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CHERYL'S MEWSINGS

FELINE THOUGHTS ABOUT ANYTHING FROM FOOD TO READING TO RUGBY

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MY FANTASYCON SCHEDULE

October 9, 2024 ~ Cheryl ~ Leave a comment

FantasyCon is only a couple of days away. Here’s where you can find me.

Friday, October 11th 9pm (Baba Yaga Room)
Fantasy In The City – Urban or second world, the city is fertile stomping ground
for fantasy. Why? And how do we treat the city like a character? Panellists:
Cheryl Morgan, Ella Summers, Liz Cain, David Green, Sandra Unerman (m).

Saturday, October 12th 7pm (Kraken Room)
Queer Role Models in Fandom – There’s nothing quite like the thrill of
discovering someone like you in your favourite book, TV show, or movie. What
characters are queer role models done well in genre? Panellists: Cheryl Morgan
(m), Susan J Morris, Tej Turner +1.

Sunday, October 13th 1pm (Kraken Room)
Demystifying the Editing Process – Every editor is different. Here, they share
their methods of working, from developmental editing to line edits, and what
writers can expect. Panellists: George Sandison, Claire Cronshaw, Jonathan
Oliver, David Thomas Moore, Cheryl Morgan (m).

I will not have a dealer table. If you want to buy a Wizard’s Tower book, let me
know tomorrow and I’ll put it in the car before leaving.

MY OCTOCON SCHEDULE

October 1, 2024 ~ Cheryl ~ Leave a comment

This weekend I will mostly be at a writing retreat in Llandybie along with Roz,
Jo and various friends. However, I have to rush home on the Saturday evening
because I need functioning internet. I am doing one virtual panel at Octocon, as
follows:

Saturday, 5 October 2024; 20:30
Stop Passing the Buck: Consent in Historical Fantasy: So often in historical
fantasy, we are bombarded with violence we didn’t ask for, particularly sexual
violence against women. When this concern is raised, the authors frequently hide
behind “I want to stay true to the time period” and “we can’t judge the past by
today’s standards”. But why are authors bound to a period that didn’t exist when
they’re creating a new society? Why do they hold to this, instead of creating
their own? And why does the adherence to the past only seem to show up in
violence against women and not to the beauty standards of the time? Why is
assault more palatable to an audience than unshaved armpits? How do we go about
demanding that this change, or do we have to abandon a genre we otherwise love?
– with Faranae, Kat Dodd, Nick Hubble and MaryBrigid Turner (m).

Juliet McKenna is also attending the convention, and she has a panel at 13:30 on
Sunday about exploring lesser-known fairy tales. That sounds like something
where she might talk about the research she does for the Green Man books.

Full details of this year’s Octocon (and you can still buy a virtual membership)
are available here.

WORLDCON HO!

August 1, 2024 ~ Cheryl

In a few days time I will be packing the car with books and heading up to
Glasgow. Most of the time I will be in the Dealers’ Room, so I should be easy to
find. I have precisely one panel. Here it is:

Sunday, 11 August 2024 – 11:30 – Gods and Faith in Fantasy – Forth, Duration: 60
mins

Faith and the divine have played a huge role in fantasy, from Terry Pratchett’s
Small Gods to N. K. Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy and Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s
Gods of Jade and Shadow. This panel will discuss the presentations and
representations of the divine in fantasy, the ways writers put faith on the
page, and the role of gods in story.

With: Ehud Maimon (moderator), Meg MacDonald & Wole Talabi

MY FINNCON SCHEDULE

June 21, 2024 ~ Cheryl

It is almost July, and that means I will be heading to Finland for Finncon. This
year the convention is being held in Jyväskylä, home of my dear friend, Irma
Hirsjärvi. I will be on programme. The convention website is here, but to read
it all you will need to know a bit of Finnish. In the main menu: Ohjelma =
Programme. In that menu: Perjantai = Friday; Lauantai = Saturday; and Sunnuntai
= Sunday. The programme grids for each day describe the English-language items
in English. My assignments are:

Friday 5th: 15:00
On Writing, in which I interview Guest of Honour, Ursula Vernon (a.k.a. T.
Kingfisher) about her writing practice.

