Author of LGBTQIA+ speculative fiction and poetry in English and Esperanto. Teacher of scientific writing. Lover of natural history. SFWA Secretary. (he/him)
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.
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.
“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.
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 1Water Dragon Table, Day 2Water 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.
I love fountain pens. I don’t actually write by hand much. But when I sell books at conventions, its expected I sign books, so I always make a point of having a nice fountain pen that is appropriately inked before I go.
Several years ago, when I needed to get a new fountain pen, I had gotten a beautiful Jinhao pen with a porcelain barrel showing an image of delicate plum blossoms. I’d really liked that pen. When I needed a new one a few years later, I looked again, but couldn’t find the same pen. I found a similar pen, however, (pictured above) which was absurdly cheap, so I bought two:
When the pens arrived (after about a month, shipped surface via container ship) they were perfectly satisfactory. But I noticed that they had some Chinese script that, interestingly, wasn’t shown in the promotional image. It made me wonder… What does it say? Is it the name of some bank? Does it say “Death to America”? I kept meaning to get it translated but not getting around to it. This morning I finally found time.
I took the picture above and fed it into Google Translate. I usually leave Google Translate set to translate between Japanese and English and it does provide a translation in Japanese, but what it said seemed rather cryptic:
Mai Muroto Ikatoide
Plum Blossom Palace Jiku Kanta
I set it to Detect Language and let it try again. Then I set it to Chinese (Traditional) to confirm that they were the same:
The sword dance in the room is sharpened by the deer.
Plum Blossom Palace is cold and beautiful.
The first seems like some kind of proverb or saying, but one that the English Internet seems unfamiliar with. Plum Blossom Palace similarly doesn’t seem to return any obvious hits.
So now I know, anyway, for whatever good that does. I still like the pens and it makes people happy to have me use a pretty pen to sign their books.
Representing disability is important in fiction. Many years ago, I saw someone who said that, rather than calling some people “disabled,” we should call everyone else “temporarily abled.” Because if you don’t have a disability now, you will. If you live long enough, almost everyone will go through some period of their life with a disability: a broken foot, gout, a bout of depression, etc. After I was hospitalized, I discovered that I have a disability: a chronic lung condition that limits my life in significant ways.
Today, my wife and I attended a flag raising for Disability Pride Month. The Town Council of Amherst wrote a proclamation and raised a flag to recognize and celebrate people with disabilities. And to commemorate the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which has been transformative for ensuring access for disabled people. It was an opportunity for to me to reflect on the writing I’ve done representing disabled characters. I have several stories that represent characters with disabilities, both physical and mental. But one character stands out.
One of my favorite characters in the Revin’s Heart series is the Professor. Revin’s first meets him when he sees a glider fly from the mountain top of the island where the pirates have their base and land on the beach.
[The glider] skidded to a stop, and then flipped over. Revin, with his sharp eyes, could see someone strapped into the device with a harness.
Revin sprinted down the switchbacks of the trail to the sea. A few of the most athletic pirates got ahead of him by running straight down, bypassing the switchbacks. But five or six of them arrived at more or less the same time to see the man — for they could see now it was a man — with wild white hair and a gray beard scramble out of the harness. But Revin could see something was terribly wrong. The front half of him was crawling out of the harness, but he was leaving his legs behind.
“Aaaa! What’s happened to your legs?” Revin asked in shock.
“Those aren’t my legs,” the man growled. “Those are just for balance.”
“But you don’t have any legs! What happened to your legs?” Revin persisted.
“Airshark got ’em,” the man replied, gravely. “Have you ever seen an airshark? Terrible creatures.”
Revin was dubious. He started to open his mouth, then realized that all of the pirates were standing in a circle, watching his facial expressions, and trying not to laugh. He turned bright, bright red and they exploded with laughter, rolling on the ground. Gently hazing the new cabin boy was a popular pastime among the pirates. And now the strenuous efforts of the pirates to get there ahead of him were explained.
