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Autistic Book Party, Episode 28 And A Half: Short Story Smorgasbord

Pat Murphy, “Inappropriate Behavior” (scifi.com, 2004; reprinted in Escape Pod)

A young autistic girl named Annie remotely operates a mining robot on a deserted island. After a storm, a shipwrecked man washes up on the island needing assistance, but the adults working with Annie may be too preoccupied giving her therapy to listen to what she says about him.

I thought that this was a really clever story. Annie’s point of view is well written, distinctively autistic, and believable. The remote operation technology and its effects on her senses are very interesting, and the critique of NT therapists is so on point that it hurts. A few sections felt like they over-explained about what autism is, but this was probably necessary in order to make sure NT readers understood the story, especially in 2004, and most sections are not like this. I also wish that some attention had been paid to the potentially exploitative relationship between Annie and the mining company. Some of what she does in the mining robot is profitable for them, despite being classed as “therapy”, but the conflict of interest between their profit and Annie’s wellbeing is not addressed. Overall, though, the story is enjoyable and effectively accomplishes what it sets out to do. [Recommended]

*

George R. Galuschak, “Counting Cracks” (Strange Horizons, November 2011)

A strange alien noise invades Earth, killing or disabling most people, and a small band of mostly-autistic survivors sets out to deal with it at the source. I found this story difficult to follow, and some details were confusingly wrong. (For example, in the narrator’s backstory, his counting-related compulsions just… suddenly go away one day, and his sympathy for other people who think that way evaporates just as quickly.) However, I appreciated the story’s overall message, in which embracing autistic symptoms instead of suppressing them is the key to victory – and the characters continue to do so long after the victory is won. [YMMV]

*

Bogi Takács, “All Talk of Common Sense” (Polychrome Ink Volume III, May 2016)

[Autistic author] A flash story about an autistic court jester who discovers a deception from the court mage. The trope of disabled people becoming jesters, and using their disability to parody more powerful people, is well known. I like how the disability in this one – and the social prejudice it brings – is made plain without exoticizing. [Recommended]

*

Edward Willett, “I Count the Lights” (Strangers Among Us, August 2016)

A diplomat needs to solve a murder on an alien planet, but the only one who can help him is an intellectually disabled alien. The alien’s neurotype is considered holy on their planet, but the diplomat takes an immediate dislike to him.

I was on the fence about whether to include this story in Autistic Book Party. It features both the aforementioned alien and a human with a similar disability, which might be autism (rocking, repetitive behavior, and difficulty with complex language) or might be another developmental disability. I decided to err on the side of inclusion.

The story is well told, and the diplomat learns over the course of the story to value both of the disabled character’s contributions. Unfortunately, the main reason why he learns this is because both of the characters prove useful to him in solving the mystery, and his action in response to this is to… graciously allow them to continue being useful to him. Considering that, and the POV character’s initially very strong ableism, I wasn’t super thrilled with the contribution of the story overall. [YMMV, but I didn’t like it]

*

Helen Stubbs, “Uncontainable” (Apex Magazine, December 2016)

A barely-communicative little girl prone to violent meltdowns is the only one who understands a terrible secret. This story echoes some aspects of changeling folklore, but with a nice twist. Someone is stealing children’s souls, but the disabled child is not the victim of this stealing nor an inferior replacement for a stolen child. Instead she becomes the one who bravely saves the other children around her, even though the adults don’t understand. I liked that aspect of the story, but was less pleased with some other aspects, including the final scene, which seems to cement the girl’s role as an all-purpose knowing-terrible-things plot device rather than providing a logical reason why she would have known what was going on. [YMMV]

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As Hollow as a Heart

My story, “As Hollow as a Heart”, is out now in Volume 5, Issue 2 of LampLight magazine.

This story has a curious history. It features Lady Blue, the same gender-flipped Bluebeard character from 2015’s “Lady Blue and the Lampreys”, but its tone, setting, and treatment of the character are very different. It might be a sequel, or a prequel, or an AU. My money is on “both AU and prequel”, but with a person whose life is as long and cyclical as Lady Blue’s, who knows?

You don’t have to have read “Lady Blue and the Lampreys” to understand this story, or vice versa.

Personally, the first draft of this story came to me about two years ago, when I was in the very late stages of a relationship that was going very bad. I had not yet discerned that the relationship was actually abusive, and that I needed to end it. I would, only a month or two after writing the story, but I had not yet then. And although there is no overt abuse in this story, looking back, that’s what the heart of the story is all about. That strange feeling of wanting something, of knowing it is rotten at the core, and of staying anyway.

