In 2022, I was hospitalized with pneumonia and learned that I have a chronic lung condition that puts me at heightened risk from respiratory infections. Even before, during the pandemic, my family was being very cautious due to my 90-year-old mother living with us. The net result has been that, for us, the pandemic never ended.

For several years, I only attended events where everyone was masked. I attended Arisia, Boskone, Readercon, and Worldon in Chicago, while masks were required. But, as events — one-by-one — dropped masking requirements, I have gradually begun attending events where masks aren’t required. This year, I attended Worldcon in Seattle.

I mask everyplace I go indoors, except for my own house. Or inside my own hotel room. It really kinda sucks. No dining in restaurants, no bars, no nothing. (Unless it’s outdoors.)

At Worldcon, a small percentage of people — perhaps 10% — were masked. The numbers were a bit higher in the science panels I attended. At SEATAC, perhaps as many as 5% of people were masked. At DFW, I saw thousands of people during our two-hour layover as we transited between terminals and only saw one other person wearing a mask.

Masks are really not that uncomfortable. They don’t interfere with your breathing at all. When you wear them for hours, however — especially when it’s hot and humid — the increased humidity on your face is irritating. And if I have to do any serious exertion, my mask will become soaked with sweat, which is even worse. It also causes my glasses to be less stable, especially if I’m looking down. I’ve had my glasses literally fall off my face. And don’t get me started about when I use the Portable Oxygen Concentrator (which I need in order to fly) and have to run the oxygen tubes behind my ears too.

Wearing a mask is stigmatizing. People can’t hear you as well and can’t see your facial expressions, which makes you more difficult to understand. It’s isolating because you can’t respond as effectively to social cues. It’s especially bad when you’re one of the only ones masking. It makes you stand out in a bad way.

The modern Summit Convention Center in Seattle has very high ceilings and, reportedly, very high quality air filtration. But I still masked everywhere.

Even masked, I avoided crowded events. If there were a lot of people in a room, I don’t go in. Or I got out.

One of the main reasons people go to Worldcon is to attend parties in hotel rooms and suites. These rooms generally have very poor ventilation. There were a lot of parties on the same floor as our hotel room. We could hear the sounds of merry making in our room every night. SFWA held two breakfasts in their suite. I attended the first for about 10 minutes, when the room completely filled up with unmasked people and so I left.

The net result is that I can only get about half of the experience of going to a convention.

When I returned home, I watched the #disease-self-reporting channel of the Worldcon Discord as reports of cases came in. On my publisher’s Discord, people who had worked in the dealer’s room began reporting positive results too. Every time I saw another report, I would have psychosomatic symptoms. Is my throat scratchy? Why did I just cough?

I finally ran a test this morning, four day after departing the convention. Negative.

It appears I’ve dodged the bullets again. But that’s literally what it is: dodging the bullets. It’s constant and it’s exhausting.

an older man sitting on the garden terrace at the Seattle Worldcin

The 2025 Worldcon in Seattle was generally good. I served on a lot of panels, had a good reading, and (for me) met a lot of people. But I had one unpleasant experience that left a bad taste in my mouth and left me feeling rather mixed on the whole convention.

I had a reading. At first, I realized they had scheduled my reading for Sunday when would have already left. But they were graciously able to reschedule it earlier in the Con. It was, in fact, in the second reading slot for the convention. I worried that it might not get any attendees. After Boskone, I said I would be happy if my reading had any attendees. But there were six people, two of whom came specifically to see me. I joked afterward that it had a non-zero number of attendees and some of them were not even related to me by blood.

I also served on seven panels at Worldcon. Seven is rather a lot, but I like to be busy. I moderated one panel and was a panelist on the others. Many people came up afterward to praise my performance both as panelist and moderator — and to express interest in my books. And some even came to the dealer room later to find me and buy copies.

