Vicious - Episodes 1-3 (Review)

Vicious (originally titled Vicious Old Queens) is a new sitcom on ITV, centred around an old gay couple who have been together for almost 50 years. The show focuses on the interactions between them and their friends, and their new neighbour Ash, a young man who rents the flat above them*.

At first glance, it's a very different thing to my usual reviews, as it's not a speculative show. However, it has a crossover of actors between speculative things. Freddy is played by Ian McKellen (Magneto, Gandalf) and Stuart by Derek Jacobi (Professor Yana in Doctor Who). Some of the jokes are aimed at the genre crowd. Add in the representation themes (not just on-screen, as McKellen and Jacobi are both gay), and I was interested to see where it went.

This review covers the first three episodes and some thoughts on the general series themes. I watched episode two first, went back to watch one, and then watched three (just to be confusing). The series has three more episodes to go and a Christmas special (I likely won't review those, as this is more of an early review so people can see if it's something that might interest them).

The Episodes

Episode One

The first episode mainly serves to introduce the characters. Freddy and Stuart find out an old friend has died, and decide to have a little gathering at their flat after the funeral. Ash (Iwan Rheon) visits to see the vacant flat, but gets the wrong door and rings the bell of Freddie and Stuart's flat instead.

When the gathering happens, also attending are Violet (Frances de la Tour), absent-minded Penelope (Marcia Warren) and grumpy Mason (Phillip Voss).

I likely appreciated this episode more as I'd seen the second, because it wasn't as quotable. It also had a rape joke, which really wasn't funny. But there were some moments in the rest, such as Freddie and Stuart's reaction when Ash opens their curtains (this is me - I never open my curtains). And cutting the sandwiches up very small (this is a very British thing at parties, though on a more serious note, also hints at money not being too plentiful for the couple).

The strength of this episode is in its potential. The parts are all well cast. It also wins on the basic setup. Apart from the running joke of Stuart not having told his mother, everyone knows about their relationship. It's refreshing to have a story about gay characters that isn't focused on coming out. And due to the not-so-subtle attempts to find out Ash's sexuality, Ash ends up coming out as straight, which is a fun reversal.

But it didn't hit that potential. One of things that makes it harder to laugh is Freddie repeatedly pushes too far in the bickering and upsets Stuart (though Stuart also snipes back, he's generally a little milder and less egotistical than Freddie). If this had been a later episode, where the viewer knew how their relationship went, it'd come across differently. I viewed it differently having seen episode two first. But here, without that context, it created an uncertainty about whether there's a genuine problem in the relationship, and it's hard to laugh at that.

Episode Two

Freddie's acting career wasn't much of a career, but he did play a villain in an episode of Doctor Who and he's been invited to a Doctor Who fan event. As the event approaches, Stuart is spending increasing amounts of time out of the flat and Freddie worries he's having an affair.

Meanwhile, Ash wants to get back together with his ex-girlfriend, and comes to Freddie and Stuart for advice. Violet also has a few suggestions.

The plot is one that's very guessable, as it's the old nutshell of assuming absence is an affair, when something else is going on. However, this series isn't really about plot, but character interaction, and this episode got that part down. The layers of Freddie and Stuart's interactions are much clearer here. The way they show caring about each other may be a little different, but it's there.

After this episode, I'm in love with Penelope. Her delivery of the lines where she's trying to prove she does know Stuart's name, by constantly using it, is classic. In general, the actors seem more comfortable with their roles.

Episode 3

While Freddie is preparing for an audition, Ash visits to ask for career advice. Freddie suggests he try acting, and should help him prepare.

When Ash gets a part at his first audition, Freddie's confidence is ruined, and he starts being nice to people. Stuart can't take it anymore, so comes up with a plan to get Freddie's confidence back.

