Hey, all! Have I mentioned that Capricon 41 is coming up soon?

Hey, all! Have I mentioned that Capricon 41 is coming up soon?
As part of its recent series of content celebrating Black creators in SFF, Tor.com recently re-uploaded an essay I wrote for them in 2018 after Black Panther came out, about radical policy and the negative and positive aspects of letting your praxis be driven by personal rage, through the lens of Nakia and Killmonger.
I like this essay a lot. I think you should read it, just like I think everyone should watch—or rather, should have already watched—Black Panther itself. But in the current climate in which the essay’s been republished, I can’t help but find myself thinking deeply and complexly about one of the primary assumptions of that essay—
No, not whether Nakia was right. Nakia was right. Let’s be clear on this. Nakia was right the whole time, and it would be a different movie if T’Challa noticed sooner.
I am writing to you now from the second week of a national stay-at-home guideline. All schools are out for the term. Banks are cutting down their hours and negotiating the terms of debt restructuring for those financially affected by the shutdown. Restaurants are offering curbside and delivery service—even the fast food places that typically never had such a feature beforehand. For the first time, my preferred grocery has a curbside service where you can send them your grocery list, pay by card, and just pick up bags of your stuff at the door.
And these are perhaps the very least of what has changed here, let alone for many other people elsewhere. For lack of other descriptors, it’s terribly awe-inspiring what things the fear of a deadly virus can do to our sense of superstructure.
Hey, all! Have I mentioned that I’m headed to ConFusion?
On January 16-19, I’ll be at the Sheraton Novi in Michigan for ConFusion 2020! I’m the Creative Guest of Hono(u)r, which is (waaaaaaaiiiit foooooor iiiiiiiit…) quite an hono(u)r, and lots of other astounding people will be there, too!
If you want to get an idea of some of the stuff I’ll be up to, here’s it:
16 January 2020, Thursday | 7pm | Room: St. Clair
Join our Guests of Honor for a Thursday night dinner. Anyone is welcome to join.
Seanan McGuire, Gwenda Bond, Kameron Hurley, Bogi Takács, Brandon O’Brien, Dr. Julie Lesnik
17 January 2020, Friday | 7pm | Room: Ballroom C&D
Welcome to How to Train Your ConFusion! Please join our Conchair, Lithie Dubois, and our Guests of Honor, Kameron Hurley, Julie Lesnik, Brandon O’Brien, and Bogi Takács, along with our Subterranean Press Special Guests, Seanan McGuire, and Gwenda Bond! Hear about all of the exciting stuff you can expect from them, from us, and this weekend.
Lithie Dubois (M), Seanan McGuire, Gwenda Bond, Kameron Hurley, Bogi Takács, Brandon O’Brien, Dr. Julie Lesnik
17 January 2020, Friday | 8pm | Room: Mackinac
Come enjoy desserts and mingle with our Guests of Honor and Subterranean Press’s Special Guests!
18 January 2020, Saturday | 10am | Room: Isle Royale
Awareness is on the rise about how toxic social expectations placed on men and masculinity poison men, their relationships, and society at large. We now have the vocabulary to discuss the precise ways in which patriarchy hurts men, too, and how that hurt bleeds into the rest of the world. How has this growing awareness changed our speculative visions of masculinity, and how can speculative fiction help dismantle the cultural poison backing social ills from rape culture to mass shootings?
Jason Sanford (M), Marsalis, Jim C. Hines, Kameron Hurley, Brandon O’Brien
18 January 2020, Saturday | 11am | Room: Petoskey
A discussion on what it looks like and what it means to integrate themes of emotional non-violence in fiction – is emotionally non-violent fiction important? Going beyond higher level issues of emotional abuse to more subtle topics such as consent, misidentification, and personal questions.
E.D.E. Bell (M), Jason Sanford, R.B. Lemberg, Brandon O’Brien
18 January 2020, Saturday | 1pm | Room: Leelanaw
A Reading with Guest of Honor Brandon O’Brien (I’ll be reading from How To Unmake It In Anglia!)
18 January 2020, Saturday | 2pm | Room: Isle Royale
Science Fiction and Fantasy are full of tough manly heroes (and anti-heroes) with trauma in their backgrounds, from murdered families to witnessed war crimes. More often than not, these traumatic backstories serve as a justification for sarcasm, alcohol, and violence. In a world where men are significantly less likely to get professional help to heal from their trauma, how can science fiction and fantasy help to create positive examples of heroes who face their demons constructively?
Brandon O’Brien (M), Adam R. Shannon, Dave Ring, John Wiswell, R.B. Lemberg
18 January 2020, Saturday | 5pm | Room: Charlevoix
Thinly-veiled or even overt references to popular real-world social platforms are common in modern media–including in speculative stories like superhero tv shows and movies. But speculative worldbuilding often calls for a re-imagining of how humans interact–would the social media of the United Federation of Planets really look like ours? Or would a peaceful interstellar society be more likely to arise in a world where Google Reader never died? How can writers incorporate new visions of social media that reflect their speculative worldbuilding?
