Locus Is a Lifeline for Writers in the Margins

"Locus" plays an essential role in the SFF community, connecting writers and fans from all over the world.

It was 2010 when I first started writing fiction in my native language, Greek. There weren’t a whole lot of opportunities for artists in Greece, although many talented people exceled in various artistic mediums, so I decided to try writing in English.

This came with an array of challenges to overcome, such as improving my reading and writing skills in English. Those were obstacles I had anticipated. But others, such as the lack of peers who wrote in English (with a few exceptions) or a sense of belonging to the US writing community, I had not.

That’s where Locus comes in.

There are many writers like me out there. Not just writers who live far away from North American conventions, but even those who live in small US towns, those who can’t afford to travel to a convention, those that face accessibility issues, those who have many obligations and can’t carve more time to become actively involved in the science fiction and fantasy community. For all of us out there, Locus provides an insider’s eye into the happenings of the community: It covers a wide array of books and magazines as well as many industry events, both in-person and online.

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Locus as well as the source of this article, Reactor, are vital to the science fiction and fantasy literary community and to it's fandoms. These resources must be protected.

PLEASE for the love of the universe read anti-colonial science fiction and fantasy written from marginalized perspectives. Y’all (you know who you are) are killing me. To see people praise books about empire written exclusively by white women and then turn around and say you don’t know who Octavia Butler is or that you haven’t read any NK Jemisin just kills me! I’m not saying you HAVE to enjoy specific books but there is such an obvious pattern here

Some of y’all love marginalized stories but you don’t give a fuck about marginalized creators and characters, and it shows. Like damn

In Tokyo, sixteen-year-old Nao has decided there's only one escape from her aching loneliness and her classmates' bullying, but before she ends it all, Nao plans to document the life of her great-grandmother, a Buddhist nun who's lived more than a century. A diary is Nao's only solace—and will touch lives in a ways she can scarcely imagine. Across the Pacific, we meet Ruth, a novelist living on a remote island who discovers a collection of artifacts washed ashore in a Hello Kitty lunchbox—possibly debris from the devastating 2011 tsunami. As the mystery of its contents unfolds, Ruth is pulled into the past, into Nao's drama and her unknown fate, and forward into her own future.  Full of Ozeki's signature humour and deeply engaged with the relationship between writer and reader, past and present, fact and fiction, quantum physics, history, and myth, A Tale for the Time Being is a brilliantly inventive, beguiling story of our shared humanity and the search for home.

At the local bookstore there’s a system where employees can write a snippet about their favorite stories and they go on the shelf under the book as a little endorsement. On the last visit I very quickly noticed that every book I’d loved in the past year was marked and I instantly trusted the employees.

Then I started bouncing along the shelves to see which books were marked that I hadn’t read yet and instantly put holds on all the ones I was unfamiliar with. I didn’t even read the synopsis. One upshot of this was discovering T. Kingfisher.

Nettle and Bone had a little employee card so I popped a hold on it. It came in a few weeks later and I adored it. The storytelling was beautifully done and I thought, okay, what else you got.

So I got my hands on A Wizards Guide to Defensive Baking. I think I’d seen it floating around and written it off cause of the silly cover. Fucking phenomenal, great storytelling, tight pacing, just overall wonderful. Read Thornhedge. Loved it.

So I just moved T. Kingfisher to my “Always Read” list. She has not failed to delight with any of her stories and I’m now pretty confident that regardless of content I’m gonna have a great time.

One time I read this pulpy romance book and it made me literally an insane person and I went onto the authors website and found her contact me page and I wrote her this really long email about how much I loved her book and looking back it was really actually very unhinged and also it was 2am but she emailed me back that morning and was nice about it :)

it's sad that phillip pullman didn't get to live a couple decades earlier because he seems to want to engage with discussions of story and literature and myth that there is not much attention for nowadays

‘Danmei is mlm fantasy written by and for straight women’ is a lie. It’s written for transmascs and lesbians obviously.

Thinking about the Chevalier interlude, specifically the inaugural team of Wards. Like in universe, they sell it to this first group of kids (and presumably the rest of the world) as a place for second chances, to find friends and mentors who understand what youre going through, where you can learn to use your powers safely while making good memories. The kids broadly seem to believe in these noble intentions of course, but what really gets me is that I've seen readers buy into it!

"Oh, it's such a tragedy that the Wards program became this awful thing that traumatizes kids even more, and expects them to die for the sake of civilians! It's fallen so short of what it was originally supposed to be!"

No it has not??? The fact that the triumvirate and Hero are saying it has this noble goal doesn't make it true. The Wards was pretty clearly always a way to increase the amount of bodies the prt could throw at threats, and we know this because it was started by the fucking Triumvirate as a part of the Protectorate! Alexandria literally came up with the idea of the Protectorate to legitimize the power of capes, and have a consistent source of heroes Cauldron could throw at problems. That is the whole reason for the PRT/Protectorate existing. So when we have this group of children brought in a subsidiary, there are 2 real options.

