The Joy Factory Weekly - Issue #11 (6/29/2021)
Alright! You've got your tickets! Let's get to this!
Heyo, lovely people! Last week, I attended the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference as an auditor. Among the faculty at this year’s event were Nikky Finney, Jennifer Elise Foerster, John Murillo, Faith Adiele, J. Drew Lanham, and Danielle Evans. Auditors don’t get to attend the official workshops; instead, they have a special space for auditors to workshop amongst themselves. And that space was my responsibility! This is my second year serving as Auditor Supreme, and I do have some brief thoughts about the event.
In a lot of ways, I see the MNWC as a particular kind of writers conference. Its mission is less about the industry of writing, the process of writing, etc. and more about a kind of attunement of the self. The vast majority of the attendees are Minnesota locals (as far as I can tell), and most of them seem much more compelled by the personal journey of artistic expression than other interests. That, naturally, influences the content presented to the group. And so, for me, the most important parts are the auditor workshops, where we share work, discuss writing, and generally work through our writing “issues.” And that auditor space led to the casual writing group I’ve been in for the past year, which is made up entirely by attendees of MNWC. That group has done wonderful things to improve my confidence as a writer, which brings me to the other big bit of news…
I’ve started submitting fiction again! Over the past few days, I’ve gone through my short fiction folder to reorganize everything into four groups: Finish Writing, Edit, Submit, and Trunk. That process ended up being fairly brutal, as stories I’d submitted in the past made their way to the Trunk folder and stories in other folders also ended up there. I had to think pretty hard about how my writing has changed since coming back to it in the last year, and it’s hard to look back and think “yeah, this represents me as a writer.” I’ve changed.
Having done all that organizing, I ended up with 10 or 11 pieces of fiction worth submitting, about 20 stories I need to edit, and another 30 stories that need to be finished. And so, I’ve opened my submission database and submitted all of those stories! A couple are going to be hard to place because there aren’t, as far as I can tell, a lot of great markets for shorts for younger audiences (though I might be wrong).
Since doing that, I’ve already received two personal rejections. I suppose rejections are meant to be tough, but stepping back into this with two personal rejections kinda feels like a victory. When I was on the submission grind years and years ago (seriously on the grind), I had just got to the point where I was getting the occasional personal note on my fiction. To step back in and end up back there feels, well, good. I don’t expect that to hold for everything I’ve written, but I won’t take any of this as an L. I’m all W W W over here.
So, yeah, it’s been a week, y’all. I’m feeling pretty good about writing for the first time in a long time. So much so that when I’m done with this and all my podcast editing and the professional development report I haven’t submitted, I’m going right back to the writing train to finish some more fiction (and find a harsh critique group)!
Speaking of podcasts, here are some of the things you might have missed:
The latest episode of The Joy Factory Monthly dropped! It features The G from Nerds of a feather, flock together in a discussion about synthwave and his new album, Wanderers.
Over at The Skiffy and Fanty Show, David Annandale and I discussed Sun Ra’s Space is the Place (1974) for our Totally Pretentious feature.
Alright! Now onto the main affair...clickables?
Clickable Geekery
To begin with some happy news, you might have seen that the Locus Awards announced the 2021 winners! Among the winners are Martha Wells, N.K. Jemisin, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, T. Kingfisher, P. Djèlí Clark, Darcie Little Badger, and more. It’s such a fabulous list of winners. Congratulations, y’all!
Over at Tor.com, horror author Grady Hendrix takes a look at the slasher survival. Hendrix offers some “rules” to follow based on books and movies featuring various types of slashers. Curiously, he brings up some films I’ve recently watched, such as Chopping Mall, a totally bonkers 80s slasher about evil security bots stalking and murdering a bunch of young people (teens or college kids, I dunno). Also on the horror theme: this great piece from Nightmare Nostalgia on some of the best obsessive stalker movies of the 90s. I’ve not seen some of these, so it looks like I’m gonna need to take a jump backwards in time soon! Nightmare Nostalgia also has a piece on Channel 43, an online public access station streaming on Twitch featuring digital transfers of VHS-based genre content from yesteryear. I plan to check it out!
I’ve also got a few bits of history-related content for you. The first is MIT Press’ new Radium Age series, which will feature reprints of classic works of proto-SF from the early 1900s. Among the works to be published are E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man and H.G. Wells’ The World Set Free. Check it out! Meanwhile, if you’re at all interested in Chinese SF, you might get a lot out of this Vector SF piece by Niall Harrison on short SF from the last century. There are even...charts! It’s fantastic! Then there are two articles at Darkworlds Quarterly worth checking out. The first looks at Fritz Leiber’s work in Weird Tales, and the second looks at the work of Wilm Carver as manifested across numerous pulps and genres. Both feature screenshots of publications and a bit of deep-dive history. Well worth checking out!