This is generally a quieter episode, as Freddie spends a fair bit of it feeling sad, but I found it a nice change of pace. The acting humour reminded me of my amateur dramatics days**. I've met the person who tried to make being Cook Staff Number Four the most important part in the whole script. Freddie's reaction to Ash's success was spot on (success is fine... as long as you're not more successful than him).

Stuart and Violet also have some scenes, where the chemistry between them as long term (probably) best friends really comes across.

Overview

Style of Comedy

Vicious is an old-fashioned sitcom, with limited sets (it's mostly in Stuart and Freddie's flat) and snarky one-liners. It has a laughter track (which is my least favourite thing about it) but I'd learnt to ignore it by the third episode.

I can't really say how funny or unfunny it is, as I rarely laugh out loud at sitcoms. I suppose because I'm expecting the jokes. But I was looking forward to the third episode, so it did succeed in that.

Gay Themes

One of the inevitable discussions is how the gay characters are portrayed and whether that's a good or bad thing. The main criticism here tends to be that they're rather camp. It's true they are, but the problem with campiness isn't the campiness, as some gay men are camp. It's that it's usually a trait for gay men who are there to be accessories, rather than characters in their own right. It's often used as a lazy shorthand for gayness, as though there's no other way to be gay.

In most cases, a camp gay man will be the gay best friend. He will be there to help the straight main character. He'll drop everything for that main character, because his life revolves around serving them. If the gay friend is in a relationship, it will be there to inspire the main character.

Alternatively, the camp gay man is there to appear as a minor comedy character.

None of that is true in Vicious. It's about Eddie and Stuart, with the straight characters being there to help tell Eddie and Stuart's story. People may come for advice or see the couple's relationship as an inspiration, but that's not why Eddie and Stuart exist in the story. Nor is campiness a shortcut for gayness, as it's evident they're gay in other ways (like living together and having direct discussions about being gay, whether other people are gay, etc.)

It's also notable that these are older men, who lived through the time when gay relationships were illegal, when code words were needed to talk about it, and when being camp was something used as a weapon and an identity in a hostile climate.

The style of the show won't appeal to everyone, but I don't think its existence is a bad thing.

Reversals

Stereotype reversals and gender fluidity come up repeatedly in this. From the start, there's Ash cast in a role that would usually go to a young woman, of the pretty young thing people are ogling. Yet he reacts as a young man might - uncomfortable and unsure how to handle it, because this isn't something that usually happens to men.

Ash is also the one with romantic dreams of finding true love. Compared to Violet, who is clearly less interested in the love part.

At one point Freddie uses the term "shop girl" to refer to a man, which gets a laugh from the studio audience, because that's not how it goes. People will argue that fireman and paper boy mean everyone really, not just men. But the same logic doesn't apply to house wife and shop girl. They might say anyone can be a bitch, slut or whore, but in reality, it's rare for people to use them as insults towards a man (or if they do, to add the extra of manwhore and manslut, as though it's a different thing when it's a man).

This is a mixed bag for me, because I do appreciate that it hits people as unexpected, which may make them laugh and to think about why it's unexpected at the same time. It makes people notice the things they otherwise don't notice because they're so common, by switching the targets***.

But I also have an instinctively bad reaction to those insults, even if used in contexts where they're not being aimed at women. I cringe at Ash's discomfort, at the same time as being aware that if he were a woman, it'd be taken as normal treatment and some viewers wouldn't notice. His facial expressions of horror and discomfort would be seen as over-reacting if he was a she.

So the jokes in this category are sometimes things that need to be said, but it doesn't stop them having an uncomfortable layer to them.

Conclusions

Comedies are one of the hardest things to recommend to other people, as there's a wide range in what people find funny, and how funny they need to find them to want to watch. So I'm not going to say if anyone should or shouldn't watch it, but I hope there's enough information in my review to give a fair idea of whether it might appeal.

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* ITV's press pack says "their lives now consist of reading books, walking their dog and bickering." The dog is an almost dead dog they wake up sporadically to see he isn't dead. He's played by a pile of blankets rather than an actual dog, because he doesn't move. Walking their dog? Who wrote this?