The panel I moderated, An Hour of the Strange, Unusual, Creepy, went very well. One of the participants had emailed everyone within a day or two of the panel being proposed to start organizing it and asked everyone to introduce themselves and describe what they wanted to do talk about. I responded to the email and then, a day or two, followed up gently with the email I normally sent to panels that I’m going to moderate that introduces me as the moderator with my usual information requests, that includes how to pronounce names and solicits questions that will allow each panelist to make the points they want to make about the topic. A few days before the panel, I sent the list of questions I’d come up with. Our presentation went well and I think everyone was able to participate well and say what they wanted to say. The guy who’d tried to take over as organizer apologized after the panel for jumping the gun. He said he’d served on another panel where the moderator never reached out or did anything (which has happened to me too). I said it was no problem. I was pleased that everyone seemed happy with the result.

Most of my other panels were about biology. On Life as we know it, I got to serve with Frank Wu again. We were on a similar panel at Boskone. In the lead up to the panel, I pointed out a couple of new unusual life forms that I had heard about that Frank hadn’t yet seen. He was super excited about them and I think I earned a lot of points with him. In both Can biological research ever be independant? and Human evolution and our influence on it were well-stocked with real expertise and I felt like I could play effectively off points other people were making to add useful information and nuance.

I was on two ‘non biology’ panels. One was about self-publishing for poets, which went well where I got to show off my Esperanto books and the ‘zines I’ve made. The other was about Makerspaces. One of the participants didn’t show up for that one and so it was a little thin. But we had a good time playing off the audience’s questions and letting them to contribute useful information.

My favorite panel was Biology and Evolution of the Dog that had a perfect mix of expertise and personalities. The moderator was a PhD Doctor of Veterinary Medicine who had been deeply involved with sequencing projects. There was an evolutionary biologist and a dog training expert. And me. Since everyone else could play to their expertise, I could just be the weird author and talk about boxer dogs and my story with a character who is a NeoBoxer.

The panel got off to a rough start when it turned out that there was no projector to share the slide presentation the moderator had constructed. I suggested that we could run a zoom session that the participants could join and the moderator could share the presentation that way. In the 15 minutes before the start, I set a zoom session, everyone joined, and it worked. (Mostly. The convention center was experiencing some network issues and the moderator got dropped from the zoom session a couple of times. But we rolled with it, reorganized a couple of the points, and got through everything.)

I also had several SFWA events. I attended a board meeting, served at the SFWA “fan table” a couple of times, and attended a breakfast (for a few minutes: it was tightly packed in a small, poorly ventilated room so I left once it got busy to reduce my exposure to COVID). They had a networking reception that I unfortunately couldn’t attend, because I was on a panel at the same time. But I got to introduce myself as the Secretary to a bunch of SFWA folks, including John Scalzi, while I was serving at the fan table and selling books.

I was too busy to spend a lot of time selling books in the dealer room, but I was there much of my free time. We had brought some books (my own and others from my publisher) and dropped them off before the dealer room opened. I managed to sell most of the books I’d brought and ended up bringing home only a handful. I didn’t manage to sell any of my Esperanto chapbooks, which kind of surprised me. But not that much.

Everything went very well with one exception. One of the other authors with my publisher decided to try to chastise me on two separate occasions for things they misunderstood about what I was doing. In both cases, I felt that they were very aggressive and kind of an asshole about it. I reported the conflicts to my publisher and said that, as things stand, I will not work with this person going forward. But it made me somewhat upset and rather colored the whole Worldcon experience for me.

I should recognize my son Daniel for coming along with me. He was a boon companion and made sure I got at least one good meal each day. Plus he helped me schlep the books all the way there. I really enjoy having him come along with me for many reasons but also because, honestly, I don’t quite trust myself to manage all of the travel details anymore, and so having second set of eyes on everything is reassuring.

We checked out of the hotel around 6am Sunday morning and spent the whole day traveling home: light rail to the airport then two 3-4 hour flights with a long layover in DFW. We finally got home around 1am. I’m rather glad I’m not traveling again until November for LOSCon.

ribbons attached to name badge

My son, Daniel, and I brought ~90lbs of books (two full checked-bags) for Water Dragon Publishing to sell in the Dealer Room at Worldcon in Seattle. So we took the books to the Dealer Room during the set-up time to drop the books off. There was a little old man wearing a convention center staff uniform standing at the door to prevent unauthorized entry.

