2025 Baycon Report

In the past, my convention reports have included highlights of panels and other events, both those I participated in and those I attended as an audience member. This report will be different, for reasons that will soon become obvious.

Baycon is my local speculative fiction convention (“speculative” encompasses science fiction, fantasy, and horror), with programming that also includes fannish pursuits, science, history, diversity, and other areas of interest, author readings, and Regency dancing, crafts like knitting chain mail, and so forth. I’ve been attending on a more-or-less regular basis since the mid-1990s. It’s not only a fun convention but a chance to meet up with friends whom I don’t often see.

This convention, however, was different. For the past few years, Baycon programming has invited potential panelists to write up topics and list folks they’d like to include, then the entire proposal is either accepted or passed on (aka, rejected). This means more work for anyone wanting to be on a panel since you need to not only write a bang-up description but figure out who you know that would be at Baycon and have juicy things to say. Hence, much less work for the programming committee. Also, more predictable panels by restricting the pool of panelists. I’m not a fan of the system, as you can tell. I’ve loved being assigned panels with folks I don’t know who then turn out to have fascinating and often unexpected things to say. I’ve also made some great writing friends that way.

It is an understatement to say that this year, the process did not go smoothly. I was invited, I submitted two panels with panelists, and I waited. I queried and was told to be patient. Somehow, perhaps because I checked last year’s email verifying that my proposals had been accepted, I arrived under the impression that all was well and expecting to receive my schedule. Nope, no such schedule existed. The poor volunteers at ProgOps (Programming Operations)! I asked if I could be added to an existing panel. At this point, the head of programming arrived and, after many apologies for the shortcomings of their software and assurances that I was by far not the only author in my situation (hotel room booked, reporting for schedule, etc.), offered to add one of my panels for the following evening: Science Fiction as the Literature of Resistance, at 9:30 pm Saturday. Okay. They’ll try to contact the other panelists to make sure they know it’s been added. Since I was planning on seeing most of them, I could do this myself. In addition, they’d added genre luminary Larry Niven to the panel. Oh, my. Talk about name recognition.

Audiobook Review: Judi Dench's Brilliant Shakespearean Career

Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, by Judi Dench and Brendan O'Hea; narrated by Barbara Flynn and Brendan O'Hea, with additional commentary by Judi Dench (Macmillan Audio)

This is a series of conversations between Judi Dench and her colleague, Brendan O'Hea, narrated by O'Hea and Barbara Flynn. Flynn does a marvelous job capturing the vocal qualities, cadence, and humor of Dench. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook.

Dench's long acting career began in 1957 with the Old Vic Company and later joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. Although most Americans know her work through film roles, she returned to the stage again and again. Over the decades, she acted almost every major female role in Shakespeare's plays. The book is structured around each of these plays, some well-known, others more obscure. Listening to her observations about each character, I was struck again and again by the depth of her emotional intelligence and keen insight. For example, the way she describes Lady Macbeth illuminated the personality and decisions of Macbeth himself in ways I'd never considered. Her observations about the structure of the plays and acting craft, such as the critical importance of what character's don't say, apply to prose narrative as well. It's wonderful to me how different forms of storytelling share the same principles.

Highly recommended.

Book Review: Alt-Wild West Meets Religious Cult

Red in Tooth and Claw, by Lish McBridge (Putnam)

Red in Tooth and Claw opens in an alt-Wild West setting that's close enough to historical to make the reader feel comfortable with conventions and expectations, yet just "off" enough to be creepy. Sensory descriptions and a truly marvelous POV character voice create a sympathetic protagonist (orphan Faolan, a girl masquerading as a boy whose grandfather guardian has just died) in a vivid, three-dimensional world. In a scheme to gain control of the grandfather's farm, the mayor concocts a scheme to ship Faolan off to "the Settlement" for their own good. Since Faolan is still a minor, she hasn't much choice. She stuffs the deed to the farm into her grandfather's watch, tucks the watch into the toe of an oversized boot, and pretends to be meekly obedient. I'm with her every step of the way at this point.

