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At WriteAngles, I met a science fiction author who is a newcomer to the Pioneer Valley. He asked if I was aware of any local meetups related to science fiction authorship and if I knew anything about SFWA. Below is my reply, slightly edited.

Unfortunately, I’m not aware of any good, local meetups specifically around science fiction, in spite of the number of authors that are here, with one exception: James Cambias (copied on this message) has an email list by which he occasionally organizes informal get-togethers at local breweries, wineries, or cideries. Perhaps he would add you to the list.

James is also going to be offering a workshop on Worldbuilding for Straw Dog Writers Guild at the North Amherst Library Community Room on November 9: https://strawdogwriters.org/event/worldbuilding-101 This would also be a good opportunity to meet him. And if you know other people who might be interested, please let them know as well.

Note that I also run a writing group, Straw Dog Writes (SDW), that meets online Wednesdays at 7pm via Zoom. We do introductions and chat for 15 minutes then write for 45 minutes, and repeat until 9pm. There are a few of us who are doing science fiction, but we also get poets, essayists, memoirists, etc. Let me know if you’d like to attend and I’ll send you the link.

When I was at Readercon, I spoke with another author in Northampton who expressed interest in trying to organize a speculative fiction meetup for the Pioneer Valley, so I think there’s more interest if we want to try to set something up. We could certainly organize something — perhaps monthly. I could participate if it were online, but probably couldn’t if it was face-to-face, due to my health circumstances. But I’d be happy just to know it was happening and would be happy to help organize/facilitate, if that would be helpful.

Regarding SFWA, the next big thing is Quasar, which is going to be an online event on Nov 15-16. https://membership.sfwa.org/event-6301796 The preliminary program is up and it looks pretty good. SFWA runs a “Writing Date” on Sundays that is just like SDW, except more well attended. (It was what I modeled SDW on.) And there are a number of committees that offer various kinds of ongoing meetups and programming. https://events.sfwa.org/upcoming-events/

The best way to stay current with SFWA is to get added to the Discord server. Email discord@sfwa.org for more info.

As I was writing this, I realized I was rather plugged into what’s going on in the SFF world — It’s like I’m some kind of socialist butterfly. Who would have thought!

I attended the Straw Dog Writers Guild annual conference, Write Angles, as a participant. I had a good time! They had invited me to serve on a science fiction panel. In addition, I attended several other panels during the conference and had the opportunity to meet a lot of people I had only met previously via zoom. Plus, I met even several new people (somewhat unusually for me). Overall, it was an outstanding conference experience.

The opening/keynote speaker was Franny Choi. She primarily asked us to consider what literature is for, especially in the face of the terrible events happening in the world around us: What use is poetry in a time of genocide? It challenged me to think about why I write escapist fluff and gave me a context for several good conversations throughout the day.

The science fiction panel, Writing the Future, was focused on near-term science fiction. I’ve written a few short stories like that, although most of my science fiction is set in some distant future — and I write as much or more fantasy than scifi. The panel was organized and moderated by Mark Schlack and included an outstanding and diverse group of writers: Allegra Hyde, Marisa Williams, and Andrea Hairston. We discussed the challenges of writing near-term science fiction and trying to go beyond dystopian fiction toward writing something more useful and optimistic. There were several interesting and thoughtful questions, including one person who said they had misread the topic and were hoping we were going to discuss the future of science fiction writing. That would be an interesting topic too.

I particularly enjoyed a workshop by Tolley Jones, a columnist for our local paper, on intersectionality. She described a technique she calls “writing from the middle” for moving from a personal experience to an essay that puts the experience in a context that others can understand and appreciate. After an introduction, she had us do a couple of writing exercises and share the results with a peer. Afterwards, she invited us to identify other kinds of identities (e.g. gender, race, class, religion, etc., etc.) and consider how our piece related to people with other identities or backgrounds. And if it wasn’t, why was that? It was a provocative question that got me thinking. She ended with a few concrete suggestions: Tell your story before you conclude anything. Don’t speak about others’ stories without input from that community. Be brave. Tell the truth. Consider your audience, but don’t protect them — don’t minimize your story to make it palatable.

After lunch, I attended a panel with three agents. Up to now, I haven’t tried to query for agents to publish my work and have been working with a small press. For my current work-in-progress, I’ve been planning to start querying to see if I can interest an agent in trying to find a publisher. I took a lot of notes. But was overall a little creeped out by the experience. When I described it to Phil, he immediately said it reminded him of how he discovered that Human Resources is not your friend. Yeah. Exactly. It’s not to say that you shouldn’t have an agent or try to get one. But remember to set boundaries and respect that it’s a business relationship — and primarily a relationship between your book — not you — and the publisher.

