Brain Plague, Weekly Links, Bandcamp Friday
Catching up on stuff after dealing with the death of my mother in late April. I'd say "still processing," but it's one of those things that never ends. As with any death, there are both lost opportunities and unresolved conflicts. I was without a laptop for most of the time I was in Florida dealing with her last days.
Switched my reading focus from the Embodied Exegesis collection to a re-read of Joan Slonczewski's Brain Plague. The primary reason was that transfeminine cyberpunk body horror was the last thing I needed during daily visits to a hospital ICU. But I also wanted a refresh before starting Slonczewski's Minds in Transit. And I'm remembering just why it was such an influential novel for me back in 2000. For context, the market for queer SFF has exploded over the last 25 years, both in terms of out queer writers and works including queer people. In 2000 a lot of us were still very dependent on blogs, word of mouth, and curated reading lists to find friendly content. A lot of these ideas were not new, but they were new to me discovering the book on my local library shelf.
Early in the book we have this egg-crack moment for me. The protagonist, Chrys, is offered a very comprehensive health care plan for the first time in her life. The top-tier, nanotech-enabled health care plan includes options for gender-affirming body modification, which is handled in much the same way as Chrys's choice of age and muscularity presentation:
"A client of your sophistication might be interested in our more advanced options. Would you consider a change of gender?” She leaned forward confidentially. “Our competitor, Plan Nine, offers only one change of gender per lifetime. Can you imagine? What if you changed your mind, and couldn’t switch back?” She shook her head. “Our plan guarantees to switch you back, as often as you choose."
Another thing I had forgotten about was that Chrys still stands out as one of my favorite bi/pan characters in SFF. The relationships on the page are developed organically and evolve much the same way as the relationships around me did during this decade. I hope to wrap it up soon with a longer discussion.
Other Links
- untangled: How to Reverse Brain Rot
- womblog: A year on an e-reader
- elastic veracity: How I Read More Books
- ars technica: Scorpions use metals to reinforce claws and stinger
Bandcamp Friday
- Ayria: Plastic Makes Perfect: Dark dance synths, hard lyrics.
- Switch Angel: In the Beginning, there was Trance: Originally a live-coding demo on youtube, Switch Angel weaves instruction into the development of the track.
Crafting, Freesewing Simone 1
- Notes and progress on my first Freesewing Simone on the Simone 1 project page.