Whenever I attempt to share my critical writing, especially about contemporary speculative fiction, the following dialogue plays out in my head:

POINT: My qualifications don't support the hotness of my takes. Who do I think I am to publicly expound my criticisms when I'm a blogger with a BA and no fiction publication credits?

COUNTERPOINT: Posting is free. Also, I'm working on that last thing, it just takes some time.

POINT: Sharing my sincere thoughts about the genre, industry, and the work of other authors in the field will harm my ability to get published in future.

COUNTERPOINT: This is possible. However, if the genre can't sustain good-faith debate and reflect on itself in a clear-eyed manner, it's not worth my energy. My impulses toward engaging with sff via fiction and non-fiction projects come from the same source. I wouldn't care about this title if I didn't care about the genre.

POINT: Any non-anodyne content you put out with your name on it is fodder for a potential future harassment campaign, so isn't it safer to just retreat into a cave in the woods and enjoy the relative security of a smaller attack surface in exchange for a sense of regret and creative frustration?

Et cetera.

That said, last weekend, I shared an essay I wrote about suspension of emotional disbelief, the need for authors to commit to their story's premises, and the cozy sff uncanny valley. It's ostensibly a book review, but you don't need to have read the book in question. I'm quite proud of it.

The internal Gollum-and-Smeagol forum that surfaces when I consider posting about a book that didn't work for me is also a significant factor in the trends I criticize in that piece, so I have empathy for the authors whose work I critique. To paraphrase myself, the attempt to avoid saying anything controversial siphons the potency of your analysis.

No way out but through.

invitations for the genre to reflect on itself in a clear-eyed manner

Poetry has returned as a Hugo nominations category for 2026. For those of you able to nominate (you became a member of LAcon V by January 31 or were a member of the Seattle Worldcon 2025), I’m echoing Rebecca Fraimow’s call to consider nominating Elisa Chavez’s poem WHAT YOU NEED TO BE WARNED; OR: INVENTORY AND APPRAISEMENT OF NEIL GAIMAN, HEREAFTER "DECEDENT" which is eligible in the poetry category. Nominations will close on March 28, 2026. More information on the nomination process here.

shelfbusting

Last fall was preoccupied with decluttering. This leads one to rediscover just how much amazing stuff one owns and can barely justify continuing to store considering how rarely one even remembers one has it, let alone uses it.

I'm trying to make 2026 a depth year. Working on existing projects rather than starting new ones, figuring out what to do with the pound of dried barley I inexplicably bought, resisting the urge to stockpile sparkling water just because I have a Costco card.

A friend is organizing MARCH THROUGH YOUR STASH, a challenge for those of us whose book-buying habits outpace our reading. Come the 1st, I will be making an attempt. Join us.

Discord and Haitang

Two pieces relevant to the intersections of platform capitalism, state surveillance, and the fannish Internet:

• Hackers Expose Age-Verification Software Powering Surveillance Web: Once a user verifies their identity with Persona, the software performs 269 distinct verification checks and scours the internet and government sources for potential matches, such as by matching your face to politically exposed persons (PEPs), and generating risk and similarity scores for each individual. IP addresses, browser fingerprints, device fingerprints, government ID numbers, phone numbers, names, faces, and even selfie backgrounds are analyzed and retained for up to three years.
• The Ugly Beauty of Boy's Love in the Ruins: The 2024–25 incidents shattered the illusion of digital platforms as a benevolent community commons, exposing the ‘ugly’ reality of surveillance capitalism operating in a grey zone. Haitang operates on a model of risk outsourcing. It typically takes a 50 per cent cut of author earnings while hosting servers in Taiwan to evade direct censorship. This created a false geography of safety: authors believed that because the servers were offshore, they were offshore. However, because most mainland users could not directly top-up accounts on the platform and instead relied on third-party top-up services, often brokered through the sellers on the e-commerce platform, the entire payment infrastructure ultimately funnelled back into Alipay, WeChat Pay, and mainland China banking systems. [...] This dynamic reveals the authors as digital sharecroppers. They work the land (the platform), producing affective value through their labour, but they own neither the land nor the means of distribution.

Lastly, if you have the freedom to give this week, two fundraisers I would invite you to consider:

• Supplying Ramadan food kits in Gaza through World Central Kitchen, and
• Supporting families at a South Minneapolis Public School through a mutual aid network I vouch for via contacts on the ground in the Twin Cities.