** I was also reminded of Tumblr, where creative aspects of scripts are often put down to the actor adding something in and it being kept, rather than being in the script. These things happen, but not as often as Tumblr posts claim. The part where Freddie is talking about dropping a potato not being in the script, but them keeping it in, reminded me of that so much. This needs to be a Tumblr meme.

*** This is a similar philosophy to gender-switching superhero characters or cover models, to highlight that the way women are dressed and posed is not equivalent to the men.

On Defining Conflict

I find discussions of whether stories have conflict in different cultures interesting, but not for the reason most appear to. It's not that I think, "Wow, maybe I don't need conflict!" It's that I read the example stories and think, "But that story has conflict."

Which leads to the inevitable conclusion: I define conflict completely differently, but it's rare than someone will stop to give their definition of conflict before writing an article about whether something contains conflict. If they do, it confirms that my definition is different.

The issue I face is that everything has conflict. If it didn't, I'd wake up in the morning and never move again. I'd have no need to move or think, because there's nothing to do and nothing to think about.

Instead, I get up and eat. I have to eat regularly, because if I don't, I'll die. This may not be the thought on my mind when I'm making a sandwich, but I'm aware this is why I eat. A lot of my day is taken up with this conflict, because I have to shop, cook, and consider nutrition.

Watching me make a sandwich and consider its nutritional value may not be a story everyone wants to read (then again, if you've got this far, you've read an account on my sandwich ponderings and not stopped reading). But saying it has no conflict is an exaggeration. Existence comes with obstacles and those generate conflicts. You can only escape that by not existing anymore.

So my thought on conflict discussions comes from a different perspective. Rather than not seeing conflict, I see a different presentation. It may be the conflicts chosen are different. It may be in the story structure. Sometimes what's considered relevant to the story is different. But something happens in the story, either directly or implied*. No reader is likely to pay money for a blank page (not intentionally anyway... and if they're tricked into it, that may create a conflict of the more obvious punching-author-in-nose variety).

Then again, it might be why I've written things get rejected with, "This isn't a story"** so maybe you shouldn't listen to me***. But I like my version of conflict and I'm sticking with it.

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* An example of implied would be if I wrote about a ball balancing at the top of a slope and a child standing at the bottom of the slope. I don't tell you how the scene got to that point or what will happen next, but the story is still there.

** I don't have many of these stories, because they don't sell, and they annoy readers even if they do sell. It reduces my incentive to keep trying. I've tried selling a few as prose poetry****, but it usually doesn't wash. I may get bolder about sneaking them into my collections, but we'll see how that goes.

*** I have this vague idea that things like a three act structure exists, but I can't apply it to stories. I can't say this is how this story splits into acts or write something with the intention that it'll end up that way. I don't learn well from theory books and how-to writing instructions. People never believe this. When I say stuff like that, they try to show me a worked example, and it means nothing to me. Rather like when I explain my dyslexia word mixups, and they say, "But word X means this and Y means that," not realising what they've said to me is "Word X/Y means this and X/Y means that." If I was capable of reliably telling the words apart, they wouldn't be mixups.

This is why I read stories, rather than how-to guides.

**** This was inspired by someone on a writing forum, who submitted a piece of flash fiction for critique. It was shredded as lacking story and lacking conflict. The writer took the piece, inserted line breaks, deleted a couple of words for flow, and placed it in the poetry critique forum instead. They loved it.

I liked the piece in both forms, but it was clear it was more likely to sell as a poem than as a story (as far as the English-speaking SFF market was concerned).

Writing Diary: The Future

Looking back over my posts, I realised I hadn't posted a writing diary this year, and it's April. So here's a bit of catching up on what I'm doing and where I'm going.

