obvious exception to this is when there is a clear and immediate need for an alteration, most notably the stripping of author name from a manuscript when dealing with anonymous slushpiles.
“We can’t pay yet, but we hope to pay someday”
This isn’t generally how the business works. If you treat your writers well, and you pay well for their fiction, and you show that you have good taste in your choices, and you can get the word out about your stories, then you will attract more writers and more experienced writers who have had the time to develop the skill you want to use. This will increase the overall quality of your slushpile and if you choose from that slushpile carefully you will end up with a much better result. If you don’t pay writers then you will only get submissions from writers who are willing to submit stories to you for no pay, which is a much smaller group that is going to exclude most of the best active writers. With lower quality work in the publication, you will have a harder time finding a paying reader base–it’s hard enough finding funds if the quality of the work is high, it’s nigh impossible if the quality is low. So “we can’t pay yet but we hope to someday” tends to hint that you don’t really have a good idea how to run this business, which combined with the lack of pay is not a great sign to someone thinking of submitting.
BONUS POINTS
The things following are things which are not expectations in the guidelines, but if you feel comfortable putting something like them in the guidelines they make your guidelines page especially useful and attractive to writers.
Sample contract
There can be a big gap between the general terms listed in guidelines and the specific terms listed in a contract simply because the former is conversational language and the latter is formally structured legalese. If you have an author-friendly contract template in hand, there should be no reason why you can’t share that publicly to help authors make an informed decision.
Diversity Statement
If you want to increase the diversity of the authors and stories in your slushpile, it can help to ask for this in your guidelines–especially reaching out to demographics that have historically been excluded for either the author identity or the content of a story–gender, race, sexuality, culture, religion, neural profile, etc.
“Don’t self-reject. If in doubt, submit.”
Statements like this are particularly welcoming to writers, because there can be a tendency for writers to self-reject out of doubt because they think they don’t write the kind of stories you buy. Writers are inaccurate judges of their own work–encourage them to let you do your job.
A bulleted list of important points
A writer new to your publication should read the whole guidelines page before submitting, but a quick bulleted list makes it both more likely that newbies will catch the important points and that veterans will refresh their memory before submitting again.
A brief list of exemplary famous authors
If you say you want stories that bring to mind Phillip K. Dick, Terry Pratchett, Octavia Butler, Isaac Asimov, or Douglas Adams, these all give useful information to a writer about what kind of aspects of fiction you value most to help them decide what to send to you first. If you truly want everything in every style, leave this list out. And keep the list short–if you have too many authors on it, then trying to distill a meaning from that list becomes impossible.
Joker Game isn’t the series I thought it would be, but it’s not the series I feared it would be either, and that’s both good and bad.
The story starts in 1937, in the midst of Japan’s invasion of China leading up to WW2. Lieutenant Colonel Yuuki has started up a specially trained spy organization known as D-Agency. The men who have graduated its rigorous training are regarded as both mavericks and monsters for adhering to tactics that the prevailing military thinking at the time regards as cowardly or even sacrilegious.
The opening two-parter is a delicious start, with conventionally trained Lieutenant Sakuma arriving as a military liaison between D-Agency and the Imperial Army. Sakuma quickly gets caught up in a cat and mouse game between D-Agency and his own superior that ends the first episode on a glorious cliffhanger with no obvious way out.
From there the series spins off into an anthology format, featuring a different spy each episode, with mixed results. For one, it really hurts to lose Sakuma’s outsider perspective. Since he’s not a spy, he doesn’t hide what he’s thinking and we get to follow along with his thought process. This doesn’t happen with the other characters, who are trained agents and reveal nothing more than their cover. The show plays its cards so close to its chest that sometimes it’s not possible to figure out what happened until the danger is over and it’s safe to debrief.
It makes sense, considering these men are working deep undercover rather than the more glamorous James Bond sort of agent, but it means that many times the viewer can’t put all the pieces of the story together until the last five minutes of the episode when the show reveals what we could not have known before.
On the one hand, it allows the spies to show their skills, and watching them is like seeing a magic trick without knowing how it’s done, but on the other, some things don’t make sense until context is given, and unlike magic tricks, we need the context to fully appreciate what happened.
I’d also argue that the two episodes following the opening two parter are among the weakest of the batch (though Hatano’s creativity in making an escape rivals Jason Bourne) since the spies involved are either dealing with temporary amnesia or primarily operating in the background, but there are some standouts in Episode 5 “Robinson” and Episode 6 “Asia Express.”
Each spy has his own strengths so the nature of their assignments results in a different feel for every episode. One episode might take place on an ocean liner in full sunlight. Another might happen mostly in an interrogation room after a spy’s identity has been compromised.
Now for the elephant in the room.
Joker Game takes place before or during WW2, depending on the episode, and from history, we know that Japan was among the aggressors. The show even opens with the Japanese populace celebrating the invasion of Qingdao.
The series combats approval of this history in two ways (in addition to a disclaimer that reminds audiences that this is a work of fiction). The first is the reminder of Japan being unprepared to deal with the western world, resulting in unequal treaties. Historically this was true and very much a legitimate concern, so it is understandable that Japan would want a spy agency to keep up with their western peers.
The second way is what makes D-Agency such a maverick in its time period.
Nationalism was high in WW2 and the military still adhered to a bushido-inspired code. But the two rules of D-Agency are: Don’t kill. Don’t die.
There is a good reason for this. Bodies bring up questions, and for a spy relying on discretion, they don’t want bodies to be found, whether it’s their own or an enemy’s. This code makes the spies of D-Agency more sympathetic because they aren’t killers, but runs counter to common military thinking of the time, which favors a more direct approach. Lt. Col. Yuuki finds the Imperial Army’s thinking to be backwards and even foolish as he and his team work to outwit all comers.
It’s also clear that D-Agency does not entirely trust Germany, since one spy expresses surprise at the side of the war his country has chosen, and another spy operates in Germany even after the war begins and the two countries are supposed to be allies.
If you can buy into a spy agency that is loyal to its country, if not what its country is fighting for, Joker Game is worth a shot. The obligatory Shanghai episode (Japan occupied it throughout the war) was a potential for the show to go very, very wrong, but did not end up offending me, and put a spotlight on military corruption in the city.
Though there is some spy versus spy involving the Allied powers, the show is careful to keep the conflict a human one (or to make the Allied spy such a bastard even his allies wouldn’t like him) so there are no hard feelings at the end of the episode. None of the spies ever deliver a smoking gun that could be tied to a historical offensive, so they can remain the good guys, rooting out corruption, traitors, and other spies.
