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Guest Post: Valerie Nieman on Going Away and Coming Home

Thomas Wolfe claimed “you can’t go home again,” but the place you sprang from is never going to go away from you, that’s for sure. It’s down there in the isotopes layered into your bones and teeth. It’s there in the way your accent shifts when you go home for a visit, no matter how long away nor what education’s done to change you.

My new book, To the Bones, takes me back to the West Virginia I knew, a place both beloved for its “wild, wonderful” hills and source of despair for its history of exploitation. It also brings me home to genre fiction, after a long time wandering (mostly) in the paths of literary and mainstream writing.

The book began because I couldn’t get started. I was completing a novel-in-verse that had been long in the gestation, and was ready for the next project, but a couple of false starts had left me cranky. I complained to a writer friend about how poorly things were going. The conversation rolled around to a discussion of how to dispose of a body, and I commented, “When I was back in West Virginia, I always said that if I murdered someone, I’d throw them down a mine crack.” He challenged me to do so, and to make it a horror novel.

I was off and running, with a book that would bring together Appalachian legends, zombie movies, quest literature, ecojustice, Celtic lore, and a bit of romance. To the Bones is a satirical look at the legacy of coal mining in West Virginia through a splintered genre lens.

My years as a farmer and newspaper reporter in the northern coalfields provided both setting and substance for the novel. I’d struggled with the lack of water after mining cut off the springs and wells at my hill farm. You generally own only the “surface rights” when you buy land in coal country, which meant that subterranean water was not guaranteed, nor did I stand to profit from the capped gas well in the back field. (That property is likely fracked by now.) My land rested above part of the Farmington No. 9 mine, where an explosion 50 years ago left 78 men dead””the bodies of 19 of them left entombed because it was too dangerous to reach them. A mine crack extended over a corner of the back pasture; another marred a neighbor’s field.

As a reporter, I’d covered mine accidents, train derailments, murders, wildcat strikes, mine subsidence, town meetings and camp meetings. Those memories came back, including the lethal orange color of acid mine drainage that painted the destroyed streams.

The very shape of the land found its way into fictional Carbon County, as it did in my first novel, Neena Gathering, published in 1988 and resurrected by Permuted Press a couple of years ago as a classic post-apocalyptic story. There are many ties between my first book and this most recent outing, including a number of settings loosely based on places where I went to school, farmed, fished, and worked at newspapers. Characters end up below ground, in pits and abandoned mines and that aforementioned mine crack, because that’s just what I do””Fred Chappell remarked once that my interests were chthonic, and from Neena onward, what lies hidden or buried has served to wind taut the warp of story.

To the Bones came quickly, and I’m a slow writer, so I have the feeling I’d already been on the road “home” for a while. I published a crime drama in 2012 that’s set in tobacco country, but the protagonist is from northern Appalachia. My latest poetry collection, Leopard Lady: A Life in Verse, begins in Kentucky and follows a mid-century carnival sideshow traveling the region from Pennsylvania to South Carolina.

I’d left the mountains, but they hadn’t left me. While most people think of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” as the West Virginia state song, which it’s been since 2014, I always think that “Green Rolling Hills” addresses the Mountaineer’s pain of leaving more directly””check out the lyrics here.

In terms of genre, I’d gone away like the speaker in Utah Phillips’ song, but the joys of writing spec fiction “never let me go” and were right there waiting to welcome me back when I found that returning road.

Here’s an old-time peach cobbler recipe from among those I’ve collected over the years. In my family, the fruit went in first and some kind of dough went on top, though I’ve known some will put the dough down and pour the fruit over. I don’t know what recipe Darrick uses, but the traditional dessert plays a small role in To the Bones. Just the thing to welcome home a weary wanderer.

Peach Cobbler

6 cups peaches, sliced
1 TBSP lemon juice
1/4 C packed brown sugar
1 and 1/2 TBSP cornstarch
1/2 C water
1/2 C sugar (white)
1/2 C flour
1/2 TSP baking powder
1/4 TSP salt
2 TBSP butter, softened
1 large egg

Grease two-quart casserole.
Put peaches in, stir in lemon juice.
Stir brown sugar and cornstarch, gradually add water. Cook about 5 minutes.
Pour over peaches.
Set aside 1 TSP sugar.
Stir together sugar, flour, baking powder and salt. Stir in butter and egg until soft dough forms. Drop over peaches. Sprinkle over 1 TSP sugar.
Bake 40-45 minutes at 400 degrees F


Valerie Nieman is a poet and novelist whose first West Virginia novel, Neena Gathering, was returned to print in 2013 as a classic in post-apocalyptic literature. She’s also the author of Leopard Lady: A Life In Verse; Blood Clay, a crime drama set in North Carolina; and a collection of short stories and two additional poetry collections. To the Bones drops on June 1 from West Virginia University Press.