Read safely, if you read.

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Autistic Book Party, Episode 28: The Three-Body Problem

Today’s Book: “The Three-Body Problem” by Liu Cixin, translated by Ken Liu.

The Plot: A mysterious online game invites humans to explore the lives of aliens living in a trinary star system, and factions emerge on Earth with various attitudes towards the real aliens who might be behind the game.

Autistic Character(s): Wei Cheng, a member of one of the factions.

Wei Cheng occupies a brief but important role in Liu’s Hugo-winning novel. He shows up midway through and tells his life story to the viewpoint characters in order to explain a point. He’s the husband of another researcher in one of the factions. He’s reclusive, and is shown having difficulty with activities such as personal grooming, face recognition, creation of appropriate facial affect, knowing when to stop talking, and executive function. It’s the executive function, combined with flattened emotions, that cause him to identify, not as autistic, but as “lazy”:

I’ve been lackadaisical since I was a kid. When I lived at boarding school, I never washed the dishes or made the bed. I never got excited about anything. Too lazy to study, too lazy to even play, I dawdled my way through the days without any clear goals.

The way Wei Cheng describes himself is actually really interesting to me. Of course I am familiar with autistic people who are described as lazy, and who internalize that description. But the way Wei Cheng centers “laziness” throughout his narrative is something I had not encountered before. It strikes me, not just as internalized ableism on his part (although it is), but as a whole different way of looking at how his neurotype works and at what the central deficits are, compared to neurotypical people. I suspect that this is due to Wei Cheng being from a non-Western culture (the book is set in China) but I don’t really know enough to say that for sure.

Despite his “laziness”, Wei Cheng is gifted at mathematics. He struggles in math classes because he cannot explain his intuitive ways of solving problems, but even very advanced problems come easily to him. After earning a PhD, he has difficulty with the non-mathematical aspects of the jobs he is qualified for and drifts around until he meets his future wife, who welcomes him into her secret faction so that he can help solve the three-body problem.

Wei Cheng’s role in the plot confuses me a little. On my first read, he struck me as an autistic person who had been inserted as a plot device. He shows up, tells his life story, suggests solving the three-body problem with an evolutionary algorithm, reports on some ominous events, and then does very little else. But his big scene isn’t even really a plot device, because it isn’t crucial to what else happens in the rest of the book.

A reviewer who is familiar with modern Chinese culture and its view of neurodiversity might have better insight into Wei Cheng than I do (and I would welcome comments in that vein in the comment section!) In the absence of that, I find him a puzzling but interesting minor character who, despite his internalized ableism, is not really badly portrayed.

The Verdict: Marginal

For a list of past/future/possible Autistic Book Party books, or to recommend a new one, click here.

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Autism News, 2017/01/02

U.S. politics news:

  • On Buzzfeed, 13 disabled activists talk about their reactions to the American election
  • ASAN is joining the newly formed Modern Medicaid Alliance, advocating for the importance of Medicaid in American disabled people’s lives
  • ASAN statement on the nomination of Jeff Sessions as U.S. Attorney General, and why this nomination is dangerous for disabled people (among others)
  • The state of Michigan passed legislation to severely restrict and regulate the use of restraint and seclusion on K-12 students. (TW: descriptions of specific instances of restraint and other ableist treatment)

Posts about self-advocacy:

Pan-disability news:

Misc:

Sad Things Other Than Trump:

 

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The Pattern of Eightfold Limbs

And suddenly, at the end of the year, a new poem happened! I thought Through the Gate wasn’t going to publish “The Pattern of Eightfold Limbs”, my very short poem about communication with octopi, until 2017, but it snuck right in as a surprise New Year’s Eve treat.

Enjoy, here.

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My Favourite Short Speculative Fiction of 2016

Novelettes

  • Seth Dickinson, “Laws of Night and Silk” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #200). Horrible in an unfairly gorgeous, “all my feels” way. I couldn’t decide if I loved it or was incredibly furious with it until the end of the last damn scene.
  • Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, “The Orangery” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #214). A refreshingly nuanced feminist take on Greek mythology. Also, trees.
  • Bogi Takács, “Standing on the Floodbanks” (GigaNotoSaurus, November). A quietly beautiful story of a magical apprenticeship, and of learning to move from a system of abusive control to something better.
  • Genevieve Valentine, “Everyone From Themis Sends Letters Home” (Clarkesworld, October). Looks like a space colonization story at first, and then blossoms into something far more complex.
  • Alyssa Wong, “You’ll Surely Drown Here If You Stay” (Uncanny, Issue Ten). Desert magic, vengeance, claiming one’s power. Queerplatonic True Love.