One point that I would like to raise separately from the quality of the show is that D-Agency is composed entirely of men, and women only play bit parts in the series. While I’m sure the Imperial Army wasn’t about to start drafting women, D-Agency revels in the creative and unorthodox, so it seems odd that Yuuki would not have recruited at least one, especially since historically Japan did have a female spy in WW2, Yoshiko Kawashima.
Yuuki explains his reason for not doing this in the final episode, but quite frankly his reasoning is a load of horse pucky and applies to both genders, as is quite apparent in the context of the conversation.
It may have been difficult to arrange for a single Japanese woman living abroad given the time period, but D-Agency clearly works within Japan as well as without, and there’s no shortage of opportunities for a woman to do spywork domestically. Yuuki is already aware that some women are perfectly capable of seeing through the blind spots even the military men miss. It’s a shame he doesn’t capitalize on that.
Number of Episodes: 12
Pluses: characters are extremely smart and believable about their spywork, seldom explored perspective from a contentious time period, writers clearly did their homework
Minuses: spies get minimal screentime in some episodes (they might not even be the POV character), frequently not possible to understand the full situation until the end of the episode, not possible to get attached to the cast since they’re constantly rotating
Joker Game is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled.
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner ofWriters of the Futureand since then her work has been published inGalaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, and theYear’s Best YA Speculative Fiction.
Albert had no interest in History. Nor had he interest in Mathematics, Science, Language, Art, or any of the other schools of The University. But one did not question The University, let alone defy it. Tales skittered among the Uneducated about Accepted Candidates thrown back from the gates for a single unwisely chosen word. The accepted response was safe.
“I so pledge,” said Albert.
A hole dilated open in the hallowed wall in front of him, symbolic of the forthcoming opening of Albert’s own eyes as he gained his Education. Antiseptic blue light spilled out. He waited for the command, to demonstrate his patience and submission to the sacred Policies and Procedures. One page of the Packet had detailed precisely how he was to behave, and he had no intention of failing now. Not when greatness lay before him.
“Insert your left hand,” The University instructed Albert. He obeyed. His skin looked a sickly sallow under the light, until the opening sealed around his wrist and held him in place. He felt the mildest of twinges as an airjet drove the new chip into his wrist, neatly tucked beneath his radial artery. His own pulse would provide the micropower the chip would need for the rest of his life.
“Welcome, Freshman,” The University boomed, loudly enough for the rest of the Application Center to hear. No one cheered. No one ever cheered. The Uneducated saw the Educated as mad, and yet dreamed of one day joining their ranks. Every Accepted Candidate meant there was one less spot available for the rest of them that year. He was no more Educated than he had been when he stepped into the Application Center ten minutes prior and submitted his forms, and yet now he was counted among their ranks for the potential that The University had seen within him.
The porters arrived. He had brought nothing with him, as per the Policies and Procedures, save for the clothing they now demanded he remove. He had made arrangements for the rest of his personal effects, as every Potential Candidate did. But this year, those arrangements would be put into action. He had a single cousin, who would have it all, the same as if Albert had died.
He donned his University Uniform. For the next six years, he would wear the comfortable, loose canvas of the jeans and the casual, distinctive blue shirt of the University Student, and carry the slim-line screen on which so much of his life would now depend. The porters gave him that screen when he was dressed. It was already turned on, and his class schedule was displayed in glowing green letters. His first class was in thirty minutes: Introduction to Speculative Analysis.
He left the Application Center without another word, either to the porters or to The University. The University had other Candidates to evaluate, and the porters would eagerly scrutinize his every word for signs of rebellion. He would give them nothing. He would be Educated in History and then the porters would have no power over him ever again.
Only The University would. Forever.
Six years. Six years of glorious freedom, and yet, only by abstaining from the temptations of life at The University could Albert become Educated. Many did not. To be a University Student was, after all, to be free to travel anywhere in the world, to be free to order any goods or services one desired, to be free to take part in all the wonderful bounty the world had to offer.
But The University was keeping track. Education was priceless. No man could possibly possess the wealth needed to pay even a single year of the most abstemious life at The University. It was solely by the generosity of The University and its ancient, mythical Donors that any man could become Educated, by surrendering himself to the wise and remorseless command of The University. To be given the opportunity for Education and to waste that chance was the most foolish possible outcome a man could achieve. And yet so many did, trading six short years of glory for a lifetime of drudgery.
History was a rare subject. Only four others shared the topic with Albert in his class. The first thing Albert learned was the wisdom of The University, for he was fascinated from the moment of his first lesson. All sorts of strange and wonderful secrets were his, matters that the Uneducated could never hear.
How once, The University had a great rival, whose name had been deliberately expunged in the riotous celebration when The University achieved its final victory.
How before that, The University had been but one of many, invited to ally itself with great powers among its brethren but choosing to stand proudly alone, growing in wealth and import with each passing year.
How once, not a lifetime but a single summer’s labor was deemed sufficient to repay the cost of a year’s Education, and how the years of labor per year of study grew each year.
How beyond The University’s reach there had been other places that refused the benevolent counsel of The University – and Albert could understand the implications of the phrase ‘had been.’
How the University had turned its wisdom upon itself, and seen the fallibility of man, and acted to remove that element from its own administration. It had been a very long time since mere human decisions had guided it, since bureaucracy and greed had played a role in the administration of the world. It was only among the University Students that folly remained despite The University’s rigorous selection; of the few tens of thousands chosen around the world each year, one in ten would squander the priceless gift of Education, and another one in twenty would fail its rigors despite their best efforts.
It was not merely human history that Albert learned. Alone among his classmates, The University chose for him courses of study that took him deep into the Restricted Archives, regions where The University’s own processes of deliberation had been recorded. Organization charts, acceptance criteria, secrets that many of the Uneducated would beamingly murder to learn, to gain their own entry into the ranks of their betters. He began from the most ancient of files and moved forward.
Many of Albert’s classmates had dissipated their precious days, losing the favor of The University but still through its grace permitted their full term of freedom. Albert did not travel. Albert did not spend his nights in drunken stupors. Albert was engaged, in the fullest sense of the word. The University guided Albert, drove Albert, but where it drove him was deeper and deeper into itself, into understanding how The University had once functioned, how it grew over time, how its Policies and Procedures had developed into the heart of the world.