He peered at our badges and said, “You’re ‘members.’ Members aren’t allowed in until 2pm when the Dealer Room opens.”

We had been listed as dealer-room staff by Water Dragon, so we should have been able to get into the Dealer Room but, due to a snafu, we ended up with “member” badges that didn’t list our role as dealers.

While we were standing there another person came up and then another with the same issue. The guard kept saying the same thing, “Your badge has to say ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.’ I can’t let anyone in unless their badge says ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.'”

One woman was quite irate, “Can I speak to Amy? Can you get Amy? I need to drop off these books.”

He replied, “Your badge says ‘member’. Members aren’t allowed in until 2pm when the Dealer room opens.”

The woman became nearly apoplectic with rage when Amy happened to come by. She listened to us and then promptly directed us to bring in our stuff and drop it off.

When I was leaving, I thanked the guard for his service. He said, “I just can only let people in if their badge says ‘artist’ or ‘dealer.'”

“Yep. It’s waaaay above your pay grade,” I said. “Thanks again.”

Privately, Daniel commented to me, “I’ve never seen someone go full NPC before.”

I commented that he didn’t have much experience with the military because that’s what they train you do to: follow orders.

Later, I was on a panel where someone with a dealer badge said, “Where do you get those name placards?”

“They’re in your participant packet,” someone said.

“Participant packet?”

“Yeah. That white envelope you got when you got your badge.”

“I didn’t get one!”

When I got my badge, I just said my name and gave them my ID and assumed they had everything cross correlated regarding the various roles people had. But evidently their system only tracked one role. So you were either a member or artist or dealer. That’s just my hypothesis.

Later in that day, I was able to get a dealer ribbon that now gives me access to the dealer room during set-up time. So it’s all good.

a Scarlet A graphic for allies to show opposition to payment processors restricting access to legal adult content.

Mastercard and other payment processors, under pressure from right-wing groups and the government, are forcing vendors to remove works with a wide variety of perfectly legal, but in some way sexually explicit content, from their listings. This neo-Puritanism results in Authors and Artists being branded with a new kind of Scarlet A. To recognize and respond to this, I’ve created a Scarlet A graphic you can use to show that you’re an Ally and oppose having the neo-Puritans restrict what legal content you can access.

You can get the image three ways [PNG] [PDF] [SVG].

Put it on your website! Share it via social media. And please link it to this page so people will know what it means.

Other things you can do:

Sign the ACLU petition. The ACLU is collecting signatures to show that the issue matters.

Call Mastercard. They began these actions in response to a well-organized campaign by a small pressure group. We need to show them there are more of us.

Call your congresspersons. This is just one skirmish in a larger war by neo-Puritans to restrict everyone’s access to adult materials in the guise of “protecting children”. Congress has been proposing one ill-considered measure after another. Push back!

My first significant work of fiction, The Mary Stories, is now available via Theo Reads! It’s a “rural fantasy” story that blends Eastern and Western elements. I’ve grown a lot as a writer since I finished this work, but I still enjoy re-reading it. It has a lot of charming moments and the wry humor that a number of people have told me they like about my writing. I think that people who like my writing will also enjoy it. Here’s the description:

“An older man moves back to his childhood home in the country and rediscovers the imaginary friend he had as a child, who is not so imaginary. Reconnecting after a lifetime apart, they begin to trust one another again. And, together, they confront a mystery that spans the past and the present, and that threatens them both.”

When I first started trying to actually write something for publication in English, this was the first piece of greater than short-story length I ever completed. It was a serial of ten episodes that each had a minor story and, together, covered a larger overall arc. It includes many of the elements that characterize my work: a blend of East and West, episodic story telling, interactions between human and non-human characters, ecological and environmental themes, and trans people finding acceptance and love.

