The Mumpsimus

The latest issue of The Revelator  is now online. Eric Schaller and I put this one together with love and craft . It includes new short stories by Meghan McCarron and Laird Barron, poems by Sonya Taaffe, comix by Chad Woody, a column on music by Brian Francis Slattery, art by Adam Blue, miniatures used in the movie The Whisperer in Darkness , a previously-unpublished interview with H.P. Lovecraft that Nick Mamatas discovered, etc. Once again, we have, we believe, fully embodied our motto: The Truth ... And All. The easiest way to keep apprised of the always-unpredictable, regularly irregular schedule of The Revelator  is via our Facebook page .

I don't generally publicize Kickstarter projects, etc., here, because it would be easy to get overwhelmed, but here's one I've got multiple personal interests in: Unstuck: New Literature of the Fantastic and Surreal . Unstuck  is a new(ish) annual(ish) journal out of Texas. Their first issue included fiction by Aimee Bender, Matthew Derby, Amelia Gray, J. Robert Lennon, Meghan McCarron, Rachel Swirsky, Leslie What, and others who are just too fabulous to name. Their upcoming (at the end of the year) second issue will include work by Other People You Know, plus me (a very short story about Victrolas and turtles that I read last year at Readercon). The rewards for funding the project are pretty great. Also, one of the editors is Meghan McCarron , someone whose life I nearly ruined once by hiring her to teach at a boarding school in New Hampshire. She's beginning to forgive me. She'll forgive me more if you fund this project. (But don't use that as an exc...

By now, you've probably seen John Scalzi's post "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is" (and perhaps John's amusing commentary on deleted comments  and follow-up post in response to some responses ). My post here is simply to point you toward three responses among the many, many, many that the post has drawn. Excerpts are here merely to entice you to read more, not to suggest that they are the only things you need to read from these excellent writers. First, Nick Mamatas : ...when class is fully integrated into an understanding of the difficulty setting of the Game of Life, I think the arguments get much clearer. The question: "I'm a poor white guy; should I fight against systems of privilege?" The answer: "Because you'll benefit from it. The more equal things are, the better off you are." For rich white guys who ask the same question, well, they're clearly on the other side, so they don't n...