Saturday 6th: 14:00
Wales in the Time of Arthur, in which I talk about Welsh history in the 5th and
6th centuries, CE.

Saturday 6th: 17:00
Masquerade – Ursula and I will be among the judges

Sunday 7th: 10:00
Queer Fantasies, in which a panel of queer-identified folks talk about their
favourite fantasy books with queer elements.

Following the convention, I will be attending Rencontre Assyriologique
Internationale at the University of Helsinki. And because my life is a bit mad,
on Saturday 13th I will dialing in to the Marginalised Writers’ Day at
Abertystwyth University, from the Finnair Lounge at Helsinki airport.

Talking of that day, my pals at Inclusive Journalism Cymru now have a blog post
up about it. Two of my colleagues will be attending in person and reporting on
social media: one in English and one in Welsh.

HUSTINGS

June 20, 2024 ~ Cheryl

We have an election happening in the UK. In the past such things have often been
of little interest to me. The town where I grew up, and the town where I lived
until recently, were both in constituencies where the the Tories could have put
up a corpse and still got over 50% of the vote. Ah well, at least I wasn’t in
the Bath & North East Somerset constituency, where they did put up a corpse who
kept getting elected. However, Rees-Mogg is one of many Tories too chicken the
contest the election this time because he knows he’ll lose. That’s not the case
for Trowbridge, where the incumbent Tory is still confident of winning.

These days, things are very different. To start with, my local constituency is
known to be a hot bed of Plaid Cymru supporters. Secondly, it is one of the
constituencies that the Tories gerrymandered. They have stuck us in with
Carmarthen which has traditionally been solidly Tory. And with Labour on the
rise across the country, people were initially predicting a three-way fight.

Earlier this week some friends and I headed into Carmarthen to see a hustings.
It was being held at SERO, a community environment centre, and was therefore
likely to attract a more progressive audience. Of the 8 candidates, only 4
turned up. The far-right (Reform) and far-left (Workers Party) candidates did
not respond to the invitation to participate. The Green, very sadly, was sick
and unable to attend. There was a place set for the Tory, but he didn’t show. It
looks like he has given up. So maybe it is only a two-way race.

Ours is one of the few seats in the country to have a Women’s Equality Party
candidate. I suspect that is because the incumbent for my town’s old seat was
kicked out of Plaid when he was arrested for beating his wife, though he kept
his seat in Parliament. However, he decided not to run, which left my new pal,
Nancy Cole, with much less to do. It was her first time as a candidate, and with
the election having been called in a rush she had no time to get any training.
In view of that, she did very well, but I don’t expect her to retain her
deposit. On the plus side, both the Labour and Plaid candidates supported most
of her positions. Getting other parties to support their policies is one of main
purposes of WEP.

The LibDem candidate, Nick Beckett, was the only man among the four candidates.
He’s a local councillor, clearly an experienced politician, and he spoke very
well. Sadly he has no chance.

The Labour candidate, Martha O’Neil, is very personable. She was born here,
speaks good Welsh, and clearly knows the area despite now being part of the
Westminster set. She’s young, very smart (won a scholarship to Cambridge), has
worked for an animal rights charity, and knows a lot about IT (a skill sadly
lacking in Westminster). She could win.

That leaves Plaid Cymru. Their candidate, Ann Davies, is also an experienced
local councillor. She owns a small farm near Carmarthen. What I’d seen of her
campaign before the hustings was all about being anti building new transmission
links to connect renewable generation to the grid. Farmers have a reputation of
being very conservative around here, so I was a bit worried.