The backstory of how the Professor came to not have legs is never described in the books. Revin discovers soon, however, that the Professor brilliantly supervises the team of pirates that maintains the airship and keeps it airworthy. He uses hand-braces to move around and is clearly a genius inventor, scientist, and engineer. He’s blunt, plain-spoken, and gruff, but you soon learn that he really cares about Revin and the other pirates.
Grip […] sent Revin to the Professor to request he construct a practice sword with similar properties to the real sword. He looked at the sword, then looked at Revin fiercely from under his bushy eyebrows.
“You’re going to get yourself killed if you play with these things,” he grumbled.
“I want to be able to protect my friends,” Revin said.
“Worry about yourself first,” the Professor said. “You can’t help anyone if you’re dead.”
“Please?” Revin said, sweetly.
“Ugh. It’s your funeral,” the Professor said. “We’ll have something for you by tomorrow.”
It isn’t until much later that Revin learns that there’s larger backstory to the Professor than he realizes. They travel together on a secret mission when Revin discovers that the Professor is actually a famous member of the Royal Academy. Everyone in academic circles knows the Professor.
[Revin] stood conferring with the Professor about what to do for the night when someone said, “Professor Grexin? Is that you?”
“Eh?” the Professor said, turning toward the newcomer, a middle‑aged academic wearing University garb.
“It is you!” the man continued excitedly. “You probably don’t remember me: Niles Ender. I saw your talk five years ago on hydrogen generation using algae and we spoke for a bit at the reception that followed. What are you doing back here?”
“I’m just visiting my nephew,” the Professor said, clapping Revin on the back.
“Wow! You must be so proud to have a famous uncle like Professor Grexin!
When they’re attacked by highway men, Revin learns that there is more to the Professor than meets the eye.
Revin and the Professor got ready to sleep. They were about to get into the bedrolls when Art [their coachman] appeared around the corner of the wagon accompanied by two other men. With their swords drawn, they charged toward Revin and the Professor.
Revin drew his sword and put himself en garde. Considering the Professor no threat, Art and the two men bypassed him to attack Revin. Revin began to panic, wondering how he could possibly defend himself against all three of them. Suddenly, the two other men staggered and, with their eyes rolling up in their heads, collapsed. Art looked surprised and distracted at the sudden loss of his allies. Revin lunged forward and caught him in the throat. Art fell over clutching at his neck and expired with blood spurting through his fingers.
Revin stared wild‑eyed at the Professor, who stood with his arm braces raised.
“What just happened?” Revin gasped.
“I keep each of my arm braces loaded with a poisoned dart,” he said. “They must have figured me for no threat. But they were wrong.”
When they arrive at the Hermitage (a research institute), the Professor is again recognized as the famous scholar he is and they are invited to attend a formal dinner, Revin learns yet something new about this enigmatic character. When a toast is proposed that celebrates using science for war, the Professor pours out his glass on the floor and hand-walks out of the room.
With the toast out of the way, Revin was concerned that his lack of knowledge about polite dining would make him stand out. But he needn’t have worried. The scientists couldn’t care less about etiquette and appeared to use forks and spoons randomly — or not at all — which allowed Revin to relax and enjoy the meal. Watching the servants, though, he began to awaken to how easy it was to become complacent about your station in life. And to become complicit in sustaining inequalities. His respect for the Professor went up, to be willing to be true to himself and publicly demonstrate his commitment to his principles. And he began to see how the Professor and Will, a captain of pirates, had found common ground.
The Professor is one of my favorite characters in Revin’s Heart. He continues to show up in the (as yet) unpublished sequels to Revin’s Heart. In Ecorozire, Revin visits the Hermitage, where the Professor has retired after the pirates disbanded.
“How is your second retirement going?” Revin asked.
“Oh, it’s wonderful!” the Professor said. “I just come in, sit around, and argue with people all day.”
“Not getting bored, then?” Will pressed.
“Oh, no. No boredom here!”
“Well, then,” Revin said. “I guess you wouldn’t want to go investigate these mysterious coins with eternite in them.” Revin pulled out the necklace shook it at him
