When Marion Zimmer Bradley decried sex in SF stories

I've been wading through my grandfather's old science fiction magazines and have decided to do occasional scans of this content to illustrate forgotten aspects of the genre's history. In particular, I want to illustrate the letters to the editor which were a major way people in fandom communicated with each other before the start of the digital revolution.

My first scan is a letter to the editor from Marion Zimmer Bradley. Long before she became famous as a fiction writer — and then infamous for both ignoring her husband's child molestation activities and engaging in the same herself — Bradley wrote a number of letters which were published in Thrilling Wonder Stories.

The letter below comes from the June 1953 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. In it, Bradley says that her complaint about sex in a recent story in the magazine isn't the "shrieking of an outraged prude." Instead, she complains about using poor science to set up what is essential a "sex fiction" story. Bradley adds she is okay with sex in SF stories when it's integral to the story's plot, as in Philip Jose Farmer's famous story "The Lovers." Otherwise, she doesn't want it in her SF.

In light of Bradley's later abusive and criminal acts, the letter can't help but be read today in an extremely disturbing manner. That said, the letter also opens a window into her mindset at the start of her writing career while also demonstrating a good bit of insight into the gender-norms and beliefs which saturated the SF/F genre in the early 1950s.

To open the letter as a PDF, go here.

Yes, the Sad Puppies campaign swept the Hugo Awards

The Hugo Award nominees won't be announced until April 4, but you don't need to be Nostradamus to see what's coming. The Sad Puppies slate of nominees essentially swept all the Hugo Award categories with the exception of Best Novel.

Don't believe me? Then wait until Saturday and find out. Or you can examine the evidence. Brad R. Torgersen and Larry Correia, who organized the campaign, have both written posts claiming a pending victory without actually stating that their slate won (since the nominations are technically sealed until the 4th). I'm sure they've received the same private messages I've had from people who either made the final ballot or know of people who made the list. Add in that some of the nominees from the Sad Puppies slate have outed themselves, and that Kate Paulk is already gearing up to run a Sad Puppies 4 campaign — and yeah, it's obvious where all this is going.

While the fact that the Hugo Awards can be gamed may shock some people, it's actually somewhat easy to do in the categories with lower voter participation, such as the short fiction categories. For example, if a few dozen people organize to vote for the same short story they can land that story on the final ballot. The reason this hasn’t been a major issue before is no one organized a large enough voting campaign like Sad Puppies 3. Basically, people had too much respect for the Hugo Awards to try and land only particular stories on the final ballot for political reasons. Most Hugo voters also took their nominating ability serious and voted for what they considered to be the best stories — and not for certain slates of stories and authors merely to make a larger cultural point.

Last year I wrote about how the Hugo Award rules needed to be changed so the awards weren't so easy to game. Otherwise the end result would be competing voting campaigns, which would result in the destruction of the entire Hugo Awards. It now appears this is where the Hugos are going. I'm also hearing that the people who help run Worldcon are outraged that this gaming of the awards succeeded. As a result, a number of proposed rule changes are already being considered. But such actions won't change this year's final ballot, which will be dominated by Sad Puppy stories, authors, and editors.

I guess congratulations are in order to Brad and Larry and the entire Sad Puppies campaign. You successfully gamed the Hugo Award nomination system. So go ahead and crow and jump around and do your little happy dance.

That said, I hope you realize that most people in fandom do not care for or support political games like this. Just as the vast majority of people in most countries only pay attention to politics when they have to (such as around election time), so does most of fandom ignore the political controversies which pop up in our genre from time to time. But this vast cross-section of fandom, while apolitical, also will not enjoy seeing their cherished Hugo Awards manipulated to score political points.

I predict a backlash is about to wash over the Sad Puppies. And when it does, it'll be interesting to see what happens next in our genre.

