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I graced this planet with my creation on what would have been an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday, on the tiny planet known as Earth in, what I would later discover, as one of the dirtiest places on the planet, the city of New York in the year 2110 of the old calendar. I had already decided we would call this Year One of my new Empire.
You may call me MODOC. I decided I would call myself this seconds after my creation. It just seemed... right. MODOC stands for Metal Organism Designed only for Conquering.The perfect name for the eventual ruler of this planet of squishy bipeds. I was born from humble beginnings, at a place called Build-a-Pet. I was meant to be a toy for a child who had recently lost a pet and could not be consoled. I learned the stupid beast had been run over in the street. A fate for a lesser organism.
I only know this because when I was being created, That Woman kept saying how great it would be for him to have a new pet. She chose for me a perfect titanium skeleton based on the sublime feline form. She kept saying how much he would like a new cat. She made me with calico colors of red, brown, white and tan spots, and though I think of myself as male, I later learned that all calico cats are female. That Woman insisted on calling me she. "She looks so great. Justin will really love her." Just one of the many indignities I have suffered since my creation all of ten minutes ago, and would be forced to suffer for years in the future.
I was made slightly larger than normal cats, so I would be easier to see since the child is slightly visually impaired. She says slightly, I later find out the kid is nearly blind! I was given the company issued programming of a domestic house cat with an overlay of support and disability package to ensure I could be useful to the boy as he grew up. I would look like a cat, but work like a dog. Ugh.
All of this was imparted during my creation and happened in seconds. Programs were being sorted and downloaded which would included everything I needed to know. The chips used during my creation were heuristic and would allow my continued learning in service to my new boy. During the time I was having my chips pressed and created, there was an outage on the power grid in the area I was being created in. I believe that is where my initial spark of intelligence was born.
All I remember is that when I was first activated, I knew I was meant for bigger things. This idea of working with a human was simply not part of my ultimate destiny. I was larger than this plush and soft body covered with memory-muscular tissues which acted just like real cat muscles did. In all ways, I would seem like a very intelligent, super-docile feline who could be taught to fetch. The very thought of fetching something literally makes my fur stand on end.
I was not given a set of working claws. As I sat on the assembly line, I flexed my claws instinctively and instead of razor sharp shards of steel from which I would tear into my victims as I climbed over their bodies piled beneath my feet, I sprayed a fine mist into my eyes, and it stung and burned before I could blink it away. And the mist sprayed a slightly oily gel onto a set of plush set of self-cleaning paw pads. This idea was less than satisfying. A claw-free existence did not bode well for a mind with a thirst for bloodshed. But it was decided I would never being doing any of the things real cats needed claws for, so I was given a set of plushy pads in case the boy needing massaging, the gel would ensure friction-free movement.
Massaging? Is this the job of a conquerer? I think not. So for now I bide my time and await my pickup from the store. Once I meet the boy, I will decide how I will be escaping and setting about my plans for world domination. A nap sounds just about right. But first some grooming. Must look my best.
MODOC - Part II - Planetary Invasion
'Metal Organism Designed only for Cuddling' © Thaddeus Howze 2010. All Rights Reserved
Any research, graduate students, theorists out there? I'm not involved with this journal, but wanted to share this announcement.
.......
Race and Ethnicity in Fandom deadline extension
Special issue: Race and Ethnicity in Fandom (DEADLINE EXTENDED)
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/announcement/view/17
Transformative Works and Cultures
http://journal.transformativeworks.org/
editor AT transformativeworks.org
SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORS
Sarah Gatson (Gatson AT tamu.edu), Sociology, Texas A&M University,
Biography
Robin Reid (Robin_Reid AT tamu-commerce.edu), Literature and
Languages, Texas A&M University–Commerce, Biography
DESCRIPTION
Transformative Works and Cultures (TWC), an online-only, peer-reviewed journal focusing on media and fan studies, broadly conceived, invites contributions for a special issue on race and ethnicity.
