Some of my friends may be wondering why I didn't publish their comments over the past few weeks. I just checked my Typepad spam filter and found comments by the likes of Gary Farber, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and Jeff Beeler caught there like flies in amber. I've just approved them. Sorry, folks. I'm not sure what caused that.

(On the other hand it did also catch a rude and paranoid comment from Rose Fox a little further back that I'm really glad I didn't read at the time.)

It is the kind of sunrise for which you have to wait for the complex display of light that will inevitably come. Patience. Put on the coffee pot and get the camera from the basement.

The sky is clear and blue-grey, with only feathery clouds up high. The lake is rough, but without whitecaps. The usual sailboats are there in silhouette, but without reflections. Heavy dark storm clouds hang over the Vermont horizon, the scraps of a passing hurricane. But there are gaps and the sunlight finds them: the profile of the Green Mountains becomes clear in subtle shades of gray, while the topmost storm clouds radiate holy light. The high clouds are pastel yellow now.

The coffee smells good and you are impatient, but it would be unwise to walk away just now because you know the sun in about to break through.

A faint strip of gold stretches across the lake even though you cannot see the sun. A few ducks are swimming in the brook that empties to the lake, but not the heron this morning, unless it is hiding in the reeds by the bridge.

The gold strip disappears. A flock of swallows flies by.

Now the sun breaks the cloud horizon, and at first there is no gold strip, but then it grows. The ducks in the brook swim as a group to the lake. The tops of the storm clouds look like fluffy yellow cotton candy. The strip of sunlight has the texture of dragon's scales. A nearby bird cheeps and cheeps as though announcing the sunrise. The sunlight warms your skin. The drama is over. You get the coffee.

The kids and I made it all the way to the summit of Coon Mountain this afternoon.

Elizbeth got there first.

. . . actually, just this morning's sunrise, but doesn't it look thermonuclear?

I was on several excellent panels at Anticipation which I hope to write about later, and on one panel that was hopelessly ill-construed. It was a panel on which four white people were assigned the task of discussing whether ethnic and sexual minorities ought to write for the mainstream sf audience or whether they could or should write for more specialized audiences more connected to their concerns, and if they were to do that, how would they make it into the SF canon (this last point was illustrated by a quote from Joanna Russ.).

One of the designated panelists did not attend the convention, one overslept and missed the panel by accident, so it was me and this white guy who later remarked online that he has clearly been assigned to the wrong panel. 

This was not THE most socially awkward panel assignment I've ever been given. That would be the panel entitled "Politics & Bad Manners" at a Minnicon many years ago, where as I recall one of my fellow panelists was dressed in a monk's habit, and everyone but me had known in advance that this was the annual Libertarian revival panel. I  spent the panel defending things like the existence of public sidewalks. But this pannel at Anticipation was certainly up there.

Several audience members seemed to have a lot to say on the actual topic assigned, so I invited "Ide Cyan" and a woman whose name badge said "Isobel" to join me as panelists. "Isobel" declined, but made many productive comments from the audience. "Ide Cyan" joined me on the panel, but only after anxiously showing me her name badge so I would know who I was tangling with. She tried hard as a panelist, but also was extremely tense and trembling and talking very fast, as though frightened of me. (I think that is the first time I've ever been on a panel with someone who appeared physically frighten of me.)

The panel went how it went, which is as well as could be expected given both the panelist problem and an oddly constructed mandate. (Canonicty is a completely separate issue from the economic and artistic viability of subgenres with specialized audiences.) I'm told that Jo Walton had written beautiful and lucid panel descriptions that were then mercilessly pruned by a clumsy editorial hand. I think this panel description was one of the victims.

"Ide Cyan" argued that the central issue was oppression. I attempted to get her to unpack her argument, and asked interview style questions about what she meant by oppression. Another blogger has described her as becoming "tongue-tied" when presented with this line of inquiry.

After the panel, I invited her to join me for a cup of tea for further discussion, but she declined; she and a group of other audience members, who seemed to be a portion of Fail Fandom, left as a group. According to their blogs this group went off and discussed how appalling it is that I claim to be oppressed because I am a parent and because of where I live.