Marissa Lingen (M), John Chu, Jennifer Mace, Annalee Flower Horne, Brandon O’Brien
18 January 2020, Saturday | 8pm | Room: Charlevoix
Join Guests of Honor Brandon O’Brien and Bogi Takács for a speculative poetry open mic. Bring work to read, or kick back and listen as ConFusion’s poets share their work.
19 January 2020, Sunday | 11am | Room: Club Lounge
Join Creative Guest of Honor Brandon O’Brien for a small-scale conversation and Q&A over cups of coffee or tea. Limit 10 attendees, sign up in Ops.
19 January 2020, Sunday | 1pm | Room: Charlevoix
Our panel of poets and poetry enthusiasts talk about the current state of speculative poetry–how has it evolved over time, and where is it heading? Where is it situated within the wider world of contemporary poetry? Who are our favorite speculative poets and publishers of speculative poetry?
Nora E. Derrington (M), Stephanie Malia Morris, Bogi Takács, Brandon O’Brien
19 January 2020, Sunday | 3pm | Room: Ballroom C&D
Come say goodbye to our Guests of Honor and Subterranean Special Guests, and learn which 2021 Guests of Honor announcements we will be sharing with you!
Lithie Dubois (M), Seanan McGuire, Gwenda Bond, Kameron Hurley, Bogi Takács, Brandon O’Brien, Dr. Julie Lesnik
So that’s what I’ll be up to, not including other GoH duties, checking out other cool panels, and meeting all of you! Feel free to say hello if you’re going to be there!
Another year has passed! That means even more fascinating poetry, short fiction, and essays across the breadth of fandom have emerged!
I haven’t done a great deal in 2019, mostly because I’m incredibly busy working on things that are not yet finished–but I can’t wait to share more of those! I also can’t wait to take it a little bit easier with myself, which is also a big reason why there isn’t a good deal more poetry or fiction on this list.
Regardless, here’s what I’ve been up to in 2019:
🔥 FIYAH: Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, executive editors Troy L. Wiggins and DaVaun Sanders, editors L.D. Lewis, Brandon O’Brien, Kaleb Russell, Danny Lore, and Brent Lambert
FIYAH is eligible in the Best Semiprozine category. Both Troy L. Wiggins and DaVaun Sanders are eligible in the Best Editor, Short Form category. 🔥🔥🔥
🌌 ‘Elegy for the Self as Villeneuve’s Beast’, Uncanny Magazine Issue Twenty-Eight, May/June 2019
It’s funny how nobody asks about the spell,
who uttered it, or why; or why, pray tell,
we guess the boy-turned-beast was always beast-as-boy.
🌌 ‘Traveling Trini at Magic Camp 2019’, Patreon, August 31 2019
Every escalator is the first line of a portal story,
each queue its unwieldy next sentence,
but each of us is engrossed, all made of witness…
🌌 ‘Wolf’s Luck’, Twitter, October 17 2019
We came to play games.
Or to howl—to howl against
the pixelated woods, the pale woods,
the woods where we cannot be seen
as often as we howl…
🌌 ‘Due By the End of the Week’, Fireside Quarterly January 2019 (available online February 2019)
“My problem? My problem is that I can’t afford to fail Sociology, or else I won’t be able to do any more of this.” I gesture at the dead slimy centipodal alien angrily, then lean my hair into the only clean sink in the room.
🌌 ‘Getting Out of the Cold: Revisiting Toxic Masculinity in Lethal Weapon’, Fireside Quarterly October 2019 (available online December 2019)
Sometimes the things that teach us how to be men also turn men into tools.
🌌 ‘If You’ve Heard This One Before’, Uncanny Magazine November/December 2019
Often enough there is a paradox where the work that deliberately seeks to take people to task for the hostile ideologies that breed violent actions are also the works that make those ideologies and those actions seem trendy and fascinating to impressionable consumers, not because those consumers are ignorant or undiscerning, but because they’ve been primed. And there is no better example of that priming than—
—well, there are so many examples, it’s not even funny.
🌌 The Skiffy and Fanty Show, produced by Jen Zink and Shaun Duke, hosted by Jen Zink, Shaun Duke, Paul Weimer, Alex Acks, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Trish Matson, and team
Alongside making literal dozens of rad things on a monthly basis, such as Reading Rangers and Torture Cinema, The Skiffy and Fanty Network is responsible for producing Righteous Kicks, the podcast where Iori Kusano and I talk about Kamen Rider! But if you’re going to put it on a ballot, definitely credit the whole team—Skiffy and Fanty does so many amazing things, and all of them are deserving of your attention.
Here’s a reminder that I make tabletop games! You can get some of them at my itch.io page! Considering that they are all very small, I am not going to assume their eligibility for stuff like the Nebulas, but it would be really nice if you checked them out all the same!
And that should be all from me! Thank you for your time, and I hope you are the best at everything.
Hello there! I’m Brandon O’Brien. I am a performance poet, science fiction writer and teaching artist living and working in Trinidad. This is my blog, where I share work, talk about my process, and generally geek out. Never miss out on new stuff.
Your financial support helps me pay bills, travel, and continue working. Thank you very much!