We have yet another controversy rocking the queer specfic community this week. It’s one I have reservations talking about, but I know it’s deeply important to a lot of our membership that the OA addresses it, and I do understand and support that sentiment, so here I am.

Three years ago, Tor published a collection of novellas, which included one by Orson Scott Card. He retold Hamlet. I didn’t hear about it at the time. By then I’d already stopped buying books by Card, or submitting work to his publication, because I knew that our fundamental values were at odds. He’s publicly said many times things that indicate that he doesn’t support LGBTQI rights, and believes a lot of things I find offensive and damaging. Now, my personal response to that has been to ignore him. He has the right to say what he wishes, because we both live in a time and place where freedom of speech is a protected right. I have the right to speak out against him if I choose, but to date I’ve always felt that exercising that right would give his damaging viewpoint more attention, and I didn’t really want to do that.

People talk about honest reviews being good, and I agree. People have said that negative reviews can help boost sales, and I agree with that, too. I’ve bought books before because I read a review that made me sure I’d like them even though the reviewer didn’t. More than anything, reviews give books attention. I wouldn’t have known about this book if it hadn’t been for a review. I’m guessing a lot of other people wouldn’t have either. I worry that the fervor over it will lead to results other than what the protesters would hope. I know that I’m potentially fueling that unwanted attention by adding my voice to the conversation, and that unsettles me.

I’ve said before that it’s important not to attack people personally. I don’t wish to do that, and I won’t be doing that today. I’ve also said that it’s important to speak out against injustice, and important to educate people when we can. It is my hope that I will accomplish these things, and also that this post will serve as a part of an extended open dialogue with the specfic community at large.

Now, the review in question was in response to a reprint of Card’s Hamlet retelling, not the original Tor collection. The standalone novella came out this Spring from Subterranean Press. I was especially dismayed to hear that news, and to hear, in the first cries of outrage, people calling for a boycott of Subterranean. That particular press has often published great books and stories with queer content, and by queer authors. I’ve bought some of them, and always felt good about supporting an open-minded small press with really nice production values. Seriously, if you’ve ever bought a book from them, you’ll know that they use highest quality materials. Their art is usually great, and every time I receive one of their books, I feel a sense of tactile joy, because they understand about texture at Subterranean. Their books are a pleasure to hold.

When this all erupted in a flurry of passionate e-mails on the OA google group, I said that if I boycotted every publisher who ever put out something I found offensive, I’d severely limit my reading choices. Others asked why people hadn’t called for a boycott of Tor. Still others pointed out that this was a troubling reprint because it was specifically chosen by a small press, and we ought to demand to know Bill Schafer’s reasoning. Along with boycotting, demands for various other concessions floated about, but none seemed to unite everyone in agreement.

Then someone pointed out that it was in fact possible that Bill Schafer and others hadn’t realized how and why this story was offensive. People who have the privilege of not being targeted by these damaging tropes are often unaware of them. Indeed, Bill Schafer’s response to the whole thing indicates that this might have been the case for him. He asks for people to share their thoughts, and says that he’s listening. If all of this results in a publisher learning a little more about how and why works he publishes might actively hurt people, then I suppose it’s worth the risk of giving attention to an author I’d rather ignore. Here is a collection of accounts by OA members of their experiences with this particular controversy, followed by some recommendations of queer-positive Shakespeare stories.

Rose Fox summed up the whole sordid saga in a concise and comprehensive manner over on the Genreville blog.

[T]his is the thing about offensiveness grenades: they may look entirely inert for so long that you forget they’re dangerous, but sooner or later, they explode.

On the google group, Rose added the following:

I am really sad and disappointed that Subterranean Press and Tor Books, which publish many books by queer and trans authors and with queer themes, also published a novella that vilifies queer people and equates us with child molesters. I call on those publishers–and on all SF/F publishers, imprints, and magazines both large and small–to refrain from publishing books and stories that vilify any group of people in such a fashion.

Cheryl Morgan said much the same thing to me, and explained why this particular reprint is so upsetting:

There is, I think, a difference between publishing the story as part of a retrospective of Card’s work, which can put it in context, and publishing it has a high-priced collectors’ edition, which suggests it is something special and of extra value.

Elizabeth Schechter posted about her personal reaction on her blog:

To be honest, right now, I’m more at the stage of sputter…sputter… whiskey  tango FOXTROT???

And my reaction isn’t because Card wrote this. Anyone who is following along and playing Homophobic Bingo: the Home Game just maxed out their score. This is no surprise.

The surprise is that Subterranean Press published it.

River Willow Fagan posted an extremely brave and heartfelt open letter to Bill Schafer, explaining how and why this kind of thing damages people:

One of the most painful aspects of being a queer survivor has been the doubts: what if all those hateful voices were right?  What if I am attracted to men because my father abused me?  What if I really am sick, what if my soul really is twisted and broken like all those conservative Christians say?

