Author of LGBTQIA+ speculative fiction and poetry in English and Esperanto. Teacher of scientific writing. Lover of natural history. SFWA Secretary. (he/him)
Jennifer Weiner, writing for the New York Times, describes a glaring omission in the coverage of the Epstein files. Her point is that most of the coverage has little or nothing about the victims.
[…] we’ve heard endless details about the predators and the men in their social circle, we have heard far too little about — and from — the victims.
There’s another omission, however, that I haven’t seen anyone talk about, which is the economic inequality that leaves women vulnerable to becoming victims of sex trafficking. Why is no-one talking about that?
The young women who get roped into sex trafficking do so largely for prosaic reasons: usually money. The 17-year-old girl who had sex with Matt Gaetz did so for money to pay for orthodontic work. If we had an effective social safety net and universal health care, young women would not be nearly at the risk for falling victim to these kinds of nefarious schemes.
Make no mistake: the wealthy pursue the policies they do in part in order to have a large population of vulnerable people that can be exploited. It makes no sense to pursue justice against particular perpetrators without pursuing the larger goal of fixing the conditions that lead people to become victimized.
Unfortunately, that’s not a story that the media, which is mostly owned by the same wealthy people, is ever likely to report.
Not only did people crave A.I. intimacy, but the most engaged chatters were using Kuki to enact their every fantasy. At first, this was fodder for wry musings at the office. […] Soon, however, we were seeing users return daily to re-enact variations of multihour rape and murder scenarios.
I realized as I read this that my fiction writing is similarly very much about enacting my fantasies — or, at least, fixing them in tangible form — though perhaps not every single one.
When I was young, I would lose myself in fantasies every night before going to sleep. And at any time during the day, might find myself woolgathering, imagining all sorts of fantastic things.
I fantasized about all sorts of stuff. Some fantasies were pretty ordinary: I remember at point having fantasies about building a large enough model airplane that I could fly in it. But a lot of fantasies were pretty weird and highly sexualized. I started having these sexualized fantasies at a very young age: 6 or 7 or 8. These were a staple of my life throughout my youth.
When I was a doctoral student, I suddenly lost my ability to fantasize. I realized eventually it was because I was confronted with a problem I didn’t know how to resolve. My dissertation was like a mountain range. I spent a year going back and forth in front of the mountain range, looking for a pass through the mountains. Eventually, I realized there was no pass, and so I started climbing up one mountain and then the next and then another. In the middle, I couldn’t see any end: there were mountains in every direction as far as I could see.
During this time. I was caught on the horns of a dilemma: I couldn’t engage in a fantasy that didn’t involve either having finished my dissertation — and I didn’t know how that could happen — or having given up. And I wasn’t going to do that! So I was stuck. It was horrible and I remember worrying at the time that the effect would be permanent.
Eventually, years after I finished, I gradually began to be able to fantasize again.
During the pandemic, I found myself constantly tormented by negative thoughts. I called it the Hamster Wheel of Doom: one negative thought led to another and another and eventually back to the first. I rediscovered finding refuge in fantasies. And I began writing fiction primarily as a way to fix one part of the fantasy so I could move onto the next part.
As I read that article, however, I began to wonder how different my indulging in my fantasies to write is different from using one of these chatbots. Like them, I’m just playing with my ideas. The only difference is that I play all the parts myself, rather than having some kind of assistive support. But is it really all that different? I dunno.
Minimally, I’m not sharing my fantasies with some faceless corporation. I’m sharing them with the public. And on my own terms. So there’s that.
On November 9, I got to host James Cambias doing a presentation about Worldbuilding for the Straw Dog Writers Guild. He wanted to do a face-to-face presentation, so I reserved the newly built North Amherst Library Community Room. It’s a great venue with a large-screen display, four tables, and maybe 30 chairs.
Unfortunately, not many people came. He pointed out that if the number of presenters outnumbered the audience, we were obliged to take the presentation to bar and we avoded that, but only barely.
But it was a fantastic presentation and I’m sorry more people didn’t attend.