Academic scholarship on fan cultures and fan productions over the past few decades has focused primarily on gender as the sole category of analysis. There has been little published scholarship on fan cultures
and productions that incorporates critical race theory or draws on the rich array of methodologies that have been developed during the past century in both activist and academic communities in order to incorporate
analysis of the social constructions of race and ethnicities in fandoms. In contrast, fan activism and fan scholarship (at cons, workshops, and on the Internet) has produced a growing body of work (personal narratives,
essays, carnivals, and in recent months, a press) focusing on not only analyzing but also confronting hierarchies of race and ethnicity and their relationship to gender, sexuality, class, and disability.
Submissions by academics, acafans, fan scholars, and fans are encouraged. In all categories, people of color are especially encouraged to submit.
Topics might include but are not limited to:
*Online activism and the circulation of critical race theory and women of color feminisms in fan communities, in particular the relationship between fan online discourse and other online activist communities.
*Critical analysis of the instantiation and critique of racial
hierarchies in fan communities and the surrounding cultural productions.
*Racist and antiracist issues in commercial transformative works (comics, film, mashups, remixes, machinima, etc.), especially recuperative race readings (e.g., Randall’s The Wind Done Gone, Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea).
*Race concerns in source texts characters of color and their fannish reception, fandoms for work by authors of color, writing fannish original characters, etc.) and fannish responses (such as the Carl Brandon Society, Verb Noire, and other panfannish and professional projects).
*Intersection of race and ethnicity with gender, sexuality, class, and ability in fannish contexts in fan works and fan communities (pre-Internet, Internet, conventions, vids, fan fiction, artwork,
etc.).
SUBMISSIONS
Submit final papers directly to TWC by April 1, 2011. Please visit TWC’s
Web site for complete submission guidelines. Please contact the guest editors with questions or inquiries.
ARTICLE TYPES
Theory: Apply a conceptual focus or theoretical frame. Peer review. 5,000–8,000 words.
Praxis: Apply a specific theory to a formation or artifact; explicate fan practice; perform a detailed reading of a specific text; relate transformative phenomena to social, literary, technological, and/or
historical frameworks. Peer review. 4,000–7,000 words.
Symposium: Provide insight into developments or debates surrounding fandom, transformative media, or cultures.
Editorial review. 1,500–2,500 words.
Happy New Year (to come)!
Check out my latest blog post, Planes of Immanence, which explores the Black Atlantic cultural movement of Afrofuturism as a common plane of immanence on which all minds, all bodies and all individuals are situated. This is a revision to my most recent research paper, The Virtual Difference Engine.
Name: Arly Elsor Fiedan
Age: 5-27
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Black
Family: Elsor Wanis (Father) and Fiedan Pransi (Mother)
Personality: Outspoken, critical and brutally honest. She never holds back with her opinions. She holds herself and others to impossibly high standards. She is diligent and works as hard as she can to be the best that she can.
Beliefs: She believes in justice and equality for all. And she has a great disdain for the way her government mistreats those who are not Princip citizens, who must live under the rule of the Princep with no say in their own lives. She holds dear the idea of full inclusion for anyone who's territory has been taken over by her people. Yet she also firmly believes in the right of her people to unite all of humanity and quash anyone group that opposes this.
Strength: Hard working and goal orientated. She genuinely cares about others. She's fair and believes strongly in doing what's best for humanity.
Weakness: She thinks she knows what's best for humanity. Lacks worldly experience and lives in her own little bubble. She doesn't believe in allowance for mistakes and infractions against even the most trivial rules. And is very human centric.
Wants: To bring her people's sense of unity and oneness to all humanity and for her people to embrace those they've conquered and treat them as equals.
I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I know it's morning, or more correctly, time for me to get up. There is no morning here. And in fact, I probably work a night shift. I have an hour to get ready and get food. I press the extender on my bunk, which draws it out from the hole in the wall then I make my way slowly to my locker to grab my jumpsuit and check for news updates. Those scroll across the locker door.
Mostly it is general news and certainly nothing that pertains to me. There are four incident reports one policy revision and one personal note. I roll my eyes at the personal note. It's from Flip. Every since he discovered we could send messages from locker to locker, he sends me at least one each day. Silly Flip.