Sunny Moraine called for people to demand better stories, and posited that small-mindedness leads to bad writing:

I think that it’s important to recognize that art can be really offensive and still have a huge amount of value. But I also think that believing stupid, hateful things – more often than not – makes you a bad artist. As it cripples and stunts your mind and heart and spirit, it cripples and stunts the things that your mind and heart and spirit produce.

Brandon Bell, talking of the demands for more good queer stories, noted:

I’m certainly happy to see queer-themed Shakespearean works at Fantastique Unfettered.

Angela Korra’ti expressed a hope that people would not buy the book now that it has received more attention, and offfered a few alternatives for people who want good queer retellings of old stories:

So to all of you who never knew about this work, I’m a bit sorry to have brought it to your attention, and can only hope you will continue to not only not buy it, but will specifically not buy it because bigotry is not okay. To those of you who already knew about it and elected not to buy it on that basis, I thank you.

To counter its existence, I’d like to commend to your attention the Lethe Press anthology Time Well Bent, in which Catherine Lundoff has a story in which Shakespeare isn’t queer, but his sister Judith is–and so is his friend Kit Marlowe. Hayden Thorne has Arabesque, a dark m/m adaptation of Snow White. And I’ve mentioned this one already, but it’s worth mentioning again in a post whose theme is “adaptations of classic stories”: i.e., Ash by Malinda Lo.

Several people recommended Elizabeth Bear’s Spectrum Award winning Stratford Man duology. Warren Rochelle, one of the judges for the award, shared his thoughts about the books alongside some quotes from the official Spectrum Award writeup:

Ink and Steel and Hell and Earth, the two volumes in Elizabeth Bear’s duology, “were far and away the work most deserving of our award for the year.” I was quite taken by this universe in which Shakespeare and his rival and teacher and sometime lover, Marlowe, move back and forth between the worlds of Elizabethan England and Faerie and even Hell, a universe in which “the worlds of a great writer can shape the world as a form of magic … {Y]ou’ll find yourself believing that this magic of words is more than a fantasy story.”  All three worlds are masterfully done and I was more than willing to suspend disbelief.  I was caught up in the ongoing crises, crises “that only a handful of individuals, including Shakespeare, can overcome . . . Both Shakespeare and Marlowe . . . must face their own demons, their own mortality, and their own desires if they are find immortality for their own work, and the two kingdoms they come to love.”

And, finally, Hal Duncan offered his own playfully modernized screenplay retelling of As You Like it, free of charge. You can read his explanation of how it came to be, and the first scene in this blog entry, and you can download the whole thing at this site.

That wraps things up for this harrowing monster of a blog post. As I said earlier, I hope that it will be a part of an extended open dialogue. I’d love to hear more from anyone who wants to share their thoughts about this, and I’m especially interested in ideas about how we can use this situation to make our community better and stronger. Please leave a comment here, talk to us on the google group, or email me directly at julia@juliarios.com.

In this episode, Natania Barron talks about her work and how she started the Outer Alliance, Lynn Flewelling talks about writing sex scenes and teaching a writing workshop on a cruise ship, and we have an excerpt of Georgina Bruce’s story from Aether Age: Helios.

You can subscribe to the podcast RSS feed here or use this link to subscribe with iTunes. You can also hit play on the embedded player in this post and listen to the podcast on the web, or visit the individual episode page to download this episode as an MP3 without subscribing.

Notes:

Gender Playful Marketplace is collecting startup funds over here.

Elisa Rolle hosted the 2010 Rainbow Awards, which recognized works by several Outer Alliance members. Congratulations, winners!

Hayden Thorne’s historical fantasy comedy (not a problem novel!) Desmond and Garrick Book One is available now at Prizm books.

Natania Barron’s website has all kinds of info about her fiction and non-fiction. Go there to find out all about stories available now and coming soon.

Lynn Flewelling has links to signups for the cruise workshop and place to buy her work (including the sexy Nightrunner short story collection that flustered prim and proper me in the interview) over on her website.

Aether Age: Helios is out now. You can find out more at Aether-Age.com. Author Georgina Bruce maintains a blog at thebeardedlady.wordpress.com, and you can learn more about narrator T.C. Parmalee at Aural Spice.

Thanks for listening, and please do feel free to leave feedback here, on the google group, or by e-mailing me at julia@juliarios.com. I’d love to hear from you.

Hayden Thorne is a straight ally, who looks at writing as a form of activism, and features queer teens coming of age in contemporary and historical fantasy stories. Her Masks series follows the journey of a gay teen in a city full of superheroes, while her historical novels, The Twilight Gods, Banshee, and Icarus in Flight, deal with darker and more realistic themes.