Thankfully Ann was very different in person. She, along with Nick and Martha,
had clearly researched options for getting more renewables online without
building pylons through local beauty spots. She was well aware of the
culpability of farmers in polluting rivers, and knew something had to be done.
Despite being quite a bit older than Martha, she was equally vociferous in
supporting the women’s rights issues raised by Nancy. Being a Plaid candidate,
she was able to talk about advocating for Wales, whereas Martha, if elected,
would be subject to the whims of the very English Labour establishment. And she
was the only candidate to mention LGBTQ+ rights, unprompted at that.

To date no one has come to my door canvassing. I’ve had one leaflet from Labour
and two from Plaid. The Tories sent a questionnaire asking about my political
views, which seemed to be aimed at getting a list of people to be sent to
internment camps should they actually win.

Given that it seems that kicking out the Tory is not going to be an issue here,
we are more free to vote our conscience. Some of my friends will vote Green
regardless. Personally I’d like to vote for Nancy, but I’m also very invested in
the Plaid Cymru v Labour contest, because the thought of a government led by
Kier Starmer with a massive majority fills me with terror.

Most people in the UK will be better off under Labour. There’s little doubt
about that. A few groups of people will not be. That includes trans people.
Starmer has been very clear that he supports all of the anti-trans policies put
forward by the Tories. In his view, trans women are not women, even if they have
a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), and he has promised to ensure that
people like me are kept out of “women only spaces”. That means hospital wards,
changing rooms, toilets, rape crisis centres and so on.

The hospital thing is interesting because NHS Wales is a separate organisation
from NHS England. But this is probably one of the points where we will discover
that Starmer does not believe in devolution. I’ll just have to hope that I don’t
need a hospital stay any time soon.

Toilets and changing rooms are a different matter. There’s a case before the UK
Supreme Court at the moment that will probably end up with a ruling that it is
legal to exclude trans women from “women only spaces”, even if they have a GRC.
That won’t be enough for the transphobes. What they want, and what Starmer seems
prepared to give them, is to change the law so that it is a crime to allow a
trans woman to use a “woman only space”.

This will put the onus on service providers–hotels, pubs, gyms, shops and so
on–to enforce the law. They will end up getting lots of false positives, causing
endless trouble for cis women who are not sufficiently feminine-looking. But
they will, very reasonably, claim that the Gender Recognition Act is an obstacle
to their upholding the law. I have government ID (passport and driving licence)
that say very clearly that I am female. The government would have to demand that
I surrender those so that I can’t use them to pee illegally. As I have no desire
to have government ID that outs me as trans to anyone I have to show it to, that
would be a major inconvenience.

As far as other constituencies go, I would still advocate voting Labour if the
only alternative is the Tories. I’d probably be voting Labour if I was still in
Trowbridge. But if, like me, you have the option to get rid of a Tory without
giving the seat to Labour (or Reform), I hope you will do so. The country needs
an opposition.

Friends in Bristol, please vote for Carla, she’s great.

ABERYSTWYTH DOES MARGINALISED WRITERS

June 11, 2024 ~ Cheryl

My friend Jo Lambert, who is a Creative Writing student at Aberystwyth, is
co-hosting a day-long hybrid event for Marginalised Writers at the University of
Aberystwyth on July 13th. As a trans writer/publisher, I have been invited to be
on a panel. As it turns out, I’ll be on my way back from Finland at the time,
but I’m hoping to be able to log in from the Finnair lounge at Helsinki Airport.

The event is aimed at marginalised people of sorts. If you are a person of
colour, disabled, elderly, queer, living with mental illness, on a very low
income or any other form of marginalisation, this day is for you. While Jo is
primarily a novelist, writers of non-fiction are welcome, and indeed the event
is being supported by my friends at Inclusive Journalism Cymru. Attendance is
free, and you can attend online (though you’ll miss out on lovely Aberystwyth
and the free food if you do). Tickets available here.

I hope to see some of you there.