Short Stories

I'll be writing fewer of these this year, so I'm mainly focusing on interesting calls for submissions, but will likely write some random stuff too. Upcoming themed deadlines of interest are:

Innsmouth Magazine: Wings - Innsmouth is moving to a chapbook format, which will start with the first theme of wings. Deadline: July 25, 2013

Long Hidden - An anthology of historical speculative fiction, with a focus on the hidden stories of marginalised groups. Deadline: July 31, 2013

Arc - Not a themed call as such (outside of the magazine's theme of the future). Arc has opened for general submissions for stories of 5000 words or more. They pay £1500 per story, so they're worth a try.

Collections, Novelettes and Novellas

The self-published collection is on-going, and looks set to hit the deadline of May 13th. I have some more related blog posts. Some are useful stuff, like thoughts on how to sort a table of contents (something a person raised on a forum some time back, and no one had an answer... so it seems like an often overlooked topic). And possibly some fun ones, like photos of my hometown illustrating a story, including the local twittens*.

On more practical lines, I also plan to self-publish some novelettes and novellas as standalones. These seem to do pretty well (hearing other people's experiences), probably because it's an area where other publishing doesn't do as much.

Novels

My aim this year is to finish off a novel and query it. I'd still like an agent and trade publishing deals for novel-length work. It'd be nice to have other people to handle the contracts, money in advance, bookstore distribution and all those things. I also dream of having a cover with shiny foil on it one day, which is a small dream, but I like shiny things**.

I have been asked if I plan to self-publish any novels. It's possible, but it's not my focus at the moment.

Fish Versus Fungi

I'm now officially Polenth Blake of Fungi on Goodreads. Fish started later and is catching up, though had a setback when Crossed Genres: Year 2 got an extra rating out of nowhere (that book is out-of-print, so I was surprised).

If anyone's read either anthology and has a Goodreads account, ratings and reviews are really helpful. Most short fiction comes out of small presses, so it's good to support them.

You'll note I'm looking at number of ratings, rather than what the rating is. This is because I believe any rating/review is a good thing, including the bad ones. I've also come to realise I'm a lot like Mike in Monsters Inc, where he's super excited about appearing in an advert for one second before being covered in a logo. I tend to be going, "Look! Look! I was mentioned in a review!" even if the mention was really bad. It means they read my story! (Before setting fire to it and stomping on the pieces.)

I may have a different way of looking at it, but I'm a whole lot happier than the authors throwing toddler tantrums***.

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* I didn't make it up. They're really called twittens, and have been long before Twitter. They're basically little alleyways.

** And if I ever publish a picture book, I want glitter. Lots of glitter.

*** The last author meltdown I read was over a four-star review. Four stars just isn't enough.

Rainbow Lights: Writing the Back Cover

Recently in one writing community, a new person arrived and declared themselves amazingly talented. Their other online bios said they were special and unique. The reaction was a certain amount of bogglement, to say the least.

This is the issue self-published books face. Everyone knows the author wrote the summary on the back*, so the usual marketing fluff sounds hilariously unaware at best. Most authors deal with it by writing as little as possible, which is going to harm their sales, because it leaves the reader with little idea about the book.

So what can go on the back, if declaring myself to be an amazing writer is off the cards**?

I tackled it in a similar way to covers, by going out and reading descriptions for short story collections (and a few anthologies). My thoughts aren't rules set in stone. Someone else may prefer an entirely different sort of back cover. But these are the things that I felt worked, or didn't, when it came to telling me whether I wanted to buy the book.

Sections of the Summary

These are the main areas I found in summaries. They appear in different mixes in effective summaries, but I didn't find any I liked that missed out summaries of the stories inside. After all, I'm buying the collection for the stories, so it better say something about them.

1. Author Name

It sounds obvious, but a lot of self-published collections missed this piece of information. It's on the cover, yes. But it still helps to state it directly in the product description, so it's clear it's a collection of stories by one person, and not an anthology.