I ended up slipping out a little early and didn’t stay for the last session. It was such a beautiful a day, it seemed a shame to spend it all indoors. But I will definitely want to attend again next year.

japanese maple

Fall has begun. It’s always a dark time for me, as the seasons change and the days grow shorter. I have settled into my phased retirement, however, so the semester is not so onerous as it once was. And each thing I do professionally, I have the opportunity to reflect on how it’s the last time — or nearly the last — that I will ever have to do that.

After the wonderful experience with the panel about the evolution of dogs at Worldcon, I decided to have my students research and write about dogs for my scientific writing class. I always try to pick a theme I haven’t chosen before. I have had my students study many things in the 23 years I’ve taught this class — tardigrades, autumn leaves, cockroaches, garlic mustard, frogs, monocots, terrestrial gastropods, leaf miners, earthworms, millipedes, etc. — but I’ve never done dogs before. I think it’s going pretty well.

I’ve been productive with SFF writing as well as fall begins. I finished a novelette, Bearly Believable; wrote a short story, Uplands; and have started working on a second, Tablelands, in the same series. (Both are sequels to Bottomlands, a story that has been accepted for publication, but for which I’ve not yet received a contract.) I wrote about using regular expressions to find other -lands words, so now I have a bunch of ideas for further titles in this series.

I have also written an article for Planetside, the newly renamed SFWA blog. I made a pitch back in August which was accepted. Once I submitted the manuscript, it was sent to a line editor for revisions, which went well. Now it’s with the lead editor for final review and to select some of the images I submitted to go with it. It’s been my first experience writing for Planetside and it’s been a real pleasure.

I’ve not been as diligent about getting work submitted for publication this year. I have two works “in press” though long delayed. But I need to do better at getting work submitted and promptly re-submitted once it’s rejected.

I have two public appearances coming up and anticipate a few more in the coming months. I will appear next month at WriteAngles on a panel about science fiction: Writing the Future. The following month, I am scheduled to be on a panel at SFWA Quasar. I have also applied to be a participant at LOSCon in November, Arisia in January, and the next Worldcon in August.

November is going to be busy. In addition to Quasar and LOSCon, on November 8, I will be selling books at the Mill District Holiday Arts Market and the following day, I will host a Straw Dog Writers Guild craft workshop entitled Worldbuilding 101 with James Cambias.

Around the equinox, I met with the amazing curators of @wss366 to talk about Wandering Shop Stories. It’s a great bunch of folks! We had a new curator join us since our last meeting and it was wonderful to meet her. I love our small community and it gives me immense pleasure every day to have a little creative exercise in the morning to start things off. Our next meeting will be around the solstice.

Although it’s depressing to watch the news, I am encouraged by more than just schadenfreude. Not everything is dark. People are waking up to the fact that AI is a hype and asset bubble. And it looks to me like, in running up against the real world, the Republicans are beginning to realize that actually governing is necessary. I rarely agree with what they’re doing but, occasionally — after exhausting all of the other possibilities — they do finally do the right thing. It’s something.

There’s a long, dark winter ahead. But spring will follow eventually.

I’ve just finished a new manuscript called Uplands. It’s a sequel to a story I wrote about a year ago called Bottomlands. They’re dark fantasy short stories about a witch and her familiar.

I was thinking I might want to write more stories in the series and was grasping for more words that end with -lands. I pretty quickly thought of grasslands and barrowlands, but then I was kind of stumped. I went to do a websearch, but how do you search for -lands?

This is a job for regular expressions, I thought.

I poked around for a few minutes to see if I already didn’t have a dictionary file on my computer, but pretty quickly I decided to just download this list of 479k English words for this purpose. The Internet is still useful for a few things.

Then I crafted my regular expression using the unix utility egrep. I went through a couple of iterations to get it just right, but ended up with this:

egrep '^[a-z].+lands$'  ~/Downloads/words.txt

It looks through the file for words that end in “lands” and that aren’t capitalized (so you don’t get Netherlands, for example).

I ended up with 53 words. I think that’s more stories than I’ll want to write in this series. Some of the words are pretty good too! (e.g. badlands, borderlands, hinterlands all seem good for dark fantasy). Some don’t seem so useful (e.g. islands, lallands, playlands).