Here’s the little introduction I wrote:
Hello. I’m Steven D. Brewer and I would like to welcome you to Worldbuilding 101 with James Cambias presented by the Straw Dog Writers Guild.
Straw Dog is a non-profit volunteer organization dedicated to the craft and transformative power of writing, designed to serve writers throughout the region by promoting individual growth, community outreach and enrichment, and community building.
Our mission is to support the writing community by strengthening, engaging, and connecting writers at all levels of development.
Some upcoming events
Tonight: Everyone Reads Second Sundays Open Mic
Wednesdays: Straw Dog Writes
Nov 13: A Writer’s Night with Linda Cardillo at Longmeadow Adult Center
I first saw James Cambias at a reading with Elizabeth Bear and Max Gladstone at the Odyssey Book Shop in South Hadley. Since then, we’ve crossed paths at science fiction conventions in Boston, like Arisia, Boskone, and Readeron, where we’ve done readings and served on panels together.
Born in New Orleans, educated at the University of Chicago, James has been a professional science fiction writer since 2000. Among his novels are A Darkling Sea, Corsair, Arkad’s World, The Godel Operation, The Scarab Mission and his most recent, The Miranda Conspiracy. He also designs roleplaying games, and is an advisor to the Center for the Study of Space Crime, Piracy, and Governance.
This afternoon, he’s presenting Worldbuilding 101: In science fiction and fantasy, the strength and depth of the author’s world building can make the difference between a forgettable story and a classic. He will breakdown how to make convincing and interesting worlds for your stories, while still respecting realism and scientific accuracy.
And, with that, please welcome James Cambias for Worldbuilding 101.
James provided a brief preamble: Worldbuilding is a form of storytelling, in itself: An act of literary creation. That said, story considerations should remain paramount. When building a world, the purpose is to support the story. And he offered his own test:
The Cambias Test: Any alternate world needs to support adventures/stories that you can’t do here.
In other words, if your story can take place in the regular or historical world just do it. Don’t go to a bunch of extra work: just do the work that is necessary. Sometimes you have a setting that already exists (like shared worlds — I write stories set on the Truck Stop at the Center of the Galaxy) and you can just look up the necessary information, but he encouraged the audience to fit the story to the world.
He challenged the audience to consider what motives and conflicts that the setting supports. He cited Aristotle who proposed desire, fear, and honor (or, as we might say conviction, today). This reminded me a bit of the four F’s of animal behavior: Feeding, Fleeing, Fighting, and Reproducing. In science fiction, survival is clearly one motive.
He proposed to look for “signature events”, that is things that happen there that don’t happen on Earth. The terminator on Mercury moves at walking speed. For sandboxes and shared worlds: what are some signature events there that nobody has done. Find a new angle. Take it seriously or don’t do it. And for the real world, take it seriously — Do the research! You can often use the results to add details that will contribute to the verisimilitude of the story.
He then let the audience in an exercise in worldbuilding, to design a world and its alien inhabitants. He offered a worksheet that indexes planet size against temperature to help determine the characteristics the world will have. What kind of planet do we want? How habitable? Can humans live there?
He began with the star in terms of size and brightness (luminosity, which describes the brightness as compared with the sun). Large stars frequently don’t last long enough for the establishment of a stable biosphere within its solar system.
He then moved to the planet. It’s characteristics include distance from the the star, the size and density, which together determine the gravity.
Running short on the time, he touched on life. Isaac Asimov wrote an influential article, Not as We Know It: The Chemistry of Life that provides a good introduction to what is required for life: a liquid, a solvent, and some kind of information molecule. (Personally, I would approach defining life differently, not in molecular terms.)
Aliens don’t have to be from the planet the story is set on. They can play a variety of roles: as people, a threat — as individuals or a society — as victims, or a mystery. And can transform: from a mystery to a threat to people.
Aliens can be of a variety of types. Talking beasts, super brains, an elder race, warriors, hive minds, or weird things. These often come with implied roles: for example, talking beasts are generally threats and weird things are generally mysteries.