When six years had passed, Albert was given the highest of trials The University had to offer. He would not be given the multiple-choice tests that his wastrel classmates would take (and fail), to perfunctorily prove their lack of worth. He would not sit for days filling out Blue Book after Blue Book, demonstrating his grasp of rote facts and simple analysis. He would not even sit before a panel of Professors to be judged for fitness to join their exalted ranks.
No, Albert stood before The University itself, the hallowed Seal etched into the floor of an ancient chamber. Speakers and sensors embedded into every wall left The University aware of his presence at its symbolic heart as he faced his Final Examination.
Author’s Note: One evening, my writing group, the Fairfield Scribes (collective authors of Z Tales: Stories from the Zombieverse), assembled in my living room, with the express purpose of shamelessly engaging in literary generation. That afternoon, I had been working on unpacking boxes of books, and came across “Legends of the Ferengi” – in which it was noted that those avaricious aliens would decades’ worth of debt to pay for a prestigious education, a concept that was just a joke when the book was written. Nowadays, that doesn’t seem quite so funny… and it doesn’t show signs of stopping.
Born in the far-off days of the Second Millennium, PC Keeler spends his days writing detailed instructions for very dim but precise silicon brains to follow and finds it a relaxing change of pace to write more conversationally for charming, handsome, intellectual readers like you. He enjoys past, present, and future, preferably all at once. Steampunk and Ren Faires work well for this.
Diabolical Plots was open for its yearly submission window for the month of July. During that time, 803 writers submitted 1070 stories. This year, the maximum word count was raised from 2000 words to 3500 words, and this year instead of one story per month Diabolical Plots will publish two stories, for a total of 24 stories that will begin running in April 2017 which is when the Year Two stories have all been published.
Thank you to all the writers who submitted. You made the final choices incredibly difficult, which is a very good problem for an editor to have. If we had the resources to publish more right now, there would have been plenty of excellent stories to choose from.
OK, without further ado, here is the list of stories and authors and their publishing order!
April 2017
“O Stone, Be Not So” by José Pablo Iriarte
“The Long Pilgrimage of Sister Judith” by Paul Starkey
May 2017
“The Things You Should Have Been” by Andrea G. Stewart
“The Aunties Return the Ocean” by Chris Kuriata
June 2017
“The Existentialist Men” by Gwendolyn Clare
“Regarding the Robot Raccons Attached to the Hull of My Ship” by Rachael K Jones and Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
July 2017
“Monster of the Soup Cans” by Elizabeth Barron
“The Shadow Over His Mouth” by Aidan Doyle
August 2017
“For Now, Sideways” by A. Merc Rustad
“Typical Heroes” by Theo Kogod
September 2017
“Strung” by Xinyi Wang
“The Entropy of a Small Town” by Thomas K. Carpenter
October 2017
“Lightning Dance” by Tamlyn Dreaver
“Three Days of Unnamed Silence” by Daniel Ausema
November 2017
“When One Door Shuts” by Aimee Ogden
“Shoots and Ladders” by Charles Payseur
December 2017
“Hakim Vs. the Sweater Curse” by Rachael K. Jones
“The Leviathans Have Fled the Sea” by Jon Lasser
January 2018
“Six Hundred Universes of Jenny Zars” by Wendy Nikel
“Brooklyn Fantasia” by Marcy Arlin
February 2018
“9 Things Mainstream Media Got Wrong About the Ansaj Incident” by Willem Myra
“Artful Intelligence” by G.H. Finn
March 2018
“What Monsters Prowl Above the Waves” by Jo Miles
“Soft Clay” by Seth Chambers
ETA: Note that this list originally include “Smells Like Teen Demon” by Sunil Patel, which was removed from the lineup. This list has been edited because it is the easiest way to reference which stories are in which year, and I didn’t want this to be a source of confusion.
I am back from WorldCon 74, also known as MidAmericon 2, which was held in Kansas City, Missouri from August 17-21! I am back into my normal swing of things and trying to work my way back into the normal everyday types of things that WorldCon wasn’t.
I had such an incredible time. Sitting at my desk, back in the real world, my brain is still trying to process everything, it has been a very densely packed 4 days. I am introvert. I use the word “introvert” in the sense, not that I hate social situations or hate people or anything like that, but that social situations use energy and being by myself recharges energy–as opposed to an extrovert who recharges by being around people and uses energy when they’re alone. I was expecting to have fun, but I was also expecting to slam into my social limits halfway through each day and then come home feeling like a wrung out washcloth. But, it seems that in this very specific environment, I am more of an extrovert–most nights when I finally retired to my room the reason was more because of aching legs and knowing that I should try to get some sleep than being unable to cope with the social scene anymore.
I arrived at the hotel around midday Thursday and left around midday Sunday, so I had a solid 72 hours around the premises. I hear there are a lot of really interesting things to go see in and around Kansas City. But I didn’t go to any of them, figuring that I had such a limited time here and the people and things I came here for were all concentrated in the area by the hotel and convention center.
The biggest difference in my convention experience between this time and the last time at WorldCon in Chicago in 2012 is that I have become somewhat more notable in the speculative fiction publishing community.
Since 2012:
–The Submission Grinder was launched.
–Diabolical Plots started publishing original fiction and became a SFWA-qualifying market.
–The Long List Anthology was published.
So the biggest difference is that it wasn’t uncommon for complete strangers to actually know of what I do. Some would recognize me from checking my name badge alone. Others wouldn’t recognize the name, but if I mentioned the Grinder or someone else mentioned that I run the Grinder then many writers would recognize me, would often say very nice things about the site. This was a very big difference for me–When I last attended a convention I had had some published fiction and had been running Diabolical Plots for nonfiction-only for 4 years , but those had never spurred this kind of reaction.
David Steffen and Neil Clarke
In the past, when I was just getting started at writing, I had some miserable experiences at conventions–I just thought they weren’t for me. I couldn’t seem to get anyone to really talk to me and whenever I tried I just felt like I was shut out by everyone there. This time around, since I was more well-connected than I’ve been in the past, I tried my best to try to help people have a good convention who looked like they might’ve been in the same boat as I had been when I’d had miserable conventions. First, if I was standing in a circle of people talking and I saw someone standing outside the circle looking like they wanted to join, I would try to step to one side and wave them in, make it clear they were welcome to join the conversation. Second, if I was with some people I knew, and I saw other people that I suspected didn’t know each other, I would try to introduce the two groups to each other, maybe with a bit of bragging-up, since it is much easier to talk about another person’s accomplishments than your own. I feel like these simple practices might’ve helped make the con a little better for some of these people, and I know that when I saw such similar behaviors directed toward me I greatly appreciated the person taking a moment to make my day much better.
