AuthorRaymond K. Rugg Archives
December 2022
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Are you serious, Rugg? The only time you post to your blog is when you're tooting your horn about what you've had published over the past year?
Well... apparently so. And I guess if this is going to be another shameless self-promotion post, let's get right to it, shall we? The big news for 2022 is, without a doubt, my pantoum that appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction (May/June 2022). It's titled I Recalled Old Earth Last Night in a Dream, and I have to say, it's one of my favorite pieces and I'm delighted that Asimov's liked it too. The Eccentric Orbits anthology series also took a shine to my work. I had one piece accepted for Volume 2 in 2021, but a whopping four poems made it into Eccentric Orbits, An Anthology of Science Fiction Poetry: Volume 3. Although two of them are villanelles, other than that, the pieces accepted for EO this year are all very different from one another, and I've got to say that this batch also includes some of my poetic darlings. They include:
In another boost to my ego, I had back-to-back appearances in Eye to the Telescope, the online poetry publication of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. In Issue #45 (July 2022) the theme was "Veterans of Future Wars" and they accepted a pantoum that I was particularly proud of called Duty. Issue #46's theme for October was "Quests," and they published one of the shortest poems I've ever turned loosed out into the wild, On Sending a Mission to Explore the Outer System. (It's just five lines, so it turns out that the title of the piece is nearly as long as the poem itself...) And finally, I was particularly excited to get a prose piece out there into the world this past year. It's been, gosh, a smidge over half a decade since I had some short fiction published. And this was a super-fun one to quench the drought with, a Flash Fiction Cozy Fantasy called "Glorin the Dwarf" that ran on the website of Wyngraf, a publication of cozy fantasy. So that's the Rugg roundup of publications for 2022. But hold on to your hats, 'cuz I'm planning to break tradition and post another update on my non-publication achievements. Fingers crossed, it'll hit the airwaves within the next few days...and if nothing shows up on this blog until the Awards Eligibility 2023 post, well then, I'll just give up and accept that I'm a once-a-year poster. Stay safe and well. -rkr
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Awards Eligibility, Redux12/11/2021 Ouch.
You know you've been neglecting your blog when you go in to do your Awards Eligibility post, and the last time you posted was for the PREVIOUS year's eligibility post. Anyway, this year is a marked improvement over 2020, with the following awards-eligible pieces... The Beasts are Gods, Abyss & Apex, Jan 2021 Prodigal, Utopia Science Fiction, April/May 2021 Ten Squared, Illumen Magazine, July 2021 I also had Spec-Po works appear in two anthologies this year-- In an Ivory Tower, Eccentric Orbits Volume 2 Camelot- A Villanelle, New Tales of the Round Table
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Awards Eligibility1/12/2021 It's all the rage this month to post one's awards eligibility, and who am I to swim against the tide?
I had three SpecPo pieces published in 2020: An audio poem ("They Say at this Time of Year") on the SFPA Halloween Poetry Reading page, A graphic poem ("Northern Rockies") in Snakeskin Poetry Webzine, And a long poem ("Tapestry") in Utopia Science Fiction Magazine. Because of the formatting, I believe that "Tapestry" is the only one of the three that is award eligible. But it's a start, right?! :)
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I was honored to serve as a juror for the Speculative Literature Foundation's 2020 Diverse Writers and Diverse Worlds Grants over the past several months. The recipients have been announced and the press release is included below.
