Tag: bogi takacs

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Autistic Book Party, Episode 30 And A Half: Short Story Smorgasbord – Award Edition!

Today I’m going to do something a little bit special. I worried that, by separating my Recommended stories into Recommended-1 (for stories with autistic characters, regardless of author) and Recommended-2 (for stories by autistic authors with no autistic characters in them), I would be somehow ghettoizing the work of autistic authors. Instead, I feel freer and more excited about reviewing stories that would go in the Recommended-2 category. I’m no longer putting pressure on myself to justify why these works are as relevant to Autism Issues as the Recommended-1 stories; I can let them be their own, good, thing.

In this spirit, I want to review four short works by autistic authors that are up for awards this year. Let’s celebrate some autistic award nominees!

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Rose Lemberg, “The Ash Manifesto” (Strange Horizons, October 10, 2016)

[Autistic author] A powerful poem about personal strength (and un-strength), written in gorgeous, mythic words. “The Ash Manifesto” was one of my favourite speculative poems of 2016, and is one of two poems of Lemberg’s to be nominated for the Rhysling award this year. [Recommended-2]

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A. Merc Rustad, “This Is Not A Wardrobe Door” (Fireside, January 2016)

[Autistic author] A 2016 Nebula finalist, this is a subversive take on portal fantasies in which two friends in different worlds attempt to fix the malfunctioning portal that is keeping them apart. It’s a short, sweet tale with a firm emphasis on the value of community and connection, and some gorgeous, surreal descriptions. There is also some minor, but nice, queer content. [Recommended-2]

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A.J. Odasso – “Nothing Goes Away” (The New England Review of Books, November 30, 2016)

[Autistic author] A poem that uses beautiful language to describe a moment of inaccuracy by a doctor, and the sheer density of thought that can occur in a moment in response. I don’t know if this poem is autobiographical, but it is certainly meant to be read as the experience of an autistic person who is similar to the author, and it succeeds at that. It is one of three poems of Odasso’s that are nominated for the Rhysling award this year. [Recommended-1]

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Bogi Takacs, “Marginalia on Eiruvin 45b” (Bracken, issue ii)

[Autistic author] A poem about a character, like some of Takács’ fictional protagonists, who accumulates intense levels of magical power in their body and has to learn to let some of it go. (Eiruvin 45b is a verse from the Talmud, which, as far as Google can tell me, has to do with movement and water – but you don’t have to be a Talmudic scholar to understand the basic events in the poem and appreciate the way they are described.) “Marginalia” is a Rhysling nominee this year in the short category. [Recommended-2]

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Of course I cannot review my own work, but just to round out the set, I will note here that my own short poem, “The Giantess’s Dream“, has also been nominated for this year’s Rhyslings.

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Autistic Book Party, Episode 29 And Three Quarters: Short Story Smorgasbord

Lesley L. Smith, “Bologna and Vanilla” (Daily Science Fiction, December 2014)
[Autistic author] A first contact flash story in which lexical-gustatory synesthesia helps the protagonist understand alien speech. I thought that the synesthesia was a bit simplistically handled, compared to Luna Lindsey’s “Touch of Tides”, which has a similar premise. But we can always use more stories in which thinking or sensing differently from other people is the key to success. [YMMV, but I liked it]
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A.C. Buchanan, “Invisible City” (self-published, February 2015)
[Autistic author] A novelette about a man traumatized by his experiences in a country which, because of magic, no longer exists. There are no autistic characters here, but it’s a very good story about memory, dictatorship, rebellion, and the human tendency to pretend that terrible things never happened. This makes it, strangely, more timely now than it was at the time of its release. [Recommended]
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An Owomoyela, “Unauthorized Access” (Lightspeed, September 2016)
A young woman named Aedo is let out of jail for hacking – and immediately gets sucked into another, even more dangerous hacking project. It’s subtle at first, but I definitely read Aedo as an Aspie due to repeated mentions of her social awkwardness, dislike of eye contact, preference for expressing herself by typing, etc. I really like that the story centers someone who can talk, but has an easier time writing, and that it shows how difficult that is to explain to other people without implying that it is therefore somehow bad or wrong. I also enjoyed the subversively realistic portrayal of hacker culture, and the way the tension ratchets up as Aedo realizes she’s being used. [Recommended]
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Bogi Takács, “Good People in a Small Space” (free Patreon reward, December 2016)
[Autistic author] A very short, very cute story set in the same universe as Bogi’s Iwunen Interstellar Investigations web serial. Several people from Eren, a planet of autistic people, feature prominently in the story. The viewpoint character, while not autistic, does a good job respectfully adjusting their behavior to make their interactions more comfortable for the Ereni. There are also some adorably polite negotiations around pain, and some ARTISINAL LOGIC PUZZLES. [Recommended]
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Merc Rustad, “Monster Girls Don’t Cry” (Uncanny, January 2017)
[Autistic author] A horror story about monsters and the people who try to make them “normal”, with and without their consent. There are no autistic characters, but autistic readers (among others) will relate very hard to the themes of social pressure, closeting, and forced normalization. Please take the content warning at the top of the story seriously – and considering the number of autistic readers who have trauma related to this, there should also be a content warning for non-consensual medical treatment / surgery. It’s all sensitively handled, though, and there is a well-earned happy ending. [Recommended]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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]