Marguerite Kenner, Alasdair Stuart, and David Steffen
I was namedropped on at least three different panels, and each one was for a different project–this was a novel experience for me. I have heard secondhand from people who’ve gone to other conventions that the Submission Grinder is often mentioned in panels as a resource, which is great! I hear that I was mentioned in a Kickstarter panel as an example of someone who has run a successful Kickstarter (for the Long List Anthology last year)–this was before I arrived onsite or I might’ve been there myself. I hear that I was mentioned in a panel aimed at new writers that in part discussed the topic of how to find markets for your work, and the Submission Grinder was mentioned as a resource–I had intended to attend that panel just to see if I could witness a namedrop for the fun of it, but I ended up seeing a perfect opportunity to hang out with someone I had barely seen yet, so I took that opportunity (and didn’t regret it since my intent to visit the panel was really just a vanity novelty). And the one namedrop I was there to witness–Finding the Right Podcast For You, in which Alasdair Stuart mentioned the Diabolical Plots “Best Of” podcast list as a good way to get samplings of fiction podcasts… and then he also commented on the shades of pink I was cycling through. So that was all very exciting.
Aside: This might be an appropriate time to note that being able to have an unrelentingly wonderful time does not mean that everyone was treated well–see this thread by Alyssa Wong about being targeted by harassment at this convention and a previous one she had gone to. Alyssa had very positive things to say about how the WorldCon organizers handled it (which is good!) but it is horrible that it got as far as it did–people should know better. This isn’t rocket science. Read her thread and other threads that spun off of it if you aren’t aware of this kind of horrible behavior from some small subset of fans. It’s nasty stuff. I did not see any of this kind of thing happening personally, but it did happen. It’s not necessarily surprising that I didn’t see or experience it personally, since I am an able-bodied heterosexual white man of unremarkable appearance who is not a household name, and so it would be less usual for me to be the target of such abuse (not impossible, mind you, but less common). It is a mark of privilege that I don’t generally need to worry about that, and I’m glad that Alyssa Wong and others are willing to talk about this kind of thing still happening, because it’s easy for people who don’t experience it to forget about it or to think it’s not a problem if the people who ARE experiencing it feel like they can’t talk. On the other hand, since this is a post about my experience of the con, I will leave it at that for now–if you weren’t aware of that thing happening, consider taking some time to read her tweets. There have been some other tweet streams of interest on the subject of harassment that have run since WorldCon, such as this one by Rachael K. Jones and this one by Julia Rios.
My Programming
I wasn’t involved in a lot of programming. I actually hadn’t thought that I would be on any programming at all–I had applied early in the year and received a rejection quickly after. But I did end up being in two bits of programming.
Writer’s Workshop
I co-led a critique session with C.C. Finlay (editor of F&SF and a writer), which was a lot of fun. We read synopses and excerpts from novels by three authors, and then all five of us gave our impressions and we discussed ways that the synopses and excerpts might be improved. I had never met Finlay before, and it was wonderful to get a chance to not only meet with him but to interact with him for a couple hours to discuss strengths and weaknesses of fiction. Obviously I can’t say much more than that–these were unpublished novels and the discussion in a private room, so I can only speak about it in generalities.
Fiction Reading
I was very excited to find out not too long before the convention that I had been assigned a 30-minute fiction reading (Well, 25 minutes, to allow some time to let the next author get prepared). It… wasn’t what you would call an ideal timeslot, being from 7-7:30 on the night that the Hugo Awards start at 8–so at that time most people who were at all interested in watching would be finding seats in either the auditorium or in some other group viewing area where they were streaming.
Brian Trent, Benjamin C. Kinney, Thomas K. Carpenter, Marina J. Lostetter, Tina Gower, and Andrea G. Stewart
But to my surprise, approximately 13 people were there just to hear me recite things I made up! This is a quite large turnout for someone like me who is not well-known for their writing.
Of all the readings by other people that I attended, most people read either one work that fit very closely into the time allotted, or maybe two things, or an excerpt from a longer work. I flipped through upcoming stories and though I would’ve loved to read part of my upcoming story that will be in IGMS, it is a bit of a sprawling story so that it would be hard to find a representative sample. And, well, in my opinion my best writing is very short, punchy stories of 500-1000 words. So, I decided to buck the trend and I ended up reading 5 stories in my allotted time.
I read “My Wife is a Bear in the Morning”, written as an complaint letter to an apartment manager by a man whose wife is literally a bear in the morning (you can hear it in audio at Podcastle).
Sunil Patel and David Steffen
I read “So You’ve Decided to Adopt a Zeptonian Baby!”, written as a brochure to help those who’ve decided to adopt those invincible alien babies that keep falling from the sky in meteor showers. (you can hear it in audio at Podcastle)
I read “This Is Your Problem, Right Here”, which is a story about a woman who has recently purchased a water park and finds that the plumbing doesn’t work properly when she opens in the spring, and it starts as a plumber tells her that this is because all of her trolls have died (the existence of trolls are not common knowledge in this world). That was originally published in Daily Science Fiction, you can also hear it at Cast of Wonders.
And I read two others that are as-yet unpublished, so I won’t discuss their details here.
The reading seemed to go over well. I got some compliments, and people said they liked the quick changeups of stories, especially at the end of a long day when everyone was getting tired.
Books
The one book that I knew ahead of time that I was going to buy was The Flux by Ferrett Steinmetz. I already own the book. I already love the book. But I only had it in ebook, and I love these books so much I felt like I should have a signed paper copy. And, since Ferrett was onsite, it seemed best to go ahead and buy it so that I could get him to sign.
Ferrett Steinmetz and David Steffen
I knew that Ferrett’s next book, the third in his ‘Mancy series, was coming out soon, but that the release date was not for a little while yet. But Angry Robot Books had the book on sale at their vendor booth! So, obviously that came home with me too. And I am SO EXCITED to read it.