Finally, over the past week or so, I’ve seen quite a number of articles (new and old) talking about living in dark times or writing and reading dark or grim or difficult literature in our present moment. The first of these is from Grimdark Magazine, which ponders the place of grimdark narratives in our present predicament. The second is a piece by Margaret Killjoy on finding a way to live in a world that is, well, collapsing. It’s from 2019, but it talks a lot about the mentality of survival, of accepting the inevitable, of finding meaning in what we can do. Both are pretty powerful pieces, and I think we should continue talking about these things to get a better grip of what it means to live in, well, the “end times.” I know. It’s not happy. But it’s important.
Clickable Factoids
I’ve only got three for you this week, but they’re juicy ones!
First up, there’s the news of a discovery of a skull in China now referred to as “Dragon Man.” The skull is of a different species related to our own and may represent a bridge between an ancestor (Homo erectus) and us (Homo sapiens). Obviously, a lot of study is still left to be done, but it is nonetheless really freaking cool.
Also taking us back in time is this news from the University of Cincinnati about the ancient Mayan city of Tikal. New evidence based on ancient plant DNA supports the idea that there were numerous species of trees and plants growing in the palace reservoirs. The evidence also suggests that they Maya might have intentionally left a portion of the forest intact in that spot. Read more about it in the article. It’s super interesting!
And lastly, I take you over to Centauri Dreams again, which features a guest article by Robert H. Gray on the question of the ceiling of an advanced civilization. Special attention here is paid to the potential for harnessing different forms of energy. One might argue that humanity is on the precipice of a drastic shift in its own energy harnessing capability, which would certainly complicate any science fiction written about future energy shifts. We’re already fighting what is obviously a better outcome for literally everyone (green energy); what kinds of “fights” would we have over harnessing the power of stars (if such a thing were possible)?
Clickable Fiction
“The Red Mother” by Elizabeth Bear (Tor.com)
“Witch is Another Word for Wild” by Donyae Coles (Anathema Magazine)
“Cake Between the Teeth” by Steph Kwiatkowski (Nightmare Magazine)
“Do Nothing” by Endria Isa Richardson (Lightspeed Magazine)
“How to Become a Witch-Queen” by Theodora Goss (Lightspeed Magazine)
“I was a girl once but I slipped” by Rupsa Dey (The Dark)
You might also want to check out Polar Starlight #2!
Now on to...media?
For the past year, my VHS player has been broken. This would seem to be “not a big deal” except for one small problem: some media is largely unavailable in any other format. Plus, I actually kinda like watching things on VHS. It takes me back to the best parts of my childhood when we’d go to the local Blockbuster or other video store, rent a bunch of random stuff, and have one heck of a weekend. I have fond memories of watching movies like We’re Back! A Dinosaur Story (1993) or FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992). If you’re the nostalgia type, you can snatch up a vintage case for under $15 in the U.S., though they’re often pricier in Canada for some reason.
All of this brings me to what has been a defining “experience” in my life: my collection of Star Wars VHS tapes. For over 25 years now, I’ve owned close to three full sets of VHS tapes of the original trilogy. Like many Star Wars superdorks, I’ve kept these because there is only one version of the theatrical releases on a medium other than VHS (or other form of “dead” media) -- and I honestly have no idea which one because marketing materials for Star Wars products frequently say things like “the original trilogy” without specifying which version they mean. To get an idea of the frustration Star Wars fans feel about this, here are a handful of reviews from the last few years of folks who purchased DVDs only to find out that they didn’t end up with the actual original trilogy:
(From this point on, “original trilogy” means “the theatrical releases”)
For a lot of Star Wars fans, the original trilogy (unaltered) represents a formative experience. A discovery of true love. Of pure joy. To go back to the original trilogy is like meeting up with your best friend. Your heroes are all there waiting to take you on an adventure, to fight evil in a murky world of space empires and bounty hunters and everyday folks just trying to do the right thing. Star Wars is this glimpse into absolute wonder, and it has the profound power to turn you into a super fan just by force (heh) alone. Hell, when I introduced a former student to Star Wars for the first time, I got to watch someone discover what I had discovered as a child. The wonder. The beauty. The emotions. The joy. It was a precious moment.
And so, it’s been a bit sad that my VHS player is on the fritz. There isn’t an easy replacement for these tapes other than the very illegal despecialized editions. When I watch altered Star Wars, I don’t feel like I’m having the same adventure. The additions of CG characters and unnecessary references and bloated imagery takes me out of the experience and plops me into something that doesn’t feel magical anymore. And that’s the thing: original Star Wars is magical. I want to feel the magic again and again and again. That’s what great, meaningful media can do. It grips you in the deepest part of yourself and brings you back to the purest emotions. I can watch the original trilogy again and again, and each time, those emotions of wonder, joy, sadness, beauty, etc. swell up in my chest.