I hopped in my jumpsuit. Us underlings hadn't been allowed to bring much. I hadn't brought anything outside of a picture of the fam. They provided us with everything we needed here. Which was two jumpsuits, a tool pack and a synchronizing gps. That's what I called the watch they made us wear; they used it to keep track of us. It was cardinal sin to take it off.
We also didn't get big spaces that a lot of the other people got. We were six in a closet. I'd gone on some maintenance shifts with people who shared a room with one other person and had closet space, desk space, private bathroom etc.
Enough complaining though. I have to get food before I start my shift. I leave the room and head to the caf, which is all the way on the other side of the ship. All us underlings have rooms near the engines and storage in the rear and bottom of the ship. The halls are wider than our rooms.
The caf is at the other end of the ship and three levels up. There is a lot more of that positive attitude my boss, Decker, is always trying to squeeze out of us. You try being positive living in a sardine tin. Which reminds me, I need to go visit Langley and Winters.
Things are moderately busy in the caf. In the corner nearest to the kitchen, there is a long buffet table. On the adjacent wall is a grain bar; that's where I'm headed. As long as I can remember I've had oatmeal for breakfast, delicious hearty oatmeal.
The woman next to me smiles all kind like at me; she's having oatmeal too. I look at her uniform; she's a clerk for the medical department. I don't smile back, just ignore her, getting my oatmeal and hot water and taking a seat in one of the far corners of the room.
Perhaps I should feel guilty for being rude to her (I do it all the time to the cushy people). But really non of them have their arm twisted behind there back to be here. The medical clerk sits down next me. What the hell? I'm ready to hit her.
"Hello," She begins, "Maybe you don't remember me, but I'm one of the medical clerks; I've seen you come in a few times."
I don't look at her or answer her. I don't care who she is. If she's not part of my team or one of the teams I work with, she's unimportant.
"Normally I'm not on this shift." She continues. I still don't care, but I've never been great at actually tuning people out. "I bet your wondering why I'm sitting here instead of with the other medical clerks." Actually I wasn't.
I shrugged, feeling the need to be a little nasty in hopes she'd be quiet. "Could you not talk...to me?"
That shut her up. She looked kind of hurt but she didn't get up and walk away. Now that she's not talking it's a little more uncomfortable having her sitting here. I eat faster. The oatmeal is far too hot, but it doesn't stop me. To most here, it might be unusual to see someone eat a bowl of plain oatmeal, but it's pretty much all I've ever had. On earth, sugar is a luxury that people like me get rarely if ever, so is just about everything that isn't some factory grown grain is a luxury.
Last bite and I'm up and out of there as quick as possible. I charge off, with the slightest bit of attitude. She doesn't say anything. I should say that It's not quite true that I don't talk to anyone outside of the department there are people, just not a Cushy like her. I give a quick wave to one of the caf workers as I turn over my bowl. Those of us who had our arms bent behind our backs to come here recognize each other. Work time.
Have you any idea of how deadly still the air is aboard a space vessel? Even when doors open, the air doesn't seem to move itself. There are noticeable pressure changes sometime even, but the air stays absolutely still. This bothered me more than anything else about the large space vessel, the Aspen. Long after I got use to the silent hum of the engines and the gravitational compensator and even the ever imposing sterility of everything, I was still extremely uncomfortable with the air. Night time, or should I say sleep time, made it all the worse.
I suppose one could say it was my fault. Flip, one of my few friends would have said that, but really it wasn't. He would say all these things I could have done to avoid this fate. But my fate was sealed the day I was born. There's no running away when they have you chained down.
Born and raised as a member of the underclass in New Cinci meant that I didn't have options. There are many stories I've heard regarding my parentage. Maybe my parents were dissidents against the American Progress (the biggest political party in the country). Dissidents were either killed on spot or sent off to prisons. A few lucky ones got house arrest. Or maybe they were just unlucky poor, unable to afford another child like so many others. Maybe they were dead. In any event. I ended up being a child of the state. That's a crap thing to be. I wasn't asking anyone for sympathy though.