When she is not writing, Hayden divides her time between working in the fine art industry, and cycling. In addition to advocating for LGBTQI rights, she supports the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Humane Society of the United States.

All of Hayden’s books to date, including her latest novel, The Twilight Gods, are available now from the LGBTQ YA imprint, Prizm Books.

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The Twilight Gods is based on a Native American folktale, but set in Victorian England. How did you get the idea to retell it that way?

Firstly, I’ve always been enamored of folklore, and while I grew up reading Western European folktales, it wasn’t till I was in college (better late than never) when I discovered folklore from all over the world. What fascinated me the most was that there are a number of variations for certain themes, as classified by Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson. Folktales from all over the world can be categorized according to their system, so that a simple tale like “Cinderella,” for instance, will find a number of similar stories from other countries.

I also happen to be a shameless Anglophile, having discovered Victorian fiction in high school. I *love* the social commentary and, at least in the case of satirists like Thackeray, the biting wit. I actually didn’t think much about retelling a Native American folktale and using Victorian London for its new setting. It just seemed to fall into place for me. It’s really nothing more than two passions melding, so that folktale motifs are juxtaposed with more practical day-to-day concerns of a struggling family. The result is a gothic, dream-like treatment of a boy’s journey of self-discovery.

Your historical fantasies seem to take a more serious tone than your contemporary superhero fantasy series. Why is that? Do you think you’ll write more lighter and comedic books in the future?

The one thing I try to do with historical fiction is to keep everything as real as possible, which means a pretty somber treatment of homosexuals and how they cope with living in a society where they’re outlaws. On the other hand, I’m not a huge fan of uber-angst, so I try to work in a little edge of hope for the characters. If they don’t get their happily-ever-after, they at least mature enough to understand their place and make decisions from there as to where they want to take things. Will they pursue their dream of finding other gay men who are willing to risk everything and be with them? Or will they decide to stay in the closet and follow the paths that have been set out for them by society? Either way, they’re still empowered with enough knowledge and maybe some experience to make their choice.

I’m definitely moving in the direction of more comedic historical fiction. I have a couple planned out, in fact – one a satire about artists and one a historical fantasy involving a family of “special” agents working for Queen Victoria.

The Masks series follows the adventures of a goth teen in a city full of superheroes and supervillains. What drew you to write about these types of people? Are you a superhero comics fan? Were you a goth in high school?

*laughs* Eric Plath is actually not goth though other characters in the books mistake him for one. He’s “being sixteen,” as he argues in the first book. He colors his hair blue and tried once to wear eyeliner to school till he was made to take it off, but he’s really just a normal kid who experiments with whatever happens to catch his fancy. No, I was never a goth in high school, but some of my friends were. Growing up in the early to mid-80s, I kind of fell in with the “mod” crowd, or those kids who dug alternative music.

My initial plan for the Masks series was to create a mini-world of superheroes and supervillains where being a “freak” becomes par for the course in the eyes of a snarky teenager. Being a superhero is usually the Mark of Cain, so to speak, and it’s pretty common for superheroes to be ostracized or welcomed but still treated as outsiders of some kind. I want to write about superheroes who, while doing all kinds of amazing things, still behave like regular teenagers either in costume or out. Using Eric as the odd man out gives me that platform.

All of your protagonists so far have been male. Have you ever considered writing a book with a female, trans, or intersex main character?

I’d *love* to be able to write trans characters, and I hope someday to do it. I’ll need to spend more time learning about them before I feel confident enough to write them in a story. I also would like to write female characters, and I hope to do something like a subversive Austen type of deal. Historical fiction, that is, tends to draw all kinds of romantic ideas from me, and I figure that the Regency and all its associations with Austen’s satires and romantic adventures make for prime material involving teenage girls who don’t fit the mold and subvert social convention. They could be magicians. Or adventurers in an alternate universe. Or I could just write a contemporary fantasy, with girls for the leads. The same can be said about transgender teens. The possibilities are endless.

Have you ever gotten reader feedback that made your day? What’s the best thing a reader could possibly tell you?

As I tend to get extremely rare reviews at sites like Amazon, I have a feeling that I tend to attract quiet types (hey, I’m pretty withdrawn in person, too). I’ve received a couple of very nice messages about my books, and simply hearing from readers is really good enough for me. I don’t expect high praise all the time. If they want to discuss things with me, I’m more than happy to do so. If they see anything they find objectionable, I’d like to know. So far, though, I’ve been told that these readers really enjoyed my books, with one saying that she wished she had books like these when she was younger. They were all very sweet, and I really appreciate their taking the time to write me.

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Thanks, Hayden! Join us again next Friday for another Spotlight. In the meantime, why not check out The Twilight Gods?