To the recipients of the grants, I extend sincere congratulations. The significant differences in the style and subject of the two winning applications should serve as a reminder to everyone to write what you feel, to strive to write a well-crafted story in your own voice. This is what both Kanyinsola and Tatiana did and their awards are well deserved. By the same token, there were a number of other finalists whose applications were absolutely of high-enough quality to have been justified in receiving high honors. If you have submitted to this or other competitive events and not come out on top, don't let it stop you from moving forward. If you know your work is good, get it back out into the pipeline. If you know your work needs some more, well, some more work, then take this as an opportunity to polish and tweak and improve it. Kudos to the SLF for its efforts in support of Spec Lit and particularly to Grants Administrator L.D. Lewis for riding herd on this project. --- "The Speculative Literature Foundation has announced that Kanyinsola Olorunnisola is the winner of the 2020 Diverse Writers Grant and Tatiana Schlote-Bonne is the winner of the 2020 Diverse Worlds Grant. Kanyinsola Olorunnisola: Olorunnisola was awarded the Diverse Writers Grant for his work “How Dead Men Come Back Home.” He is an experimental poet, essayist, and writer of fiction. His work interrogates black histories, futures, identities and spirituality. He has been published in Popula, Jalada, Gertrude, Bakwa, The Account, Bodega, Kalahari Review, On the Seawall, and elsewhere. He has published a chapbook: “In My Country, We’re All Crossdressers” (Praxis, 2018). He is currently working on a full-length poetry collection and a dark fantasy novel set in colonial Africa. He is the founder of SprinNG, one of Africa’s foremost platforms dedicated solely to growing young literary talent, and the Fiction Editor at Kreative Diadem. He currently lives and writes in Lagos, Nigeria. Reach him at [email protected]. Tatiana Schlote-Bonne: Schlote-Bonne was awarded the Diverse Worlds grant for her work “The Afterlife Memoirs”. She is a 2nd year MFA candidate in The Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa. The Diverse Worlds grant will aid her in completing her work-in-progress: a young adult novel told from the perspective of Lucina, a mixed-race Japanese girl who’s awakened as a ghost and must resolve her unfinished business and learn how to haunt. Tatiana’s essays have been published in F(r)iction, Dogwood, Emrys Journal, and The Iowa Review blog. In her free time, she lifts weights and plays video games. Her website is tatiana-schlote-bonne.com. The Speculative Literature Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit and these two diversity grants are entirely funded by donations from the community."
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Kid Stuff: NEPCA 202011/22/2020 Here's the notes I prepared for my presentation at the New England Popular Culture Association conference this year. The event was virtual, and this text doesn't come across half so fun and dynamic as the actual presentation session itself, but this is the gist of what I spoke about. (When you reach the end, you might have a question, and the answer is yes, yes I did actually type a smiley-face icon into my presentation notes...
Good morning! And thank you for being here! A quick introduction, I’m Raymond Rugg, here under the category of Independent Scholar. I work with quite a bit of genre fiction and non-fiction, often in relationship to issues of identity. Before I begin, just a quick note about some of the terminology I’ll be using. I’ll use the label of Speculative Fiction or Spec Fic as a catch-all meant to include Science Fiction, Fantasy and Supernatural or Paranormal Horror… anything with a fantastical element that doesn’t exist in our world today as we generally understand it. When I talk about Adult Fiction, that refers to books or stories written with an adult target audience in mind and which MAY, but which does NOT NECESSARILY, contain the sort of situations that would earn it an ‘R-rating’ (or beyond). In general terms, this classification is often also just simply identified as Fiction, in contrast to the different and distinct area of literature written specifically for readers in the general age group of teens or high-school students, known as Young Adult, or YA, Fiction and from fiction for even younger readers Children’s Literature. I do recognize that there are other classifications that drill down deeper into age groupings, such as New Adult, Middle Grade and others, but for today I will be discussing the subject in the broad strokes of FICTION and YOUNG ADULT FICTION. So, today my topic is ‘The Younging Down of Adult Speculative Fiction Literature’ and by that, we don’t mean that adult Spec Fic is being written or re-written at a level more appropriate for younger readers, but instead, that adult Spec Fic is being mis-perceived and mis-shelved as just generally aimed at a younger reading audience. It is generally acknowledged that genre fiction lacks the regard given to more ‘literary’ fiction. But the stature of Spec Fic is diminished even further by a subtle bias that can often result in the classification of adult speculative fiction genre books as being Young Adult reading material. (And I want to make clear that it’s not that YA is inherently a lesser literature in terms of quality. In fact, I would argue that good YA writing takes more skill than does writing good adult literature. The issue here is more the historical perception by the public at large of Speculative Fiction as a genre that isn’t for adults.) If you were right now to go browse your