Jason Sanford Jason Sanford

Jason's Patreon

Want to see me write more short fiction? Want to help me make my already published short stories available in professional ebook editions? Then consider supporting my Patreon.

In case you're not familiar with Patreon, it is a platform allowing creators like myself to run a subscription content service. Pitch in a few bucks a month and you not only help support my writing you also gain access to member-only content including

When I reach $300 a month in support, I will hire a freelance e-book designer and artist to help me release professional e-book editions of my previously published short stories. I believe the audience for speculative fiction short stories is out there and I aim to find and expand it..

To support my Patreon, go here.

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Jason Sanford Jason Sanford

My rocking ConFusion schedule, Jan. 18 to 21, 2018

I'm a participating author at ConFusion in Detroit, January 18 to 21. As I've said before, ConFusion is one of my favorite conventions and features a strong literary focus with a laid-back and accessible attitude.

Here are the panels I'm taking part in. Really excited about these topics. See everyone there!

Visions of Positive Masculinity
6pm Friday in Saugatuck
David Anthony Durham, Jason Sanford, Jim C. Hines, John Chu, Pablo Defendini
From high fantasy adventures to noir mysteries to superheroes and war stories, genre fiction has meticulously catalogued the narrow roles society expects men to occupy: strong, brave, and powerful, but also angry, competitive, emotionally repressed, and misogynistic. What does a character arc look like for the man who has decided not to be the best at performing this toxic vision of masculinity? We've seen many stories about women who struggle and triumph against gender roles. How can writers use social expectations of masculinity to create challenges that their male characters have to overcome to save the day?

That’s Not My Star Wars!
11am Saturday in Leelanaw
James Breakwell, Ferrett Steinmetz, Jason Sanford, Mur Lafferty, Sarah Hans, Seleste deLaney / Julie Particka
At one point, it appeared most of the world agreed on the canon-destroying awfulness of the Star Wars prequel films, and their unholy avatar Jar Jar Binks. But a new generation of Star Wars is taking hold, and not everyone is pleased with the direction that’s going, either. Where do we draw our mental lines, and why?

Autograph Session (4 PM)
4pm Saturday in St. Clair
Come meet your favorite authors, artists and musicians and have them sign things! Featuring Amal El-Mohtar, Annalee Flower Horne, Annalee Newitz, Carl Engle-Laird, David Anthony Durham, David D. Levine, Delilah S. Dawson, Diana Rowland, Dominik Parisien, Dyrk Ashton, Ferrett Steinmetz, James Breakwell, James L. Sutter, Jason Sanford, Jason Sizemore, Jim Butcher, Jim C. Hines, Julia Rios, Mark Oshiro, Michael J. DeLuca, Michael R. Underwood, Monica Valentinelli, Mur Lafferty, Nisi Shawl, Patrick S. Tomlinson, Sara Dobie Bauer, Sarah Gailey, Scott H. Andrews, Seleste deLaney / Julie Particka, Stacey Filak, Suzanne Church, Tracy Townsend

Making Money in Fandom: Why and Why Not
5pm Saturday in Petoskey
Dessa Lux, Jason Sanford, Sunny Moraine, Mark Oshiro
We all like to express our love of fandom in different ways but not all of us like to get paid for it. Find out why our panelists do what they  do for a profit or not.

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Jason Sanford Jason Sanford

2017 novel and short story recommended reading list

Here are the novels and short fiction from 2017 which I'm recommending people consider for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards. This list will inform my eventual nominations for all those awards.

That said, this list is not all-inclusive. I actually read less in 2017 than in many previous years. I'm trying to fix this by reading and reviewing a short story each day during 2018. You can follow my progress on Twitter and my Patreon. If you like what I'm doing consider becoming one of my Patreon backers.

Note: If no link is provided for a work that means it can be found through your local bookseller or in the specified back issue of a magazine.

Novels

  • An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon 
  • Autonomous by Annalee Newitz 
  • Borne: A Novel by Jeff VanderMeer 
  • City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett 
  • Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders 
  • Phantom Pains by Mishell Baker 
  • The Changeling by Victor LaValle 
  • The Rift by Nina Allan 
  • The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley 
  • The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin

Young Adult Novels

  • The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller 
  • The Hollow Girl by Hillary Monahan

Novella

  • A Portrait of the Desert in Personages of Power by Rose Lemberg (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
  • And Then There Were (N-One) by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine)
  • Barry's Deal by Lawrence M. Schoen (NobleFusion Press)
  • Buffalo Soldier by Maurice Broaddus (Tor)
  • In Calabria by Peter S. Beagle (Tachyon Publications)
  • Nexus by Michael Flynn (Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March/April 2017)
  • Passing Strange by Ellen Klages (Tor)
  • Red Threads of Fortune by J.Y. Yang (Tor)

Novelette

Short Story

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The golden age of SF/F television

white-walkers-game-of-thrones.jpg

Note: Originally published in the October 2017 issue of the Czech SF/F magazine XB-1.
 

My grandfather lived through the Golden Age of Science Fiction during 1930s and 1940s, when the modern SF genre made a major cultural impact in many other parts of the world. As a child I often looked in awe at my grandfather’s collection of Golden Age magazines and books.

I once asked him what it was like living through that era. My grandfather merely smiled and said “I just loved reading the stories.”

One day, when my grandchildren ask me what it was like living during our current Golden Age of SF/F Television, I plan to say, “I just loved watching the shows.”

