In Sputnik’s Orbit

A few thoughts to tide you over…

 

A Confident Humility

Here’s a copy of the Writers of the Future video that was shown during the big awards show last April, featuring glimpses of my experience as a contest winner and interviews with many of my friends and mentors. I’m sure you’ll find more than a few things interesting, humorous, and/or educational, but I’ll just speak to a few points.

At 2:42, fellow winner Randy Henderson talks about the blind submission process.  This is a unique and laudable feature of this contest. It helps eliminate unconscious bias and ensure the merit of every award.

At 6:34, I talk about seeing my illustration for the first time.

At 8:28, I talk about the honor of winning, and as Trevor says somewhere, the sense of responsibility one feels after winning, to meet or exceed standards you never knew you could reach for, and now are held accountable to by association with all the others involved in the contest, winners, instructors, and legends.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJIAGzHZOYY?list=PL0OhC35xZyUVUCBhMFxUpLBDUbMv1amyX]

I must say that after being welcomed by heroes like Tim Powers, Orson Scott Card, and Larry Niven, after walking out on stage in the Wilshere Ebell, nothing seems all that daunting anymore. Dave Farland, one of our instructors, talks of writing with confidence. Winning this contest gives you personal confidence, and a powerful humility too.

Happy Anniversary America, I Got You On My Mind

I used to work with a very British chap with the very British name, David Noble. Once, in the lead up to the long July 4th weekend, I asked him his plans. “Ah, July 4th,” he said. “That’s the anniversary of the date you lot kicked us out. We don’t celebrate that.”

No, but he took the day off.

Happy birthday, anniversary, kick-the-Brits-out day, or however you choose to think of it. As troubled as the world is, I am pleased to live in a time when most of it’s people view one another more as neighbors and friendly rivals than as enemies. May we all continue the trend, educate the laggards, make amends for past indiscretions, and remember that the culture we bequeath to the future is at least as important as the skin color genes—or the flags.

Cheers.

The Ascent of the Apes

This, I think, ought to be part of every police academy curriculum:

It’s easy to see how even the most even handed, culturally mature police officer could be led into making racist assumptions when he or she spends every day dealing with trouble makers from whatever the local disadvantaged group happens to be (often black in the US), when the reality is, any group of economically stressed people will have an elevated crime rate, regardless of race, and even in the most crime infested neighborhoods, most folks just want to go about their law-abiding lives.

If the cops were racist to begin with, all the worse, but even if not, they must get conditioned by circumstance. Even if they weren’t terribly racist to begin with, they start to make understandable but irrational assumptions, and this affects their judgment and the culture of their interactions with one another.

And then…they start killing people under suspicious circumstances, and the community, the law-abiding people who mostly just want to go about their lives, shout back with rage and indignation, “Racist!” And the police get their hackles up: more trouble from the damned troublemakers. And the people get their hackles up: more trouble from those damned racists cops.

And where does it end? Are we human beings, with reason enough to solve problems our nature didn’t prepare us for? Or are we beasts? I never understood people who find it offensive to be told we descended from apes. We ARE apes, and I find it offensive that so few of us seem capable of using our brains, god given or nature-hewed to become anything  more.

Here we are, apes with billy clubs and tear gas, Molitov cocktails and machine guns. Apes with the dreams and drive to walk on other worlds, who use the tools to do so to set fire to this one.

It’s time the apes grow up.

Comicpalooza is Here!

My Comicpalooza Schedule:

Comicpalooza will be held at the George R Brown Convention Center in glorious downtown Houston, Friday May 22 through Monday May 25th, and it’s ALL ABOUT ME! Well, no. It’s not. Not at all. Not really. But I will be there, and you can come see me, and we can connect as human beings, or cyborgs, you know, as the case may be.

So here’s where to find me:

  • Friday at 4: Star Trek vs Star Wars. Rm21 352A w/ P. J. Hoover, Wayne Basta, Dom. D’Aunno.
  • Sunday 1-4: Signing and jawjacking at the Skipjack Publishing table.
  • Sunday at 4: Evolution of the Star Trek Franchise, w/ Rebecca Shwartz, Wayne Basta, Diana Dru Botsford, Marshal Ryan Maresca. Rm 3, 350B
  • Monday 1-4: Signing and Flamenco dancing at the Skipjack Publishing table (There will be no dancing).
  • Monday at 4: Scifi Writing on TV, w/ C.D. Lewis, Rick Klaw, Wayne Basta, Diana Dru Botsford. Rm 1, 350A

I’ll have copies of the Writers of the Future anthology and Galaxy’s Edge Issue 14 with Robert Heinlein on the cover. Skipjack will have copies of the two Tides anthologies, one scifi with a story of mine in it, one fantasy which I co-edited. Come by and ask us stuff. Cuz we like that. And bring a camera. And a smile. 😉

Tangent Online Review: “Very Well Done”

My first review in Tanget Online is in. The verdict? Well done!

“Behold the lowly copper penny! Stuart Hardwick, in his story “Luck of the Chieftain’s Arrow,” gives us the unlikeliest of heroes—the penny. Having been arrowhead, jewelry, bell, and then finally a penny, the narrator of this tale is an immortal entity trapped in copper by a shaman’s ignorance. Wanting nothing more than to be set free, it endeavors to educate its owners just enough to do so, but eventually comes to care for humanity in a way humans never seem to do for themselves. This bit of spirit-infused metal travels through history—Forrest Gump-like—mostly observing, but sometimes influencing that history. The ending is left to the reader, but satisfying nonetheless. Very well done.”