bookstore or library--physically or digitally-- there is a good chance that you would find at least one adult speculative fiction title shelved among the YA section, even though the book industry has a subject classification system in place intended to help retailers and librarians correctly shelve books into the proper sections. These Book Industry Standards and Communications subject codes are used by most major publishers and book distributors Ingram and Baker & Talylor. The implementation guidelines call for the book’s editor or a marketing associate to apply subject codes to the book, including a hard division between books written for the general adult reading public and those written for an audience of teen readers. Yet, despite this classification system, it isn’t unusual to see Speculative Fiction books written for adults shelved as YA Fiction. So the first question is-- How? How does it happen that a book coded as FICTION gets put on the YA FICTION shelf? The answer is surprisingly simple. The subject classifications aren’t being used. Instead, it comes down to where the person, store or institution thinks is the best place to put it. As one librarian explained, “We tend to think, where is someone going to look for it? We want browsers to find it. We want things to check out.” The same drive exists and is even more imperative in a brick and mortar bookstore. If someone wants to buy this book, where would they look for it? So perhaps the better question is Why? Why would people look for Speculative Fiction titles in the Young Adult Speculative Fiction section? And Why would people THINK that people would look for Spec Fic in the YA section? Well, for one thing, Spec Fic has an image problem. Yes, there’s the stigma of being genre fiction, but it goes deeper than that. Even among genre fiction, the speculative fiction sub-genres are often considered to be somewhat childish, or if not childish, then child-like. Speculative Fiction, by definition, is a genre of the imagination and requires a stronger commitment to accepting the unreal than any other genre. For example--No one would think to classify Louis L’Amour as a Young Adult writer. Nor is Rex Stout and his Nero Wolfe stories ever shelved in the YA section. But J.R.R. Tolkien? You bet, it happens all the time. And it’s not just the Hobbit, which legitimately is for younger readers, but the Lord of the Rings trilogy often gets labeled in the YA category as well, despite having been written for an adult audience, 1954 in the New York Times, W.H.Auden wrote, “Seventeen years ago there appeared, without any fanfare, a book called “The Hobbit” which, in my opinion, is one of the best children’s stories of this century. [my emphasis. He goes on to say “ In “The Fellowship of the Ring,” which is the first volume of a trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkien continues the imaginative history of the imaginary world to which he introduced us in his earlier book but in a manner suited to adults…” [again my emphasis]. Auden noted that the book was entirely fine for teens to read, but the point was that, unlike The Hobbit, it was not targeted to a young reading audience. There are a number of contributing factors to this overall tendency to think of Speculative Fiction as being for a younger audience, including the tradition of fairy tales as spec fic literature, the fact of authors like Heinlein writing successfully for the juvenile market, the influence of newspaper comic strips, comic books and more. Among the general public, there is an inclination to consider the genre of Speculative Fiction as not quite appropriate fare for adults. And when Spec Fic is incorrectly shelved as YA Spec Fic it makes for a self-fulfilling spiral of an inaccurate public perception of just what Speculative Fiction is. It can make for a bad experience on the part of the reader or buyer which is bad for YA Spec Fic and it’s bad for adult Spec Fic. One way in which it is detrimental to the genre is when books written for adults sometimes include adult situations and graphic scenes. While this isn’t to say that YA literature doesn’t include works with very adult themes, the YA books are written to present these themes to the reader in a different way, a more age-appropriate way, than books written for adults. This also isn’t to say that teen readers should not be reading adult books—many teen readers are absolutely ready for adult literature. But when something like Stephen King’s “It”—A novel with scenes of racism-driven mass murder, with a cannibalistic clown and child dismemberment, when this gets shelved in YA based on the fact that Stephen King is a writer of ghost stories and thus his work probably more or less okay for younger readers--this real-life online example is a detrimental mis-classification. (YABooksCentral.com) The other side of the coin is when people are looking for ‘clean teen’ YA books and end up lumpimg any adult Spec Fic that ISN’T R-rated into that group. That’s how something like Douglas Adams “Hitch-hiker’s Guide” can end up on the YA shelf. And it’s how an adult reader looking for Speculative Fiction to read and not thinking to check in the YA section can overlook what might be their next great book. Another answer to the question of how and why an Adult Fiction book can end up on the YA Fiction shelf is one that isn’t limited to the SF genre. YA lit is literature written to be read by teens. But some people make the mistake of thinking that when a book is written ABOUT teens, it also means that it is FOR teens. This results in situations in which the YA label gets applied to a story that has a protagonist or characters who are in their teens or early 20s, even if written for adults. This also applies to practically any coming of age story. Or--any larger story that contains a coming of age component. Take for example, Nnedi Okorafor’s “Binti.’ Published in 2015, it won the Hugo and the Nebula awards for best Novella, and was a nominee for the Locus Award. A highly regarded story in the Speculative Fiction world, it also includes scenes of graphic violence. But it is also a story about a young woman going off to college. And so over 300 people have shelved it as a Young-Adult book on Goodreads. Or Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse, published in 2018 and nominated for a wide selection of awards, such as the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award for First Novel. An action-filled adventure about a monster hunter in a post-climate collapse world, it’s an adult book with adult scenes and situations in the contemporary tradition of Urban Fantasy. But the monster hunter is a young Native woman. Nearly twice as many Goodreads users have shelved it as Young Adult than have shelved it as Adult, even though Tor.com notes that “Domestic abuse, sexual/verbal/physical assault, PTSD, the patriarchy, and state-sanctioned violence all make appearances.” Not that YA can’t or shouldn’t address these issues, but this book is not written, and does not discuss these topics, with a teen readership in mind. Or to swing back around to Stephen King, Amazon.com lists Carrie as its #2 book under Books: Teen & Young Adult: Stephen King. It’s the tale of a 16-year-old girl who uses her newfound telekinetic powers to exact revenge on those who have bullied her. King’s first published novel, it is also one of his most frequently banned books, due in part to scenes of underage sex and violence. And given that the novel grew from a short story that he was hoping to pitch to Cavalier, a men’s magazine along the lines of Playboy, it’s a safe bet that he didn’t write it with the YA market in mind. As noted, the issue of classifying books ABOUT teens to the YA category FOR teens is not a problem that is limited strictly to the genre of speculative fiction. But when it occurs in Spec Fic, there are larger implications, in that it serves to reinforce that erroneous mindset to which Spec Fic is already particularly susceptible, that Speculative Fiction isn’t really appropriate for as a genre for adults. To summarize-- Although there is a classification system in place designed to differentiate adult Speculative Fiction literature from Young Adult Speculative Fiction literature, it is often not utilized. For a number of reasons, adult Spec Fic books can be mis-shelved as YA Speculative Fiction which can result in poor reading experiences detrimental both to adult Spec Fic and YA Spec Fic literature, and can also reinforce inaccurate stereotypes and biases about the genre as a whole as being ‘kid stuff.’ And where do we go from here? This has been just a 10-minute intro to the subject, and there are two paths of inquiry that jump out from it. The first is the impact of big data on book retailers. The BISAC subject codes--remember the ones that divide books into Fiction or YA Fiction--are intended to also help online book sellers correctly categorize their inventory and are said to be in use by Amazon and Barnes & Noble. But what is going on the the background? How much weight is really given to them versus the number crunching that drive the ‘Also Boughts’ and ‘Suggested for Yous’ that they promote in their quest to hyper-personalize your purchasing experience and ultimately, sell you more product? Secondly, but more importantly, is the need for further exploration and examination of the fact that this mis-categorization, this ‘youngification’ of adult speculative literature is applied disproportionately to books by WOMEN, particularly WOMEN of COLOR. I’m obviously not suggesting that it happens only to these books—the examples I’ve presented show that that isn’t the case—but I would argue that we need to see more hard data on the statistically significantly higher chance for miscategorization of these books. Nnedi Okorafor, who I referred to earlier, holds a PhD, is a Nigerian-American writer, and has had the Binti books misclassified to the point where she felt she needed to state, “The Binti Novella Trilogy is not a YA series”… “Kids being able to read and enjoy a book does NOT therefore make it YA.” Rebbeca Roanhorse is a lawyer and writer of Native American and African American heritage. Her debut novel is thought of as YA so often that an interviewer asked her, “Do you think of Trail of Lightning as Young Adult?” and her answer was, “No, Trail of Lightning is adult science fiction and fantasy.” Both of these authors have written other works that ARE Young Adult. That may be influencing the public’s perception of these adult Spec Fic works. But Silvia Moreno-Garcia—Mexican-Canadian publisher, editor, journalist and best-selling author—has not. And yet, her latest book, Mexican Gothic, is subject to the same sort of mis-classification, to the point that just earlier this month, she was compelled to announce-- “MEXICAN GOTHIC is a horror novel. … No, it’s not YA either.” … “For God’s sake, stop assuming that by default women only write romance and YA.” And that’s where we’ll wrap this up for today. Thank you very much. 😊
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Conference registration9/11/2020  Just sent in my registration for the October NEPCA Conference. And even if you have no interest in my presentation about how adult SF gets trivialized and labeled as being for younger readers, I'll still bet there's more than one topic or issue that will be address at the conference that you would love to see.