And because I want to be able to feel that whenever I want, I made the decision to get the despecialized editions. They’re about as close to the original trilogy as you can get without forking out a lot of money for a new VHS player or for hard-to-find DVDs. Now, I can watch the original trilogy morning, day, and night. Endlessly. And I can easily share that pure joy with other people. Is it how I want to experience Star Wars? No. I’d rather Disney+ have the original trilogy on its platform OR for Disney to release a remastered original trilogy on blu ray. But those things don’t exist, and so I’m going to the next best thing.
And, yes, I’ve recently watched the original trilogy via the despecialized editions. And, yes, Star Wars is still magical. Now, that magic will live on for as long as I am on this beautiful planet...in a galaxy far, far away...
Every week, I’ll ask my Twitter followers what they’re reading. Here’s what they said:
Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff Vandermeer (from @KateSherrod)
Vernon Subutex Vol 3. By Virginie Despentes and translated by Frank Wynne (from @KateSherrod)
Dust by Hugh Howey (from @KateSherrod)
The Sound of Rain by Gregg Olsen (from @BeverlyBambury)
The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski (from @AlteredInstinct)
The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and translated by Sonia Soto (from @oldscout)
An Aria of Omens by Patrice Greenwood (from @mikaela_l)
Tracer by Jason Dean (from @KaushikKarforma)
Makeda Red by Jennifer Brozek (from @KaushikKarforma)
Leo Roa by Juan Gimenez (from @KaushikKarforma)
The Sword in the Street by C.M. Caplan (from @D_CurrieDC)
The Union Club Mysteries by Isaac Asimov (from @D_CurrieDC)
The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers (from @ChazBrenchley)
Castle Shade by Laurie R. King (from @ChazBrenchley)
The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin (from @Twofishie)
Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots (from @Twofishie)
Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher (from @Twofishie)
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado (from @Twofishie)
Pet by Akwaeke Emezi (from @Twofishie)
The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson (from @Twofishie)
The House with the Two Palm Trees by Eugenio Montale (from @carturo222)
Beowulf translated by Maria Headley (from @SueBursztynski)
Mob Cops by Greg B. Smith (from @SStaatz)
The Sharp Edge of Yesterday by K.M. Herkes (from @InkyD)
Nimona by Noelle Stevenson (from @SarahAveryBooks)
The Zero Signal by Rick Wayne (from @Julirose)
The Scramble for Africa by Thomas Pakenham (from @fabiofernandes)
The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson (from @fabiofernandes)
Virtual Unrealities: The Short Fiction of Alfred Bester (from @SteveJWright1)
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters (from @rabbitfish63)
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (from @cherylreads and @jjblacklocke)
The Field of Blood by Joanne Freeman (from @MBoorseHistory)
The Spy and the Traitor by Ben McIntyre (from @OtterB5)
Cage of Souls by Adrian Tchaikovsky (from @PrinceJvstin)
Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard (from @WriterNancyJane)
Chaos Vector by Megan E. O’Keefe (from @templetongate)
A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (from @maerlyn99)
The Best of Nancy Kress (from @delegar)
Reporter by Seymour Hersch (from @StrongholdMag)
Between Two Worlds by Upton Sinclair (from @StrongholdMag)
Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks (from @runningpockets)
Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu (from @ClayHale7)
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (from @EddieLouise)
Bound by Benedict Jacka (from @joshhayes51)
And there you have it. Follow me on Twitter @shaunduke if you want to share your reads next time!
And we’re there! We’ve made it through yet another edition of the newsletter. Thanks for sticking around, folks!
Here’s what to expect for the rest of the week:
A new episode of The Skiffy and Fanty Show on Lady Battle Cop (1990). This is for our Torture Cinema feature and will star myself, Brandon O’Brien, Paul Weimer, and Daniel Haeusser!
Probably a new episode of The Joy Factory Monthly with Sara Nicolas on podcasting (and more episodes are soon to be recorded).
A post about my return to writing and submitting fiction. I’m having an experience, y’all!
And there you have it! I end this edition with something that I missed from Eugene Lee Yang of The Try Guys. It is absolutely beautiful, heart wrenching, and essential.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpipLfMiaYU
Joyful Transmission Concluded!
Thanks for reading The Joy Factory Weekly newsletter! As always, if you want to support the project or my other work, head over to patreon.com/thejoyfactory. You can find me @shaunduke on Twitter and at shaunduke.net!
Joyful Transmission Concluded!
Thanks for reading The Joy Factory Weekly newsletter! As always, if you want to support the project or my other work, head over to patreon.com/thejoyfactory. You can find me @shaunduke on Twitter and at shaunduke.net!