It was a fantastic presentation and got me to think a lot about my own writing. In my writing, I’ve generally felt that aliens are extremely unlikely to have a compatible biology to our own. So the idea of “away parties” visiting alien worlds and talking to aliens… I just don’t see it happening.
Becoming a powerful demon’s familiar might be the best thing ever. But what’s the catch?
Rory Soletsa is supposed to find his magical familiar, but he doesn’t want something trite, like a cat; or stupid, like a bird; or ugly, like a toad. He wants something cool and powerful that can be an ally in a fight. When he’s captured and made into the familiar of a powerful demon — who presents as a voluptuous, beautiful woman — he’s amazed as he begins to discover how much more powerful his magic is with her. And he’s ecstatic when the demon offers to train him in advanced offensive and defensive magic. But just what is she training him for?
There’s a small chance my new book, A Familiar Problem, will be out by then. But I will also have copies of my other books, as well as stickers and ‘zines.
Etymologically, November was originally the ninth month of the year before the Romans messed everything up by adding January and February. But nov- is also the root for “new” in Esperanto, so let’s go with that. Because I’ve got some new stuff coming up.
Although I still don’t have a new release date, A Familiar Problem is moving forward again. I’ve approved the illustration for the cover and, behind the scenes, the wheels and gears are (hopefully) grinding forward.
Once again, I’m planning to do WritingMonth during November. I did this also last year and wrote 23,100 words toward The Ground Never Lies. This year, I’m planning to work on the sequel to A Familiar Problem. I’ve got some notes and a rough outline, so its a project I think I can make some good progress towards. I do have a lot of other obligations, so I don’t know how work I’ll be able to get done, but it’s nice to have a goal.
On November 2nd, I’m scheduled to attend the SFWA Winter Worlds of Giving Kickoff Event. And afterwards, I will probably attend the SFWA Writing Date, which I haven’t been doing as much as I should.
On November 8, I am scheduled to sell books at the Mill District Holiday Arts Market. And the next day, November 9, I am hosting James Cambias for Worldbuilding 101, a face-to-face Straw Dog Writers Guild event at the North Amherst Library Community Room.
On November 15-16, I am attending SFWA Quasar where I will be on a panel on Sunday “Science Fact in Science Fiction: Getting It Right in SFF”. This is the first year that Quasar has been offered, so it’s new for everyone.
Finally, over the weekend of Nov 29-Dec 1, I will attending LOSCon 51 in Los Angeles. I am listed as a participant, but I haven’t yet seen the final schedule. I haven’t attending LOSCon before, so it will totally new for me.
There is a new scam going round. WriterBeware called it Nigerian Prince Redux and I’ve gotten now a half dozen or more examples. They arrive as emails (or comments on my website, though mostly emails) that present as book clubs that are really excited about one of my books. Or as services to help market my books.
They’re not that hard to recognize. When you look at the emails, they have obvious misspellings in the names. And the people they mention and organizations they refer to don’t exist.
I’ve gotten things like this from when my first book came out. The earlier examples were crude and had all the lure of a bare fishhook. What’s new is the use of AI to create overblown language to try to fish you in. It’s just… Ugh.
The messages use sycophantic language to rave about the book:
I came across Revin’s Heart and was immediately drawn in by its premise, airship pirates, identity, and the courage to follow one’s true self. It’s rare to find a story that blends adventure, steampunk atmosphere, and emotional discovery with such nuance.
Seriously, that blend of steampunk adventure, social tension, and emotional awakening? That’s not writing, that’s alchemy. You didn’t just create a world; you forged one. The war, the class divide, the moral tug-of-war between duty and desire, it’s like you built a literary airship powered by empathy and intellect.
Your novel, with its blend of realistic emotional journey and gentle mystery, appears to be exactly the type of story that resonates deeply with readers who enjoy character-driven fiction with a touch of the speculative. My role is to design and implement a marketing strategy that connects such works with their ideal audience.