News and excerpts from her work can be found at:
Facebook @valerienieman1 – https://www.facebook.com/valerienieman1/
Twitter @valnieman – https://twitter.com/valnieman
Instagram @valnieman – https://www.instagram.com/valnieman/
Website valnieman.com

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines.

This was a guest blog post.
Interested in blogging here?

Assembling an itinerary for a blog tour? Promoting a book, game, or other creative effort that’s related to fantasy, horror, or science fiction and want to write a guest post for me?

Alas, I cannot pay, but if that does not dissuade you, here’s the guidelines.

Guest posts are publicized on Twitter, several Facebook pages and groups, my newsletter, and in my weekly link round-ups; you are welcome to link to your site, social media, and other related material.

Send a 2-3 sentence description of the proposed piece along with relevant dates (if, for example, you want to time things with a book release) to cat AT kittywumpus.net. If it sounds good, I’ll let you know.

I prefer essays fall into one of the following areas but I’m open to interesting pitches:

  • Interesting and not much explored areas of writing
  • Writers or other individuals you have been inspired by
  • Your favorite kitchen and a recipe to cook in it
  • A recipe or description of a meal from your upcoming book
  • Women, PoC, LGBT, or otherwise disadvantaged creators in the history of speculative fiction, ranging from very early figures such as Margaret Cavendish and Mary Wollstonecraft up to the present day.
  • Women, PoC, LGBT, or other wise disadvantaged creators in the history of gaming, ranging from very early times up to the present day.
  • F&SF volunteer efforts you work with

Length is 500 words on up, but if you’ve got something stretching beyond 1500 words, you might consider splitting it up into a series.

When submitting the approved piece, please paste the text of the piece into the email. Please include 1-3 images, including a headshot or other representation of you, that can be used with the piece and a 100-150 word bio that includes a pointer to your website and social media presences. (You’re welcome to include other related links.)

Or, if video is more your thing, let me know if you’d like to do a 10-15 minute videochat for my YouTube channel. I’m happy to handle filming and adding subtitles, so if you want a video without that hassle, this is a reasonable way to get one created. ???? Send 2-3 possible topics along with information about what you’re promoting and its timeline.

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Guest Post: Writing Uplifting Stories by Casey Blair

A few years ago, I decided to try writing a fantasy book as a web serial. It was a project I came to for a lot of reasons, but one of the keys was that I wanted to have a way to put a little joy out into the world on a regular basis with my writing.

That idea spawned a whole cozy fantasy trilogy, which is now complete! And I am Kickstarting funds to officially publish them as books.

That starting seed, that fundamental goal to bring joy with story, shaped the whole trilogy in ways I didn’t initially predict. After all, what does it even mean to write fiction that is “uplifting?” As with anything, people have different tastes for what brings them joy or makes them feel validated.

When it comes to uplifting fiction, I think of this along an axis of “escapism” to “realism.” To be clear, I don’t consider either of these a value judgment: tastes vary, and we all crave different kinds of stories at different times.

For some people, what they want is fantasy that takes them away from their problems. They want to read about other worlds that don’t have the same micro and macroaggressions””or even just the minutiae of daily life””that they have to deal with every day of their actual lives.

For others, those fantasies are unrelatable at best, or erasure at worst, pretending real-world problems don’t exist rather than giving us characters who grapple with them and triumph in some fashion, empowering us in our real worlds thereby.

Fantasy authors have the power to invent the entirety of what goes into our worlds, what’s explicit and implicit. Do we choose to carry over the sexism, racism, queerphobia, ableism, and all the rest from our world and tell a story where characters find happiness despite their oppression? Or do we imagine a world where those oppressions don’t exist, and in so doing invite the reader to imagine other ways of being worth striving for?

