Review of A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

This is the second book in the series, following the Hugo Award-winning A Memory Called Empire. The novel was released March 2, 2021, by Tor Books and runs 496 pages. It’s billed as Space Opera that “reinvents” the genre, and was a Dragon Award finalist this year. Arkady Martine is the pen name of AnnaLinden Weller, a historian and city planner. This review contains spoilers.

The story picks up a short while after A Memory Called Empire leaves off. The old Emperor of the Teixcalaanli Empire has passed away, causing a political upheaval, and leaving a new Emperor in place and an 11 year-old clone heir. The Empire is beset by dangers, as mysterious aliens are lurking at the borders, slaughtering humans and destroying outposts. The Emperor has dispatched Admiral Nine Hibiscus with a fleet to deal with the problem. The encounters are not going well, so Nine Hibiscus tries a different tack, requesting an expert on first contact from the Information Ministry. Three Seagrass volunteers to take the mission and searches out Mahit Dzmare, Lsel Station’s Ambassador to the Empire, for help. Dzmare has returned to the Station, where she faces death threats from Councilors in the government because of her survival of their sabotage attempt on her imago memory line and her performance as Ambassador. Mahit takes Three Seagrass’ offer in order to escape and the two join the Fleet to help analyze sounds recorded by one of the ships. Armed with the results, they manage to establish a contact with the aliens. Is there any way to negotiate a peace treaty?

Like A Memory Called Empire, this story is a leisurely, slow-moving narrative, but it remains gripping because of all the threats. Themes include colonialism, genocide, and collective consciousness. The world-building is already pretty much done, and Martine doesn’t add a whole lot more, putting all the work into intrigues and developing new characters. The situation was fairly desperate at the end of the first installment, so we start off in a pretty dire place. Mahit is looking at an unfortunate “medical error” that would kill her in an investigation of her “defective” imago, which is a technology developed on Lsel Station to record and save memory so skills can be transferred. Three Seagrass is Dzmare’s former liaison from her stint as Ambassador to Palace Earth where the Emperor passed away, and Mahit is sent off with demands from her government that she sabotage the Fleet and its task. Lsel Station is way too close to the alien encroachment; Nine Hibiscus’ assignment looks like it’s planned to be a suicide mission, and Eight Anecdote, the young heir, is treading on dangerous ground. Various people step up to be heroes and everything ends fairly well, with Dzmare looking at opportunities outside Lsel Station.

On the less positive side, the leisurely pace got to feeling like padding about three-quarters of the way through as it really started to slow down the action. The investigation of experience, background, thought-processes and feelings is helpful to develop characters, but eventually it got out of hand, especially in the insecurities department. This would have been a much more entertaining read if it were about 25-50 pages shorter and cut some of that out. Next, I ended up uncertain who the main protagonist is in this installment of the story. Dzmare was clearly it in the first book, but the profusion of characters here and the shifting viewpoints confuses the issue, leaving this more of an ensemble performance–I’m actually tempted to say Eight Anecdote should be the main character. I was led astray by the introduction of kittens living in the ships’ air ducts; I was sure these were baby aliens, and maybe they will eventually turn out that way. Still, it’s a loose end. And last, the Emperor’s heir seems to have gotten away totally scot free on what is certainly major lesé-majesty, or maybe treason. Assigned by the Emperor to be her spy, he eventually makes decisions counter to hers, sabotages her communications with the Fleet and substitutes his own orders instead. This seems a little much for an 11 year-old, and it should set up a succession battle, imprisonment, execution, exile, but…nothing happens. This is another of those misleading, permissive fantasies where there are no consequences to behavior, no matter how transgressive, as long as it’s done for the “right” reasons.

Four stars.

Wrap up of the 2021 Hugo Reviews

As usual, I’ll have a look at the nominees to see if I can identify any interesting patterns. First the diversity count. As usual, the count won’t work out to exactly 100% because of the intersectionality. Apologies if I miss anybody.

Novel: 6 women, 0 men, 2 black, 4 white, 1 Native American, 1 Jewish

Novella: 2 women, 2 men, 2 nonbinary, 3 white, 2 black, 1 Asian, 3 LGBTQ

Novelette: 6 women, 0 men, 5 white, 0 black, 1 Asian, 2 Jewish, 5 LGBTQ

Short story: 4 women, 2 men, 5 white, 0 black, 2 Asian, 1 Jewish, 5 LGBTQ

There were 24 nominees in all so there are 18/24 women (75%), 4/24 men (17%), 2/24 nonbinary (8%), 4/24 black (17%), 17/24 white (71%), 1/24 Native American (4%), 4/24 Jewish (17%), 4/24 Asian (17%), and 13/24 LGBTQ (54%). One of the male authors is trans, but all the other LGBTQ authors are women, so there were 4/24 straight cis women (17%).