Read the entire review here.

What did YOU think of my story? Leave a comment and let me know or better yet, share with the world online. As of this writing, the issue is still free to read on the website at www.GalaxysEdge.com

A Galaxy of Scifi Talent – And Me!

I am elated to announce that Galaxy’s Edge #14 is free to read on the website.

http://www.GalaxysEdge.com

GalaxysEdge14-320My story, “Luck of the Chieftain’s Arrow,” appears in this issue alongside stories by Rebert Heinlein, Larry Niven, Nancy Kress, Greg Benford, Alan Dean Foster & more. Yeah. This stellar lineup is a testament to the work that Mike Resnick and his editorial partners are doing, and a reminder to me to keep up my efforts.

I am particularly proud to see my name right next to Heinlein’s. It was his short story, “A Tenderfoot In Space,” that I remember as one of my earliest literary experiences.

Please be sure to share and spread the word, and if you are a WorldCon attendee, remember me at nomination time.

Meanhile on Twitter….

tom follows meThis, seen on Twitter today, tickles me for a couple of reasons.

I’m a big fan of Hugh Laurie since way back, since long before he became Dr. House, from back when he and Stephen Fry were ubiquitous funny men on the BBC. I’m also a big fan of Tom Hall since way back, since we worked together at Softdisk and used to eat pizza and play cards together with a collection of kids at the dawn of an industry and all with their lives before them.

Tom, a co-founder of id Software who recently had one of his level designs from the original Doom game voted an all time favorite of fans, probably saw my recent publication in Galaxy’s Edge Magazine. But what has Hugh done lately?

I kid.

Cheers.

My Hugo Euro’s Worth

Sad puppies. Yeah.sad_puppies_3_patch

When I bought this house, there was…an agitator… in the neighborhood trying to get the government to buy his house because of a tiny quantity of hydrocarbons found in a bit of pipe left buried when the land was cleared. The state had come, the EPA had come, an independent testing company had come, and they all agreed the solution was simple: fill in the hole and get on with life.

But no. This chap kept making noises and getting the media out and convincing the ladies in the bridge club that fumes and leachate from the cypress bark mulch used here was actually a dangerous CHEMICAL that was going to turn the place into three mile island. Or something.

This guy wanted a buyout. Never mind that in the absence of any actual problem, houses were already selling at market value, and that a government cleanup is never going pay you more than market value and that if you shovel shit at the neighbors loudly and long enough, you might actually succeed in driving the market prices down. For everyone.

So I killed him. Not really. I think he died of old age or finally moved to Antarctica where there are no petrochemicals at all, or he got wrapped up watching Gossip Girl and forgot all about it.

But I digress.

I’ve yet to meet (in person) a scifi or fantasy author I didn’t like. I certainly haven’t met them all, but I have met a couple who’ve been embroiled in certain recent controversies. And we’ll just leave it at that.

Look. We all wade in this little pool together. And we all need each other’s help and support. We can each try to fill ‘er up with clean and clear bright water, or we can be the kid with the stinky diaper. And get hoisted by it.

I do not have an axe to grind with regard to the Hugos. To be honest, I kind of skimmed over the early SP3 posts with the graphs and the analysis showing how the whole system has apparently collapsed into a shameless sham of anti-meritocratic crapulence. Partly that’s because those posts had, you know, math and stuff. Partly it’s because there are others far better positioned then I to worry about such things and because I never really expected the Hugos to be any different from any other part of human experience.

It seems clear to me that both principal sides in this debate have, or at least started from, reasoned positions that they genuinely believe to have validity and merit. And that’s fine. Opinions are free. Debate, exposition, analysis, and yes, even argument are all critical to society. But to criticize an action, a process, an outcome, is one thing. To demonize a person or group based on supposition is quite another.

This year I have watched as a bunch of writers, most of whom I know to be talented, some of whom I consider friends, have heaped on one another a crap heap of vitriol to high and so deep, it was bound to come crashing down. And now, for some of them, it has. And we all stand here spattered in poo.

It’s time to change the water. It’s time to stop and recall that before it became about selling tickets to Worldcon, boosting careers, assuaging egos, and anointing the best of the best, the Hugo was about honoring Hugo Gernsbach, a man who committed his life to evangelizing science for the lay public.

We live in a world running short of petroleum, fresh water, habitat, and–you know–fish. Where both sides of the political spectrum operate by insult, distraction, and obfuscation, so they can keep the onr percent of their constituency that pays all the money making more and more and more. And we’re worried about whether one group of another is biasing the distribution of little plastic rocket.

I humbly suggest that we are all better served by resolving our procedural disputes through respectful discourse and leaving the exploration of political ideas to our fiction. That’s what it’s there for, after all.

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Here read some more about the kerfuffle, if your want to, I guess. I have a novel to write.

Are Sad Puppies Sad Gits?
Jennifer Cambpbell-Hicks on the nominations.
John Sclazi’s Take

You can also Google Brad Torgersen, who launch the opening salvo in this year’s campaign, but who I’m not going to link to, because…he’d done himself enough harm this week.