It’s not my strongest work. I’ve grown a lot as a writer since I wrote this. The story structure and pacing is uneven. And there are some “darlings” and “mary-sue” parts that I like to think I have gotten somewhat better at killing. Or, at least, disguising. But I still like the stories and I think they’re fun romp.


After I finished writing the stories, I shopped them around a bit but found that few publishers were interested in serialized work from new authors. In spite of that, I kept pushing to write serialized work and found success at Water Dragon Publishing when Revin’s Heart was serialized. After submitting the Mary Stories a few times, I set them aside to work on other things. Then I heard of Kindle Vella.

Vella was an experiment that Amazon did in serialization. I published The Mary Stories at Vella as It’s Complicated. It didn’t attract much interest there. I read that people that were successful at Vella — and there weren’t many — had generally written more than a hundred chapters. And the more successful works tended toward erotica, which wasn’t really what I wanted to write. But Vella itself didn’t pan out either, and they shut it down in February 2025.

Theo Reads is an interesting project to commercialize serialized writing. It’s more of a platform than a publisher. They’re still developing the technology and the processes. But it’s fascinating to see a bit behind the scenes as they try things out and work through the various challenges. Among the authors are a number of familiar — and well known — faces in the SFF community. They’re currently particularly interested in erotica — or works adjacent to erotica. But they’re interested in broadening the types of stories they publish.

I have several other works that might fit that I could choose to publish via Theo Reads. I have one serial just sitting there that I had thought I had found a home for, but has been languishing for more than a year. So, for me, this is a useful opportunity to try out Theo Reads and see if my work might find an audience there.

In Thin, White and Right: The Ideal Christian Woman the speakers describe how it’s currently “in” in Conservative circles to be fit. One of the biggest, weirdest successes of the so-called Conservative movement is how they’ve convinced people to judge and hate who they themselves are. This is something I’ve never understood. Obesity and poverty are huge problems everywhere in the US, but in the South, especially. But a vast number of those same people have been persuaded that these things are their fault — some kind of moral failing. And they hate and mock people for being like that.

They say, “Poor? You’re a loser and it’s your fault. Fat? You’re a loser and it’s your fault. Addicted to drugs? You’re a loser and it’s your fault. Can you believe those woke people not hating poor, fat, drug addicts and telling them that it’s OK to be like that? What a bunch of leftist freaks!”

We now know, of course, that treating these things like they are moral failings doesn’t work. There are systemic reasons for obesity, poverty, drug addition, and many other things that we could work together to solve for everyone. Blaming people for being unable to individually solve them is purely hateful.

Of course, they also hate people for sexual orientation and gender identity which is similarly not a moral failing. Furthermore, we know that, among them, there a lot of people — maybe 20-25% — that would be much happier being able to express other orientations and identities. Instead, they live out their lives hating themselves and feeling like there is something wrong that needs to be hidden, bottled up, and repressed.

All I can say is that it’s deplorable that people would rather go through life hating themselves and engaging in self-abnegation. If that’s actually how you want to live, maybe you really are a loser and it is your fault.

Early this spring, at a meeting of the Faculty Senate Rules Committee with the Campus Leadership Council (the Chancellor, Provost, and Vice Chancellors), a key campus administrator mentioned that they didn’t understand why it was so difficult to recruit people to serve on the Faculty Senate. I was able to enlighten them with a story.

I read to him an excerpt of what my department’s Personnel Committee wrote about my service on my Annual Faculty Review (AFR) from 2023:

Recap: Dr. Brewer was a member of the biology awards committee, the biology climate committee, Chair of CNS lecturer review & promotion committee, Presiding officer of faculty senate, a member of the rules committee of the faculty senate, a faculty senator, an ad hoc reviewer for the journal American Biology Teacher, and serves on the Program Committee of the Straw Dob Writers Guild, an organization that supports writers in Western MA. Although not part of his job responsibilities, Dr. Brewer also published several short stories, novelettes, and flash fiction works.

Evaluation: Dr. Brewer’s service contributions meet departmental expectations.

