Tag Archives: transformative works

Tough as an old linkspam (8th December, 2011)

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  • Not the thought police:
    • How to be a fan of problematic things: Liking problematic things doesn’t make you an asshole. In fact, you can like really problematic things and still be not only a good person, but a good social justice activist (TM)!
    • Does Pop Culture Have Social Responsibility?: …pop culture in general does not actually have an obligation to be socially responsible. But, it often positions itself in a way that suggests it is making an important social commentary, is contributing to ethical discussion, is attempting to cultivate responsibility among viewers. When creators of pop culture do this, it leaves them wide open to criticism…
  • The Sketchbook of Susan Kare, the Artist Who Gave Computing a Human Face: Susan Kare designed much of what is best-known about the Mac interface.
  • The 8th volume of Transformative Works and Cultures is available, a double guest-edited issue: Race and Ethnicity in Fandom and Textual Echoes.
  • Letting my black-girl-geek flag fly: All I knew was that my unintentional eccentricity played a role in making me a target, and not in the general you’re-a-dork way but the you’re-a-dork-and-you’re-too-white way.
  • Stranger In A Strange Land OR Being A Woman In Tech: I had breakfast with a young woman who is an associate at a very well-known firm. She is the only woman investor. On the down-low she asked me if I think about wearing glasses or contacts to be taken more seriously (Yes, I have thought about that) and did I have any strategies for making my voice heard in a room full of men (Yes I do).
  • Mary Wollstonecraft’s image is beamed onto Palace of Westminster: She has been called the mother of British feminism, so it is perhaps fitting that her image was blasted onto the building known in some parts as the mother of all parliaments.
  • Changing the Culture of Ocean Science: a DSN core value: Glamour magazine, where the HELL are female scientists in your annual women of the year awards?

You can suggest links for future linkspams in comments here, or by using the “geekfeminism” tag on delicious or pinboard.in or the “#geekfeminism” tag on Twitter. Please note that we tend to stick to publishing recent links (from the last month or so).

Thanks to everyone who suggested links.

How John Scalzi invented fanfic

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So the other day John Scalzi posted on his blog that he is writing a “reboot” of H. Beam Piper’s science fiction novel “Little Fuzzy”. He says:

Why did you do this?

Because as far as I know it’s never been done before. Science fiction TV and movie series are rebooted all the time — see Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek for recent examples of this — but I can’t think of a significant, original universe in science fiction literature in which this has been done, at least, not by someone who is not the original author. So I thought, hey, this seems like it could be a fun thing to do. So I did it.

If your eyes aren’t rolling enough already (because, hello, fan fiction?), melannen pointed out to me that Ardath Mayhar, a female author, had even written a professionally published retelling of the Little Fuzzy story (a fact that’s mentioned on the Wikipedia page for Little Fuzzy, so it’s hardly obscure.)

Is it time for another round of How To Suppress Women’s Writing?

  • She didn’t write it.

(But if it’s clear she did the deed. . .)

  • She wrote it, but she shouldn’t have. (It’s political, sexual, masculine, feminist.)
  • She wrote it, but look what she wrote about. (The bedroom, the kitchen, her family. Other women!)
  • She wrote it, but she wrote only one of it. (“Jane Eyre. Poor dear, that’s all she ever. . .â€)
  • She wrote it, but she isn’t really an artist, and it isn’t really art. (It’s a thriller, a romance, a children’s book. It’s sci fi!)
  • She wrote it, but she had help. (Robert Browning. Branwell Bronte. Her own “masculine side.â€)
  • She wrote it, but she’s an anomaly. (Woolf. With Leonard’s help….)
  • She wrote it BUT. . .

When women do it, it’s just fan fiction. When men do it, it’s a reboot. Right.

ETA: I’ve been pointed at a subsequent post in which Scalzi admits he’s writing fanfic.

For those who are new here, I’d like to point out that we have a comment policy which asks you to “Be at least one of: feminist, friendly, amusing, or perspicacious. Two is even better.” Comments along the lines of “She wrote it, BUT…” (it wasn’t commercially published, it wasn’t called a reboot because we hadn’t invented that word yet, she didn’t have permission from TPTB…) will be bitbucketed.