So I showed up at the Angry Robot booth to buy The Flux, and knew I had to buy Fix, a very nice man (whose name I didn’t immediately recognize and so didn’t pay all that much attention to) behind the counter told me that I could get a discount if I bought one of the larger form-factor books. Not really intending to buy a lot of books (because I have such a stack at home, I am a slow reader) I saw that United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas was on display, and I had heard someone talking about how good that was earlier, so that was the first one I picked up. The guy behind the counter started telling me about it and I tried my best to unrudely say “yeah yeah let me just read the back cover descriptio myselfn” (I hope I didn’t across as rude! I like taking verbal recommendations from fans of a book but at pretty much any kind of store I would rather just look at stuff without staff discussing everything I look at–it makes me very nervous if I feel like the staff are hovering and I will be much more inclined to scurry away than to buy). It did indeed sound really interesting, a story where Japan won World War II and ended up in control of the United States. I glanced at some of the other books, flipped a few over to read the back, but decided that United States of Japan caught my eye much more solidly than the others. So I decided to buy United States of Japan. The guy behind the counter rang me up and then offered to sign my book… at which point I of course realized that I was talking to Peter Tieryas, the author of the book I’d just bought, so I laughed at the fact that I had not noticed the matching book cover and name badge and took him up on his offer. (This concludes my telling of “The Time That I Wouldn’t Let Peter Tieryas Finish Pitching His Book To Me But Then I Bought His Book From Him Anyway Without Realizing He Was the Author of Said Book: A Tale of David Steffen’s Inattention to Detail”)
Tina Connolly, David Steffen, and Caroline M. Yoachim
Caroline M. Yoachim and Tina Connolly both had book releases from Fairwood Press at WorldCon. Caroline’s book is a short story collection titled Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World. Caroline is an incredible short story writer, and consistently hits out of the park for me, so I am buying the ebook for this one. Tina‘s short story book is a short story collection titled On the Eyeball Floor. Tina (along with Caroline) is another writer who, when I hear they have something new out, I don’t ask for a pitch I just say “shut up and take my money”. So, I’m buying that ebook too. It was quite fun to watch these two launch together–they made it a friendly competition where they made a wager on it and the Fairwood Press vendor table had a running tally sheet of sales. They ended up tying at the end, which is hilarious and perfect.
Jon Lasser and David Steffen
I stopped by the freebie table once, at a time when it was a twenty minute wait to get to the table. After that wait I felt like I had to grab the maximum of three books even though I don’t really need more books. I saw a stack of Briarpatchby Tim Pratt and grabbed a copy even though I already own and love the book, so that I could give a copy of it away to the next person I talk books with. I also picked up a copy of Fearful Symmetries, edited by Ellen Datlow, and a short story collection by Matthew Johnson titled Irregular Verbs and Other Stories.
I also had a few extra copies of the Long List Anthology left over from last year’s Kickstarter and I decided that there was no better way to use them than to bring them to WorldCon and give them out to people when I chat with them. I saved one to give away at my fiction reading and gave three out when it felt appropriate, so that was fun!
Programming
Kate Baker and David Steffen
I did not attend many panels this time around. I attended a very select few that were on very specific topics that were very near and dear to my heart or to specifically try to meet some of the panelists that were on my mental list of people that I wanted to meet.
Other than that, I tended to favor readings of authors: I went to readings by Caroline M. Yoachim, Terra LeMay, William Ledbetter, Loren Rhoads, Stefan Rudnicki, Kate Baker. And readings of magazines: Escape Artists, Flash Fiction Online, Asimov’s.
As well as kaffeeklatches, which are really just organized hangouts with people of interest–you signup in time to claim one of 9 slots and then you spend 50 minutes hanging out with that person. I did kaffeeklatches with Kate Baker, Ken Liu, and S.B. Divya.
The People
Tina Gower and David Steffen
So. Many. People. So wonderful to put faces to names for people that I have known online for years.
I am not even going to try to make a comprehensive list, because there is no way that I will remember everyone and I don’t want those that I do forget to feel left out. But I will list out a few.
Shortly after rushing to the critique session that I was almost late for, I met up with my writing group friend Doug Engstrom–we’ve swapped critiques and discussion for years, so it was great to meet him in person and to interact with him off and on throughout the weekend.
Sheila Williams and David Steffen
I got to meet Stefan Rudnicki and Gabrielle de Cuir, the masterminds (and mastervoices) behind Skyboat Media. They are most well known for producing the Lightspeed Magazine and Nightmare Magazine podcasts, and for performing much of the voice-acting for those productions. I have a direct professional connection with them in that they produced the audiobook version of the Long List Anthology last year–of which they sold out at their booth during WorldCon. They both have voices that I have heard for so long in story narrations that it was both wonderful and very weird to meet them in person–I associate their voices so strongly with storytelling that my brain sinks into story listening mode and I kind of had to yank it out of that mode because, hey brain I’m trying to talk to people here! It was great to meet them and talk business and chat.
Speaking of meeting people whose voices are incredibly familiar to me: I met Alasdair Stuart and Marguerite Kenner. They are the owners of Escape Artists, which is the parent company of most of my favorite podcasts: Escape Pod, Pseudopod, Podcastle, and Cast of Wonders, as well as the quarterly ebook zine Mothership Zeta. Alasdair has been on the staff of Escape Artists for more than ten years, and he was the host of Pseudopod at the time that I made my very first fiction sale of all time to Pseudopod and decided that maybe I ought to try listening to the show (which has resulted in an 8 year listening binge of all the podcast fiction I could find that still continues today). Marguerite is the editor and host of Cast of Wonders. They are incredible, smart, nice, welcoming, helpful people, and I want to hang out with them forever.
Kate Baker, is another one of those familiar-voiced people and I was happy to get a chance to hang out with her at kaffeeklatch and elsewhere. (And again with the barely being able to talk because I am so familiar with her voice from podcasts!)
David Steffen and Dionne Obeso
It was wonderful to meet Sheila Williams, Neil Clarke, C.C. Finlay, Caroline M. Yoachim, Tina Connolly, Martin L. Shoemaker, Marina J. Lostetter, S.B. Divya, Ken Liu, Alyssa Wong, so so many others.
I got to meet a few writers whose short stories I have purchased: Andy Dudak, Tina Gower, Sunil Patel, Jon Lasser, Andrea G. Stewart. (it makes a handy icebreaker to say “Hi! I bought your story!” 🙂 )
Meeting people was easily the highlight of my convention experience.
The Hugo Awards
Host Pat Cadigan and Jan Siegel
The Hugo Award ceremony was held Saturday evening and was hosted by Pat Cadigan. Cadigan was a wonderful and hilarious host, and really overall the awards went as well as I could have hoped given the ballot they started with. Lots of awesome things won. A couple categories got No Awarded (Related Work and Fancast I believe?) but none of the fiction categories which are my main interest in the awards.