LEGAL SHENANAGINS

March 28, 2024 ~ Cheryl

One of the things that has protected trans rights in the UK over the past couple
of years is that the Tories are too busy, and too cowardly, to actually repeal
the Gender Recognition Act, even though many of their MPs very much want to get
that done. The anti-trans lobby is unhappy about this, and is therefore taking
matters into its own hands by taking legal action. Very soon, their case will
reach the Supreme Court. Should they win, the consequences for trans people in
the UK (and equality law more generally) will be catastrophic.

The Gender Recognition Act says, unambiguously:

> Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the
> personâ€™s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if
> the acquired gender is the male gender, the personâ€™s sex becomes that of a
> man and, if it is the female gender, the personâ€™s sex becomes that of a
> woman).

However, as I understand it, the argument that will be put before the Supreme
Court is that allowing a trans woman to be treated as a woman is, de facto,
discrimination against cisgender women, and therefore illegal under the Equality
Act. As the Equality Act is a more recent piece of legislation, its provisions
should supercede those of the GRA.

Hopefully it is obvious that, should this claim succeed, it will open the doors
to equivalent claims such as, “letting Black people into my whites-only pub is
discrimination against white people,” and “building a wheelchair ramp is
discrimination against able-bodied people.” Thankfully such claims are less
likely to pass the Supreme Court.

But the chances of this getting through are very high. And if it does, not only
will the GRA be rendered useless, it will create a climate of fear in businesses
all around the country. Because it will be possible for a business (or school,
local authority, etc.) to be sued for discrimination if they inadvertently allow
a trans woman to be treated as a woman. This will lead to a lot of proactive
bans being issued at places like public toilets, gyms, clothing stores and so
on. Most of the people caught by this will be gender-nonconforming cisgender
women, because despite what the anti-trans lobby claims, they can’t always tell,
and neither can anyone else.

I say the chances of it getting through are high, because at the moment no trans
people or allies will be allowed to give evidence. The anti-trans lobby is being
bankrolled by She Who Must Not Be Named (to the tune of Â£70,000). In contrast,
a crowdfunder by The Good Law Project to allow them to intervene in the case
stands at just over Â£10,000. Britain’s only senior trans judge has asked for
leave to intervene on the case, but that request may be denied.

My guess is that both Sunak and Starmer will be having messages sent to the
Supreme Court judges encouraging them to find in favour of the case, because
both main political parties would be delighted if the GRA could be made to
vanish without them having to do anything. And of course the judges know that
they will be pilloried in the media if they don’t find in favour of the case.

It would not surprise me if, by the end of this year, the UK had become one of
the most transphobic countries in the world (rather than just one with the most
transphobic media in the world).

INTRODUCING TIR Y DAIL

March 20, 2024 ~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Ah, the Spring Equinox (in the Northern Hemisphere, at any rate). It is a time
of new beginnings, and so perhaps a time to talk about new things. Things, at
any rate, that have been gestating over the winter.

When I lived in Wiltshire, I knew hardly anyone else who lived near me (which
was probably just as well, given how very patriotically English and Tory most
people there were). Most of my friends were in Bath or Bristol, so I could visit
them, but not hang out for any great amount of time.

Here in South Wales I have several good friends who live locally, and who have
many of the same interests as me. Those interests include role-playing;
something I have not been able to do seriously for around three decades due to
lack of a suitable local group (not to mention lack of time).

At the same time I have read Nicola Griffithâ€™s Spear, and am keenly aware that
the place where I live was once the home of the great boar, Twrch Trwyth. This
area is as steeped in Arthuriana as the area around Glastonbury where I grew up.

Now it so happens that one of my favourite role-playing game systems is
Chaosiumâ€™s Pendragon. I ran a campaign many years ago. But Pendragon is very
much based on Malory and Le Morte dâ€™Arthur. It is a high mediaeval and English
version of the Arthur cycle. Would it be possible, I wondered, to do something
more Welsh? Something that was rooted instead in The Mabinogion?