Checking gender representation: women at 75% are well above their demographic of 51%,  men at 17% are well below their demographic of 49%, nonbinary at 8% are well above their demographic of 0.2%, and LGBTQ at 54% are well above their demographic of 5%.

Looking at the ethnic groups: black authors at 17% are slightly above their US demographic of 13%, white authors at 71% are above their demographic of 60%, Jewish authors at 17% are well above their demographic of 2%, and just one Native American entry at 4% put the list above the US demographic of 2%. As I’ve noted recently, the huge over-representation of LGBTQ authors in the list of nominees comes mainly at the expense of straight women. As usual, gay men are represented poorly to not-at-all.

Tor/Tor.com dominated the list as publisher of 11/24 (46%) nominees, Uncanny came in second with 4/24(17%) and Clarksworld at 2/24 (8%). Anthologies or collections provided 3/24 (13%) of the nominees. There were no nominees from print-only magazines this year, a result that shows a continuing trend in reading habits. Presumably Tor’s dominance has to do with its recent effort to attract and publish excellent novellas. All the novella entries this year were from Tor, plus some of the short stories and novels.

As usual, fantasy outweighed science fiction, with maybe 8 (33%) nominees recognizable as pure fantasy and the most of the rest some type of speculative fiction hard to pigeonhole. Two entries (Wells’ Network Effect and Kowal’s The Relentless Moon) likely qualify as hard SF, adventure type fiction. These are both from bestselling series, which I take as an indication of the continued popularity of adventure fiction, regardless of characters, theme or setting.

Characters and themes in the stories showed considerable effort for inclusion. About 11/24 (46%) included clearly trans, binary and/or LGBTQ characters, 4/24 (17%) were about machines or human/machine constructs, 2/24 (8%) were about memory loss, plus Meg Elison’s story about heavy people. The number of stories with revolutionary message fiction was definitely down this year, and only about 6/24 (25%) stand out as heavy-handed political message fiction. In an interesting development, three of the stories this year investigated lies or the effects of lying, and several others involved settings that were deceptive and/or included deceptive political intrigue. This suggests a change in viewpoints as far as message fiction goes.

Wrapping up, the Hugo voters clearly favor white and Asian female LGBTQ writers published by Tor. Plus, this group has a tendency to nominate a limited number of authors over and over. For one example, Nora Jemisin has been nominated five years out of the last six. Many of the other nominees are also perennials, including: Yoon Ha Lee, Aliette de Bodard, Sarah Pinsker, Naomi Kritzer, Sarah Gailey, Seanan McGuire, and now P. Djèlí Clark, making his third appearance in three years. That’s not to say that these aren’t great writers, but it still looks like a limited reading list and cliquish voting.

Review of The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal

This alternate reality science fiction novel is a finalist for the 2021 Hugo Awards. This is also billed as Lady Astronaut Series #3, was published by Tor Books/Solaris in July of 2020 and runs 546 pages. Kowal is a multi-award winning author and a professional puppeteer and is also the current president of the SFWA. This review contains spoilers.

This novel picks up the Lady Astronaut story in 1963, about 10 years after the meteor struck Earth and set off a massive change in its climate. Populations everywhere are suffering from major disasters, and relocation efforts are underway. Politics is intensifying. A terrorist organization called Earth First has vowed to stop the space program and the efforts to evacuate some of Earth’s population to a moon and a Mars colony. Astronaut Nicole Wargin is now the wife of Kansas City Mayor Kenneth Wargin, who supports the US space program, based in Kansas City, and is planning a run for the office of president in order to advance its interests. Nicole takes off with a crew of astronauts and specialists for a rotation at the moon colony, but it seems they have brought an Earth First saboteur with them to the moon, plus a case of polio. As medical struggles to deal with the epidemic, Nicole and her friends Myrtle and Eugene Lindholm attempt to identify the saboteur and dismantle their plot. Then they lose contact with Kansas City. There’s bad news from Earth. Is there a way to save the space program?