Michi Trota of Uncanny Magazine
Uncanny won Best Semiprozine in its first year of eligibility! Naomi Kritzer won for Best Short Story for “Cat Pictures Please”! Hao Jingfang and Ken Liu (who was the translator in this case) won for Best Novelette for “Folding Beijing”! Nnedi Okorafor won for Best Novella for “Binti”! N.K. Jemisin won for Best Novel for The Fifth Season! Neil Gaiman won for Best Graphic Story for Sandman!
Astronaut Stan Love accepting Campbell Award for Andy WeirAstronaut Jeanette Epps accepting Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form for The Martian
The Martian won Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, and its author Andy Weir won the Campbell Award! For each of them an astronaut accepted his award for him and talked about how much The Martian meant to them, that it got the science and the feel of the interpersonal relationships of the astronauts right!
Yes, there are a lot of explanation points in this section, but they are all deserved. Especially after last year with the fiction categories getting so many No Awards, it was a major relief that all the fiction categories were awarded, and to such incredible people and recipients.
I watched from the very crowded SFWA suite this year, in part because my reading was too close to the ceremony to have much chance of finding a seat. It… was more than a little cramped, but it worked out pretty well.
The Long List
Most of you who follow me at all already know about the Long List Anthology, but I’ll give a quick rundown for anyone who might not have heard about the project. Every year, after the Hugo Award ceremony, the Hugo administrators publish the longer list of works that were nominated in each category–approximately 15 including the 5ish that are on the final ballot. In most years, these works don’t receive a great deal of extra attention even though that longer list makes an excellent recommended reading list.
Last year I launched the Long List Anthology, which published stories pulled from that longer nomination list. It totalled 180,000 words, about 500 pages in print, and featured some of the most popular contemporary short story authors like Sam J. Miller, Amal El-Mohtar, Elizabeth Bear, Ken Liu, Kai Ashante Wilson, Alaya Dawn Johnson, and others. The book continues to sell steadily even now, and has sold more than 9000 copies (which is more than the Hugo voting population has been in any year).
The project was so successful last year, that I have decided to repeat the project this year–the list is here. I am in the process of reading stories in the different categories and sending queries to the authors. Last year the cover art was reprinted art from Galen Dara. This year I’m taking that to the next level and commissioning original artwork from Galen Dara. And I’ve got a few surprise ideas to try out for stretch goals, too.
There will be a Kickstarter to fund the anthology–I look forward to sharing links and the good news with you all–I am aiming for mid-September.
WSFS Meetings
You may not know what WSFS Meetings are, but you’re probably familiar with the Hugo Awards, awards that are nominated and voted on by supporting members of WorldCon. WSFS meetings are held every year at WorldCon, and they define rule changes to the Hugo Awards. Anyone who has an Attending WorldCon membership can show up and debate, vote, help decide new categories or nomination rule changes and so on. I fully intended to go to at least one meeting while I was at WorldCon, because I do value the Hugo Awards and this once-a-year batch of business meetings defines everything. But… I was a horrible person and didn’t attend any of them. Nonetheless, some important rule changes went through this year, which I have been reading about after the fact, so I shall list out some of the more interesting ones (of the ones I understand) and give my reaction. My primary source for the WSFS Meetings that last couple years has been Rachael Acks’s blog. Rachael is a writer and editor, and is also involved in WSFS, both liveblogging updates as the meetings happen, and giving summaries and reactions afterward–which gives a very nice place to catch up on what you missed if you can’t or don’t go to the meetings.
Here is a list of the business agenda they started the weekend with, with a daily meeting scheduled from 10am to 1am. Or for a more informal version with Rachael’s reactions to items, you can check out this page.
I am honestly just catching up on these things now, so it’s entirely possible I got something wrong typing all this up.
Best Fancast category is now a permanent category
The Best Fancast category was defined a few years ago, and has been a trial category that would have expired after this year if it hadn’t been ratified again. I have mixed but mostly negative feelings about its permanent addition. I do feel that the Hugo Awards have been slow to consider publications in new media–it took quite awhile for online magazines to be considered seriously and audio-only publications have been slow to start to get some recognition, even when they are publishing original fiction of excellent quality. When the Fancast category had first come out I was excited that maybe this little niche would encourage more serious recognition.
Part of my disappointment has been that every nominee, except for StarShipSofa, has been nonfiction. That’s… fine, I guess. People like nonfiction podcasts, apparently. But I really want to see fiction podcasts recognized, especially fiction podcasts that pay their contributors and which publish original fiction and don’t need to beg their listeners for votes in every episode.
The rest of my disappointment is that, for my favorite podcasts, it is quite unclear what category they actually qualify for. They could be a Semiprozine or they could be a Fancast. The differentiation between the two is not well-defined in the current rules. If Fancast is supposed to actually be nonfiction, as voters have been treating it, then I would prefer that it would just be defined as such, so that this differentiation was at least clear. And a common point of confusion is that people assume Fancast is the A/V equivalent to Fanzine, meaning that it’s defining trait is not paying its contributors. (I have had discussions with people who advocate for the Fanzine category and they insist that this is NOT the defining feature, but according to the rules that are actually used to administer the award that is the main difference). But the rules seem to imply that Fanzine is also the A/V equivalent to Semiprozine. And what happens if a publication published in both audio and text? There is some precedent in Beneath Ceaseless Skies and Clarkesworld and Lightspeed and others who both publish in both and who have gotten Semiprozine nominations, but other publications that also get both like Escape Pod came at it from the other direction and I think most voters think of them differently as a result.
I liked the Escape Artists editorial strategy last year, suggesting that if anyone wanted to vote for them, that EA would prefer they do it in the Semiprozine rather than the Fancast category. I thought this was a good idea, to encourage the fans to pick one specific side of the equation because one issue with having an ambiguous category is that maybe you have enough fans who want to vote for you to get you on the ballot, but if they’re splitting their nominations across two categories that kind of ruins that chance. Also, I don’t believe it’s possible to absolutely determine whether something is eligible for one category or the other unless it actually reaches the ballot level–at which point it will either be invited to be on the ballot, or it will be removed as being ineligible. Either case you’ve learned something which can help future voting, and it may even help push through some changes that better define the rules in the future.
The Five Percent Solution
Prior to this year there has been a requirement that all but the top 3 entries in a category must have at least 5% of the overall vote, or they are simply not on the ballot. This rule was a bit silly because it caused a reaction to larger pools of award-worthy worker and larger nominating group by REDUCING the category. This didn’t start hitting the ballots until a few years ago–that’s why you sometimes saw the Short Story category with only three items on it instead of five.
Very glad to see this bit removed from the constitution, so now you’ll see five items no matter what.