Well, never fear. I did, after all, grow up on Original D&D (the white box
version). As a consequence, I never met a role-playing system that I didnâ€™t
want to customize. I could do this.

Out of such thoughts grew Tir y Dail, a role-playing campaign set (at least
initially) in South Wales, and using a variant of the Pendragon rules to create
a distinctly Welsh feel to the game. Specifically the campaign begins in Ystrad
Tywi, the same location in which we find ourselves at the start of Spear. But
Tir y Dail is not the stylized, mythical land of Griffithâ€™s story. It is
something much more similar to the world of Hild and Menewood. Whereas in Spear,
Ystrad Tywi is a wild land occupied only by a few peasants and bandits, in Tir y
Dail it is a bustling post-Roman culture just beginning to learn to live with
the absence of colonial rule.

The most obvious sign of Roman presence is the still-busy port town of Moridunum
(Carmarthen), the most westerly outpost of the Roman Empire. From here, local
goods can be traded for wine and pottery from the continent. There are two
sizeable villas in the region, one south-west of the city, and one north-east.
Hill forts are everywhere. Tir y Dail (The Land of Leaves) is the name of the
local settlement here in Ammanford, but there are many others dotted about the
region. To the north, keeping watch over the Tywi, are the impressive Dinefwr
Castle and the stately home that stands in its shadow. Those are more modern
constructions, but in the 5th Century the hill on which they stand still boasted
a Roman fort, guarding the road west to Moridunum.

Iâ€™m telling you all this now for a number of reasons. I am NOT planning to
keep a campaign diary. However, I do want to talk about the worldbuilding, and
the historical research that went into it. Some of that I will only be able to
drop once the players have moved past the events in question. Also I see from
BlueSky that my good friend Hal Duncan is working on something similar but based
in Scotland (and presumably fiction). I hope people will find the contrast
illuminating.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with doing Arthurian stories set in Scotland.
We should remember that, before the Romans came, â€œWalesâ€ â€“ the country of
Prydain, inhabited by the Cymry â€“ covered the entire island, at least to the
edge of the Highlands. (Iâ€™ll talk about the problem of the Picts in a later
post.) Glasgow is a Cymric city. The name, Glas Cae, means â€œblue fieldâ€, and
is indicative of especially good grazing.

In the time of Tir y Dail, the Ystrad Clut (the valley of the Clyde) is ruled
over by the Damnonii tribe whose capital was the imposing fortress of Alt Clut
(Dumbarton Rock). It stayed that way until around 870 when Ivar the Boneless and
his Viking buddies finally managed to sack the place. The Damnonii then moved
their capital to Glasgow â€“ specifically to the area called Govan which is just
over the river from the Event Campus where Worldcon will be held. They also fell
under the influence of their Gaelic-speaking neighbours, the Scotii of DÃ¡l
Riada. The new kingdom, known as Strathclyde, remained independent until just
after the Norman invasion of England, at which point they joined the kingdom of
Alba (possibly because they were conquered by MacBeth).

But I digress. Thereâ€™s a huge amount of Welsh history that I want to talk
about. The Irish will be in on it as well (though mostly as villains to begin
with). Iâ€™ll stop for now, but there will be more.

LUXCON, FOR REAL THIS YEAR

March 13, 2024 ~ Cheryl

Last year I was invited to be a Guest of Honour at LuxCon. It was the weekend
after Eastercon which, if you remember, was a massive superspreader event for
COVID. So I ended up being sick and unable to go to Luxembourg. The con
committee were very understanding, and have kindly invited me back this year.

I think I will be able to make it. When I was first invited the date I was given
was the weekend after Easter again. Since then it has been moved two weeks
later. So I am now going there direct from an Assyriology conference in Malta.
However, I’m confident that my Assyriologist friends will be rather more careful
than Eastercon attendees. My main worry is having to go through Heathrow.

Assuming I do get there, it looks like being a fabulous event. I’ve been offered
some fun panels. It looks like they have an excellent cosplay culture. And there
is talk of a live role-playing game featuring the guests.