Before departing, "Ide Cyan" instructed me to read Joanna Russ's book What Are We Fighting For? Sex, Race, Class, and the Future of Feminism, a book which as it happened was sitting on my night table. A while back I blogged my dismay with the opening chapter. It is a book that Joanna worked long and hard on, the book in which she intended to reconcile socialism and feminism, and which was published too late to have the impact it might have had because it took her so long to write. (Our collective recollection is that she was already working on that book when I attended the Seattle Clarion in 1984; its copyright date is 1998.)

Joanna Russ was my first science fiction mentor. She was my professor at the University of Washington for two years. I spent many happy hours taking up her office hours when everyone else was scared to talk to her. A few decades ago, I knew her pretty well. She was in chronic pain. She was on heavy-duty anti-depressants that messed up her short-term memory in ways that were sometimes comical. She is also a genius, and I treasure the time I spent sitting at her feet (sometimes literally) listening to her hold forth.

That having been said, I don't think What We Are Fighting For? works in the way she intended. In trying to reconcile socialism & feminism, she has for the most part left out the problem of motherhood and the relationship between the parent and the State. Her discussion of motherhood is extremely slight. The most extensive passage I was able to find, via index and skimming, is a mother-blaming section on the role of families in perpetuating oppression and sexism. (p. 347) Clearly, something had to go or this book never would have got finished, but I think it is unfortunate that the oppression of mothers by the State was omitted from discussion.

So what is oppression? Its definition is not one of Joanna's central concerns in this book; she is writing for an audience that thinks it already knows what oppression is. Oppression is depression — "a feeling of being oppressed"; persecution —"the act of subjugating by cruelty";  and subjugation — "the state of being kept down by unjust use of force or authority." In my daily life, I have experienced all three in connection with being a mother and it is not a minor thing. It is a major force in my life.

I seriously doubt that Joanna Russ I know would argue that I and other American mothers are not oppressed. And I wonder by what right self-described feminists discard out-of-hand claims by individual mothers that they suffer oppression.

Is 21st century feminism really feminism at all? If it has abandonded mothers as such, it has abandoned its task of advocating the liberation of women. 

Posthumans communicate electronically. Pay no attention to the geek behind the handle.

A posthuman outnumbers a human: their emergent relationship is often predator and prey.

Humans are single, identifiable individuals. Posthumans are legion; they are multi-headed hydra. When fully developed, they contain multitudes, as many identities as they need.

Posthumans are the heroes of their own stories.

Humans may have several social identities, usually dependent on contexts such as work, parenting, gaming. Posthumans have more.

Humans are cursed with continuous lives; posthumans are not. Posthumans can go underground with a keystroke. Bingo, another identity!

Posthumans are lonely, they are looking for love and companionship and attention. Self-love does not ease the ache for another, more satisfying identity. Perhaps even as a superhero.

Posthumans are disinhibited.

Posthumans are thrill-seekers, enjoying the rush of the group demagogic skydive.

Posthumans live in constant fear of exposure as insignificant meat.

Posthumans argue against the unique identification of moral actors.

To protect them from predation, children are taught in elementary school how to become posthuman when going online. As with many top predators, by adolescence, these proto-posthumans with have learned the role of predator. Social networking plays a major and perhaps even Darwinian role in this socialization.

Posthumans hunt in legions. If no one else will hunt, posthumans become the legion.

Posthumans bear no responsibility for the past. For posthumans, electronic life is an organizing principle imposed on the past, which is chaos.

All the truth posthumans need is available online. And if it isn’t there, they can make something up and put it online.

For a human to seek a human's address and phone number, she looks in the phone book. For a human to seek a posthuman's address and phone number is stalking!

Humans privilege relationships formed in and founded on what they call "real life." Posthumans either deny a distinction between “real life” and online relationships, or disparage the idea that "meatspace" relationships have any privileged meaning.

Posthumans like to watch. They especially like to watch humans and other posthumans fighting.

Posthumans find inflicting pain easier than do humans. Posthuman demagogues easily replicate the results of the Milgram experiment again and again, since posthumans are drawn to such experiences.