Electronic Signatures for Site Bids
Historically WorldCon has kindof been more USA-con. A lot of people have been trying to put the World in WorldCon and encourage it to be more internationally located. I’m a proponent of having it be more international (even though I will probably not be able to afford to go to most non-USA located years), and this helps more people vote for it without having to be physically present, so I think this is a positive change toward that goal.
Best Series Category
The idea behind this one is that some people felt that series of books that were remarkable and awesome series may not be likely to be nominated for Best Novel for their individual books. This category would be for those kinds of books–a series would be eligible after so many words have been published in the series, and would be eligible again after so many words have been published again after the first nomination.
I… don’t really see the point in this category. Individual books are already eligible, and if those individual books aren’t winning awards… it doesn’t seem like we really need to define new categories to handle that because maybe just some things are less likely to win, but we don’t need to make new categories for every little thing.
Not only that, but the eligibility would be harder to determine than any other category, since it would depend on when the last nomination for a series was, and how many words were in each book (which isn’t generally immediately obvious).
Nominee Diversity
The idea behind this change is to prohibit the same entity from being nominated more than one time in a category (in which case I think the highest ranking item for that entity would be on the ballot). This was probably proposed in part based on John C. Wright’s shenanigans-related 5 nominations of a couple years ago. But more importantly, to me, this should make the Dramatic Presentation Short Form category much much more interesting, because there are many years where that is effectively the Best Doctor Who Episode category.
I am glad to see this go into the constitution, primarily for the Dramatic Presentation Short Form category.
Two Years Are Good Enough
Presently, anyone can nominate for the Hugos who was a supporting member last year, a supporting member this year, or who has registered already to be a supporting member next year. This proposal would remove the last of those options.
I don’t have strong feelings about this one–I wonder how many people actually pre-register for next year early enough that they can nominate this year? Maybe it’s just that my life rarely allows such pre-planning, that I find it hard to conceive this mattering one way or the other.
This passed for the first time, and would need to be ratified next year to go into effect.
YA Award
This has been proposed before as a Hugo category. This time it was proposed as a not-a-Hugo that would nonetheless be voted for on the Hugo ballot and awarded in the Hugo Award ceremony with the rest of the Hugos (much as the Campbell Award for Best New Writer is).
This one passed but would need to be ratified next year to become an official category the year after.
It seems positive to me. YA is important to the genre world because it’s often the first thing that young readers pick up that transitions them into the adult fiction (and adults can love it too). I think it’s worthwhile to give it its own award.
Three Stage Voting
This was proposed as a way to avoid future Hugo Award shenanigans by adding an extra stage between nomination and the final ballot. The nominations would result in 15 semi-finalists which would be published. Then voters can upvote the things they think are good enough to be on the final ballot, which eventually becomes a final ballot, and then the final ballot would work now.
One concern I’d originally had was that it would increase admin workload, but it sounds like it might not be much different, especially by taking advantage of some crowdsourced effort. The middle stage would not have had eligibility verified, so the voting group can help point out ineligible works. And the nominated entities would only be checked for their interest in the ballot between the 2nd and 3rd stages, so that cuts down on “waiting for communication to happen” in the timeline.
I’m a little concerned that people voting against the spirit of the intent of the 2nd round might end up nuking categories, but I think it has a lot of potential.
This one passed, to be up for ratification next year.
E Pluribus Hugo
This is a new proposed nomination system which is intended to reduce the effectiveness of large numbers of voters with identical ballots for the same category (primarily to reduce the effect of slates). Last year I was in favor of this when it passed its initial vote, because I hadn’t heard of any better ideas and I didn’t want to wait a whole nother year to see if a better idea came around. But… though I think the concept makes sense, but it is more complicated than the current system–the current system you can look at all the numbers and sort them out by hand given the overall voting numbers. This one, you really can’t because it depends on the exact contents of individual ballots, and you end up having to basically count it by program given the full voting data.
And the major difference is that I think that the better solution might have come along in the form of three-stage voting. But three-stage voting also passed and so goes into effect next year, so we’ll visit that next year again.
5 and 6
This was another measure intended to make it harder to sweep the ballot with slates. Normally, a voter can nominate up to 5 works, and 5 works end up on the final ballot. So voting collusion can sweep the ballot with only a little discipline–just all fill out the ballot in the same way. This change makes it so that one still nominates 5 works, but that the top 6 end up on the ballot–so if one wanted to force 6 items onto the ballot it would require more complicated coordination. It increases the chance that at least one item will be on the ballot that was not related to the slate.
This was ratified so this will go into effect next year.
E Pluribus Hugo +
This is a new proposal that appears to be a new alteration of E Pluribus Hugo? But I don’t seem to be able to find any additional information–I’m sure it’s out there. It passed, and is up for ratification next year, head to head with Three-Stage Voting. (NOTE: David Goldfarb explains EPH+ in his comment on this post–go read that!)
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is probably one of the best mystery games I’ve played, and if you aren’t put off by a lot of reading, I highly recommend picking up a copy on Steam or Playstation Vita before watching the anime, since it will spoil everything in an otherwise plot-heavy game. For non-gamers, the 2013 anime offers a more condensed version of the story and it’s a surprisingly good adaptation.
The plot is quickly laid out with fifteen new students waking up trapped inside their elite high school, Hope’s Peak Academy. They are all cream of the crop, being the super baseball star, the super pop idol, the super programmer, etc, with the exception of Makoto Naegi, the main character, who is merely the super lucky, having won the lottery for an average student to attend such a privileged school.
The self-declared principal, in the form of a mechanical plush bear called Monokuma, informs the class that they will spend the rest of their lives trapped in the school, unless they wish to graduate, which is performed by murdering a fellow student and escaping detection in the subsequent class trial, where the surviving students serve as judge and jury. Monokuma gleefully covers the last part as executioner in heavily stylized sequences that would be too gruesome if presented realistically.
The premise initially invites comparisons to Battle Royale, Hunger Games, or other stories where teenagers are made to fight each other to the death, but what makes Danganronpa different is that it’s actually a mystery plot with a truth waiting to be discovered. While killing is heavily encouraged, it’s not mandatory and it’s well within the rules to collectively give up and live peacefully in the school. Some students do end up murdering each other, but the real meat of the show isn’t to witness what people are willing to do for freedom. It’s to unravel the mystery about the school itself.
Danganronpa starts with an absurdly large cast, all named, and helpfully given title cards in their initial introductions, but unfortunately it’s still a bit of information overload trying to keep track of all fifteen students, especially for someone who hasn’t played the game. The Japanese opening credits remedy this problem by presenting the cast and their titles every time they run, but they’re left untranslated in the US release.
