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Blog Editor's choice Out Now Patch Notes

Brandon O’Brien’s 2019 Awards Eligibility Post

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:


The Magazine (eligible for the Best Semiprozine Hugo):

🔥 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. 🔥🔥🔥


Poetry (eligible for the Rhysling Award):

🌌 ‘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.


(Some) Other Poetry (That May Or May Not Also Be Rhysling-Eligible):

🌌 ‘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…


Prose (eligible for the Hugo and Nebula Short Story categories) :

🌌 ‘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.


Nonfiction:

🌌 ‘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.


Podcasts (eligible for the Best Fancast Hugo):

🌌 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.


Stuff The Eligibility Of Which Still Eludes Me:

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.

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Blog Editor's choice Out Now Patch Notes

Brandon O’Brien’s 2018 Awards Eligibility Post

Another year brings with it another crop of radical stories worth reading from all across the speculative fiction landscape. It’s also been a kind of a hard year for all of us, one where what we read and write has become in a lot of ways the truest shape of extolling who we want to be and rebutting who we are afraid of becoming. 

A lot of that has particularly come from many of the things that I’ve read, which I want to turn into another post where I can truly talk about the length and breadth of good SFF that came out in the year 2018. 

It’s also been an intensely busy one for me creatively. Lots of things were either published or cooking this year, which I’m somewhat glad for. If I’m being honest, it’s rather ironic that I wrote so much in a state of such mental and emotional flux that today, in another one of those valleys, I find it hard to just write the blog post about the stuff I wrote so people can read them and possibly consider them worthy of a statue. But ultimately, I’m proud of my output. That I can use my work as a channel for some of those valleys, and at least work slowly through the words when the valley fills with water, is a marked improvement from just last year. And ultimately, I came out with some things that I’m really proud of, and I hope I can make more things like those next year. 

But since I should also mention the things themselves, here are some stuff that fell out of my brain this year: 

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About me

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.

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The System We Could Have Been Driving: Rage vs. Revolution Redux

The System We Could Have Been Driving: Rage vs. Revolution Redux

Brandon O'Brien's ConFusion 2020 Schedule

Brandon O'Brien's ConFusion 2020 Schedule

November 30, 2019
Brandon O’Brien’s 2019 Awards Eligibility Post

Brandon O’Brien’s 2019 Awards Eligibility Post

November 18, 2019

Brandon O’Brien’s Worldcon 2019 Schedule

July 27, 2019

Big Hugo News!

April 3, 2019

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Arisia assault Black Panther ConFusion 2020 COVID-19 fandom Hugo Awards intimate partner violence LGBTQ National Patriotism Month Performance Poetry revolution SFF Awards Season socialism Speculative Fiction Speculative Poetry The 2 Cents Movement Voltron: Legendary Defender

therisingtithes

Poet, writer, tabletop game designer, nerd. Trying to make something of himself. Preferably in pen.

therisingtithes
I did a panel at #PAXOnline2020 earlier this year I did a panel at #PAXOnline2020 earlier this year and it was really rad, so you know your resident pin-obsessed nerd had to get some swag. Including some new locking backs, and some dope pronoun hexes so I can try on ‘they’ more often in public!
Behold, my @fiyahlitmag #IgnyteAwards Finalist med Behold, my @fiyahlitmag #IgnyteAwards Finalist medallion has arrived! Still beyond blessed for all of it: for my poem simply being nominated, for FiyahCon—the very best con of this year—& for FIYAH in general, the best damn outlet in this whole damn genre. 🔥 🔥 🔥
Portrait of An Election Stain, 2020. Portrait of An Election Stain, 2020.
A book I cannot wait to eagerly consume. QUEEN OF A book I cannot wait to eagerly consume. QUEEN OF THE CONQUERED is finally in hand, and the sequel done preorder.
Guess what finally came in the mail! My copy of So Guess what finally came in the mail! My copy of Sovereigns of the Blue Rose! ‘Like Ice And Then Like Fire’ is a little ache of a story about how we mourn, and how we judge mourning. It’s surrounded by so many fabulous tales of the decades of the chosen sovereigns of the Kingdom of Aldis. The book looks amazing, inside and out.
Ordered a #Heckadeck to tinker with, but as soon a Ordered a #Heckadeck to tinker with, but as soon as I opened it, I was supernaturally compelled to #DestroyThisCard in particular. Don’t know what came over me.
One for each generation. ———— These @bozor One for each generation. ————
These @bozorobo pins are my absolute favourites. I just got the Kamen Rider Ichigo one on top, which completes the set. 
Kamen Rider, starting with Ichigo, seems to consistently argue that even when your power comes from a potentially dark place or has cruel origins, dedicating its use to destroying the forces of evil is what slowly turns that power into justice. Fascism denies you your own body? Reclaim it for the sole purpose of destroying fascism, and it becomes justice. Your space suit was made possible by revelations that led to the murder of your best friend’s father? Avenge him by thwarting evil’s plans while always smiling and sowing joy. Have you survived the trauma of unending hopelessness? Spare innocents that same pain by sharing hope wherever you go. Have you become a tyrant, forgetting to do good as power corrupts you? Then justice is the act of *literally* confronting yourself. Is time itself a record of the cruelties and selfishnesses of man? Then even break time against your heel.

I mean… it’s also not shy at all about how several antagonists are just mutant fascism, incapable of argument or compassion, only performing reason to keep their violence undetected, seeking power through force. Resistance, then, is in wielding the parts of you that are on the verge of collapse or corruption, and throwing them against the gears. Forge those dark portions in the fire of your own rage, tie them to your heel, and drop-kick all evil. 
I’m thinking about this as I work. What are the cruelties in my space that my body is unduly bonded to? And what parts of me do I wield in contrast to that cruelty? How do I transform myself, Darkness and all, into justice, resolve, compassion, and solidarity?

#kamenrider #enamelpins #resistance
#ConFusionSF was amazing. I got to give my mother #ConFusionSF was amazing. I got to give my mother the early birthday gift of her first trip to the States, her first live sight of snow, and her first con experience. I got to see snow for the first time, too, and even make a snowball (I’m good on that now, thanks). I got to link up with old friends, meet digital friends in person for the first time, and make brand new ones. I attended panels that actually made me think more deeply about what I make. I got to cohost a Speculative Open Mic, to talk about speculative verse, to ask deeper questions about how we write men with power or men with pain or both. @bogiperson even took us to this really neat black-owned bookstore in the area afterwards, and then @edebellauthor and Chris took my mother and I out for pizza after that! I adored the entire weekend. 
I’m particularly grateful that @miconfusionsf made me their Creative Guest of Honor this year. I tend to feel like I haven’t done enough, haven’t ‘made it’, but just knowing that I’m welcome in a fandom space seems to allay those fears. I’m grateful for those spaces. If ConFusion would have me back, I’d work my hardest to be there, any time.
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