Sunday, I did go out to DuckCon, and sat on some panels, and then came home and collapsed for a few hours, and then went over to Satya's house for a very mellow party. Ate too much junk food (she had sour cream and onion Pringles, my favorite chips, and which I try not to buy myself because I will just eat straight through an entire can, which is like a zillion calories), had good conversations.
Today, much work. Much much work. Writing, school work, e-mail, etc. This evening, DesiLit meeting here.
Let’s see if I can express a meandering idea without starting an awards argument:
I had some similar thoughts about Air. Compared to some previous winners, the one speculative element directly related to sexuality (avoiding spoilers here) seemed almost restrained. However! If you think about gender as a role that is performed within the context of a society, Mae’s story is suffused with both maintenance and subversion of those roles in *her* society, not the baseline-for-SF society of 20th century USA. I think there’s something interesting going on, too, about how her subversion is not the standard Western humanist subversion that I as a Western reader might want to project onto her, but that’s harder for me to articulate or defend.