That being said, all the characters are distinctively designed, and some of them are quite outlandish, so it’s not hard to visually tell them apart. Once a few bodies start falling, it becomes easier to remember the names and personalities of the remaining cast, and it’s possible to see why the story needs so many characters to start with. With every class trial, the cast dwindles due to the rising count of murder victims and executed murderers.
Anyone wanting to keep up with the body count will want to watch the ending credits, which changes every couple of episodes. Initially it consists of Naegi sitting in a near empty classroom, but gradually fills up as characters die and the smiling figures of his dead classmates are inserted into the photograph. It’s messed up, but very much in line with Danganronpa‘s black humor.
The show is incredibly cagey about who’s going to die when, making it unpredictable who the next victim or murderer will be. The opening credits always display all fifteen students, and no one gets extra focus. The shots of the students riding down the elevator and taking their spots in the trial room has all fifteen alive and present, even though a trial doesn’t happen until after the first murder.
Considering that a big portion of the game involves investigating the murders and presenting evidence, the show does a remarkably good job of compressing the detective work while still giving the audience everything they need to follow the trial.
But this does not mean the audience can necessarily solve the case on their own. New information comes up during the trials themselves as different students offer their personal accounts of what happened and the results of their investigations, which means the audience never comes in with a full tank. It’s realistic, and even happens several times in the game, but can be disappointing for audience members hoping to more actively join in the “whodunit.”
The innocent students have a stake in outing any murderers, because if the murderer escapes undetected, then everyone else will be executed instead. It makes the students extremely motivated to discover (or create) as coherent a truth as possible, so the class trials are among the most important sequences in the series, taking up almost half the episodes.
While the trial debates have a lot of good back and forth spread through all the cast members, probably the most bizarre issue with it for English speakers who haven’t played the game is the strange bullet firing motif that shows up when main character Naegi counters a statement made by another student.
In the game it’s a mechanic where the player as Naegi loads evidence as “ammunition” to counter arguments during class trial debates. It does not literally happen in the context of the story as it only appears in the player interface, but without it, the title Danganronpa, a compound word formed by the Japanese words for “bullet” (dangan) and “rebuttal”(ronpa), would make no sense.
Even knowing this, watching the bullets fire in the anime is probably one of the more groan-inducing parts of the adaptation, because there’s really no reason for it other than to match the title. The show otherwise does a good job in keeping the unique personality of the game, from poses characters like to use, to the soundtrack, to faithful recreations of many of the cut scenes. I love that it keeps the comic book style case summaries to show how the entire crime played out.
Despite being a 13-episode adaptation of a long and convoluted story, somehow director Seiji Kishi manages to get all the necessary narrative bits into place while staying true to the game, which is an amazing feat. Smart decisions were made about where to compress and streamline, without cutting any characters or any of the trials. For the most part, if information is not absolutely necessary (to the point the plot would break without it) it doesn’t show up.
But this also means there’s barely any time to catch one’s breath and get to know the characters. Though some students die early and don’t have an opportunity to become deeper, it becomes more problematic with the longer lasting survivors, since the emotional rally in the final episode works best knowing the kind of people they are and what they’ve gone through both before and during their current situation.
The mastermind behind Monokuma is similar shafted. Though the show explains how the killing game came to be, the why is largely neglected, which removes one of the biggest shocks the game had to offer. The final story arc really needed three episodes but was jammed into two for the original broadcast, and I think it’s telling that the home video release expands the last episode by 14 minutes.
Having seen both the streaming/broadcast version (on first watch) and the home video (on second watch), I can confirm the additional minutes fix my complaint about the mastermind’s motivation and vastly improve the ending.
I highly recommend Danganronpa for its novelty and the surprise twists, but unfortunately the easiest version to experience is the streaming one. It’s not that the original broadcast ending is poor, but as someone who knows what the original was like, it was disappointing to see what was “excellent” downgraded to just “good.”
Even so, it’s stands well enough as its own story, and viewers who have not played the game won’t necessarily be reaching for the wiki. It may be about high school students trying to kill each other, but the mystery slant is a new tack and a fun one to see unravel.
Number of Episodes: 13
Pluses: Faithful adaptation of the game, crazy plot twists in second half, good at keeping the audience in the evidence loop during trials
Minuses: Final trial really needed to be three episodes instead of two, lot of characterization skimmed over, villain’s motivation never explained (streaming/broadcast version only)
Danganronpa is currently streaming at Hulu and Funimation and is available both subtitled and dubbed. Funimation has licensed this for Blu-ray/DVD in the US.
Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner ofWriters of the Futureand since then her work has been published inGalaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons,andCrossed Genres.
What We Do in the Shadows is a mockumentary horror comedy film which had a theatrical release in 2014. It was directed by Jemaine Clement (who you might know as half of New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk comedy duo Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Watit, who also both acted in the film. The film is structured as a documentary following four vampires who are flatmates in New Zealand, chronicling their everyday lives including flatmate disputes, their feeding habits, their human familiar, their night life, and avoiding vampire hunters.
I did not grow up with Digimon in that I had just graduated college when it started airing, but it was one of the last series I watched as a Saturday morning cartoon. People who haven’t seen it tend to dismiss it as a Pokemon knock-off, for featuring young children with monster buddies, but it did something that Pokemon did not. It allowed its protagonists to mature and grow up.
I thought the idea for this game was interesting. I liked how it didn’t go the straightforward After School Special route where if you do the right thing then everything will turn out happy for you. I thought the art was nice enough, and the voice acting good. I picked up on the sense that the narrative was kind of feeling around the empty spaces where other events in her life would be revealed to be, which I thought was an interesting technique.
Visuals
When I first started watching anime I wasn’t too picky, because there wasn’t much available, so I watched a lot of genres that I wouldn’t anymore.
The one book that I knew ahead of time that I was going to buy was The Flux by Ferrett Steinmetz. I already own the book. I already love the book. But I only had it in ebook, and I love these books so much I felt like I should have a signed paper copy. And, since Ferrett was onsite, it seemed best to go ahead and buy it so that I could get him to sign.
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is probably one of the best mystery games I’ve played, and if you aren’t put off by a lot of reading, I highly recommend picking up a copy on Steam or Playstation Vita before watching the anime, since it will spoil everything in an otherwise plot-heavy game. For non-gamers, the 2013 anime offers a more condensed version of the story and it’s a surprisingly good adaptation.