“Lots of Earth floors in this building,” Carissa added.
Scotto Moore, Wild Massive (source)
“I see,” the shapeshifter said. “What happens on these ‘Earth floors’?”
“Murderous extraction of capital value from helpless human beings,” Carissa replied. “And theme parks.”
It’s been a cool, wet summer here in our part of Oregon, with the occasional thunderstorm (a rarity for us), and fall is right around the corner.
This month I’m going to chat a little about what folks can do to create positive change in SFF as a field, and share a few things I’ve been reading and listening to.
Wild Massive, by Scotto Moore
Scotto Moore’s 2003 novel, Wild Massive, is described by the publisher as “a glorious web of lies, secrets, and humor in a breakneck, nitrous-boosted saga of the small rejecting the will of the mighty.”
The setting of the novel is wonderfully weird: the entire story takes place in a corner of the multiverse called only The Building.
The Building is, as its name implies, a building. However, there’s a twist. Each floor of The Building is its own distinct world, some the size of literal universes and others as small as a “standard room” (which is just enough room for four elevator banks and a few tables).
The novel follows a (psionic) refugee from a state-sanctioned genocide, a shapeshifting magic user of immense power, and a young woman who’s inadvertently absorbed the power to alter the future by writing a novel draft as they travel through The Building in an attempt to stop (a) another state-sanctioned genocide and (b) a terrorist attack that might destroy up to a thousand floors at once and (c) other even more bad things involving former demiurges with opaque agendas.
As promised by the quote at the top of this post, theme parks (and roller coasters!) play an integral role in the plot.
With writing and scenarios that remind me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide (only slightly weirder and more surreal), fun prose, and just a little bit of metafiction, it’s a heck of a lot of fun, and I’m really looking forward to more of Moore’s work.
Eurobeat, and other glorious mistakes
Last month, my wife and I started watching old-school racing anime Initial D. Following the street racing exploits of a young tofu shop delivery driver, the show is supremely cheesy and a surprising amount of fun.
Although we ended up enjoying it a lot, the main reason I decided we should watch it was the music. A lot of the music that plays while (badly-rendered late 1990s 3D) cars drift down the slopes of Mount Akina is from a genre called Eurobeat.
This music features fast paced music with Italo Disco and EDM influences and very little in the way of lyrical sense. This month I’m recommending a Dave Rodgers Eurobeat megamix to put some soul gasoline in your tank and get you running in the 90s. Both of which, if you couldn’t guess, are the titles of Dave Rodgers songs.
Eurobeat definitely isn’t for everyone, but personally I think it’s a lot of fun. Check out the Dave Rodgers Super Eurobeat Megamix below and see what you think.
Speculative Organizations Need Your Support!
I’ve been an active member of SFWA since around 2017.
And by “active” I don’t just mean “as opposed to associate member.” I’ve been involved with a lot of SFWA committees and initiates, including the short fiction, game writing, fundraising, and international committees, as well as working on projects like Publishing Taught Me (SFWA’s NEA grant-funded blog series highlighting the contributions of BIPOC editors to publishing).
SFWA has always been a little dysfunctional, especially when it comes to volunteer and staff burnout and poor communication. Still, the organization has done a lot of good in the last ten years, from its initiatives like Writer Beware and
In the last couple of months, though, SFWA has gone into crisis mode, as this File770 post and this Genre Grapevine post describe.
I sincerely hope SFWA’s current board can resolve its issues, and I really do think SFWA has the potential to do a lot of good in the SFF community. But I’ve been hearing that folks are anxious and stressed about the idea of SFWA’s good work disappearing if the organization goes under, while simultaneously feeling like they can’t trust the organization enough to volunteer for it any more.
I am too.
While I definitely hope the organization recovers, I wanted to put out an important reminder: SFWA isn’t the only way to do good in SFF. It’s not even close.
To that end, I’ve put together a list of SFF organizations that do good work and that could benefit from volunteer help or donations.
Whether you’re a former SFWA volunteer looking for somewhere else to donate your time, or just someone who wants to make a cash-based donation, check it out and see what’s out there, and who needs your support!
Writing Update
Just a quick update here at the end:
- My short story collection, The Butterfly Disjunct, is now coming out in November. You can get a PDF review copy on NetGalley or a PDF/epub review copy on Booksirens, or preorder it from the publisher in print and ebook.
- My short story, “The List Making Habits of Heartbroken Ships,” came out in Thinking Ink’s The Neurodiversiverse anthology August 6th. You can purchase a copy from the publisher here.
- My short story, “White Lies Cast Dark Shadows,” came out in Tyche Press’s Carpe Noctem anthology. You can purchase a copy from the publisher here.
- Work on the new choicescript game proceeds apace! You can play a free demo here. The game will be out sometime next summer.
That’s all for now.
See you next time!