This is a hard SF thriller, strongly plotted, and the best part of it is the nerdy tech solutions they come up with to analyze what’s going on and fix the problems. The main characters are well established at this point, and we get pretty good imagery on the moon colony, the lunarscape and the waxing and waning blue planet that hangs in the sky. Each chapter is prefaced with a news report from Earth that lets us keep track of various disasters and lets us know how the media receives and interprets the politics. The story also treats men and women about alike as far as expertise goes, and strongly advances minorities. Nicole is especially strong as the politician’s ex-spy wife, always smiling and stuck in those painful high-heeled shoes. There is a slight military quality to the astronaut corps that rings true. There are a few incidents that illustrate historical racism, and individual cases that are put down strongly by the moon colony management and staff.

On the less positive side, the characters are slightly flat, and the internal dialogue fails to really fill them out. Kowal apparently tries to give her main characters weaknesses to balance their strengths, and Nicole suffers from anorexia, which means she’s not ready for emergencies and may be suffering from osteoporosis that leads to a broken bone. This kind of thing suggests she might be an affirmative action hire, or in place because of her husband’s position. She does well here at the tech stuff, which seems a stretch from how she was described in installment #1, but is strongly believable as a former spy. A couple of other quibbles: I know this is an alternate reality, but polio was pretty much under control in the US by 1963 in our timeline. The Salk vaccine came out in 1955 and there was a highly effective push to get everybody vaccinated in developed countries. They shouldn’t be having this kind of epidemic on the moon. And next, if Nicole curls her toes to go en pointe as a ballerina, that’s why she’s got such bad arthritis in her feet. She’s dancing on her knuckles, which is bad technique.

Another issue that I need to discuss is the theme. This is message fiction, less obvious than the first installment of the series, but clearly there. This basically takes young women with panic attacks and anorexia and assumes that by complaining and agitating they can advance and suddenly become experts at various things like espionage, politics and systems wiring. This also suggests that minorities will be accepted and that they will be able to step up to the job requirements when unexpectedly advanced. This is not necessarily so, which explains why affirmative action has a bad name. It also does a disservice to young readers who expect life will treat them this way. Activists are generally focused on change, but they’re not that good at building solutions. What’s missing in this story is the understanding that everybody needs to do their part to avert the looming disaster to humanity, a willingness to take poorly qualified candidates with potential, and a mentoring program that prepares these young people for key roles where they can contribute. That’s how things ought to work.

Recommended for hard SF fans. Four stars.

Review of “Come Tumbling Down” by Seanan McGuire

This fantasy portal novella is a finalist for the 2021 Hugo Award. It’s also billed as Wayward Children #5. It was published by Tor.com in January of 2020 and runs 189 pages. McGuire is well established and this series is a New York Times Bestseller. This review contains spoilers.

Christopher is relaxing in the basement of Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children with his bone flute when a portal opens and Jack Wolcott comes through, wearing her sister Jill’s body. She has brought her friend and lover Alexis with her, who she has resurrected from death and has to be fed with lightning. Things have not gone well in the Moors world where Jack resides, and she is asking for help to stop her sister, who has killed Dr. Bleak, plans to become a vampire to strengthen her Master and change the balance of power in that world. At the school, Christopher, Kade, Cora and Sumi agree to follow her back to the Moors. Jack opens a doorway and they start their journey. They’re briefly separated when Cora is attracted by the Drowned Gods, but Kade manages to rescue her and Jack persuades them to leave her alone. They arrive at Jack’s windmill where she prepares Dr. Bleak’s body for resurrection, if only they can find his head. Can Jack succeed in her quest to get her body back, defeat the Master and save the Moors?

Fans of the series will be happy that this installment picks up the threads left from Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones, adding more the story of the familiar characters. They’re well established at this point, as is the worlds of the school and the Moors, which is Jack’s weird but favorite place. The story is young adult, features McGuire’s comfortable, easy-to-read style and, as usual, leaves a warm, inclusive feeling behind it. The theme of acceptance of all the odd children at the school is this series’ main attraction, and it promises that many will eventually find the place they want in life. This particular storyline has the extra bonus of promoting STEM, as Jack considers herself a scientist.

On the less positive side, this moves slowly and feels heavily padded. The plot is thin for a novella and much of the pages are filled with conversation and description that don’t really advance the plot. It’s straightforward, without any twists, and as we expect, Jack succeeds in her quest. Although STEM is normally considered good, she’s something of a Frankenstein scientist, and I would have like to have read some discussion about the morality of sewing dead corpses back together and resurrecting them. It apparently works fine at the Moors, but it’s a questionable issue in our world. Investigation of ethics isn’t the point, though.

Three and a half stars.