Both approaches can be radical. Both can be triumphant, validating, and uplifting stories””though not necessarily for the same audience, and that’s fine.

In Tea Princess Chronicles, I tried to find a balance between them. I wanted to write about people who care about other people, and lifting up everyone around them, and gutting oppressive systems who prevent that; people who do the work, without the feeling it can be too easy to drown in while doomscrolling on social media that caring is a necessarily joyless slog. I wanted to tell stories about people who find ways to make things better, in small ways and large, that don’t feel like wallowing in awfulness but instead inviting joy.

More like the feeling of drinking a warm cup of tea in front of the fireplace on a chilly day.

Whether I succeeded, whether any story succeeds, is a judgment for each individual reader. But I think living with joy, and spreading joy, can be fundamentally radical, and storytelling is one of the most powerful mediums for it. For me, that’s what “uplifting” fiction does, in whatever form it takes.


BIO: Casey Blair writes adventurous fantasy novels, including the cozy fantasy series Tea Princess Chronicles and the novella Consider the Dust. After graduating from Vassar College, her own adventures have included teaching English in rural Japan, attending the Viable Paradise residential science fiction and fantasy writing workshop, and working as an indie bookseller. She now lives in the Pacific Northwest and can be found dancing spontaneously, exploring forests around the world, or trapped under a cat. Find out more at caseyblair.com or follow her on Twitter @CaseyLBlair.


If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!

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Guest Post: Eric Schwitzgebel Gives One-Point-Five Cheers for a Hugo Award for a TV Show about Ethicists' Moral Expertise

When The Good Place episode “The Trolley Problem” won one of science fiction’s most prestigious awards, the Hugo, in the category of best dramatic presentation, short form, I celebrated. I celebrated not because I loved the episode (in fact, I had so far only seen a couple of The Good Place‘s earlier episodes) but because, as a philosophy professor aiming to build bridges between academic philosophy and popular science fiction, the awarding of a Hugo to a show starring a professor of philosophy discussing a famous philosophical problem seemed to confirm that science fiction fans see some of the same synergies I see between science fiction and philosophy.

I do think the synergies are there and that the fans see and value them ““ as also revealed by the enduring popularity of The Matrix, and by West World, and Her, and Black Mirror, among others ““ but “The Trolley Problem”, considered as a free-standing episode, fumbles the job. (Below, I will suggest a twist by which The Good Place could redeem itself in later episodes.)

Yeah, I’m going to be fussy when maybe I should just cheer and praise. And I’m going to take the episode more philosophically seriously than maybe I should, treating it as not just light humor. But taking good science fiction philosophically seriously is important to me ““ and that means engaging critically. So here we go.

The Philosophical Trolley Problem

The trolley problem ““ the classic academic philosophy version of the trolley problem ““ concerns a pair of scenarios.

In one scenario, the Switch case, you are standing beside a railroad track watching a runaway railcar (or “trolley”) headed toward five people it will surely kill if you do nothing. You are standing by a switch, however, and you can flip the switch to divert the trolley onto a side track, saving the five people. Unfortunately, there is one person on the side track who will be killed if you divert the trolley. Question: Should you flip the switch?

In another scenario, the Push case, you are standing on a footbridge when you see the runaway railcar headed toward the five people. In this case, there is no switch. You do, however, happen to be standing beside a hiker with a heavy backpack, who you could push off the bridge into the path of the trolley, which will then grind to a halt on his body, killing him and saving the five. (You are too light to stop the trolley with your own body.) He is leaning over the railing, heedless of you, so you could just push him over. Question: Should you push the hiker?

The interesting thing about these problems is that most people say it’s okay to flip the switch in Switch but not okay to push the hiker in Push, despite the fact that in both cases you appear to be killing one person to save five. Is there really a meaningful difference between the cases? If so, what is it? Or are our ordinary intuitions about one or the other case wrong?

It’s a lovely puzzle, much, much debated in academic philosophy, often with intricate variations on the cases. (Here’s one of my papers about it.)

The Problem with “The Trolley Problem”

“The Trolley Problem” episode nicely sets up some basic trolley scenarios, adding also a medical case of killing one to save five (an involuntary organ donor). The philosophy professor character, Chidi, is teaching the material to the other characters.

Spoilers coming.

The episode stumbles by trying to do two conflicting things.

