February 5, 2024

It's February!

Well, that was January, wasn't it.

I don't have much news to report, which is probably good! I've been working steadily on the next novel (no details for public consumption yet, except that the contract specifies that it be set in the Radch universe and so, accordingly, it is).

Lake of Souls, a collection of my short fiction, will be coming out in April, and it got a nice review in Publishers Weekly!

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I've been musing on the things we assume are true about how people are, morally. That is, the way we often assume that a good person is always essentially good (even if occasionally mistaken) and a bad person is always essentially bad (even if they may occasionally do an accidental good).

Related to this is the assumption that when a good person does a neutral thing it's of course good, but when a bad person does it, it's bad. I still occasionally remember the person who was very upset with me, years ago, for saying that it wasn't fair to mock JK Rowling (who has made her own name a curse) for being pretentious enough to have an office in her home. The fact is that a lot of writers, pretentious and not, have an office, or a corner of the basement that they call an office, or whatever, and it's not pretentiousness but the fact that having a work space is just useful. (I could go off on an even more tangential tangent here and talk about the way some folks think it's fine to make fun of bad people for their appearance or the shape of their bodies, it's ok because we're talking about bad people, but I won't go on that tangent and will leave my opinion on this as an exercise for the reader.)

But the specific thing that I want to talk about is the way that people--including complete assholes and horrible human beings--are complicated and observing that someone has maybe done a noble thing is not the same as Making Them Out to be a Hero, it is acknowledging that a person has done a thing, that's all.

Everyone has a place that's a step too far. Granted, for certain people that's a several day hike over roads paved with the dead, and for another set of people it's only walking in the direction of their own interests being harmed that will bring them to that step too far. And it's also true that if you know what you're doing you can lead someone gently up to that step too far and then pave the next bit so that "too far" moves ever so slightly farther away.

But sometimes, a complete asshole hits that step too far. That moment of "shit, this thing is wrong and I can't do it." And then they...proceed to not do it. Or the inverse, "Shit, not doing this thing would be wrong, and I have to do it," and they do.

Does this mean that when you acknowledge such an action, that you are declaring this person to be Good Actually?

And does that mean that if someone fails in some way morally, large or small, acknowledging that means you are declaring a person to be Bad Actually?

I would suggest not, in either case. I am not saying that you can't or shouldn't criticize anybody. And Mithras knows there are people out there I would class as unambiguously horrible people whose steps too far will likely never involve caring about anyone else. I'm just saying that being in the habit of dividing people into such an absolute binary is perhaps counterproductive, and maybe think about that every now and then.

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What have I been reading this week? Well, some short stories!

On Bluesky someone linked to "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole" by Isabel J. Kim and, yeah. As someone said, "The content warning is the title." Dead dove, do not eat.

Rachel Swirsky has a story out! "Also the Cat" is awesome, because, I mean, Rachel's work is awesome.

You also don't want to miss PH Lee's "A Sojourn in the Fifth City" and if you're not familiar with Lee's work, you absolutely should consider becoming so.

I also read City of Last Chances and House of Open Wounds, both by Adrian Tchaikovsky. You should read them, too, because they're wonderful. If you haven't already, and you don't have a spider phobia, you should also read Children of Time, which is unrelated to CoLC and HoOW but also awesome. (If you have a spider phobia, avoid Children of Time. Don't even look at the description. It's crammed with spiders from start to finish. But there are no spiders in City of Lost Chances. There is a giant centipede, though.)

I also read Yellowface, by R. F. Kuang, and wow that was good.

In non-reading "what have I been <verb>ing": I'm not much of a gamer. I generally like sandboxes and some cozy games but only play occasionally. Right now I'm gaming a fair amount just as part of pondering the next day's words. I've been playing Paleo Pines, which is basically Stardew Valley but you have dinosaurs on your farm and it's lovely. You can pet dinos and feed them and of course ride them if they're big enough and my happiness would be complete if you could breed them, but nothing in life is perfect.

I've also been playing lots of Farm Together, which is just the single most relaxing game I can imagine.

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Anyway, that's the news for February! Stay safe and well!