Review of Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

This dystopian novella is a finalist for the 2021 Hugo Award. It was published by Tor.com in February of 2020 and runs 171 pages. Gailey is a Campbell and Hugo Award winner and makes regular appearances in the list of Hugo nominees. This review contains spoilers.

Esther’s domineering father has killed her female lover and means to make her marry the man of his choice, so she has run away to join the traveling Librarians instead. These women bring materials to small towns to loan to residents which have been officially prepared and approved by the Media Review Committee, the Board of Materials Approval or the Textbook Approval and Research Council. Bet and Leda are angry to find Esther stowed away in one of their wagons, but they accept her into their group where she is attracted by the non-binary Cye. The group picks up three people who have asked for an escort to Utah, and suddenly they are battling for their lives against local sheriffs and their posses. Esther goes into a town for supplies and finds that Amity, one of the three, is an assassin for the rebels fighting against the State. Can they make it to Utah safely?

The word “Librarians” seems to have taken on broader connotations just lately, possibly because of the TNT films and TV franchise. It now seems to suggest protectors of knowledge and possibly antiquities and action against evil. In this case, the Librarians are, while ostensibly doing the State’s business, actually operatives of a rebel organization who distribute subversive literature along with the state approved media. This story also makes use of the name “Galahad”, which in the TNT series was the immortal leader of the organization.

The world building here suggests a major disaster of some kind has struck the US, and the current organization is four quadrants separated by a military corridor. The story references an industrialized Northeast that builds weaponry for war, but the local setting for the story is a very repressive, unpopulated Southwestern desert where towns are only about eight or ten buildings and protected by guard checkpoints. The theme seems to be freedom for LGBTQ women and people who fail to meet the cisgender requirements of the society. Esther is fairly well developed as a character and her attraction to Cye is well handled. The story starts with a strong emotional impact as Esther recalls the death of her lover and ends with a warm feeling of inclusion.

On the less positive side, a lot of this seems impossible. Horses appear and disappear as if by magic, and what must be long distances between towns seem to take just a short time to cross. There are no indications of farms or ranches or where water, ammo and food supplies come from. It’s also hard to reconcile a technological, developed Northeast with the barren conditions here. What happened to the ~330M population of the US? Although Esther and Cye are clear as characters, there’s very little to bring any of the others into focus. And why doesn’t the blond Esther totally burn up in the sun? She doesn’t even seem to have a hat.

Regarding the theme: There seems to be a mixture of messages here. The main one, of course, is freedom for LGBTQ women and non-binary people to pursue their lives and loves without interference. After her lover is killed, Esther flees and joins the subversives carrying out a revolution. That’s all okay, but the source of the repression is unclear. This feels something like the Scarlet Letter days, where the patriarchy ruled, but how did these people get from the fairly free society we have now to that condition? Next, all the sheriffs and their posses are men, so are they agents of the repressive state? Is this anti-patriarchy? And last, supposedly the State has wasted all the country’s resources on wars, leaving everyone poor, so is this anti-government? Actually, this political setting sounds like the results of the current “revolution” where anarchists are pushing to remove capitalism, small business and government, leaving people to fend for themselves. It doesn’t quite make sense.

Three and a half stars.

Review of “The Inaccessibility of Heaven” by Aliette de Bodard

This fantasy novelette was published by Uncanny Magazine in the July/August 2020 issue. Aliette de Bodard lives in Paris and is well established as a writer, having won three Nebula Awards, a Locus Award, a European Science Fiction Society award, a British Fantasy Award and four British Science Fiction Association Awards. She is a current Hugo, Locus and Ignyte Award finalist for 2020. This review contains spoilers.

Calariel didn’t like the way humans suffered, and she wanted to throw open the gates of Heaven. As a result of the rebellion, the Fallen now live with humans and something is killing them. Sam is a witch who runs a shelter for the Fallen and is companion to Calariel. She is drawn into the plot when the Fallen Arvedai has her brought to him for a conference. She sees the stripped bones, and goes to visit the Fallen Vazrach, who is dying from an attack out of darkness. Is there a way the Fallen, Sam and Arvedai’s man O’Connor can find out what’s happening and stop it?

As usual with de Bodard, what stands out about this story is the quality of the imaginings. The author uses the Biblical story of fallen angels as a vehicle for a fantasy murder mystery that’s rich with details and involves a complicated magical ritual. Her best imagery is in the description of the Fallen, their beauty and the darkness that is attacking. The shelter has the feel of a homeless shelter where the Fallen can find beds and a meal in a foreign city.