2. Genre and Themes

This might refer to the author or the stories. Genre writers have this one easy, as it's where the book would be placed in the bookstore (romance, mystery, fantasy, etc.), with perhaps a modifier like humorous, dark or experimental. It's a little trickier with books that don't easily classify, but experimental, interstitial and cross-genre are all possibles.

Some descriptions avoided this direct reference, and tried to rely on descriptions of the story content. The issue here is some left me uncertain about the overall genre. Stories about dark secrets could be literary fiction about people's past traumas, mystery stories about serial killers or paranormal stories about werewolves. So which is it?

Making up genres also doesn't help. I know people like to believe they're created something all-new, which couldn't possibly be described in basic terms, but how many readers will search the online store for spacehamsterpunk?

3. Statistics

The ebook age has changed the needs of the summary somewhat. In a physical book, you can see how thick the book is, so you know roughly how many words are inside. In the digital world, a collection could be anything from three short stories to fifty. The reader needs some idea of length, so they can judge whether it's good value for money.

Self-published authors win on this point, as even the shortest description tended to include the number of stories and their length category (five short stories, three novellas, and so on). Some of the trade published books have yet to catch up.

4. Story Summary

This is likely to be the biggest part of a lot of back covers. It's a way of going past a basic genre tag and showing what the author writes about. A few common ways:

Story description: A cat grows a fish tail and swims across the Atlantic, to be reunited with her owner.

Character lists: A sentient potato, a pink mushroom and a lump of coal find happiness in this collection of twelve romance stories. Character lists worked the best for collections with unusual characters. A college graduate, a house spouse and an office worker aren't as eye-catching. The lists also tended to be part of a sentence with some other elements (like the genre and number of stories).

Character plus story: A cheerleader has a dark secret. A squirrel is chased by the ghosts of acorns. This combines the character list with a bit of story, but not as long or detailed as the single story description.

There wasn't one true way of making these work. The back covers I liked the best all had some story summary, but different combinations work best for different books. The biggest failing of this part is some descriptions tried to summarise every story in the collection (or as many as possible). In general, this worked best with a maximum of three descriptions in a row, or three items in a list. More than that started to drag. It's understandable if it was a collection of four novellas to include a description of all four, but ten in a row is too many.

5. Author Achievements

Not every author has achievements, but when they do, it helps. Someone with professional publications or award wins is expected to be able to put out coherent prose. However, some back covers tried to use achievements to carry the whole collection. It doesn't matter how many awards someone has won... if I don't know the author and there's no suggestion of the type of stories in the book, I won't buy it.

6. Quotes

Established authors often have quotes from reviews or other authors. Personally, I find these useless for buying books. They take up space with waffle about how great the author is, without telling me what the author actually writes. Someone obviously likes them, as they're common, but I skip these. When a back cover is mainly quotes, I'm moving on to the next collection.

7. Table of Contents

An optional extra for short collections is to include the table of contents after everything else. This is more common for online product descriptions than the back cover of printed books, and works best for collections with only a handful of stories. I don't think anyone would expect a collection with thirty stories to list them out.

Back Cover Issues

Order and Weight

The order of the elements mattered. If it started with three quotes from other authors, I would have moved on as a reader. I only read to the end because I was analysing them. If it ended with those same three quotes, it wouldn't have mattered as much.

Some descriptions were also a bit too in love with one element, such as listing author achievements and not much else. Yes, it's nifty they've done all those things, but if no space is given to the stories, it won't attract new readers.

Vagueness

Some summaries had an attack of the vague. Everything's amazing, ground-breaking and awe-inspiring, but nothing got more specific than that. What's the book about exactly?

I Hate my Genre!

It's a fantasy story, but it's totally believable, unlike those other fantasy stories. It's science fiction, but there's no science in it, so it's like it could be the modern world. It's romance, but without any of that love stuff. Apparently it needs to be said this isn't a good idea. Readers generally like the genres they read. Why would they read a book written by someone who hates them?