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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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Autistic Book Party, Episode 27 And A Half: Short Story Smorgasbord

Kythryne Aisling, “quiet hands” (inkscrawl Issue 10, August 2016)

The title of this poem is a catchphrase commonly used by educators who try to stop autistic and other special needs children from moving around. The poem will be relatable to autistic people who have experienced coercive medication and attempts to extinguish stims. [YMMV, but I liked it]

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Bogi Takács, “Toward the Luminous Towers” (Clarkesworld, August 2016)

[Autistic author] A story about a non-neurotypical person with immense magical power who is coercively drafted into a war effort. (Bogi’s story notes confirm that the protagonist is autistic.) This is a well-written but difficult story; there is a great deal of abuse and coercion, and the ending could be mistaken for suicide by a careless reader. Readers who are put off by this content might want to wait for later installments in the series, which according to the story notes will be more cheerful in tone, and in which autism will play a greater role in the plot. [YMMV, but I liked it]

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Rose Lemberg, “The Book of How to Live” (Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #209, September 2016)

[Autistic author] A story about a magicless autistic artificer in a magical world, and the beginnings of a revolution. Efronia’s autism is downplayed but recognizeable, particularly in her confusion over people’s motivations and in a period of sensory overwhelm she has towards the end of the story. She is a patient, steadfast person, which is a nice thing I don’t see often enough. The story overall is political in a very good way. [Recommended]

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Julie Nováková, “Becoming” (Persistent Visions, October 21, 2016)

A story about a woman who becomes the mind of a space station, then is “rescued” and pressured to assimilate back into normal human life by other humans. Ana’s neurotype is written to closely resemble autism, although it’s unclear to me if she was always autistic or if this is somehow a consequence of having been a space station for a long time. (Her synesthesia and physical disability certainly predate her transformation.) Neurotypical society never really gets around to respecting Ana’s autonomy or ability to choose, even when they offer her old position back to her again – but Ana still triumphs by staying true to her own chosen values. [Recommended]

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Amanda Sun, “What Harm” (Strangers Among Us, August 2016)

A non-speaking autistic boy named Colin is sold to an evil overlord and unexpectedly becomes the overlord’s undoing. This is a cool idea for a story and might have been enjoyable in different hands, but I was very distracted, alienated, and frustrated by the writing style. Colin is constantly othered by the narration in a variety of ways, even when it makes no sense to do so. I suspect that this may have been intentional on the author’s part, an attempt at ironic contrast between the way Colin is described and what he is actually capable of, but it really didn’t work for me. Colin’s deeds effectively undermine other characters’ claims that he is incapable of intentionally affecting anything, but many other ableist aspects of how he is described in the narration remain unchallenged. A well-intentioned attempt that left a bad taste in my mouth. [Not Recommended]

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Autistic Book Party, Episode 26 and a Half: Short Story Smorgasbord!

Gabriela Santiago, “They Jump Through Fires” (Black Candies: Surveillance, April 2015; reprinted in GlitterShip, September 2015)

A horror story about an autistic woman mourning the death of her girlfriend. The protagonist’s grief is described in a way that, to me, feels both distinctively autistic and realistically nuanced. There are sensory aspects, analytical aspects, philosophical aspects, and a strong undercurrent – implied more than explicitly described – of immense confusion and distress. This distress only intensifies as the horror plot progresses and the scene becomes a surreal nightmare: a nightmare which is no less haunting for its mathematical aspects. [Recommended]

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Lynn Kilmore, “By the Numbers” (Crossed Genres Issue 31: Novelette, July 2015)

A story about a math-obsessed autistic professor who discovers that she can communicate with equally math-obsessed aliens. The story makes a point of including realistic details, such as the protagonist (Mel)’s sensory sensitivities and her anti-cure perspective. It also makes a point of sharing and validating Mel’s experience. That said, a few things about it didn’t work for me. Mel is portrayed as a very disagreeable person (and, frankly, a bad professor) in ways that have little to do with autism, but that could easily be conflated with it by an outsider. I’m not opposed to writing autistic protagonists who are disagreeable, but I don’t think this one is handled well. Additionally, mathematical sequences are thought to be one of the easiest ways for two sentient species to establish communication over a long distance, so it feels like a stretch when the other characters (including a physics professor!) conclude that the aliens must be “annoyingly obsessed” like Mel, rather than performing a logical and necessary first-contact protocol. This one tries, but doesn’t quite hit the mark for me. [YMMV]