Interestingly, barrowlands wasn’t among the words. Go figure.

brain coral

Since the pandemic, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) has provided a robust online experience for the Nebula conference. It was fully online during 2020 and then resumed in 2022. Since then, there has been a commitment to offering a full (if not always perfectly integrated) online experience during the Nebula Conference. This year, SFWA is trying something new: an online only professional development conference. We’re calling it Quasar.

If you already paid for attendance to either the face-to-face or online Nebula conference, you’re eligible to register for Quasar at no expense. Otherwise, it’s only $50. Register before September 15 to receive the panel participation forms and office-hour surveys.

It will be a weekend of seminars, office hours, and flexible event scheduling with a keynote by the Nebula Grand Master Nicola Griffith.

It should be interesting, informative, and a lot of fun. Anyone interested in writing speculative fiction should strongly consider attending to learn more about the craft and business of writing and to network with your peers. Join us!

widely posted meme contrasting the social media experience one some networks as compared with Mastodon

Today, I shared one of my Mastodon posts with friends, one of whom commented, “Weirdos posting stuff to social media 😂” So I took a few minutes to explain to them why I like Mastodon.

I do like Mastodon. I get more and higher quality engagement with what I share on Mastodon than anyplace else these days. But, more than that, I really just like it. It’s peaceful and relaxing. And a few months ago, I realized why: It reminds me of Usenet.

Usenet was a kind of terminal-based messaging system that scientists and technologists used in the earliest days of the Internet and the before times (i.e. when it was still “NSFNet“). It was an amazingly interesting and useful community of people having high-level discussions of topics both academic and non-academic.

My brother, who was an Unix systems-engineer at the time, had told me about Usenet. Honestly, the main reason I decided to go back to graduate school, was so I could gain access to it. Even at my university, it wasn’t easy. The campus IT group didn’t make it available to the general university community, so I had to request a guest account from the computer science department. As a doctoral student, my request was honored and I used that as my primary computer account, and email address, the whole time I was a graduate student. That was also why I started learning Unix, which became a key factor in landing the job that became my career.

As a student, I used Usenet professionally to further my academic career and research. I had high-level conversations about science education and life science. I used it to recruit subjects for my doctoral research, developing a model of expert performance in phylogenetic tree construction. But that wasn’t all I used it for. I also lived in soc.culture.esperanto, the newsgroup for Esperanto speakers, where I could have conversations with samideanoj from all over the world. This was a genuine novelty at the time, where you otherwise might have to sign up with a penpal service to exchange paper letters with people to have similar contacts. (I did this, in fact, and had interesting correspondence, but it often took many weeks to get responses whereas Usenet allowed you to have conversations in just days — or sometimes even just hours!)

Usenet began to die when AOL came online and there was a constant influx of new non-academic people. People called it “eternal September“. The Usenet community worked for busy academics and professionals because most people respected the conventions. You could use it for high-level discussions because it was high signal and low noise. Once those conventions broke down, the really interesting people mostly abandoned it because it wasn’t worth trying to wade through all of the irrelevant crap that novices tended to post. It was very sad.

Thirty years later, I was surprised to join Mastodon and discover that it reminded me so much of Usenet. It has the same high-quality engagement by interesting, thoughtful people. And it has social conventions that make the environment functional and useful. But then I realized that Mastodon didn’t just remind me of Usenet: It’s literally the same people. There’s Gene Spafford. And Steve Bellovin. And many, many others.

A whole bunch of the old, interesting people I remember from Usenet are here! We are pretty old, too. Most of us are retirement age, if not retired. But it’s been wonderful to reconnect with so many of these folks after so many years.

It’s not just that it has many of the same people, though. It’s the thoughtful design of the software environment. And the social conventions that favor high-quality engagement and reduce both the “copypasta” and the viral “oh, snap!” types of engagement that have come to characterize most social media. It’s always a pleasure to immerse myself in a thoughtful community of people engaged in creative pursuits, whether it’s taking pictures of mosses and lichens or sharing story fragments or responding to prompts about writing pursuits.

It’s not for everyone. But I like it a lot.

lichens and moss on bark

Two of the writing prompts I follow on Mastodon ask, “How was this month for you, writing-wise?” It was pretty good.

I had a couple of distractions: I went to Worldcon and Philip Brewer came to visit. Those each took about a week away from my writing. But otherwise, I got a lot done.

I wrote a bunch of blog posts, including about The Mary Stories now at TheoReads, my Scarlet-A idea, several about Worldcon, writing affirmations, my birthday, and my teaching. But I was also productive in my fiction writing.