Click on over to see the latest updates on what's on tap for the conference. https://nepca.blog/conference/
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NEPCA 20208/16/2020  The New England Popular Culture Association annual conference will going virtual for 2020 and I'll be returning to present, if only over the interwebs.
Last fall, I presented on "Putting the 'I' in Sci-Fi: First-Person POV in SF novels, 1953-2019." This fall, my talk will be on "Kid Stuff: The Younging-Down of Science Fiction Literature." This year's conference runs from Thursday to Saturday, October 22 to 24, and more information can be found on NEPCA site at https://nepca.blog/conference/.
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Writers of the Future5/22/2016  Kulicher, Rugg, and Weber at the WotF book-signing event in Reno, Nev.
I've been following the Writers of the Future science fiction contest since it began some thirty-odd years ago. L. Ron Hubbard (a particularly colorful character in a field known for its colorful characters) developed a contest to help new and aspiring writers-- and illustrators-- break into the speculative fiction genre. L. Ron has passed away since then, but the program is still going strong, each year helping to expose the best of the up-and-coming writers and illustrators to the established professionals in the industry and to the population of readers at large.
Volume 32 is out and as fate would have it, not one but *two* of the stories included are by writers here in my own stomping grounds of Reno, Nev. :) Christoph Weber's "Mobius" and J.D. Kulicher's "Swords Like Lightning, Hooves Like Thunder"-- along with artwork specially commissioned for the stories-- grace the pages of this year's book, which is currently available for purchase at the B&N on South Virginia. I picked up my copy yesterday during the authors' book signing event and it was a real pleasure to meet Weber and Kulicher. Not only are their stories a pair of good reads, but they are both really great people, and it is super cool that the Biggest Little City and the Silver State can increase our Spec-Fic cred by claiming them as our own... #GushingFanboy (And just as I was writing this post, I got an e-mail from Joni Labaqui over at the Writers of the Future organization (We do communicate back and forth a few times each year and I do get invited to the awards ceremony each year (#namedropper), but I keep putting it off, hoping to one day attend as an honoree!) and it seems that WotF #32 is currently #1 on the B&N Science Fiction Fantasy list and #1 on the Amazon Hot New Releases list...)
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Oh, the Horror!8/19/2015 "The meal was going okay until I noticed the cockroach..." I work mostly in Fantasy and Science Fiction, which I think is interesting, since one of my favorite writers and inspirations is Stephen King. So I'm proud to announce that my latest story, in the category of Horror (or if not quite horror, at least 'dark ' or 'weird'), is now live on the site, "Bosley Gravel's Cavalcade of Terror." Gravel's own work appears in a number of publications, and he maintains the Calvalcade of Terror as a blog site where he posts short fiction in the genre. So if you're in the mood for a little change of pace, something a little different from my usual, please feel free to click on over for a quick read. http://dreadfullittlepress.com/cavalcade/
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Najah Hafir returns to Mash Stories!8/4/2015  Mash Stories is a quarterly online writing competition in which an author is given three random words to be woven into a story of 500 words or less. Submissions that are shortlisted are published on the site, and compete for a top prize of cash and coaching.
A few quarters ago, my story, "Independent Contractor," was shortlisted, and I have to say, I think it is one of my better efforts. And now I'm immensely proud to share that a sequel to that story, "Art Education," with the return of the deadly Miss Hafir, has been shortlisted for the current competition. One reason I like these two stories so much is that, while I consider myself a multi-genre writer, the bulk of my work sits squarely within the realm of Speculative Fiction (an umbrella term for science fiction, fantasy and horror, for those of you unfamiliar with the label). But my flash pieces on Mash Stories are more action/thriller. The role models for most of my work are folk like Robert Heinlein and Stephen KIng, while for these stories, I've tried to channel my inner John D. MacDonald. So click on over to the site and give it a read. If you like it, I'd be honored if you'd give it a kudo, and I'd be thrilled if you leave a comment. Thanks for reading! http://mashstories.com/shortlist/art-education/ |
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