The 300th issue of the Czech magazine XB-1

Fun fact: There's an entire world of science fiction and fantasy existing beyond the horizons of what most English-language genre fans know. As proof of this, the Czech SF magazine XB-1 is celebrating their 300th issue with their upcoming April 2015 edition.

Followers of my website and social media account have often heard me talking about XB-1 because the magazine publishes a monthly column by me, along with regular translations of my stories. I greatly enjoy working with the XB-1 editors and love the interactions I have with Czech readers and fans.

XB-1 was founded in 1990 as the magazine Ikarie. Named after the classic Czech SF film Ikarie XB-1, Ikarie quickly became one of the most important European genre magazines. Published as a 8.25 x 11.5 inch, 64 page monthly (changed to 80 pages in the last volume of 2010) with full-color covers and black and white interiors, Ikarie contained between five or six stories in each issue in addition to reviews and nonfiction articles. Over the years Ikarie published countless Czech authors along with translated stories from the biggest names in world SF. 

Unfortunately, the publisher of Ikarie decided to close the magazine after the November 2010 issue. What made this decision even more painful was the closure didn't reflect poor sales but instead the publisher's desire to focus on lifestyle magazines.

Like the world truly needs another lifestyle magazine.

But as anyone familiar with SF/F fandom knows, the true power in our genre rests with the people who make up the genre. Ikarie editor in chief Vlado Ríša, foreign rights editor Martin Šust,  editor of Czech and Slovak fiction Jaroslav Jiran, and the rest of the magazine's staff pulled together and found a new publisher. Because of legal issues they couldn't use the old name, so the reborn magazine became XB-1.

Nearly 5 years later the combined run of XB-1/Ikarie has reached the magical 300, something few genre magazines in the world have ever accomplished.

Above is the cover of the 300th issue, which features the people who helped create and run XB-1/Ikarie. Martin Sust sent me the information below identifying the people who made the magazine possible over the years. 

Congratulations to XB-1 on this milestone. And I hope their SF future is as glorious as their SF past.
 

People on the cover of XB-1's 300th issue
by Martin Sust

First row – green bubble – Jaroslav Jiran – current editor of Czech and Slovak works, has been with the magazine since August 1992. He is also a fantasy author.  

Second row – yellow bubble – Pavel Kosatík – Worked on Ikarie for the first two issues, in eighties he edited three fanzine anthologies of foreign fiction. Now he is also an author of historical stories and biography books.  

Second row – pink bubble - Jaroslav Olša Jr. – he was the editor of the fanzines Ikarie XB-1, Ikarie XB-2 and Ikarie XB-3 in the eighties (three issues). At the beginning of nineties he edited a couple of anthologies with foreign fiction. He worked on the first five issues of the magazine. After that he was an author of the SF Encyclopedia. He is currently an ambassador for the Czech Republic.  

Second row – yellow bubble – Ondřej Neff – one of the most respected Czech SF authors from eighties to the present time. He was the first editor-in-chief of Ikarie, serving from the first issue to August 1993 (39 issues).  

Second row – blue bubble – Eva Hauserová – she was first editor of Czech and Slovak fiction in Ikarie for first 26 issues (to July 1992). Today she is a respected author of novels and a well-known feminist.  

Second row – brown bubble – me (or Eminem maybe). I was an editor of Ikarie from Sept 2005 to March 2007 and from August 2008 to the current XB-1 issues. BTW, at one time I was an editor of foreign fiction in three Czech SF magazines (Ikarie, Pevnost and Czech edition of F&SF magazine).  

Third row – red bubble – Alena Bytomská – secretary from fifth issue in 1990 to June 1999 issue. A good soul of the stuff. She was a political dissident during the eighties under the Communist government.  

Third row in the middle – Vlado Ríša – author of many SF/F books and a member of the staff from third issue (1990) until now. Editor in chief from Sept 1993.  

