![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Extremely partial transcript: A Queerer War
~1200 words; extremely spotty transcript of the bits that grabbed me. Panel description:
Duncan Lawie: moderator. The session is intended to run til 5:45. Primarily a reviewer, Arthur C Clarke judge - job is to keep his opinions to himself
Sarah Groenewegen: essayist, one essay in Queers Dig Timelords. Law enforcement in dayjob, in Australia, the UK and Netherlands.
Ann Leckie: author of AJ!
Tanya Huff: series of MilSF. Served in Canadian Navy as a cook for two tours (late 70s). Also has essay in QDT
M: first question to T. Omnisxual series - was that intentional in terms of milSF?
T: I write characters first, and scene-setting around them. I was mostly - when I started series
M: In a sense, sexuality in your book doesn't exist...?
A: It DOES exist, but it's not going to be an issue - all of us, we have things we like and don't like, as do the characters in my book, but gender is not one of those foremost, everybody-has-to-know-what-it-is, things.
S: Torchwood - Captain Jack, from the future & pansexual; other characters, opens up franchise to ask question...
M: do you think it's more difficult for things like Torchwood to approach that because they're aiming for a BBC audience?
S: I think that's part of the issue. Other panels have also pointed out that TV is made in a very different way from books, and sometimes all the best intentions of doing things get lost in accidental production things - and also the focus of the medium isn't necessarily on the characters, in a sense, as the adventure.
M: Do you find it easier to write in a world not connected to our own?
A: Yes, I do actually. And it's strange, becuase it's not like human beings are different in SF to where we live in the real world - but when I cut away constraints deliberately as much as I can, I feel a little more free to push some boundaries and do some things I would feel mroe restricted on in a present-day setting and situation.
M: T, default bisexuality in your characters? are Valour books milSF?
T: not... really?
---
A: grew up reading a specific kind of very colourful space opera - way more Andre Norton than could be healthy! Couldn't find it on the shelves any more because the very simplistic binaries of good&bad wasn't chewy. Made her thoughtful that she wasn't finding anything, so wanted to build & expand on it...
M: thoughts from the panel on combat & straightness?
T: when she was in in the late 80s, had women who were out & serving & noone cared as long as they did their jobs - asked at the time, serving members of US military in the audience at Denver, and the answer was "nobody cares when someone's shooting at you" - in combat situation, need people who can do their jobs. Problem is when not in combat situation, have lots of free time, need to fill it [sniggers] - generally by being a bigoted asshole... [laughter]
M: "interesting documentary about gays in the Second World War, conscription - priority was not what you did at home, but what you did when someone put a gun in your hand/pointed a gun at you" someone this morning talking about it doesn't matter where a book is set, it's where it's written from - we are writing now, responding to existing experience. Has that changed how milSF has been written since the Second World War, when space opera was the biggest milSF you got?
A: A lot of writers had /served/ in the war, that brought in milSF - as time goes by, fewer people have actually served in such a huge war that it's going to change the experience of that absolutely
... T just said something about "non-binary sexuality"???
A: one of the amazing things about the Internet is that stuff that would've been incredibly hard to find 10 years ago, you can find an audience, you can kind authors. You're not reliant on what your local bookstore is stocking.
wow this panel is much less exciting than I thought it would be.
M: Big question - does SF has a mission? do you feel any pressure as a writer to write for non-default readers?
A: My feelings are complicated. Firstly, narrative is deathly important - the kind of stories we read affect how we organise the world around us, the choices we make, etc. Writing stories is potentially a really amazing, effective, world-changing thing to do. I feel it's important to write things I think are true, I don't want to say things I don't believe, feeling like there's a mission - but I also feel like a writer has to be true to whatever their vision and truth is, so I'd be hesitant to say every writer has to write from a particular point of view - but I think it's important as a writer to think very hard about what assumptions I'm making, what kind of patterns I'm putting out in the story, what that means. But I don't think SF writers have to be writing optimistic things about the future, etc...
M: Do you find default assumptions about who's in the army have changed?
S: Interesting question. There's definitely been a shift - I knew people who worked military police pre-2000, which was when they reversed the ban on the military, it became fully decriminalised, which is - not that long ago, really. Lots of talk in the press about Alan Turing - questionable things in there - but basically during those times, up to the 50s, 60s - you couldn't get a job if you were gay, you couldn't pass the security clearance. If you were serving and it was a criminal offence - some of my friends were in these jobs, they lied, post-2000 they were in a review meeting, they had a review meeting - "is there anything you want to declare?" "... well, yeah, actually"; "yeah, we kinda know, but you got the clearance and did the job because it wasn't actually a risk, so!" One of the other people they met was bagman to one of the admirals at the point when they were debating whether they should address the issue of homosexuality in the services; at that stage the government were going "... we want to do something?" but nobody was talking about a complete reversal, at all. Apparently the admiral was going "I get all the political, philosophical conversations, but it would really help if I knew someone who was gay", and his wife laughed a lot and then realised he was earnest, and told him most of his staff was gay... and he did talk, and the full reversal recommendation was made. People had previously been hounded out etc - "would I say it's Nirvana? no of course it isn't" (ew), but still a lot better. LGBT combined services group is on twitter, heh. Recommends as a resource for writers if they want to expand their defaults! If sexuality doesn't really matter in the story ("most of the time, I think it doesn't really have to"), then why make them straight and white and male?
T: in Canada hit the news because it didn't come from the gov down, instead the military up.
***
T: all my characters are bisexual unless I actively say otherwise.
***
Moderator suggesting that uterine replicators was a way to get rid of "icky sex stuff"????