Posthuman culture changes at a much more rapid pace than human culture, such that the social protocols of online communities less than five years old are often regarded as ancient and venerable traditions. Still, most bad ideas go back a long way.

Truth is the consensus of posthumans today. Tomorrow's truth will be different. There is no fact outside of constantly-shifting consensus truth.

Humans are limited to no more than 3 or 4 romantic entanglements at a time. Posthumans may pursue 15 or 20 simultaneously; those posthumans augmented by bots can pursue hundreds. For some posthumans, this can prove highly profitable, particularly those who specialize in widows and the elderly.

Posthumans can blogswarm from jail!

The posthuman condition is a happy state for registered sex offenders.

Posthumans have solved the problem of professional ethics: The ethics of posthumans are completely undiscussable. How dare you raise the issue of ethics!

Posthumans are becoming the natural prey of Intelligent Agents, currently in the service of humans and adept at parsing social networks and friends lists. Intelligent Agents perform due diligence.

A posthuman’s HR department already has the posthuman’s Charles Manson fanfic on file; is already aware of the disturbing themes in the posthuman’s Shirley Temple Second Life porn; the posthuman’s Flickr account has already been run by legal. Legal has advised management to let him dig himself in a little deeper.

Posthumans are losing security clearances for unexplained reasons.

Posthumans are now being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Now posthumans lose their jobs.

Intelligent Agents take over. Truth is the consensus of corporately owned Intelligent Agent systems.

The era of Transhumanity is at hand.

History has ended. Posthumans have no history.

Copyright © 2009 by Kathryn Cramer.

It is not a science fiction writer's job to hold only popular opinions. It it were, there would be no science fiction field.

So my name has been taken in vain in a post on Metafilter. I am left wondering exactly how my objections to people using pseudonyms leads anyone to the idea that I think that "The future is all straight, white men?"

Certainly, most of the assholes on the Internet are straight white men, though that does seem to be changing. But whoever wrote that post clearly doesn't read either my blog nor my books, nor know me personally.

Cowards, cowards, cowards.

The monkey ran out of the picture before the camera went off.

Here are some other choice pix from the Essex County Fair in Westport, NY.

Anticipation (the Montreal Worldcon)

5-075 Mon/Lun 12:30 1hr30min
P21BF Human Culture
Cultural Memory, Societal Resilience and Change
Blind Lemming Chiffon, David Anthony Durham, Geoff Ryman, Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Panel just about to start.

Blind Lemming Chiffon speaks for a while; Patrick Nielsen Hayden appeals to a high power for salvation.

David Durnham & Geoff Rymam begin to appear concerned.

Patrick looks at Blind Lemming wondering if this guy is for real.

Geoff Ryman touches his forehead just before putting his head down on the table.

Despair sets in. The panelist begin to look helpless and trapped. Patrick flees in terror along with a portion of the audience as Blind Lemming invites a filker up to sing a song that will clarify his argument which has thus far eluded the other panelists. 

Someone in the audence asks, "Is this some kind of tradition?" Someone else says, "No, this is not a tradition. It is surreal."

The footage cuts off with the end of the song when more of the audience flees. Footsteps are heard in the halls.

My dad, John Cramer, was quoted in New Scientist this week in Lisa Grossman's article Expert panel urges NASA to revive futuristic think tank concerning NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts.

Despite the current uncertainty in NASA's future plans and budget, the committee says that NIAC is still a worthwhile investment. "NIAC was efficiently run, there was no waste of money," says John Cramer, a physicist at the University of Washington and a former member of a council that reviewed NIAC projects. "NASA got an amazing amount of bang for the buck," Cramer told New Scientist.

I am told that Year's Best Fantasy 9, eds. David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, will be published by Tor.com in 3 days. Hooray!

Patrick and and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, accompanied by Jon Singer, stopped by Westport, NY on their way up to Montreal. We took a quick excursion to Kip and Marilyn Trienen's dayliliy farm near Coon Mountain.

Patrick took pictures of scenery and people. Teresa and I took pictures of flowers. Jon Singer asked a lot of questions about plant species.