A More Inclusive Fan(tasy) Community

The big news in the publishing world is that the trophy given for World Fantasy Awards, a bust of H.P. Lovecraft, will be retired. The impetus for the change was World Fantasy Award winner Nnedi Okorafor's discovery of Lovecraft's pernicious racism, and the realization that she had the bust of a man who, at at least one point in his lifetime, would have considered her subhuman, and who went to his grave without giving up his youthful racist beliefs.

I am a fan of Lovecraft's 'weird tales' (even now, I am taking a break from finishing up a re-read of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward), and I have written quite a few blog posts about the man and his body of work, addressing his racism as well as his stories. It's tempting to believe that he was reconsidering his reactionary attitudes in the days before his untimely death, but the fact remains that he harbored some heinous attitudes. Lovecraft's position in the Fantasy and Science Fiction pantheon is undeniable, though, as sword and sorcery author Charles R. Saunders acknowledged in a recent interview. Whenever you encounter 'nameless horrors from beyond' in a story, Lovecraft's shadow can be found.

There's no need, though, for the Old Man of Providence to lend his long, lugubrious countenance to an award. Speculative fiction has been enriched by such African-American authors as Samuel R. Delany, Octavia Butler, and the aforementioned Nnedi Okorafor and Charles R. Saunders. The Fantasy and Science-Fiction community is not the exclusive white boys club it used to be (a few years ago I wrote a post about women F&SF authors)- it's time the leading lights of the community recognized this reality.

With the retiring of the HPL statue, the World Fantasy Association needs to come up with another award statue- if they didn't want to rename the 'Howard', they could always rename the statue after Robert E. Howard... wait, what?

A Quick Musical Interlude

Tonight is a beer-drinking night, the weekly team trivia battle at a local bar, so I figure I'll put up a quick post, a lickle musical parody... Roy's latest post is an exegesis of a recent screed by Sparta-obsessed whackjob Victor Davis Hanson. In the comments, the redoubtable Smut Clyde, who cannot have my giant mushroom, noted a particular obsession peculiar to VDH:


There may be a glitch in his copypasta software. So far this year he has snarled about:

progressive grandees
Public grandees
Silicon Valley grandee
some Silicon Valley Grandee who wants the smelt
The grandees of Planned Parenthood
the Bay Area grandee's
another successful grandee of unknown lineage
millions of tax-deductible dollars from foreign grandees
a rather run-of-the-mill liberal grandee
Silicon Valley grandees [different ones]

Do you think he knows he's doing it?


With apologies to The Kingston Trio...


My name is Don Victor D. Hanson,
I'm obsessed with the title 'grandee'
But I lost my saw to a wetback,
To hell with the lords in D.C.

Right-wing, the white wing is lonely,
You can work at the Hoover, it's true,
But all of the smug urban hipsters
Are pointing and laughing at you.


For those not familiar with The Kingston Trio's body of work, this is a parody of South Coast, a tragic ballad about early settlers of California's Monterrey region:





I'm not sure that VDH would dig the tune, it being about white, but decidedly non-Anglo people.

Gotta Let This Hen Out

Three weeks ago, I was the recipient of a nice chunk of a really choice wild mushroom, a hen of the woods (Grifola frondosa), known in Japanese as the Maitake, or 'dancing mushroom', because its discoverers are said to dance with joy upon finding one.

I was dancing with joy today as I spied a nice hen of the woods fruiting body roosting at the base of a large red oak (Quercus rubra) tree on the grounds at work:

After clearing the leaves from the base of the tree, I found two more fruiting bodies, but one of them looked past its prime- dry, tough, and playing host to mold. I left that one behind... as I rule, I never grab everything, I want these beautiful mushrooms to proliferate, after all. All told, though, I had a major mushroom score:

I don't know the weight of my find, but it totally filled a standard plastic grocery bag. Needless to say, I am an extremely happy individual right now and I will be scarfing down delicious mushroom for weeks. The post title is inspired by a very silly song by Robyn Hitchcock:





I referenced Listening to the Higsons in a post about the possible discovery of the Higgs boson, the song also provided the name of a fabulous live album, a personal favorite of mine, by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians. I've got this hen out of the woods, and now I've gotta get this hen in mah belly!

