some professional news
i'm writing a book about science fiction
I’m really excited to share this news! Weird Sisters was an idea I had back in 2020 (!), but at the time, I thought the smart thing to do was to work on an essay collection. Getting sick clarified for me that I should do the book I’m a little scared to write.
This is also a project that is going to bring together a lot of my pet interests, which, I mean, any book of mine ought to do! One thing I stressed in the proposal for this book was that women are very present in SFF before the period I’m focusing on. And there are going to be a lot of women I can’t include because I am king of only a finite space. I understand the temptation to say “oh, so-and-so was the first woman to do…” as a shorthand for importance, but declining to do it opens up a lot of possibilities. Some that I hope to realize in Weird Sisters are:
putting women’s writing in continuity with tradition, but also
preserving the ways in which they sharply differed from one another, and finally
writing about them as major artists and / or players in their scenes, not minor ones in need of rescue; also
Additionally, we have
art that also wants to be entertainment, and
the possibilities inherent to genre
Finally, I also want to say thank you to all the people who read draft copies of this book proposal and gave me comments on it or encouragement. Thank you! You will all achieve literary immortality in the acknowledgements. And a big thank you, too, to Will, my agent, an infinitely patient man. And while she did not read my proposal and does not know I exist, I would also like to say thank you to Chappell Roan, for this specific performance. I don’t know if Joanna Russ, actual person, would have loved this… but Joanna Russ, “person that exists in my head,” certainly does.
I’ll take some questions now…
I came here to find out who the hell you are?
Here are some things I have published that are directly relevant to the book:
“Joanna Russ, the Science-Fiction Writer Who Said No” (The New Yorker [dot com])
“Ursula K. Le Guin was her own toughest (and best) critic” (Washington Post)
“The Soul Should Not Be Handled” (The Point [dot com])
And here are some things I’ve written over the years that I really like, in no particular order:
“Summer, Glorious Summer!” (Lapham’s Quarterly)
“Full-Length Mirror” (Paris Review)
“What Is Miss America, if Not a Beauty Pageant?” (New York Times Magazine)
“The Bad Patient” (The Drift)
“Monumental Woes” (The Hedgehog Review)
“Thunder Entered Her” (Commonweal)
“What exactly do we want from the author of ‘Cat Person’?” (The Outline)
“American Gothic” (The Baffler)
“Enough with the ‘forgotten’ writers” (The Week)
“Teaching a Dog to Talk” (Full Stop)
So, that is who the hell I am. You can also see some science fiction blogging I’ve done by click on this tag, though I need to go through and straighten out my archives.
Why isn’t [so-and-so] in the book? Why is [thus-and-such] in the book?
The book does not exist yet so I cannot answer this question. 🫡
I’m interested in this subject but I don’t really want to wait around for your book. Feed me.
Some non-fiction books you might like (Bookshop links are affiliate links). I have read some of most of these but have only read all of a couple:
The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction (Justine Larbalestier)
In the Chinks of the World Machine: Feminism and Science Fiction (Sarah LeFanu)
James Tiptree, Jr: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon (Julie Phillips)
Julie Phillips is also working on a Le Guin biography that I’m quite excited for.
There are a lot of women writer–centric SFF anthologies to get a sense of the spread of stories out there and I’m not sure if there is any particular one I’d recommend. The Library of America had a two volume set but it seems to be out of print. Maybe this three-volume Rediscovery set is the best buy. Alternately, if you’re more interested in this period in SFF writing, the Damon Knight Orbit anthologies might be worth a look.
And I will again recommend Bobby Derie’s website for C. L. Moore stuff—I wrote to him asking for help tracking something down and he mentioned he’s thinking about writing some more about her this summer. So keep an eye out! :)
I already know who the hell you are, but what does this all mean for the Substack?
In the short term, not very much I think! I do not intend to do a hard rebrand into “sixties and seventies science fiction only.” Notebook will remain as all-over-the-place as ever. If I were able to run an “on theme” newsletter I would have done that by now.
And I’ve never written a book before so… I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep about book-related things you can expect in the future. With those caveats, here are some changes that might happen, but will not definitely happen.
—The normal stuff might have a tighter schedule. That is, capsule reviews will come out twice a month (or whatever) on Fridays instead of coming out whenever I’ve written enough… that kind of thing. I think this might happen simply because reading the sheer amount of science fiction I will be reading means less reading time for everything else.