For comparison, in many departments service on a single departmental committee would be considered sufficient to “meet expectations”. By contrast, I served on two departmental committees, I CHAIRED a personnel committee for the College (which is a particularly heavy load and for which many faculty would secure a release from other service), and I served as one of the two highest, elected positions that lead the Faculty Senate. I have to preside over the Senate meetings plus my service on the Rules Committee is heavier than most departmental committees. Moreover, I do additional outreach outside the University. (It’s Straw Dog Writer’s Guild, btw.) In short, I did a fuck ton of service that year. I’m not sure what I would have had to have done to get an “exceeds expectations” — maybe win a MacArthur Genius Award or something.

For 2024, BTW, my assessment was the same, even though I didn’t chair the College lecturer review and promotion committee. But they didn’t even mention the General Faculty Meeting that was one of the most difficult and challenging things I’ve ever done in my life (which I did prominently cite on my AFR — they just didn’t mention it). But departments just don’t value Faculty Senate service much. And that’s why it’s hard to recruit people to serve.

Several weeks after this happened, I happened to be awarded an inaugural Delphi Leadership Award by the Center for Faculty Development, which recognizes exceptional leadership in service to non-tenure-track faculty. It was nice to have my service recognized by someone, even if my department does not.

Plaque that reads, "DELPHI LEADERSHIP AWARD 2024-2025 Presented to Steven D. Brewer; College of Natural Sciences; In Recognition of Exceptional Leadership & Contributions Supporting Non-Tenure-Track Faculty; University of Massachusetts Amherst

“Steven D. Brewer is recognized for his sustained leadership in the Massachusetts Society of Professors (MSP) and in the Faculty Senate in improving working conditions for NTT faculty. In MSP, Steven has served as an Officer, on the Executive Board, as the only NTT member on the MSP bargaining team, and multiple bargaining subcommittees to establish NTT promotion ladders, continuing appointment status, and the professional development fellowship. Steve was the first NTT member of the Senate Rules committee and now serves as Presiding Officer of the Faculty Senate.”

I’ve always known that my department did not really appreciate my university service, but it never stopped me from serving. I’ve always believed that faculty governance is critical to a university’s independence from outside influences. The faculty need to be involved in order to push back against efforts to control the university. Without a strong culture of engagement with faculty governance, there would be little to stop the university from being taken over. So, even though I knew that my service efforts would not lead to recognition at the department level, I believed it was important enough to do anyway. And it’s gratifying to see that service recognized, even if not by the colleagues in my department.

There is one kind of service I’ve stopped doing. For 25 years, I served as Director of the Biology Computer Resource Center and, during that time, I did extensive university service related to information technology (IT), serving on the Faculty Senate University Computing and Electronic Communications Committee (the euphonious FSUC&ECC). When I served on the Rules Committee the first time, I was involved in rewriting the charter for the committee to elevate it to become the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC), which had a larger charge and higher level administrative representation. During those times I worked ceaselessly to try to make the University IT responsive to the needs of departments and the faculty. But when the department rewrote my job description so that I wasn’t responsible for information technology anymore, I dropped all of my service related to IT. It’s not my job anymore.

Next year, I will complete my phased retirement and then none of it will be my job anymore. It’s been an wonderful career and I’m looking forward to one more wonderful year. But I’m also enjoying my transition to new challenges.

On Saturday, August 2, 2025, the Stavros Center For Independent Living is hosting the Rock, Roll & Gather Maker’s Market at Look Park in celebration of the Americans with Disabilities Act. As someone with a disability, I’m pleased to participate and sell books for Water Dragon Publishing.

I’ll bring my own books plus a selection of other books from Water Dragon. The weather looks spectacular and I hope we’ll have a great showing. I hope to see you there!

I agreed, with the welcome support of my son, to set up and run the Readercon dealer tables for Water Dragon Publishing and Small Publishing in a Big Universe (SPBU) again this year. I had a number of observations when I ran it last year. I reviewed those and tried to put some of them into effect this year.