Repeat Everything

Repeats were often not the exact same word, but similar enough. Mythic, mythical or myth-inspired. Dark, darkness and darkened. This doesn't always pop out as a problem, in that it reads okay when the words are spread out, or someone changed darkened to shadowed. But it means the description misses the chance to introduce a different aspect of the collection. If I replace one of the darknesses with melancholy, it's given me an idea of how the collection is dark.

Oh, the Humanity!

A surprising number of books assure the reader it's about humans. Or if it's not about humans, it's about humanity, the human experience, or some other way of saying it's all about humans. Generally, I think it'd be safe to say people will assume the book is about humans. Or of it's about non-humans, that it won't be so mind-bogglingly incomprehensible a human can't understand what's going on.

I'm never again going to be able to read a cover mentioning the human experience without laughing.

But other than adding to my general level of mirth, you're also filling up space with a rather pointless message. Shock news: there are humans in this! Actual real ones who do human stuff!

Nobody's Perfect

The summaries I liked best were not perfect. Some summarised a few too many of the stories. Or they started with a rather vague review quote. Or they didn't say how long the book would be. But I would have bought the book, if I was looking for that sort of story, and that's ultimately the goal.

It's important to keep in mind, because trying to make things perfect can lead to stripping out any voice and soul from it. A back cover won't work for everyone. It mainly needs to work for the target audience and it only has to work enough for them to want the book. I'm sure some instances where the summary was over-long or repetitive were due to trying to answer all the questions critiquers had (because I've seen the exact same thing happen to queries).

My Back Cover

Putting this all together, I came up with something for my summary. Here's how it ended up:

A deep-sea robot tells stories in every colour, but no shade can describe meeting a giant squid.

Rainbow Lights is the first collection by science fiction and fantasy author Polenth Blake. Alien scorpions, vampire ice cream sellers and clockwork flies, try to find their place in worlds where being human is optional. These thirty-five stories and poems are a mixture of new pieces and work published in venues like Nature, Strange Horizons and ChiZine.

And here's why:

A deep-sea robot tells stories in every colour, but no shade can describe meeting a giant squid. [Leading with something storyish seemed a good idea, as the back cover is mainly for buyers who don't know who I am. It'll be down to whether the stories sound interesting.]

Rainbow Lights is the first collection [Not compulsory, but it sounds shiny and new to be the first one... if it were the tenth and they'd never heard of me, they'd wonder] by science fiction and fantasy [I have genres!] author Polenth Blake. [And also a name. This gets the basic stuff out of the way.]

Alien scorpions, vampire ice cream sellers and clockwork flies, [I aimed to make each part do as much lifting as it could. The character list gives an idea of the range of sub-genres (as it implies science fiction, steampunk and urban fantasy), along with a liking for invertebrates and quirky things (unless ice cream becomes the next big thing for urban fantasy, I think it's safe to call it quirky)] try to find their place in worlds where being human is optional. [Okay, I'm having a joke at the expense of human experience summaries. But there really are non-humans, so it works whether anyone shares my sense of humour or not.]

These thirty-five [I really hope I counted them correctly] stories and poems are a mixture of new pieces and work published in venues like Nature, Strange Horizons and ChiZine. [I write well enough for people to pay me, and these also come with some genre implications, as Nature is hard science fiction and ChiZine is dark/horror. I have range, or something like that.]

And there we go. Someone did suggest I mention my imaginary goldfish on the back cover, but I'm saving that for the author bio.

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* Though I'm calling it the back cover summary, it's also the product description for online stores. It's sometimes called the blurb too, but I've seen that used to describe quotes from other authors about the book, and that's not what this post is about.