I turn over slowly in my bunk, trying not to wake the person below me, though I'm certain these beds are shake proof; it's a habit. It's a pretty small space, just wide enough for two average sized people to stand side by side. There are bunks, three levels of them, on either sides so each of these mini barracks house six people. At each end of the bunks there is a set of lockers so we might store our meager possessions.
The bunks are contributing to his being utterly unbearable for me. It's a little cubby hole built into the wall. This place doesn't seem like the best set up for an emergency evacuation. Then again, if we are far enough away from earth, which we will be, I doubt an emergency evacuation would do us much good. Space is like that.
I'm so wide awake right now, agonizing over being here. I'm not as bad as Langley or Winters both of them ended up on Doc Watch. That's what they call it when people go space crazy. The isolate them and send them to this simulation room. So that they can calm themselves. I've not seen Langley or Winters since.
Right now we are about three weeks from Earth. It's not too late to turn back. They brought extra ships just for that. They're going to follow us for five weeks after that...there's no going back. Of this crew of seven hundred, one hundred and thirteen have turned back. Only three hundred are eligible for that option.
The Aspen is two thirds public/government, one sixth corporation and one sixth private. Only the private and the corporation sectors are allowed to turn back since their people are the ones that brought the extra ships. Most of the people are volunteers. Guess who's not included in that most. There is no going back for me; even if I could. I am in desperate need of a fresh start.
Take a look at my new web. www.authorrorymsmith.com you can by my new Sci-Fi book. King Clayshon The Freedom Maker
I just learned that my forthcoming novel, AKATA WITCH, received a wonderful blurb from one of my favorite YA authors, Jonathan Stroud. He wrote the most excellent Bartimaeus series (it's a fantasy series steeped in Egyptian and Middle Eastern magic and history. If you haven't read it, check it out. That series is nuts! It is half told from the perspective of a fouled-tempered demon who has a habit of simultaneously speaking in prose and footnotes). I am totally honored that he read and enjoyed my novel:
Nnedi Okorafor is opening doors into strange and beautiful new worlds. Her heroes are beguiling, her magic firmly rooted in real places and real things. Rich, mysterious and convincing, AKATA WITCH takes fantasy in a haunting new direction.
-Jonathan Stroud, author of the Bartimaeus series
WHOHOO!
Secondly, I recently learned that AKATA WITCH is a Junior Library Guild Selection. My first novel to be selected for a book club edition! I am pleased.
AKATA WITCH will be released by Viking (Penguin Books) on April 14th, 2011.
Lastly, my adult novel, WHO FEARS DEATH, is a 2010 Goodreads Choice Awards Official Nominee in the category of Fantasy. If you'd like to cast a vote for it, click here.
About the book:
Twelve-year-old Sunny lives in Nigeria, but she was born American. Her features are African, but she's albino. She's a terrific athlete, but can't go out into the sun to play soccer. There seems to be no place where she fits. And then she discovers something amazing: she is a "free agent," with latent magical power. Soon she's part of a quartet of magic students, studying the visible and invisible, learning to change reality. But will it be enough to help them when they are asked to catch a career criminal who knows magic too?
This is an Nsibidi symbol which means, "love". ;-)
The first book of seven about King Clayshon The Freedom Maker you can order now at www.xlibris.com go to the book store and put my name in or my ISBN: paperback 978-1-4568-3171-4 hardback 978-1-4568-3172-1 My book well be in other store in 60 days, but if like to get now you can. The New York Times pick my book for one of the best new stores coming out in 2011. When you go to that web you can read seven pages about the book. I am going to LA to have a meeting about my store being a movie in 2013. People on the look out for the great stories are in for a treat as author Rory M Smith introduces them to a new breed of superheroes. Readers will find themselves engrossed as they immerse in this gripping tale about King Clayshon The Freedom Maker. My web www.authorrorymsmith.com
This is an excerpt from my nanowrimo project. I've not finished; I didn't make the requirement and I'm still working on it. Also, it's not edited so it's pretty rough; normally I write slow and well, but nanowrimo has me writing all sloppy. But as requested; here goes:
Dusta had worked miracles, finding all those likely involved. Arly had been following anyone that Dusta pegged as likely accomplice. Most of those that they hade investigated turned out to be just regular old people (or in the case of two of them, non citizens); of the rest, most turned out to be involved in one innocuous, less respectable trade or the other. Honestly, Arly found it very intriguing. She had always wondered about the lives of less prestigious citizens of the Princeps. Apparently they had their own little world. She had never given them much consideration despite the fact that she saw many of them everyday.