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Bogi Takács, “Skin the Creature” (Through the Gate, Issue 9, December 2015)

[Autistic author] This is a poem about seizing hold of life. While it’s not “about” autism, mentions of flailing movements and sensory intolerance suggest that its vivacity is a neurodivergent vivacity, one unbothered by its own intensity and oddness, unafraid of standing out, and eager for the next experience. [Recommended]

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Rose Lemberg, “The Desert Glassmaker and the Jeweler of Berevyar” (Uncanny Magazine, Issue Eight, January 2016)

[Autistic author] A light, warm, and rather flowery long-distance love story set in Lemberg’s Birdverse world. I read one of the lead characters, Vadrai, as perhaps on the spectrum. She has anxiety, fear of crowds, preference for solitude, aptitude for work involving tiny details, and admitted lack of understanding of how to deal with people. (I also read both characters as demisexual.) These elements are backgrounded and perhaps debatable, which only makes the story more charming to me: we need more love stories involving (arguably) autistic people in which autism is not presented as a major barrier to the characters’ happiness together. [Recommended]

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Merc Rustad, “Iron Aria” (Fireside, Issue 34, July 2016)

[Autistic author] I read the protagonist of this story, Kyru, as autistic because of his expressive speech difficulties and sensitivity to noise. Kyru also gets to be the typical bildungsroman-fantasy protagonist, leaving a home where his relatives underappreciate and misgender him, and traveling to a magical mountain where there are problems only Kyru’s abilities can fix. I especially appreciate the way Kyru’s sensory sensitivities and his magical abilities affect each other, without being at all conflated. An ominous but hopeful story in which an autistic trans hero comes into his own. [Recommended]

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Autistic Book Party, Episode 19 and a half: Short Story Smorgasbord!

Jim C. Hines, “Chupacabra’s Song” (Kaleidoscope anthology, 2014; also available by itself on Amazon and Smashwords)

A story about Nicola Pallas – a minor character from the Libriomancer series – her father’s veterinary clinic, and her discovery of magic. Nicola is visibly different, humming, waving her hands, and going nonverbal under stress. She’s also shown as significantly more human, and more compassionate, than the apparently NT wizards she encounters, and she ends up outsmarting them. There’s a theme of acceptance here, but it doesn’t hit you over the head. [Recommended]

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Bogi Takács, “The Need for Overwhelming Sensation” (Capricious, issue 1, September 2015)

[Autistic author.] Autism is not foregrounded in this story, but I did read the narrator as autistic due to eir sensory seeking, intense anxiety when confronted with uncertain/unfamiliar things, the use of a weighted blanket, and other things. Regardless of whether you read it that way or not, it’s a nice story of a nonbinary-gendered person in a queer D/S relationship on a magical spaceship, who gets swept up in events when a political dignitary abruptly requests passage on eir ship for mysterious reasons. I enjoyed it. [Recommended]

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Addison Trev, “The Beachcomber of Dong Hoi” (Breath & Shadow, volume 12 issue 4, fall 2015)

[Autistic author.] This is the story of a mentally disabled beachcomber and his weekly routine; a speculative element emerges only near the end. It is a story which is told with precise detail and empathy, and which takes the title character’s concerns seriously. Many developmentally disabled people do end up in life roles like this one, in which they vaguely eke out an existence on the margins of society. It’s important that these characters be portrayed with the kind of dignity that Trev’s narration provides. I did find the ending a bit facile, and some of its implications unfortunate – but it’s the ending that hammers home that yes, this really IS intentionally an autism story. [YMMV]

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Rose Lemberg, “The Shapes of Us, Translucent to Your Eye” (The Journal of Unlikely Academia, October 2015)

[Autistic author.] This is a sharp and biting commentary on Western academia which will have academic readers glumly nodding their heads in recognition. An autistic student, or perhaps the ghost of an autistic student, plays a brief but pivotal role. It has to do with the politics of who is and is not welcomed in academic spaces, rather than with who the student is as a person – but is still, I suspect, of great interest to the kind of person who reads Autistic Book Party. [Marginal, but I liked it]

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A.C. Wise, “And If the Body Were Not The Soul” (Clarkesworld, October 2015)

I, for once, was dense and did not read the protagonist in this story as autistic – but his asexuality and unusual sensory/bodily experience are impossible to miss. A lot of commenters, including autistic commenters, did see autism. (It could be because my own experience as an autistic person does not include Ro’s kind of touch-phobia – but it is a real and common experience for many!) Whatever you want to call Ro, he’s portrayed with nuance and respect. He is not protrayed as broken or less than the characters who enjoy touch, even if he is insecure enough to feel that way at times – and his insecurity, while providing background tension, is not the driving conflict of the story. Instead, Ro gets to do cool things, make decisions with agency, get involved in racial politics, and figure things out about aliens. [Recommended]