THE SOLARIUM

“Lemon Squares in All Dimensions” was just awarded an honorable mention in the Science Fiction Writers of the Future Contest!

For those of you who don’t know, Science Fiction Writers of the Future is a huge international contest with a judge panel including incredibly high-profile sci fi authors like Orson Scott Card and Brandon Sanderson. An honorable mention might not sound glamorous, but any kind of recognition on this level is staggering for me.

Brandon Sanderson actually won the whole thing back in the day. I know Nancy Farmer, author of The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm, one of my favorite children’s science fiction novels, was a Sci Fi Writers of the Future winner early in her career. Kevin J. Anderson, director of the Publishing MA program I currently attend, never won the grand prize, but I believe he received several honorable mentions over the years. Clearly, I’m in good company!

The idea that Orson Scott Card might have read one of my stories is mind-blowing. Say what you will about the man himself–I certainly intend to if I ever make a video essay about the Enderverse–he’s a master of the craft, and Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead remain two of my top ten favorite books of all time.

His work has been a major influence of mine since high school. Ender’s Game especially was instrumental in my development of Amethyst the Assassin, particularly Niko’s character.

Prior to reading Ender’s Game, I conceived Niko as a pathological optimist in the face of insurmountable horror. The haunting portrayal of a child being broken for the greater good in Ender’s Game pushed me to think in new directions.

Paranoid, nervous Niko is certainly different from the coldly resolved Ender Wiggin. However, both characters possess at their core a deep well of empathy and desire to do good that is constantly thwarted by the world around them and darker elements of their own character.

Orson Scott Card’s introduction to Speaker For the Dead, which I would highly recommend any aspiring writers read, informed my approach to writing character.

In that introduction, he explains that every character can be broken down into innumerable versions: Character-X-interacting-with-Character-Y is essentially a different person than Character-X-interacting-with-Character Z.

Mapping relationships between characters the way Card suggests in that introduction encourages one to develop complex characters.

I don’t think “Lemon Squares in All Dimensions” would be nearly as impactful without the contrast between SARA’s fawning over her husband, her deep yet damaging devotion to her daughter, her seething hatred of other women. Within the narrow confines of her programming, there are several SARAs, each with their own motivations and hang-ups.

That said, I have to address the homophobic elephant in the room.

Before JK Rowling went full TERF on Twitter, there were controversies around Card regarding his stance on the LGBT community, displayed in both his writing and beliefs expressed off-page.

I fell out of love with Harry Potter in high school. Pretentious literature nerd that I was, I grew increasingly frustrated to see a series that I mostly thought was pretty okay paraded around as the greatest gift to the English language.

At the time, Rowling was still widely beloved. Suffice to say, my opinion was not popular, and neither was I. By the time Rowling made her transphobia increasingly apparent, I can’t say I felt any particular sense of betrayal.

It was disappointing, in the sense that this was a highly visible public figure throwing her support between harmful, outdated ideology that had the potential to do great damage to people like me and especially my trans siblings in the LGBT community, but I didn’t feel the same keen, personal anguish plenty of queer Harry Potter fans experienced.

It was easy for me to cut all things Harry Potter for my life–for the most part, I already had several years prior. It was a childhood interest I had outgrown, not an enduring part of my identity.

Ironically, the Orson Scott Card homophobia scandal was kicking into high gear right around the time I first picked up Ender’s Game. I was none the wiser. In my ignorant bliss, I fell deeper and deeper into the Enderverse.

It was only when I started getting into the interquels that something felt . . . off. Then I did my research.

I can’t unread Ender’s Game and Speaker For the Dead. I don’t want to. They have changed my writing for the better. I think the removal of those books from science fiction canon would be a net loss.¹

I don’t support Card financially. Aside from copies that were gifted to me, my Enderverse books are secondhand. I read the latest installment through my local library.

Still, by giving his writing such glowing praise, am I not contributing to his cultural hegemony? Does venerating his writing vindicate his homophobia?

I don’t think so. I exist as a writer both because of and in opposition to Card. I use lessons learned from his books to create distinctly queer science fiction and fantasy.

“Lemon Squares in All Dimensions” highlights the arbitrary, constructed nature of gender roles, particularly womanhood.

She Who Bleeds Stars challenges unjust hierarchies, religious or otherwise, and revels in the redemptive nature of love–including a central romance between two women.

Amethyst the Assassin has less room for romance, but its queer cast of characters and the rich web of connections that bind them stand front and center.

I hope this award will be the start of something, not only for me, but for other marginalized authors indebted to yet hoping to grow past their influences.

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Change of plans schedulewise!

Instead of putting out the John Green video in April, I’m going to push it back so I can do a reading and commentary of “Lemon Squares in All Dimensions” instead.

Other than that, things on this site will remain consistent. This Wednesday, I’ll finally finish my series of Artemis Fowl reviews, and I’ll be back next Sunday with another Constellations post.

1. The same cannot be said about the interquels, or the so-called final book in the Enderverse, which Card wrote during the pandemic. Politics aside, those books are dull and disastrous by turns. The constancy with which literal children give speeches on the importance of mating and breeding certainly doesn’t help. ↩︎