We’re living in an age of television greatness, an era which HBO helped created at the beginning of the millennium with intense crime dramas such as The Sopranos and The Wire. These shows, which took visual episodic storytelling to new heights, influenced other networks and producers such as Netflix to do the same. The result is more great TV these days than anyone could possible watch in a lifetime.

However, what’s often missing in discussions over the great shows on TV is how much of that gold is mined within the science fiction and fantasy genre.

This doesn’t mean there weren’t great SF/F television shows in earlier decades. Star Trek and Doctor Who created the world’s first SF franchises back in the 1960s, a trend continued by 1978’s Battlestar Galactica. The soap opera Dark Shadows showed the potential of TV fantasies during the 1960s, as did the The Twilight Zone.

However, there were limitations on televised genre works in earlier decades. Special effects prior to the use of computer-generated imagery (CGI) were extremely expensive and often looked extremely unrealistic. While Hollywood could justify the cost of quality special effects on blockbuster movies, TV shows had more limited budgets, with the cost of special effects playing a significant role in the cancellation of both the original Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica.

Expensive special effects also limited the genre stories which could be told on TV. For example, Harlan Ellison’s original script for the Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever” was very different from what was eventually filmed. While creative disagreements between Ellison and Gene Roddenberry caused some of the changes, others resulted from how expensive it would have been to film Ellison’s script.

A side-effect of expense special effects was that many genre shows of this time period, such as Doctor Who, were also overly talkative. After all, it was far cheaper to film characters describing what was going on in a SF/F setting than to actually create the visual world and effects.

But by the 1990s realistic-looking and affordable CGI effects had expanded the storytelling possibilities of televised genre stories. And the arrival of good CGI coincided with increasing demand for in-depth episodic stories. This perfect melding of new visual worlds with deeper character-driven stories resulted in two great SF shows from the 1990s, Babylon 5 and Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

However, I believe it was Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the fantasy/horror/comedy series created by Joss Whedon running from 1997 to 2003, which truly set the stage for our current Golden Age of SF/F Television. The series followed the life of Buffy Summers, one in a long line of "Slayers" who battled demons and vampires while often falling into complicated relationships with the same. The series’ power rested fully on Whedon’s unique characters, in particular the strength of Buffy and her painful on-again-off-again relationship with the vampire Angel. The complex chemistry between the characters raised the show above other TV fantasies from that time such as Xena: Warrior Princess, which while fun never reached Buffy’s heights.

Joss Whedon’s next series, 2002’s Firefly, continued this mixing of character chemistry and drama but added a far higher standard of CGI effects. Set in a far future where humanity settled a distant star system, Firefly followed the crew of a rundown spaceship trying to survive in a space-western setting. Firefly was unique among many SF shows in that every character was fully realized with a complex dramatic arch — individual stories which, tragically, would not all be realized before the series was cancelled without finishing even a single season.

Fortunately, death by cancelation didn’t befall the next two great genre shows of our new golden age, the reimagined versions of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who. Debuting respectively in 2004 and 2005, both series built upon the strong universe creation, settings and characters of their earlier incarnations. They also showcased special effects which finally did justice to the grand scope of their stories, whether showing a ragtag group of ships struggling to reach a new home or the immortal Time Lord playing across space and time.

However, the new versions of Battlestar Galactica and Doctor Who also took their stories into new territories with extremely complex storytelling and characterizations which crossed back and forth through grimly realistic themes and ideas. Battlestar Galactica’s reworking of the original hotshot fighter pilot Starbuck into the tortured soul of Kara Thrace resulted in one of the best TV characters of all time. Doctor Who episodes such as "Blink," featuring the Weeping Angels, showed viewers new depths of fear while "The Doctor's Wife" gave a painful depth to the Doctor’s character and travels.

And now we’re caught up to our current day, with fantasies like Game of Thrones and SF such as The Expanse and Westworld being major cultural milestones. Even lesser-watched shows like Black Mirror and Orphan Black are creating stories which rank with the best SF/F television of all time. Add in the countless superhero shows and it’s easy to see how we are truly living through a Golden Age of SF/F Television.

One day, when your grandchildren ask what it was like with so much great SF/F on TV, simply tell them you loved watching the shows.

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My novella "The Emotionless, in Love" accepted by Beneath Ceaseless Skies

Art I created for a special limited edition of "Blood Grains Speak Through Memories."

Art I created for a special limited edition of "Blood Grains Speak Through Memories."

Great news! My novella "The Emotionless, in Love" has been accepted by Beneath Ceaseless Skies. The novella is a stand-alone sequel to my novelette "Blood Grains Speak Through Memories," which was a finalist for the Nebula Award and also made the Hugo Award longlist.

The story focuses on Colton, the son of Frere-Jones Roeder from "Blood Grains..." When Colton was young his mother forced him to leave the life he'd always known and travel with a day-fellow caravan. But his mother's actions physically damaged Colton. Now he must fight to both become more human and to survive in a land where tiny microscopic machines dictate what is and is not acceptable behavior.

The novella will be released during BCS's Science-Fantasy Month 4, in February 2018.

Many thanks to Scott H. Andrews for both accepting the novella and giving great editorial feedback and suggestions on it. Also, many thanks to everyone in WriteShop, my writing group, for their equally great feedback. This is one of the most challenging stories I've ever written and I can't wait for people to read it.

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