On the less positive side, it’s pretty late in the story when we find out Sam is one of witches that have bonded with the Fallen. The place where they live also ends up being extremely vague, apparently an urban environment, but there are few details of how it’s laid out or what the shelter looks like that Sam and Calariel apparently run to protect the Fallen. And last, the relationship between Sam and Calariel remains unclear. Are they lovers?

Four and a half stars.

Review of “Monster” by Naomi Kritzer

This science fiction novelette is a finalist for the 2021 Hugo Award. It was published by Clarkesworld in January 2020. Kritzer is well established as a novelist and short story writer and her short story “Cat Pictures Please” won a Locus and a Hugo Award. This review contains spoilers.

Cecily is on winter break from her job as a faculty member and gene editing researcher. She’s also in the Chinese town of Guiyang looking for her childhood best-friend Andrew, who has been doing illegal research on a serum that will give people superpowers. His research has killed a number of people that he has suckered into being test subjects, and now the FBI and the CIA are hoping Cecily will find and betray him because they want the formula for his serum. Cecily meets an annoying Englishman named Tom at her hotel, who dies suspiciously in a way that looks like he’s found Andrew and ingested his serum. She’s getting close. What will she do when she finds Andrew?

The narrative for this story switches back and forth between Cecily’s memories of her high school friend and her experience in China looking for him. The theme is monsters, of course. Andrew is one example, an unethical researcher who uses people for his own ends. There are others, mostly boys, who persecute Cecily because she’s bookish and nerdy as a child. The subtheme is how different children are ostracized and either choose an ethical or unethical path in response to persecution. The plot emerges gradually, and the ending comes off as something of a surprising twist. Cecily’s struggles with the Chinese language and Tom’s explanation of why her translation app isn’t working are an extra bonus in the story.

On the less positive side, I think there is a bit too much emphasis on boys harassing Cecily as a child. Mean girls are often worse for girls that don’t conform, which makes this feel like something of an attack on the male sex. There’s a certain amount of exploration of Andrew’s character from the flashbacks, but I’d have liked to have had more of this. It’s not completely clear why he’s chosen this path. Is the genetic research a clue? Maybe it’s genetic? I know this was written some time ago, but Andrew is of Chinese ancestry. Given the current attacks on Asians in the US, this seems like a questionable suggestion.

Five stars.

Review of “Metal Like Blood in the Dark” by T. Kingfisher

The list of Hugo nominees dropped while I was working on the Nebula reviews, so I’ll move on to reviewing it. This science fiction short story is a finalist for the 2021 Hugo Award, published by Uncanny Magazine in the September/October 2020 issue. T. Kingfisher is the pen name of Ursula Vernon that she normally uses when she writes for adults. Vernon is well established as a short story writer and is a prior Hugo winner. This review contains spoilers.

Once there was an old man living by himself that built two machines. He calls them Brother and Sister and lets them be free in the place where they live. Eventually the old man has a problem with his heart, and he calls for people to come from another place to get him. He says that he might return, and before he leaves, he frees Brother and Sister even more, allowing them to go into space. Brother has wings and Sister is a digger after metal, and they harvest asteroids for repairs and drink starlight for energy. They find what seems to be an abandoned ship of metal, but it is inhabited after all by a machine called Third Drone that captures them and makes them work for it. Third Drone wants wings like Brother’s to fly into the gas giant Chrysale, and it holds Brother captive while Sister harvests metal to make the wings. As she is working, she locates a concept growing within herself about what it means to lie. Is Third Drone lying to them? And more important, can she lie to it?

This feels very much like the Genesis Creation Story, with the Father who makes male and female and leaves them in the garden where they are approached by a fallen angel that teaches Eve to lie. It’s a long story, but written in an engaging style that allows the reader to bond with the two innocents going about their business in a universe far away. There are some subtleties here. If there was any question about Third Drone being a snake, it hisses a bit when it speaks. Sister disposes of it in a gratifying way, turning its own desire for revenge against it, and then goes back to rescue her Brother.

On the less positive side, the narration is very matter-of-fact. The story is heart-warming, but it doesn’t generate much in the way of drama, and if readers don’t recognize the allegory, then they may not see much in the story. Looking at just the surface storyline, it’s unclear why Father makes the machines in the first place, why he thinks he’s coming back and why he thinks they might be misused by the people coming to get him. Brother and Sister are confident that he’s coming back, but what is he going to think about Sister’s new talent for lying?

I’m just starting to read for the Hugo, but looking through the nominees, this is the third work I recognize with a theme of lying. Two mentions might be coincidence, but three suggests it’s a pattern. I’ll come back this in the wrap up of the Hugo reviews.