—There’s also a middle type of post that I’ve wanted to do that is sort of like “here are books coming out this month I’m interested in,” but I haven’t really ever found a way to do it that doesn’t grate on me. Maybe time to figure it out! A monthly digest, something.… also, ethics questions (not discussing Simon & Schuster books is probably excessive but… should I not discuss Scribner books anymore?).
—A dedicated “Weird Sisters” capsule review vertical for anything I’m reading or watching that seems relevant (and that I can write up here without getting into trouble vis-a-vis the book). There are a lot of women in science fiction who are, for instance, kind of out of scope in terms of period, but I’ll probably still be reading them. Like, Miriam Allen deFord is pretty cool.… Also I believe men have written a book or two.
—Re-reading some works of biography I admire (or reading ones I’m curious about for the first time) and reflecting on what works about them and what I’d like to emulate from them. I love biography—it’s probably my favorite form of non-fiction.
—A reading series / book club. I like the idea of doing this one a lot, but logistically am a little worried about it. If anybody has experience running a book club on the topic of the book they are writing and have some thoughts they’d be willing to share… please email me lol.
—A podcast. This would be really fun, but… I have tried to do podcasts before with mostly failed results. So I would say this is almost definitely not going to happen, but it might happen.
—With both the idea of the reading series and the podcast, I think my main concern is that the Eva posts, which require watching one twenty minute episode twice in a week, have nonetheless never really been an every week thing. Which is sort of fine in that instance, and probably fine even for a podcast, but it’s not fine if I’m scheduling something where people do work and show up.
—I may start paywalling some things. I’m not sure about this one, but it’s possible. If I do it will probably be something like… “one capsule review is free to read, two are behind the paywall.” Or I’ll start doing things in the chat for paid subscribers. This is an internal debate at BDM Industries, however. The newsletter pay structure is set up the way it is because (1) interested and active readers are more valuable to me than money at this time and (2) I’m frankly much more productive this way. However, with the book the time/money calculus shifts a bit, so… I’m thinking about it.
Finally, I would like to say a big thank you to everybody who reads this newsletter, whether you’re paying or not! I appreciate you so much. Thank you for reading.
Have you learned anything interesting yet about writing a book?
I’ve learned that if you think “it might be nice to have a paragraph or two about Margaret Cavendish, just at the beginning, even though she’s a bit out of scope,” that will seem reasonable. And when you start to read a biography, so you can write your paragraph or two, that will be merely doing your due diligence, after all.…
And when you find yourself on eBay trying to get a three volume history of the English Civil War so you can write your book on American science fiction, that will somehow feel like the obvious thing to do, even though if you explain why to anybody they’re like “I don’t actually think you need to learn about the English Civil War.”
Is there a perfume angle?
Maybe. Maybe.
Actually, in one of her letters Le Guin mentions wearing “Je Reviens” (Worth). In one of Tiptree’s letters post-reveal, Alice Sheldon says she wears “Joy” (Jean Patou), “No. 19” (Chanel), and “Diorissima” (Dior). When I saw “No. 19” in Tiptree’s list I made I sort of honking sound because… well here’s Tania Sanchez’s description of “No. 19” from Perfumes: The A-Z Guide:
In the history of feminine perfumes, there seem to be two recurring motifs of femininity: let’s call them the cloth mother and the wire mother, after Harry Harlow’s famous experiment. The cloth mother is the soft, cuddly, big-bosomed, heavy-hipped ideal of the feminine, best represented by the warmly creamy, nutty classic florals like Fleurs de Rocaille, Detchema, and Arpège. Lovely and soothing in a slightly boneless way, these are easy fragrances to like. But the wire mother is angular, unkind, tough, and cold—scary and handsomely hollow-cheeked. Of the wire mothers of perfume (see Miss Dior, Ma Griffe, and Envy for examples), No. 19, first released in 1971, may be the cruelest.
I have some vintage “No. 19” of dubious provenance but have also smelled the current parfum formulation at an actual Chanel store and I guess I could acquire some of it. (But Chanel’s so damn expensive!)
I thought you were joking when you kept saying you weren’t writing a book about Taylor Swift because why would you have spent so much time writing about Taylor Swift otherwise.… Are you stupid?
I forgot to put this one in my initial list!
Stet was NOT a failure it was a trainwreck there's a difference
Life rocks fr