I’ve just about finished writing a new novelette called Bearly Believable. For several years, I’ve been writing little story fragments about a bear who acts as the fire-safety coordinator at a park. They’ve been among my most popular story fragments (which isn’t saying much, honestly). I think this is the very first one:

Post by @stevendbrewer@wandering.shop
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I wrote dozens of little scenarios about the bear as I fleshed him out in my mind. He changed a bit along the way and developed a backstory, which is what this story is really all about. Along the way, he was joined by a owl named Forrest who terrorizes litterbugs. And a little girl named Brunhilde who asks him thoughtful questions.

There’s a lot of world building embedded in the story. It has bits about the ecology of terraforming, lifestyles in a replicator-based society, and issues of freedom for non-human biological androids. At the same time, as with all of my writing, it’s silly fluff. I really don’t write anything to be deep.

It’s been fun to write. I just have a few bits to polish off over the next day or two. I would like to get it finished before the semester begins on Tuesday. If I quit writing this post and start working on that, there’s a good chance I’ll make it and finish writing for the month in style.

extreme closeup of boxer dog

I have selected my theme for my writing course for the fall of 2025. Each semester I’ve taught the class since 2002, I’ve tried to pick a different theme for my students to research and write about. I can’t say that I’ve never repeated themes, but I always try to think up something different. This semester, I intend for my students to study the biology of Canis familiaris, the dog.

I’ve always tried to select something I don’t know much about. It allows the students to be the experts. And it prevents me from becoming too directive (which happens all too often when I already too much about the subject). It also keeps the course fresh for me and has let me learn a vast amount of biology over the years.

Some themes have worked better than others. Students tend to be strongly biased toward animals, so although I’ve been very pleased with the semesters we studied plants or fungi, students were often less satisfied. I’ve generally shied away from vertebrates, simply because there are a lot of practical and regulatory complications for conducting research on them. So we’ve studied planarians, tardigrades, terrestrial gastropods, worms, millipedes, wood lice, spiders, and many types of insects, which has usually made students happy. (They didn’t like the semester we studied cockroaches, tho. Go figure.) But dogs will be something new.

My thinking was undoubtedly influenced by the excellent panel on dogs I participated on at Worldcon. There’s a wonderfully rich literature about dogs that students can dig into. The real question will be, what kinds of research projects can students propose and conduct? My course asks students to write a proposal — preferably about something they could actually do — and then to select a proposal to actually undertake as a research project.

I encourage students to follow their interests. If they’re genuinely interested in some topic that we can’t actually do, they’re welcome to write it up as a proposal. I often use the example of studying the biology of Mars. We don’t have the resources or time to visit Mars to conduct a project. But that shouldn’t stop them from proposing that, if that’s really what they want to do. It’s typically more fun to pitch something we can actually do. And it’s fun when your idea gets chosen by the class for a whole course research project.

I don’t require that the whole course pick just one project. Each group can choose to do their own proposal or any of the other proposals. Or something different altogether, if something more interesting has occurred to them. But it does sometimes happen organically, that one proposal rises to the top and everyone coordinates to conduct 8 or 9 projects all centered around a single proposal.

I wonder what kinds of projects the students will propose. I think there’s a lot we can do. We could observe dogs at local dog parks. Or simply by walking downtown. Some students will undoubtedly have pets. Or we could look for evidence of dogs in the environment.

Before we write proposals, I have the students perform a “METHODS Project” where they make a multi-panel figure that relates to the theme to get them thinking about the kinds of data they might collect. This year, I’ll ask them to collect photographic evidence of the presence of a dog in the local environment. The challenge for this project is how to collect data that is replicable: Can they think of something to photograph that another student can reliably also document? I can think of a few ideas, but it’s tricky. I’ll enjoy seeing what they come up with.

I’m always happy when I come up with an idea that I’m excited about and that I think the students will also enjoy. I think this is going to be a winner. Now I just need to come up with one more idea for next semester, which will be the very last time I ever teach this class.

a small wooden box

I don’t generally pay much attention to birthdays. But this year, my friends and family got together and made my birthday very special. It’s wonderful to have supportive family and friends.

The last time I had a special birthday was a dozen years ago when my friend Buzz Hoagland offered to throw me a party for my 50th birthday. He brewed some special beer to toast me and we invited all of my friends, family, and colleagues to come to his house for a party on the lawn. It was wonderful and I still have fond recollections many years later. In the interim, Buzz passed away and my life is much smaller and poorer for his passing.