Locking Up

The tourist season ended today. It's a bittersweet day, because I won't see the majority of my co-workers for a few months, but I'll have plenty of time for myself over the cold months. I commiserated with one twenty-something co-worker who will go on hiatus until the spring... his other job ended a week ago, and he'll have to find seasonal work until both places open again next year. Luckily, there's seasonal work to be had with the upcoming holidays, but it's not the sort of satisfying work he's used to doing. Crazy how most of the 'fulfilling' jobs really aren't very remunerative, and by 'crazy' I mean tragic.

I half-joked with the ladies in the shop, who are mainly retired or have other gigs, telling them that we had an opening in my department... oddly enough, they didn't seem to be interested in a job that involved Scooby-Dooing around in the dark and cold. As they left, we exchanged six months worth of holiday well-wishes. In May, they'll come back like the swallows of San Juan Capistrano and, like the swallows, they will bring a bright, cheerful note to the place.

After everybody left, I locked up the gates to the parking lots for the last time this year. There's a glorious feeling knowing that I'll have the place to myself for months. On the weekends, I typically don't see another two-footed co-worker during the off-season. Our year-round crew typically works Monday to Friday, so on weekends it's just me and the Rodent Abatement Team, which is not a bad state of affairs at all.

Getting a Nostalgic Vibe Here

A while ago, I posted about the late 80s, early 90s era of blonde rock goddesses, when the airwaves were taken over by a slew of female-fronted bands playing a great mix of bubblegum pop and noise rock. Recently, I heard a song by London-based Wolf Alice which reminded me a lot of the Primitives.

Here's a live version of the song Bros, the song which turned me on to this great band:





The studio version has a fuller, lusher sound, a dead ringer for that great, noisy girl-pop from late last century.

Blast this one.

Ben Carson, Gamer?

Via M. Bouffant, commenting at Roy's place, we have an oldie-but-crazy from Ben Carson:


“My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” Carson said. “Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big if you stop and think about it. And I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time to store that much grain.”

Let's unpack this for a second... an brief glance at the cross-section of the Great Pyramid of Giza reveals that it is largely solid, while granaries tend to be hollow so that, you know, grain can be stored in them. More importantly, archaeological study of an ancient granary would reveal the remnants of the grain that had been stored therein- tiny particles of plant matter can be separated from detritus, and these tiny particles are of great importance because they reveal information about the diet of the individuals who inhabited a site. If grain were being stored in the insufficiently large chambers of the pyramids, it would have been evident for over fifty years.

It gets even better:

“And when you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for various reasons. And various of scientists have said, ‘Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that’s how—’ you know, it doesn’t require an alien being when God is with you.”


Let that sink in for a moment... "And various of scientists have said, ‘Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that’s how—'" No, Ben, Erich von Däniken is not a scientist, never was. The whole 'ancient aliens' industrial complex is rehashed Lovecraftian pulp fiction, complete with a hefty dose of racism.

Yeah, not only are the mostly-solid pyramids the worst granaries in the world, but 'scientists' think they were built by aliens.. got it. So where the hell did Ben Carson get the idea that the Pyramids were built to store grain? He made this statement in 1998, two years after the release of the computer game Civilization II. The game is a strategic simulation of a society as it advances from the neolithic to the interstellar age, involving the foundation of municipalities, their growth and expansion, and the discovery of new intellectual advances. Among the structures that players can build in their cities, are wonders of the world, including the Pyramids:

The Pyramids require Masonry. It will put a Granary in each of your cities.

It seems like old Ben was playing computer games when he should have been reading up on history. People who are well-informed about these things know that the Pyramids were built because big balls of water were a no-go.

Thanks! A Million!!!

Sometime this weekend, between Friday night and Saturday night, I received my one millionth page view! Currently, I have 1,001,096 hits. The top ten breakdown for my audience is as follows:

United States 536506

France 104033

Germany 40075

United Kingdom 32214

Russia 24402

Ukraine 16608

China 15937

Poland 12350

Canada 11139

Netherlands 5977


I never knew my French audience was so extensive: Merci mes amis! Thanks to everyone, I love you all, I love your comments. Having people stopping by and reading the blog is a great honor for me. I also want to thank everyone on my blogroll, the "Bloggerhood" as zrm puts it. I couldn't do this without the support of everybody.

Really, I can't thank everybody enough. I figure I should post a celebratory video, so how about "Million Seller" by the Pooh Sticks? No, you naughty little lambies, the band is named after a sport.





For the record, my favorite Pooh Sticks song is Susan Sleepwalking, about as perfect a bit of pure pop pleasure as you could possibly find.

Once again, thank you, thank you, thank you everybody!