We only had one table each for Water Dragon and SPBU this year that were at a corner. As I understand it, there were originally two authors scheduled to use the SPBU table (plus some of my books are considered SPBU), but only one actually attended. So I used the rest of the SPBU table for my books and other Water Dragon titles.

Last year, I observed we had too many titles featured. I had considered getting some bookshelves that could let people browse, but didn’t manage to accomplish that. But I did change how the books were organized on the table. This year, rather than having essentially every title on a book stand, I had most titles laying flat on the table and only put a handful of featured titles on book stands. Over the course of the three days, I switched which books were featured, so that different books had a chance to stand out and be seen. Except the books by authors who were present: their books were on display for every day of the convention.

Water Dragon Table, Day 1
Water Dragon Table, Day 1
Water Dragon Table, Day 2
Water Dragon Table, Day 2
Water Dragon Table, Day 3
Water Dragon Table, Day 3

Three authors, besides me, were available to represent our table: two other Water Dragon authors and one SPBU author. I tried to spread the books by different authors out around the tables so that there was a chair where each of the books was positioned so that the author could stand behind their book to sell it. I was pleased when someone was looking at an author’s book when the author was near the table. I was able to point the author out for them to ask a question which then led to a sale. It’s amazing what a difference it makes to be present for selling books. In point of fact, reaching out to people when they’re at the table to call attention to your books makes a huge difference as well. At least half of my sales — maybe more — are directly attributable to my reaching out to people at the table to pitch books. If your books are just “there” people are much less likely to notice them.

One thing that surprised me this year was who I didn’t see in the bookstore. I’ve often enjoyed being in the bookstore because it’s an opportunity to see everyone that comes through. But not everyone visited the bookstore at Readercon this year. I might not have noticed, but I was particularly struck because a number of the most prominent, instantly-recognizable, authors and other members of the SFF community never came into the bookstore at all, which I found personally disappointing. At some other conventions, there are a number of inducements or other activities planned associated with the bookstore (or “dealer room”) that encourage people to visit. Maybe something like that would help here.

I got to pilot-test the 任せて DNA Analysis tool and Human DNA ribbon. Readercon only started using ribbons last year and there is not a strong ribbon culture. I developed a pitch centered around the tool that I introduced occasionally after my usual pitch. It was sometimes effective. Nobody seemed to find it problematic. A few people independently noticed the QR code irrespective of the pitch. (Or actually codes because I actually had two: one that led to the “Book” page of my website.) Although it didn’t seem interesting to everyone, some people really loved it. I still need to work a bit on the follow-up mini lecture about the human genome, to tighten it up and to bring it back more effectively to sell the book.

I finally paid for the pro version of Independent Analytics that provides traffic analysis for my website. The free version really provides enough. But I like the system well enough that I wanted to provide support for them to encourage further development. I purchased a permanent license.

My author website is (mostly) the first site I’ve tried to build in WordPress. (Although I did set up a Comic Press site for Doctor Emery’s Nightmares back in the day.) In my previous career, I set up hand-coded websites in HTML and was an expert with Drupal which I used to set up websites for a bunch of organizations. But, when I wanted to build an author site, I decided that WordPress was probably the best fit for what I was trying to do. (In large part because my hosting service, Dreamhost, did the install and does the maintenance for the system. It’s not like I can’t do that for myself, but it means I spend less time worrying about tracking and applying security patches.)

After I set up my website, I was interested in getting usage statistics, but WordPress doesn’t really provide any natively. I looked around a bit and settled on the Independent Analytics plugin as the best fit for my needs. It is attractively designed, provides almost all of the basic functionality that you might want, and has some gentle teasers for advanced functionality you can unlock by purchasing the “pro” version.

The main thing you can do with the pro version, is run “campaigns” that let you collect data to compare and test different approaches. It also provides a very pretty overview dashboard with the basic statistics. It’s probably overkill for what I’m trying to do. But, as I say, the free version is really plenty to provide the basic functionality anyone would want.