** Not that it was ever on the cards. I've always hated job application cover letters, where you're supposed to say you're reliable, hard-working and the best person for the job. I'm cursed with a certain amount of honesty, so I know I'm not the best person for the job, and no more hard-working and reliable than the other candidates. My solution was to achieve things, so I could list achievements, rather than talk about how wonderful I was. It's helpful to have something else to waffle about.

Women and Others in Genre

April has been declared as one for women in genre. There's Women in SF&F Month at Fantasy Cafe [ETA 5/2013: See # footnote for update], and #WomeninGenre going on via blogs and Twitter. I'm all for the general idea. It's about promoting people who otherwise get ignored. I have a list of writers and related people to enthuse about as my contribution. But it raises a question I've asked before: Who counts as a woman?

The Background

In gender terms, I'm an androgyne. That's a stable thing, and would make the most sense as something to put on forms. But forms only really care about sex, even if they label it as gender.

In sex terms, I'm a man and a woman, along with an identity as both and neither. This shifts depending on the day, and sometimes I'm more comfortable identifying one way and sometimes another way. I also acknowledge that others usually see me as female, and that impacts how they treat me. I face sexism for being seen as female, rather than the privilege that comes from being seen as male. So at some level, I see myself as a woman, if not completely and all the time.

In terms of affirmative action, this isn't binary enough. I'll usually be discounted as a man by those running the action, and a woman by those putting together lists of men. An example of this came when a now-dead magazine was going to publish a women's issue. Firstly, they asked for feminine stories, which I queried. And in response said they'd be open to transgender works. Up until a commenter decided to attack me over it, at which point the editor backed down and said they'd see what came in and make the decision then, as though it was a perfectly valid point raised by the commenter.

Their point was this:

An all women issue sounded really cool to me too!!! Then I read your response to Polenth’s question of "or are females of other genders included?" and was very disappointed. How about truly sticking to the theme you’ve announced by leaving out all the confusing stuff about women being of some gender other than female?

You already said: "For this issue the sign on the proverbial door says "girl writers only." Sorry gents.""
WHICH WAS PERFECTLY CLEAR – Please keep it that way.

Why not consider another special edition to accommodate Polenth?

Unsurprisingly, I never submitted to that magazine, because anyone who thinks the above is an fine response worthy of serious consideration has made it plain I'm not wanted. But it's a common attitude, that people like me should find somewhere else to be (always a hypothetical somewhere, because they don't actually care if that place exists). That we don't get to go on the men's list or the women's list, so should get our own list. However, there's never enough in the category of "it's complicated" for there to be a separate list, or a separate theme issue, or a separate month of awareness. And some people don't want to be on a separate list, because they identify mainly as a man or a woman, even if it is complicated.

This isn't just an issue when it comes to sex/gender identity. On Rochita Loenen-Ruiz's article "Woman's Work and Woman of Color at Work", she said:

This is how complex it becomes when we speak of the work of women and the work of women who come from outside of the US or the UK. If the work of women is pressed into the margins, how much more pressed into the margins are the works of women of color? How much more pressed into the margins are the works of women who do not come from within the native English-speaking hegemony?

I can think of a number of occasions where people have called for more diversity in genre, acted on it by producing a list of women writers, and those writers have been very un-diverse in all other respects. 'Women' is taken to mean a very narrow range of people. When a list is a sea of white women, there's something up. Someone's decided, however sub-consciously, that brown women aren't actually women. The same thing happens based on nationality, class, disability and sexuality. That I'm focusing my discussion on one aspect doesn't make it okay to forget it's a wider issue (much as it's not okay to say, "Well, at least the list is all women! We'll work on the other prejudices later.")

The Non-Binary Issues

So, here we are in April with #WomeninGenre month. And those mixed feelings are there, because every month gets to be #MeninGenre month, and occasionally it's #WomeninGenre month, but it's never #UnbinaryinGenre month. I face the issue of either asking to be included as a woman or not being included at all. I don't object to be labelled as a woman when it's kept at that, but it often comes with baggage, like assuming I'm feminine and assuming I'm always and only a woman, which is uncomfortable. And even if I ask, chances are high people will decide if I'm not entirely a woman, I'm a man.