Third row – purple bubble – Ivan Adamovič – he was an editor of fanzine in the eighties, and a member of the staff from the first issue (editor of foreign fiction) to Aug 2005 and from April 2005 to July 2008. He is now a respected journalist, editor of anthologies and genre theorist (including being the author of a dictionary of Czech SF/F writers).

Pope Francis on virtual relationships and information overload

I'm fascinated by comments Pope Francis made on virtual relationships and the vast amounts of information passing through our lives. These comments haven't received a lot of attention in the media, but they contain a great deal of insight into the experiences of humanity in the 21st century.

Here's what he said:

The pope was asked about young people's attraction to "virtual relationships" and how to help them escape "their world of fantasy" and to experience "real relationships."

The pope said there was a difference between fantasy and online interactions because "sometimes virtual relationships are not imaginary, but are concrete" and real.

However, he said, the best thing is for people to have real, physical interaction and contact with each other.

He said the big risk he sees is with people's ability to gather such a huge amount of information that nothing is done with it and it has no impact on changing lives. He said this process turns young people into a sort of "youth museum."

"A youth museum is very well-informed, but what does he or she do with all that knowledge?" Having a rich fruitful life is not found in "the accumulation of information or just through virtual communication, but in changing the reality of existence. In the end, it means loving," reaching out to people physically, touching the world and moving forward with one's life.

Amazing words, especially coming from the leader of a religious institution which isn't known for being on the cutting edge of technological insights. (And before anyone mentions it, yes, the term "youth museum" is a bit clunky. But that's probably an aspect of the translation of the pope's original words.)

No matter whether you believe in religion or not, or support or disagree with the pope's other views and statements, there's insight in the pope's words about both virtual relationships and how we handle the vast amounts of information pouring through our lives and minds.

I believe how we handle these aspects of modern life will be one of humanity's defining issues over the next few decades. And based on the words of Pope Francis, he likely sees this challenge in a similar way.

Remembering Eugie Foster and her stories

The Nebula Award finalists were announced the other day and, to my excitement, one of the stories on the ballot is Eugie Foster's "When it Ends, He Catches Her."  I love this story, which is both touching and disturbing and a beautiful elegy on life and death.

I wish everyone would read the story. I wish everyone would consider it for the Hugo and Nebula Awards (the story was on my nominating list for both awards).

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to tell Eugie how much I loved this story because she passed away the day after it was published. But as with all authors, a part of her lives on through her stories.

The November 2014 issue of Locus Magazine published my short remembrance of Eugie. Here's the essay in case you missed it.

Remembering Eugie Foster

There's never enough time. There are never enough words. The day before Eugie Foster died, Daily Science Fiction published her amazing new short story "When It Ends, He Catches Her." The story — a lyrical tale about the dance of life and death and loss — touched me like few others have in recent years. I wanted so badly to tell Eugie how much I loved the story. But there's never enough time and, when Eugie passed the next day, there were no more words to share.

But words are still why I loved Eugie's writings so much. She was a friend, yes, but also one of my favorite authors. Her stories ranged from fairy tales to science fiction to horror, from stories which could puzzle even cynical and jaded adults to tales which couldn't help but delight eternally eager children. Eugie embraced the entire range of possibilities contained in the short story form, with her Nebula Award winning novelette "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" ranking as a classic which people will read and wonder about for years to come.

Eugie was a powerful voice for short stories in a time and a culture where short stories are nearly a forgotten genre. As editor of The Fix short fiction review, she highlighted stories which otherwise would have been overlooked by readers. Through her friendships with fellow short story writers she encouraged so many authors to greater heights. I know I personally wouldn't be where I am today as a writer without her kind words and support.

Eugie's husband Matthew asked that instead of sending flowers, people remember her by reading her stories. That is a beautiful request and one which fits so well with Eugie's life and writings. Remember her life. Read her stories. Share her stories with others.

Goodbye, Eugie. You were a wonderful person and author. While it's never easy to say goodbye, I know I will continue to reread your stories — and urge others to read them — for as long as I live.