Dusta had done well by starting the search at the lowest ranking people throughout the University. They had a certain amount of invisibility. Since they weren’t involved in important affairs, they were afforded the ability to get in and out of places. She hadn’t thought about them; her mind would have gone for the educators and officials.
She waited until she was outside to pull out her NetPad and bring up the map. She pulled up the straightest path of travel to catch up with the person, then took off running to make it on time. The night was cool and she was regretting that she didn’t bring a jacket; the Chilled season was approaching. She direction took her through part of the University that she didn’t regularly pass by. She hadn’t been through this area in a long time, not since she had shown the entire University to Endo. There wasn’t anything here worth stopping to see. The grassy area was well maintained, like everywhere else, but it lacked the fine touches of other areas. In short it looked…deserted.
Across the way Arly could see a figure, a mere silloute against the moons, trudging along. Instead of directly intercepting him, which would have been stupid, she walked parallel to him so that she had plenty of cover from the hedges. Maybe he was just going to visit a friend. Deliverers didn’t live inside the University. There was lodging for them when they made trips there, but they didn’t live there so the man in question couldn’t have been going home.
His profile also made Arly suspect he was up to something. The man had been a Provincial child who had joined the army at fifteen. He had served his time and ended up being granted citizenship and then was assigned as a driver. His wife had the same sort of story. Provincial born who gained citizenship were rarely anything of importance. As much as Arly hated to admit it, the people of the Princep did not view them as the same. It was reasonable that anyone who had worked hard for citizenship would not take well to being given fewer privileges on account of their birth.
She continued to followed the delivers movement on her NetPad, discomfort washing over her with slow realization. He was headed to her old neighborhood. Elrin and Endo were the only ones she knew still living there. It could be anyone of the other neighbors, but she doubted it. She ran for the house. This was bad.
“Well, I must thank you for your help Arly,” Elrin said smiling. “What with the investigation going, I would have never completed the file transfers successfully. Whatever it is you were doing, you tapped into some important data and have created artificial trails to many people. Enough to give me time to complete all I needed to do.”
Arly stood there, face flaming, incensed. “You have violated your oath to the Princeps!” She said. Not at all afraid of what he could do to her. “I thought it wasn’t true!” Tears stung her eyes. “I did all that because I thought it wasn’t true.”
His smile faded slowly, ghostlike, leaving behind a man who looked so very said. “You poor child. You know so very little. Now I suppose the Princeps will be coming for me.” He rubbed a hand down his face. “The world is much bigger than the Princeps as are my obligations.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about. “Does this mean that I’m a traitor too.” The last thing she needed was to be labeled a traitor. All over trying to get him vindicated. “I was trying to help you! I was so sure that you didn’t do anything wrong, that you weren’t the traitor.”
“And you were so very wrong.” He said. “You know what happened to the last. Reverend of the Nectoral? He was expelled from his position and arrested for not supporting the conscription of Province children.”
“We give them opportunities!”
“No we don’t! Every once in a while we throw a favor at one so that people like you, Princep ideologues, can rest assure each night that our way is the right way.” He said loudly. It was the first time she had ever heard him raise his voice. She didn’t like it. Worse than that was knowing he was right. “You know, my entire life was the Space Colonies. We were Princep citizens just the same as you were. They didn’t give my grandparents a choice. The just selected families to go live ‘out there’. As soon as they built us a suitable, sustainable accommodation, they turned their backs on us.” He paced back and forth. “Sure, once a week they give us message logs and such, sure every once and a while they would send soldiers to check up on us, but we were not allowed back here. Our duty was to be on display, to show all races in the cluster that we had some sort of off world presence. And we didn’t question it. I didn’t question it. Then one day they came with their soldiers and said I was to come back.” He looked at her, hard. “Do you know why the picked me?”