I’m particularly impressed with the number of guests from around Europe they
have (full list here). Given that everyone in Luxembourg seems to speak at least
3 languages, I guess I should not be surprised.

I will report back in the April issue of Salon Futura.

BRIAN STABLEFORD

March 11, 2024 ~ Cheryl

As I have probably said before, I am useless at obituaries. When I need to write
one, one coping mechanism is to wait and see what others have said. But I can’t
put this off any longer.

Most of the obituaries of Brian Stableford focus on his significant output of
science fiction and fantasy novels. I only got to know him at the tail end of
his career, but in that time he produced some amazing work. See this review on
Emerald City for an example of what he was up to around the turn of the
millennium.

Some people have also focused on debt that they owe Brian as a person. Kim
Newman commented on social media that Brian’s SF vampire novel, Empire of Fear,
was very important to him. Farah Mendlesohn, writing on the BSFA website, had a
more personal connection. And I have one too. Brian was very kind to me when I
was going back and for the California on a regular basis, putting me up for the
night at his home in Reading to save me a hotel night at Heathrow. On one
memorable visit I was up half the night because I could not stop reading an
amazing new book called Perdido Street Station.

But the thing I really wanted to mention was alluded to briefly in the Locus
obituary. They say that Brian produced, “translations of hundreds of French
works”. Yes, hundreds. Let that sink in. Here you can find the eligibility list
for the final year of the SF&F Translation Awards. There are over 40 novels by
Brian on it, and a whole lot of short stories too. Most people would be hard
pressed to read 40 novels in a year. Brian could translate as many in that time.
And, I happen to know, when his eyesight was failing.

We will not see his like again.

FEBRUARY SALON FUTURA

March 6, 2024 ~ Cheryl

Issue #58 of Salon Futura went online last week, just squeaking into February
thanks to the leap day. In it you can find the following:

Book reviews

* The Dawnhounds – New Weird from New Zealand
* The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles – Malka Older being perfect again
* The Four Deaths and One Resurrection of Fyodor Mikhailovich – Zoran
Å½ivkoviÄ‡ kills his literary hero
* The Last to Drown – If Trauma-punk was a thing, Lorraine Wilson would be its
queen
* The Meat Tree – A science fiction take on The Mabinogion

Media reviews:

* What If? â€“ Season #2 – Captain Carter saves the multiverse again
* Masters of the Universe: Revolution – Mark Hamill cackles magnificently as
Skeletor
* Percy Jackson and the Olympians – Recommended by Classicists

And finally, Chengdu Revisited, in which I have things to say about the future
of WSFS than fandom probably doesn’t want to hear.

WE HAVE A CRAWFORD WINNER

March 5, 2024 ~ Cheryl

The results of this year’s Crawford Award for a first fantasy book were
announced yesterday. They are:

Winner: Vajra Chandrasekra, The Saint of Bright Doors (Tor)

Honourable Mentions:

* Juhani Karila, Summer Fishing in Lapland (Pushkin)
* Emma Torzs, Ink Sister Blood Scribe (William Morrow)
* Wole Talabi, Shigidi and The Brass Head of Obalufon (Daw/Gollancz)
* B Pladek, Dry Land (University of Wisconsin Press)

All of these books are well worth a look.

In the past the Crawford has worked on an “advisory group” system which meant
less work and the freedom to comment on the books. This year it moved to a
formal jury, so sadly I am unable to review any of the above. I will be stepping
back from the jury for future years as I don’t have the time to read a whole lot
of books I can’t review.

TESTING, TESTING…

March 2, 2024March 2, 2024 ~ Cheryl

It appears to be necessary to wean my sites off Jetpack, and eventually all
Automattic products. I don’t have the time to investigate Ghost right now, but I
am working on reducing the Jetpack features that I use. Having closed my Tumblr
account, and with Farcebook and Xitter no longer allowing remote posting, the
only thing I was using the Social module for was Mastodon. As of today. I’ve
stopped doing that and have installed the ActivityPub plugin instead. Hence a
testing post.