First, it seizes the trope of the philosophy professor who can’t put his theories into practice. The demon Michael sets up a simulated trolley, headed toward five victims, with Chidi at the helm. Chidi is called on to make a fast decision. He hesitates, agonizing, and crashes into the five. Micheal reruns the scenario with several variations, and it’s clear that Chidi, faced with a practical decision requiring swift action, can’t actually figure out what’s best. (However, Chidi is clear that he wouldn’t cut up a healthy patient in an involuntary organ donor case.)

Second, incompatibly, the episode wants to affirm Chidi’s moral expertise. Michael, the demon who enjoys torturing humans, can’t seem to take Chidi’s philosophy lessons seriously, despite Chidi’s great knowledge of ethics. Michael tries to win Chidi’s favor by giving him a previously unseen notebook of Kant’s, but Chidi, with integrity that I suppose the viewer is expected to find admirable, casts the notebook aside, seeing it as a bribe. What Chidi really wants is for Michael to recognize his moral expertise. At the climax of the episode, Michael seems to do just this, saying:

Oh, Chidi, I am so sorry. I didn’t understand human ethics, and you do. And it made me feel insecure, and I lashed out. And I really need your help because I feel so lost and vulnerable.

It’s unclear from within the episode whether we are supposed to regard Michael as sincere. Maybe not. Regardless, the viewer is invited to think that it’s what Michael should say, what his attitude should be ““ and Chidi accepts the apology.

But this resolution hardly fits with Chidi’s failure in actual ethical decision making in the moment (a vice he also reveals in other episodes). Chidi has abstract, theoretical knowledge about ethical quandaries such as the trolley problem, and he is in some ways the most morally admirable of the lead characters, but his failure in vividly simulated trolley cases casts his practical ethical expertise into doubt. Nothing in the episode satisfactorily resolves that practical challenge to Chidi’s expertise, pro or con.

Ethical Expertise?

Now, as it happens, I am the world’s leading expert on the ethical behavior of professional ethicists. (Yes, really. Admittedly, the competition is limited.)

The one thing that shows most clearly from my and others’ work on this topic, and which is anyway pretty evident if you spend much time around professional ethicists, is that ethicists, on average, behave more or less similarly to other people of similar social background ““ not especially better, not especially worse. From the fact that Chidi is a professor of ethics, nothing in particular follows about his moral behavior. Often, indeed, expertise in philosophical ethics appears to become expertise in constructing post-hoc intellectual rationales for what you were inclined to do anyway.

I hope you will agree with me about the following, concerning the philosophy of philosophy: Real ethical understanding is not a matter of what words you speak in classroom moments. It’s a matter of what you choose and what you do habitually, regardless of whether you can tell your friends a handsome story about it, grounded in your knowledge of Kant. It’s not clear that Chidi does have especially good ethical understanding in this practical sense. Moreover, to the extent Chidi does have some such practical ethical understanding, as a somewhat morally admirable person, it is not in virtue of his knowledge of Kant.

Michael should not be so deferential to Chidi’s expertise, and especially he should not be deferential on the basis of Chidi’s training as a philosopher. If, over the seasons, the characters improve morally, it is, or should be, because they learn from the practical situations they find themselves in, not because of Chidi’s theoretical lessons.

How to Partly Redeem “The Trolley Problem”

Thus, the episode, as a stand-alone work, is flawed both in plot (the resolution at climax failing to answer the problem posed by Chidi’s earlier practical indecisiveness) and in philosophy (being too deferential to the expertise of theoretical ethicists, in contrast with the episode’s implicit criticism of the practical, on-the-trolley value of Chidi’s theoretical ethics).

When the whole multi-season arc of The Good Place finally resolves, here’s what I hope happens, which in my judgment would partly redeem “The Trolley Problem”: Michael turns out, all along, to have been the most ethically insightful character, becoming Chidi’s teacher rather than the other way around.

Bio: Eric Schwitzgebel is a professor of philosophy at University of California, Riverside, and a cooperating member of UCR’s program in Speculative Fiction and Cultures of Science. His short fiction has been published in Clarkesworld, F&SF, and elsewhere. He regularly blogs at The Splintered Mind on topics in philosophy, psychology, and science fiction. His third book, tentatively titled Jerks, Zombie Robots, and Other Philosophical Misadventures is forthcoming with MIT Press.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines.

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