Four stars for the allegory.

Review of Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse

This dark fantasy novel is a finalist for the 2020 Nebula Awards. It’s was published by Saga in October 2020 and runs 461 pages. It’s also listed as Between Earth and Sky #1, and #2 is due for release in March of 2022. Roanhorse is the New York Times bestselling author of Trail of Lightning and Storm of Locusts. She is a past winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards, plus the 2018 Astounding (formerly Campbell) Award for Best New Writer. This review contains spoilers.

Serapio has been forced by a cult of plotters to become the Vessel of the crow god. He was blinded and scarred as a child, set on this path by the sacrifice of his mother, rejected by his father and trained by tutors sent by the cult. Now the convergence is coming. On the winter solstice the moon will eat the sun, leaving the world unbalanced, and the time for the ascension of the crow god will be at hand. The Lord Balam contracts with Xiala, a disgraced Teek ship captain, to carry the Vessel on a ship across the inland sea to the city of Tova, where the Sun Priest will officiate for the solstice and the crow god will destroy them all.

There is plenty of note about this novel. It’s strongly plotted and the characters are highly attractive, likable and brimming with magic. Serapio is a sweet boy for someone who’s been so abused, but willing to meet his fate. He’s not expecting to survive the advent of the crow god. The independent Xiala, who never really gets attached to anybody, finds she’s falling in love with him, crow god and all. Politics in Tova is seething with intrigue, and a plot is afoot to depose the Sun Priest because she wants to make amends for past wrongs to the crow clan and to better serve all the clans. The world building here also deserves mention. These people strongly resemble the Maya and the crescent coastline and inland sea sounds a lot like Mexico and the Gulf, The canyon where Tova is built might easily be Red Bluff Canyon on the Mississippi River. But then, this is all just fantasy, right?

I have very little complaint about the way this is written at all. Roanhorse seems to have covered all the bases, including some (possible) social and political commentary. Bisexual and non-binary characters fit in well, but one trans character looked inserted as an afterthought. Standard requirement these days. The big grumble I have with this is the price. The ebook costs more than either the paperback or the hardback, which says something about changes in reading habits, I guess. This one is worth the price, though. Beware, it’s a cliffhanger.

Five stars.

Are Women Being Erased from SFF?

Since the change in administration in the US this year, I’m noticing what looks to be strong moves toward erasure of women as a separate sex and/or gender. For example, in the first 50 days of the Biden administration, the president signed an executive order removing any distinction between women and trans-women in sports, opening the doors for anyone who identifies as a woman, regardless of phenotype or testosterone level. The Equal Rights Amendment is back for ratification. And the Biden administration broadened International Women’s Day in the US this month to include LGBTQ and disabled persons. Move over gals. Presumably, these people have their finger on the larger trends.

In publishing there’s been a fairly obvious discrimination against white men in recent years, justified as payback for all those decades when white men dominated the science fiction market. For a little while, it was a competitive advantage to be a woman science fiction writer, as progressive publishers opened the gates and searched for female talent to fill their bookshelves. But now I’ve looked back at my most recent review of the Hugo Awards, and I suspect the market is closing down for women. In 2020, for example, about 50% of the Hugo finalists were LGBTQ and about 30% were men, which leaves only 20% of the spaces for writers who identify as cisgender straight women of any ethnicity. This strongly suggests that just being a woman, or even a woman of color, isn’t enough to get you published any more as a writer and that you need to look for intersectionalities to make yourself trendier and more attractive for a publisher.

You can see this in development of C.L. Polk’s bio, for example. When Witchmark was published in 2018, Polk was described as a black woman, and used “she” for a pronoun. Now, I notice Polk is advertised as black, queer, disabled and nonbinary, having shifted to “they” as a pronoun. There is apparently even more pressure for white than minority women, as you can see a strong trend to fabricate minority ethnicities (a.k.a blackfishing) in order to gain advantage. For example, note Elizabeth Warren, Hilaria Baldwin, Rachel Dolezal, Jessica Krug and CV Vitolo-Haddad, all of whom have been recently exposed as fakes. In a related squabble, cancel culture went after J.K. Rowling last year for insisting that cis women should be recognized as a separate gender category. In response, I see there’s now a Harry Potter game where you can choose your preferred gender and ethnicity.

So, where is this headed? Is the only successful writer of the future “other” ethnicity, LGBTIQ, disabled and nonbinary? Or is there a way to manufacture more intersectionalities?