Now if only it was possible to stop using Microsoft products as well… Yes, yes,
I know, but I still have to work, and clients expect me to use Microsoft.

Update: Well that’s annoying. Apparently ActivityPub doesn’t play well with W3
Total Cache. So for now I’ll have to manually cross-post to Mastodon as I’ve
been doing to BlueSky. Not that I blog that often here these days, so it is not
much of a pain.

PUBLIC STATEMENT RE THE HUGOS

February 19, 2024 ~ Cheryl ~ 11 Comments

As questions have been raised on File770 regarding my involvement in the Chengdu
Hugo Award disaster, I am making a public statement.

1. I was not a member of the committee of the Chengdu Worldcon, and was not
involved with the convention other than as an ordinary member of WSFS who did
not attend the event.

2. I was not involved in any way with the Administration of the Hugo Awards for
Chengdu.

3. As a member of the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee it was my duty to ensure
that the results of the Hugo Award voting process were posted to the official
website promptly and accurately, as they were supplied to us by each year’s
Worldcon, including those from Chengdu. We had no authority to comment on or
change those results in any way.

4. I am not, nor ever have been, a member of the WSFS Mark Protection Committee
(MPC).

5. I am not, nor ever have been, a Director of Worldcon Intellectual Property
(WIP), and have no financial stake in that organisation. WIP was created from
the corporation that ran the SF&F Translation Awards (of which I was a
Director), but no directorships carried over from the one organisation to the
other, save for Kevin Standlee who is a Director of WIP because of his
membership of the MPC.

6. I resigned from the Hugo Award Marketing Committee, primarily because I no
longer wish to be held responsible for (including being subject to legal and
reputational risk for) the actions of organisations of which I am not a member
and over which I have no influence.

7. Having seen legal advice on the subject, I am confident that the contracts I
issued from Wizard’s Tower Press are structured in such a way that no one suing
me, either individually or as an officer of WSFS, will be able to obtain the
rights to any of the works published by Wizard’s Tower.

LGBTQ+ HISTORY MONTH IS HERE

February 5, 2024 ~ Cheryl

This Wednesday at 13:00 (UK time) I will be giving a free online talk on trans
history for The Diversity Trust. It will be fairly general and basic as it will
cover around 2000 years, but there will be a couple of new things in it if
you’ve seen my talks before. For registration details, click here.

Also, if you can be in Bristol on the 24th, I’ll be taking part in the event at
M Shed.

A LITTLE JOURNALISM

February 2, 2024 ~ Cheryl

The lovely people at Inclusive Journalism Cymru have kindly taken another one of
my articles. This one is all about what the media insists on calling “artificial
intelligence”. The piece is called “The Great AI Scam” and you can read it here.

LOCUS RECOMMENDS

February 1, 2024 ~ Cheryl

It is that time of year once more, and the annual Locus Recommended Reading List
is now live. I am once again honoured to have been invited to contribute to the
creation of the list. I am one person in an increasingly large and diverse
group, so I’m afraid I can’t take the blame for anything on the list, but I am
very pleased that some books I loved have been included. You can read the list
here.

MIRACLES OF ANCIENT SCIENCE

January 30, 2024 ~ Cheryl

A couple of weeks back I was doing some work in the house. I was kneeling down,
and as I went to push myself upright I felt something go in my left knee. That’s
not entirely unusual. I’ve had knee problems before. I figured it was a sprain
and if I took reasonable care of it then it would heal in time.

Healing did not happen. There wasn’t any pain most of the time, but the knee was
badly swollen and despite lots of cold treatement did not improve. I had it
heavily strapped up, and was walking with a cane.