1). Cauldron and Alexandria decided they would be really niceys and created this program with no intentions other than helping these kids out.

Or 2). As things got worse, they realized the Protectorate didn't have enough manpower to do what they needed, and so they expanded it to include children (the demographic most prone to triggering). That way, they greatly increase the number of capes who they can send to fight and die as needed, and the ones who do survive their tenure in the Wards will be better trained when it comes time to join the actual Protectorate.

At the risk of sounding conceited, I think the second one is far more likely based on everything we know about Cauldron. Maybe it was originally a little nobler, and the goal was just to create more well trained heroes and cut back on young villains, but there's no way Alexandria, Doc Mom, and Contessa didn't factor in the ability to sacrifice the kid heroes if it improved their chances of success. That was absolutely a perk at minimum.

That's the real tragedy of the inaugural Wards. The kids were lured in with promises of safety, comraderie, and second chances like lambs to the slaughter. All the while, Alexandria and Cauldron knew that many (if not most) of these children would suffer abuse by the prt (like in the case of Reed), die, or face a fate worse than death like poor Mouse Protector. It's horrifying! The idea that they didn't know the danger these kids would be in is literally inconceivable. Especially when one of you is also the head of the prt! They knew, and they didn't care. It improved their chances at the end of the world, and so they did it no matter the cost.

i feel like i havent read enough horror novels to give recs bc my only advice is try a book or two from ~5 of the most popular horror authors (imo) and then rip through the author’s entire body of work for whichever is your favorite rinse and repeat until youre out of those 5. Then start reading at random i guess or just die

SSK fic recs? :D

thank you for biting that bait afndgcbs

some skk fic recs "where the characters are trapped in an alivehouse psychological horror situation or perhaps a labyrinth of sorts", don't read the descriptions if you want a blind read, those are not the official ones:

The Liar's House translated by burgundytshirt

Dazai, Kunikida, Atsushi, Chuuya, Akutagawa and Kajii are stuck in some kind of haunted house, where lying can make you lose one of your senses. It isn't gorey despite what it looks like.

A Doll's House by Abyss_In_Wonderland_Likes_Sexy_Cannibals

Dazai and Chuuya get transported inside an ability space that has been designed to test partnerships. They have to overcome many challenges as a team!

Picking a Flower That Blooms on the Heart for You translated by burgundytshirt

Chuuya gets stuck in a time loop that resets every time he dies from hanahaki. Chuuya investigates and uncovers the mysteries behind these events.

The worst part about reading in a genre where you have low expectations (in this case, Christian historical fiction) is that when a book impresses you, you have no idea if it's actually good or if you're just overly impressed because it was a fraction of a degree better than the usual garbage.

and when we start putting our works behind paywalls, then what?

really obsessed with soulmate au’s recently and it got me thinking… what if john’s soulmate was part of the boys? a girl trying to kill him with an entire group of people also trying to kill him… and he’s fated to her? could picture him finding out and just putting his hands on his hips while turning his back to her and doing that click chuckle thing. just in utter disbelief but it is definitely on track for fate’s little play with him and his life lolol

Oohhh, you know, I've never played much with the soulmate au concept, but this struck me just right because I can so clearly see the slow, building meltdown that strikes him when that reveal drops.

The mirthless laugh, shaking his head, the hapless gesture to the ceiling before his hands drop. "Of course. Of course it's you. Why wouldn't it be? I mean—Christ, it makes sense, doesn't it? Every single person who was supposed to love me has-has fucked it, so why—" he keeps cutting into this escalating, unsettling laughter. There's nothing funny about it: you're sure that you're watching someone lose the last shred of their sanity in real time. "Why would my 'soulmate'-", he says, miming big, dramatic quotation marks. "-be any different?" That manic grin has shifted into tight baring of his teeth, a vicious sneer. He closes in on you, stands so near you can feel the heat of his breath when he hisses, "I should put you in the fucking dirt with the rest of them."

It should be terrifying, but it's hard to focus on anything other than the glassiness of his eyes. The sheer devastating heartbreak of it all, telegraphed clear as day in the way he carries himself. His eyes flare red, sizzling up the tears before they can fall. "And then you really will be all alone," you say. Maybe it's the hopelessness of the moment, maybe it's the shock of learning for yourself that he's supposed to be your one and only, but you feel numb. Frayed in a way you didn't know you could be. The crimson light of his eyes disappears in an instant, revealing surprise, followed by a wounded kind of look, before that familiar seething rage returns. "We'll see about that."