Short Stories

  • Aliette de Bodard, “A Hundred and Seventy Storms” (Uncanny, Issue Eleven). Mindships, disability, family, loyalty. Extreme weather on exoplanets. Ordeals.
  • Margaret Killjoy, “The Name of the Forest” (Strange Horizons, March 21). Vividly drawn homeless narrator. Matter-of-fact magic. Choosing life when life is messy and difficult. Also, bugs.
  • Carrie Laben, “Postcards from Natalie” (The Dark, July). An understated not-quite-ghost-story, with a supernatural element that creeps up real slowly and quietly into gut-punch range.
  • Arkady Martine, “Ekphrasis” (An Alphabet of Embers). Hive minds. Poetry. Sacrifice.
  • Russell Nichols, “u wont remember dying” (Motherboard, June 23). Police violence, shiny technology as a band-aid solution, and what that means for the people affected. Existential terror. Text messages as prose.
  • Nicasio Andras Reed, “Painted Grassy Mire” (Shimmer, July 5). Atmosphere. Alligators. Blood ties and animalism in the swamp.
  • Frances Rowat, “Playing Prometheus” (Persistent Visions, November 18). A socially aware time travel story that avoids the usual tropes in favor of a simpler and more emotionally powerful look at consequences.
  • Shawn Scarber, “The Opening of the Bayou St. John” (Strange Horizons, February 8). An eerily beautiful story of motherhood, grief, and supernatural bargains.
  • M Sereno, “Only Revolutions” (An Alphabet of Embers). Fierce, lush, hungry mythology. Anti-colonialism. Love and survival.
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My Favourite Speculative Poems of 2016

The most brilliant, the most beautiful, the ones that eloquently grabbed me where I live. Read them all.

Long Poems (51+ lines)

Short Poems (11-50 lines)

Dwarf Poems (1-10 lines):

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Work Published in 2016

And then both of my other planned publications for December were delayed, so here is what I published in 2016, after all.

One novelette: “The Scrape of Tooth on Bone” in GigaNotoSaurus (Canadian lesbian steampunk with an autistic protagonist and dinosaur fossil ghosts)

One short story: “A Spell to Retrieve Your Lover From the Bottom of the Sea” in Strange Horizons (underwater witchery, uncertain love, and difficult choices)

Ten poems:

Roundups of my favourite stories and poetry by other people are coming soon.

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Reviews of “A Spell to Retrieve Your Lover From the Bottom of the Sea”

My overly personal little deep-sea story in second person is picking up some acclaim around the Internet.

Charles Payseur of Quick Sip Reviews had some kind things to say about it:

…I like that, that the story really isn’t about fixing someone or saving someone. That it’s about being with someone and creating a space where they might want to move. Might want to break free.

Payseur later added the story to his Monthly Round of favorite stories from November, pairing it with a Vanilla Stout:

It is a slow kind of spell that the narrator casts, that the narrator asks the reader to experience. A spell that resists the common tropes and implications. That something can be fixed just by waving at it. That some things can be fixed at all.

Benjamin Wheeler at Tangent Online praised the story, despite admitting he doesn’t like second person:

With the active language, great descriptions and melancholy you could cut with a butter knife, this story really cinches what the author tries to accomplish.

Greg Hullender at Rocket Reviews was less impressed:

Although it’s a fine statement, it doesn’t make for much of a story.

Maria Haskins listed the story on her list of 12 awesome spec stories from November:

Wow… Hoffman’s prose is exquisite: it sings and flows and dances. Outstanding and captivating from start to finish.

And Nin Harris tweeted the story as one of her 30 favorite stories of the year.

If you’d like to see what all the fuss is about, the story is here.

A year in review post will happen later in the month; I still have another short fiction publication lined up for December, so I’m waiting for that, first.

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Million-Year Elegies: Archaeopteryx

My poem, “Million-Year Elegies: Archaeopteryx” is up in the December issue of Asimov’s. I got my contributor copies on the weekend. The poem is delightfully placed in the issue, appearing directly after the conclusion of an article by Robert Silverberg about reviving extinct animals, and with a very cute Archaeopteryx-fossil illustration in the background. If you like Asimov’s and dinosaur poetry, perhaps you should go check it out.