After a couple of weeks I messaged my GP because I was worried there might be
something seriously wrong. I got a message back saying that they were
overwhelmed and, unless it was an emergency, I’d have to wait. There’s an
entirely separate rant to be had about what the Tories have done to the NHS, and
what Labour will contine to do because lots of their MPs are also being heavily
sponsored by American healthcare companies.

However, this is a rugby town. If there is one thing we are not short of, it is
physiotherapists. I found one online and gave him a call. Today I had an
appointment.

The good news is that the physio doesn’t think that there is anything seriously
wrong. My knee just needs a lot of time to heal. Many weeks. But he did suggest
that could speed things up with a bit of accupuncture.

Well, I thought, it was worth a try. And it would be a new experience. So I sat
there on his treatment couch for half an hour with needles in my knee and ankle.
At the end of the treatment I could walk without either knee brace or cane. I
still limp, and am going back next week for more treatment, but I am seriously
impressed,

So if anyone asks you if accupuncture works, you can tell them that you know
someone for whom it most definitely did.

LEGAL COMPLICATIONS

January 24, 2024 ~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

My thanks to everyone who welcomed the ideas Kevin and I had for reforming Hugo
Award administration. However, I regret to say that I no longer believe that
solution is possible. Here’s why.

As I explained yesterday, individual Worldcons are incorporated. They have to
be, because they as subject to enormous legal risks. But WSFS, famously, is not
incorporated. If we were to create an Independent Hugo Award Administration
Committee as part of WSFS, that would also not be incorporated. Anyone who was
unhappy with the results of the Hugos in a particular year could then sue the
members of that committee for damages. No one would serve on such a committee
under such circumstances.

There are technical ways around this, but they’d require a lot more wording in
the original motion. In particular there is an organisation called WorldCon
Intellectual Property Inc. (WIP) that exists to own the WSFS service marks. That
could be re-puposed to own the IHAAC. Ironically, WIP was created out of the
ashes of the corporation that Kevin and I created to run the SF&F Translation
Awards, so it was originally an award organisation. But the creation of WIP was
hugely controversial within WSFS, with many people seeing it as creeping
incorporation. And of course there are plenty of people within fandom who think
it is wrong for WSFS to own the Hugo marks at all.

So we could re-craft the motion so that the IHAAC reports directly to WIP, and
its members are therefore protected by WIP’s corporate shield. However, that
would leave little for WSFS to actually do. It is incorporation by another name,
and it would make much more sense to simply transform WIP into WSFS Inc.. And
that, I’m afraid, will not fly.

I may be wrong, but my sense is that there are still way too many people within
fandom, and in particular amongst those who run Worldcons, who will fight to
their dying breath to oppose incorporation of WSFS. Indeed, I suspect that some
old-time fans will be trying to rise from their graves to come and vote against
it.

At this point I think WSFS is dead in the water. It can’t enforce its own
constitution, and the social contract by which Worldcons agreed to adhere to the
Constitution anyway has been broken. The only possible remedy is anathema to too
many people in fandom. I’m not sure we can get out of this.

A SMOKING GUN?

January 24, 2024 ~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

There has been talk for a few days that Chengdu gave notice in advance that Hugo
Administration might be subject to local laws. I’ve been reluctant to support it
without proof, but that has now come through (thanks Nibedita Sen on Blue Sky).
In Progress Report #2 on page 5 it says the following:

> Eligible members vote according to the “one person, one vote” rule to select
> Hugo Award works and individuals that comply with local laws and regulations.
> The Chengdu organizing committee will review the nominated works and validate
> the votes.

Emphasis mine there.

So I guess we were warned.

FWIW, I don’t think there needs to have been direct government interference
here. Having lived in the UK through Section 28 (the original “Don’t say gay”
law), I have seen first hand how ordinary people, often out of fear, willingly
implement, and often go well beyond, censorship required by government. Pressure
from sponsors may have played a role, and the Chengdu committee may simply have
been afraid for their safety if they did not do this. From the way Dave McCarty
is behaving, I suspect they are also afraid of admitting to having done it.

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