There are also issues when it comes to making lists of unbinary people. For a start, how do you define it? It's not as though people are either totally binary or totally not.

I wonder how many are around I don't know about. It's often essential to say you're a man or a woman to get through the system. If I refused to tick a box on forms, or ticked both, I couldn't have gone to university, filed for unemployment benefits, signed up for my taxes, got a passport and so many other things. I've chosen the hard road by insisting that outside of official paperwork, I'm going to talk about my identity. I can understand why some people hide it when it comes to the industry, much as I can understand why some women writers still pretend to be men.

And I know some people who might be open to trusted friends, but not family and co-workers, because of the backlash that often comes with it.

When a writer says they're a woman, it may not be entirely what they mean.

A List of Ten People

I took the above into account when I made my list. Some of my list are women. Others are genderqueer, androgynous, trans* and others who are non-binary or don't fit neatly into classifications (who may or may not identify as women, so please don't copy/paste this list under a heading of women without checking). I've used the pronouns from their bios, but it should be noted pronouns are a complex thing, and shouldn't be taken as an identity statement**.

Aliette de Bodard - Aliette's had a good year for award nominations. Two nominated works are Immersion and her novella On a Red Station, Drifting.

Alex Dally Macfarlane - Alex is editing the upcoming anthologies "Aliens: Recent Encounters" and "The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women". Her stories include The 17th Contest of Body Artistry.

Benjanun Sriduangkaew - Benjanun's stories include Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods.

Brit Mandelo - Brit edited Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction. Her work includes the poem What I Have Not Done.

Kat Zhang - Kat's debut young adult novel What's Left of Me was out in 2012.

Keffy R. M. Kehrli - Keffy is an editor at Shimmer. His story Bonehouse appeared in Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction.

Nnedi Okorafor - Nnedi's written a number of novels, but my favourite is still Zahrah the Windseeker. Her story From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7 is set in the same world as Zahrah.

Rose Fox - Rose works as a book review editor at Publishers Weekly and is editing the upcoming anthology Long Hidden.

Rose Lemberg - Rose edits poetry magazine Stone Telling and was editor of A Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry. Her short works include Seven Losses of Na Re.

Shweta Narayan - Shweta edits poetry magazine Stone Telling. I particularly liked her story Pishaach in The Beastly Bride anthology.

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* If you followed the star thinking, "Aha, a footnote!" I didn't want to disappoint. But this time, it's not my usual footnote notation. The star goes with the word. When I started blogging, I thought stars would be good for footnotes because no words had stars in them. People are laughing at me now.

** It's not unusual for non-binary people to use binary pronouns in English. I do so because I don't get on with the newer neutral ones very well (I can't type them comfortably into a sentence... I'd have to stop and check each one, which doesn't work for talking about myself) and I don't like the older neutral ones much (they and it). It's less common for someone binary to use neutral pronouns, but it happens.

Basically, a pronoun might be a statement of identity, but you can't assume it is, or that you know what statement it's making.

# The Fantasy Cafe series turned out not to be quite what I was expecting. I was expecting more of a "here are awesome works by women, and don't forget about them the rest of the year", which there is some of. But they also published a post where the author states there isn't as much sexism in the genre as people say, and the main fault of what does exist is people talking about gender. A direct quote being: "I think the way to truly overcome any gender bias is to get rid of these gender-focused discussions. We need to focus on quality, rather than plumbing."

You can focus on quality without telling people they're wrong for discussing sex and gender issues. Stopping talking about gender isn't something I endorse, as you might guess from the fact I wrote a whole post talking about gender and sex identity. And from a non-binary perspective, assuming someone's genitals are their gender or sex is problematic. So handle the Fantasy Cafe series with care.

A more detailed discussion of that post was written by fozmeadows.