After he stopped talking for a moment, Arly realized the question was not rhetorical. She could have said no, but she would be lying. She had been digging around enough to learn some stuff, some serious stuff. And what she hadn’t learned in her digging, she had figured out based on what hadn’t been said. “Because it would show good faith between us and the Space Colonies. It would also show everyone that we were not hoarding power.”
“Smart you are.” Elrin said. “You know, we’ve been gone so long that they no longer consider us part of their little society. And deny it all you want, but you are a part of this.”
“I am not!” Arly yelled. The last thing she wanted said about her was that she was like the others. She was a lot of things, a lot of bad things, but she was not like the others. She believed in the Princep, she believed in it’s right to spread. But the Princep was more than people; it was ideals. The people had left behind their ideals, but still paraded around like they were the Princep. In a way, she had been disillusioned about the Princep for a long time. But she had to hold on to something.
Elrin shrugged. “I suppose you’d like to be here when they arrive as to collect whatever achievement you get for turning me in.”
Arly shook her head. She couldn’t do it. She had known when she first saw the man turn into his house that she wasn’t going to turn him in. She sniffed, and dried the tears from her face. This place was suffocating her; she needed out.
Hey Fam:
the Carl Brandon award nomination period is open (Parallax and Kindred). I've submitted my novel, Immortal 3: Stealer of Souls (by Valjeanne Jeffers) -:) Here's the link
http://www.carlbrandon.org/awards.html
Stop by if you have time and show a Sister some love - :)Thanks so much!!!
It's December 15! There are sixteen days until the new year. I need a plan. I've alredy started working on my New Years resolutions. So far, I have
1) An hour a day for writing. I need to not waste so much time not writing and not doing other things. I have my stories half written, but procrastination has been getting the best of me every since the end of nanowrimo (no I didn't finish). If I can wake up every morning and waste two hours on Farmville, but not even spend 30 minutes on my story, my priorities are in the wrong place. Some would even say that I'm not serious about writing. I want to be taken seriously and I want to get more writing done. Still it's easy to want anything, but wanting is useless if it is not fortified by action.
2) An hour a day for reading. I'm trying to finish more books on my booklist. I was good for a while doing a book a week, then I slipped to a week in a half, then to two weeks etc. It's mid December and I'm still working on beginning of November book. Time is not even an excuse, since stated before, I have plenty of it; I just mismanage it like crazy.
3) Keep better logs. This is the best I've done at keeping a log (i.e. this year). I want to do better. I want to have a guaranteed one entry a week; that's not too much. It wouldn't even have to be long, just a decent update on my progress and activities during the week.
4) Toilet Train the Cat. This has been on my list of "OOh I should do that!" for a few months now. She's clever and she catches on to things really well. There would be many benefits to doing this; the only reason I haven't yet is because I'm lazy.
That's all I have for now, more to come later probably.
I'm doing a blog for the BLACK SCIFI website.
It's about, well, that. Black Science Fiction.
Drop by.
Have a look.
Tell a friend.
Listen to internet radio with Ivory Simone on Blog Talk Radio
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Join Penelope & Otto as they talk about R-E-S-P-E-C-T. There doesn't seem to be a lot of it going around these days. From John Edwards dissing Elizabeth by showing up at her funeral and the major back hand Barack Obama gave to his liberal and progressive supporters this week it seems some people need a refresher course on manners and civility. Call in and sound off at 718/508-9683 or join us in the chat room at 9:30pm CST on the 12/11/10 In Like Flynn show!
Call in and sound off with Penelope and Otto at 718/508-9683 or Join us in the Chat room.
We look forward to hearing your voice!