Buzz was, in many ways, the center of my social life. He was outgoing and gregarious — and maintained a large circle of friends that I felt lucky to be a part of. He was always the one to send out messages to bring everyone together for a party or a dinner or a trip to the brewery. After he passed away, I tried to step into his shoes and set up a signal group to stay in touch with friends.

I called my group the Manly Men. This is a joke because we are probably among the least manly men in existence. We regularly share supportive messages and funny links and organize, occasionally, to get together to hang out and drink beer.

One of us, the Z-Man, is going through a rough time right now and, by coincidence, messaged me the night before my birthday to talk about getting together. (See left…)

He did message the Manly Men and they all agreed to stop by to wish me a happy birthday. The Z-Man came first and we sat out in the tent to chat with my brother, his wife, and my mom. The Ol’ Sprackler came by while the Z-Man was still there and we chatted some more. Then, after the Z-Man left, Bug Rodger called me on the phone and we put him on speaker and chatted for a bit. Daniel came out after a while and joined us. Finally, after the Sprackler left, we went to the Berkshire Brewery for pizza and beer, and then the Sifaka stopped by to chat for an hour or more

It was wonderful to spend pretty much the whole day visiting with friends and family. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. Since the pandemic, I hardly ever see people. I generally stay isolated to avoid exposure to respiratory viruses and, except for when people come to hang out in the tent, I don’t much socialize. But I really value having friends, which have always been an important part of my life.

One of my colleagues at UMass once joked, “I used to have these things called friends…” when talking about the isolation of being a faculty member. Faculty, because they evaluate one another, have a tendency to be unwilling to show weakness or vulnerability. As a faculty member, you feel a lot of pressure to present a carefully curated perspective on your life to other faculty. You can talk about the grants you’re applying for. Or how much work your teaching is and how it takes away from your research. But sometimes, years and years after having met a colleague, you discover that they play a musical instrument in a band. Or do oil painting or watercolors. They don’t share these facets of their lives with their colleagues because they don’t want to be perceived as having “free time” that they’re not dedicating to their research. It’s very sad.

I had a great birthday — one that I will remember for the rest of my days.

a handmade box that contained a delicious mexican sweet.

Today, the #WritersCoffeeClub prompt at Mastodon asked contributors to “Talk about an affirming experience you’ve had among your writing peers.” This was really difficult, only because it was so difficult to choose. There are so many people and groups that I value and appreciate. After some consideration, I decided to write about Wandering Shop Stories:

Post by @stevendbrewer@wandering.shop
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I realized that after my recent unfortunate interaction with another author at Worldcon, it was good for me to think about all of the positive interactions I’ve had within the writing community.

I really appreciate my brother, Philip M. Brewer, and my younger son, who serve as alpha readers of my fiction. When I write my initial draft, it’s really useful to have a few eyes to look it over and help me think about story structure and pacing. My brother is particularly good at coming up with ideas to strengthen the story and heighten the drama. And Daniel likes to mock the weak points, in a friendly and supportive way. His raillery always leaves rolling on the floor in hysterics. I am filled with gratitude for their support

In addition to #wss366, which I organize and manage, many other Mastodon writing communities are wonderful and supportive. They include #WritersCoffeeClub, #WordWeavers, #PennedPossibilities, #ScribesAndMakers, #LesFicFri, #WIPSnips, and others. It’s interesting to reflect on the questions, to read the responses that others write, and to receive positive reactions from the community.

I love serving on the Board of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). The organization is such a positive force in support of the genre writing community. The Board is really excellent. It’s the best non-profit Board I’ve ever served with, composed of deeply committed people who are both talented and dedicated to supporting the community. When I joined the Board, SFWA was in a crisis with a loss of leadership and staff. Now, we have great leadership and are fully staffed with truly outstanding people. The organization is really hitting on all cylinders. Somewhat perversely, it’s much less work for us on the Board and truly wonderful things are happening all the time. Everywhere I turn, people are commenting how they like the direction SFWA is taking. It’s been incredibly rewarding service.

I also love the Straw Dog Writers Guild. I enjoy serving on the Program Committee and helping organize interesting workshops and presentations. I’ve been able to invite really excellent people to contribute to our programming. And I really treasure my small community at Straw Dog Writes. There are a handful of us that meet nearly every week on Wednesday evenings to write together via zoom and a number of others that drop in and out periodically. Everyone has been very supportive and friendly.

It’s so important to have community to fall back on when things are rough. I really value everyone’s support.