They also sometimes rave about me:
And then I look at you, Steven D. Brewer, professor, linguist, environmentalist, IT whisperer, Japanese culture enthusiast , and I realize: of course this story came from your brain. You’ve got the curiosity of a scientist, the soul of a poet, and the mischief of a pirate captain. (I’m convinced you’re secretly running a floating lab over Massachusetts right now.)
They’re just scams, written by AI, and mostly operated by people outside the country, looking to prey on vulnerable people using flattery and deception. But there’s always a small part of you that wishes you could believe all those things.
I’m reminded of the Charlie Brown Halloween special.
Lucy: I got 5 pieces of candy!
Violet: I got a chocolate bar!
Patty: I got a quarter!
Charlie Brown: I got a rock.
If I wanted to have AI rave about me and my books, I could just ask it to do that myself. So, no thank you.
A local poet I follow on Mastodon posted something about WriteOut which sounded to me like a fun excuse to write some haiku. For many years, I wrote haiku nearly every day. In the past few years, however, I’ve written fewer. But I decided I could write them more often during the three week period.
I’d kinda meant to write one every day, but in the end I only wrote five. Still, it was a lot of fun.
During the period when I was writing haiku most frequently, I decided to publish a chapbook: Poŝtmarkoj el Esperantujo. I enjoyed the experience enough that I made several more. I still use the artwork from my books to supplement the posts here. But, for various reasons, I mostly quit writing haiku and have only written them occasionally over the past several years.
Writing haiku has always been for me, like a moment of zen. I mostly don’t write haiku except from direct experience. Writing them gives me a chance to look at the things around me and just be present in the moment. It was fun to recapture that experience.
I can’t say I’ll start writing more haiku. But maybe. And maybe when #writeout rolls around next year, I’ll do it again.
When I finished my doctorate a national trend had just begun to gradually begin replacing tenure-track faculty with non-tenure-track (NTT) lecturers. In 1996, I applied for several tenure-track positions, but was offered and accepted an NTT appointment as the Director of the Biology Computer Resource Center at UMass Amherst.
At the time, NTT faculty were a tiny fraction of the faculty. They were kind of an oddity and tended to be short-term appointments — often for sabbatical replacement. Every year that followed, however, the proportion increased. And more and more of the NTT faculty were long-term employees. Now about more than 30% of faculty are NTT, they do 75% of the teaching, and they make a bit more than half as much money.
I was on the front-lines of trying to improve the treatment for NTT faculty. (My efforts were recognized earlier this year with a Delphi Award.) When I arrived there were no promotional or professional development opportunities for NTT faculty. Now we have two (and soon to be three) promotional levels and a professional improvement fellowship, which gives NTT faculty a semester of release to work on a significant academic project.
The perception of NTT faculty has also improved. For many years, tenure-system faculty and administrators tended to view NTT faculty as not REAL faculty. They would say things like “Our faculty and lecturers…” as if lecturers were not faculty. Many tenure-system faculty fundamentally believed that to accept an NTT position was to have failed at life.
Over the years, I spent a lot of time thinking about what the actual difference was between tenure-system and NTT faculty. Eventually, I put it like this: Tenure-system faculty are fundamentally investing in themselves, developing an independent national/international reputation in their field, which belongs to them and which is portable. NTT faculty, instead, commit to working to make their host institution as good as it can be.
During the transition from tenure-system to NTT faculty, some units at the university didn’t really get the distinction. In one college, they hired some tenure-system and NTT faculty with identical job descriptions. After several years of wrangling with the union, they offered those faculty the option to go up for tenure. One of my colleagues encouraged me to pursue tenure, but I declined. I had chosen not to invest my effort trying to develop an independent reputation in my field: my goal had been to run my facility and to serve my faculty and students as well as I could. I had no confidence that my faculty would consider that work worthy of tenure.
Now, as I transition to retirement, I have increasingly turned my attention to authorship, publishing short fiction and a number of books. For that, developing an independent national/international reputation is important. The irony that, at the end of my academic life, I’m starting over with what I shunned for my whole professional career is not lost on me. But it’s been fun and interesting to do something new.
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!