Kameron Hurley, God's War
Consideration of sexuality has been part of military SF since at least The Forever War, but while it's easier than it used to be to find militaristic SF novels that address queer experience -- Adam Roberts' New Model Army, say, or God's War by Kameron Hurley -- they remain uncommon. Let's talk about the implied or assumed links between combat, straightness, technology and morality, and how science fiction has succeeded and failed at complicating its understanding of the sexuality of war.
Duncan Lawie: moderator. The session is intended to run til 5:45. Primarily a reviewer, Arthur C Clarke judge - job is to keep his opinions to himself
Sarah Groenewegen: essayist, one essay in Queers Dig Timelords. Law enforcement in dayjob, in Australia, the UK and Netherlands.
Ann Leckie: author of AJ!
Tanya Huff: series of MilSF. Served in Canadian Navy as a cook for two tours (late 70s). Also has essay in QDT
M: first question to T. Omnisxual series - was that intentional in terms of milSF?
T: I write characters first, and scene-setting around them. I was mostly - when I started series
M: In a sense, sexuality in your book doesn't exist...?
A: It DOES exist, but it's not going to be an issue - all of us, we have things we like and don't like, as do the characters in my book, but gender is not one of those foremost, everybody-has-to-know-what-it-is, things.
S: Torchwood - Captain Jack, from the future & pansexual; other characters, opens up franchise to ask question...
M: do you think it's more difficult for things like Torchwood to approach that because they're aiming for a BBC audience?
S: I think that's part of the issue. Other panels have also pointed out that TV is made in a very different way from books, and sometimes all the best intentions of doing things get lost in accidental production things - and also the focus of the medium isn't necessarily on the characters, in a sense, as the adventure.
M: Do you find it easier to write in a world not connected to our own?
A: Yes, I do actually. And it's strange, becuase it's not like human beings are different in SF to where we live in the real world - but when I cut away constraints deliberately as much as I can, I feel a little more free to push some boundaries and do some things I would feel mroe restricted on in a present-day setting and situation.
M: T, default bisexuality in your characters? are Valour books milSF?
T: not... really?
---
A: grew up reading a specific kind of very colourful space opera - way more Andre Norton than could be healthy! Couldn't find it on the shelves any more because the very simplistic binaries of good&bad wasn't chewy. Made her thoughtful that she wasn't finding anything, so wanted to build & expand on it...
M: thoughts from the panel on combat & straightness?
T: when she was in in the late 80s, had women who were out & serving & noone cared as long as they did their jobs - asked at the time, serving members of US military in the audience at Denver, and the answer was "nobody cares when someone's shooting at you" - in combat situation, need people who can do their jobs. Problem is when not in combat situation, have lots of free time, need to fill it [sniggers] - generally by being a bigoted asshole... [laughter]
M: "interesting documentary about gays in the Second World War, conscription - priority was not what you did at home, but what you did when someone put a gun in your hand/pointed a gun at you" someone this morning talking about it doesn't matter where a book is set, it's where it's written from - we are writing now, responding to existing experience. Has that changed how milSF has been written since the Second World War, when space opera was the biggest milSF you got?
A: A lot of writers had /served/ in the war, that brought in milSF - as time goes by, fewer people have actually served in such a huge war that it's going to change the experience of that absolutely
... T just said something about "non-binary sexuality"???
A: one of the amazing things about the Internet is that stuff that would've been incredibly hard to find 10 years ago, you can find an audience, you can kind authors. You're not reliant on what your local bookstore is stocking.
wow this panel is much less exciting than I thought it would be.
M: Big question - does SF has a mission? do you feel any pressure as a writer to write for non-default readers?
A: My feelings are complicated. Firstly, narrative is deathly important - the kind of stories we read affect how we organise the world around us, the choices we make, etc. Writing stories is potentially a really amazing, effective, world-changing thing to do. I feel it's important to write things I think are true, I don't want to say things I don't believe, feeling like there's a mission - but I also feel like a writer has to be true to whatever their vision and truth is, so I'd be hesitant to say every writer has to write from a particular point of view - but I think it's important as a writer to think very hard about what assumptions I'm making, what kind of patterns I'm putting out in the story, what that means. But I don't think SF writers have to be writing optimistic things about the future, etc...
M: Do you find default assumptions about who's in the army have changed?
S: Interesting question. There's definitely been a shift - I knew people who worked military police pre-2000, which was when they reversed the ban on the military, it became fully decriminalised, which is - not that long ago, really. Lots of talk in the press about Alan Turing - questionable things in there - but basically during those times, up to the 50s, 60s - you couldn't get a job if you were gay, you couldn't pass the security clearance. If you were serving and it was a criminal offence - some of my friends were in these jobs, they lied, post-2000 they were in a review meeting, they had a review meeting - "is there anything you want to declare?" "... well, yeah, actually"; "yeah, we kinda know, but you got the clearance and did the job because it wasn't actually a risk, so!" One of the other people they met was bagman to one of the admirals at the point when they were debating whether they should address the issue of homosexuality in the services; at that stage the government were going "... we want to do something?" but nobody was talking about a complete reversal, at all. Apparently the admiral was going "I get all the political, philosophical conversations, but it would really help if I knew someone who was gay", and his wife laughed a lot and then realised he was earnest, and told him most of his staff was gay... and he did talk, and the full reversal recommendation was made. People had previously been hounded out etc - "would I say it's Nirvana? no of course it isn't" (ew), but still a lot better. LGBT combined services group is on twitter, heh. Recommends as a resource for writers if they want to expand their defaults! If sexuality doesn't really matter in the story ("most of the time, I think it doesn't really have to"), then why make them straight and white and male?
T: in Canada hit the news because it didn't come from the gov down, instead the military up.
***
T: all my characters are bisexual unless I actively say otherwise.
***
Moderator suggesting that uterine replicators was a way to get rid of "icky sex stuff"????
Kameron Hurley, God's War