The Settlement is run by an eerily familiar-sounding cult that worships "the Shining God" and is run by the oily (as in snake-oil salesman) "HisBen" ("His Benevolence").  Despite their isolation, the Settlement is inordinately rich--behind its stockade, there's ample food, for example. Faolan is not the only kid who's been sent there to get them out of the way, and she soon makes friends and allies as well as enemies. She makes plans to escape, encounters a band of Rovers, falls in love, and gets catapulted into a horror mystery when people disappear and bodies appear. Something's out there, thirsting for blood.

For me, this is where the book loses the skillful evocation of the first part. The world is just enough askew from our own to make Faolan's predicament believable. When Faolan, who's finally gotten a decent meal when she arrives at the Settlement, thinks this place might not be so bad, I'm screaming, "Danger! Danger!" It's delicious, shivery stuff. 

Then come the Rovers, who could have provided a counterpoint to the secretive Settlement leaders, with their bond with their horses and the natural world. But, and it's a huge but, the Rover culture is a slap-dash amalgam of generalized Native people cultures, Hollywood-style Roma, and Western Europeans. Many elements of their culture are poorly thought-out, often incongruous with each other. The Rovers, and especially Faolan's love interest, Tallis, lack the thoughtfulness and depth of the earlier settings. 

By the time the monster makes an appearance through a trans-dimensional portal opened by HisBen's rituals, I was so disappointed, I no longer cared what happened. I knew that Faolan would get her very own sweetly tame monster, defeat HisBen, and live happily ever after with Tallis. (I was right.) What began as one type of story devolved into something quite inferior. I really, really wish the author had applied the same solid world-building and dramatic tension as in the opening to the rest of the book and not tried to switch genres.

Reprint: Transgender Saints!

 

Christianity has long revered saints who would be called ‘transgender’ today

Sarah Barringer, University of Iowa

Several Republican-led states have restricted transgender rights: Iowa has signed a law removing civil rights protection for transgender people; Wyoming has prohibited state agencies from requiring the use of preferred pronouns; and Alabama recently passed a law that only two sexes would be recognized. Hundreds of bills have been introduced in other state legislatures to curtail trans rights.

Earlier in the year, several White House executive orders pushed to deny trans identity. One of them, “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias,” claimed that gender-affirming policies of the Biden administration were “anti-Christian.” It accused the Biden Equal Employment Opportunity Commission of forcing “Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith.”

To be clear, not all Christians are anti-trans. And in my research of medieval history and literature, I found evidence of a long history in Christianity of what today could be called “transgender” saints. While such a term did not exist in medieval times, the idea of men living as women, or women living as men, was unquestionably present in the medieval period. Many scholars have suggested that using the modern term transgender creates valuable connections to understand the historical parallels.

There are at least 34 documented stories of transgender saints’ lives from the early centuries of Christianity. Originally appearing in Latin or Greek, several stories of transgender saints made their way into vernacular languages.

Transgender saints

Of the 34 original saints, at least three gained widespread popularity in medieval Europe: St. Eugenia, St. Euphrosyne and St. Marinos. All three were born as women but cut their hair and put on men’s clothes to live as men and join monasteries.

Eugenia, raised pagan, joined a monastery to learn more about Christianity and later became abbot. Euphrosyne joined a monastery to escape an unwanted suitor and spent the rest of his life there. Marinos, born Marina, decided to renounce womanhood and live with his father at the monastery as a man.

These were well-read stories. Eugenia’s story appeared in two of the most popular manuscripts of their day – Ælfric’s “Lives of Saints” and “The Golden Legend.” Ælfric was an English abbot who translated Latin saints’ lives into Old English in the 10th century, making them widely available to a lay audience. “The Golden Legend” was written in Latin and compiled in the 13th century; it is part of more than a thousand manuscripts.

Euphrosyne also appears in Ælfric’s saints’ lives, as well as in other texts in Latin, Middle English, and Old French. Marinos’ story is available in over a dozen manuscripts in at least 10 languages. For those who couldn’t read, Ælfric’s saints’ lives and other manuscripts were read aloud in churches during service on the saint’s day.

Euphrosyne of Alexandria. Anonymous via Wikimedia Commons

A small church in Paris built in the 10th century was dedicated to Marinos, and relics of his body were supposedly kept in Qannoubine monastery in Lebanon.

This is all to say, a lot of people were talking about these saints.

Reprint: Why we fall for fake health information – and how it spreads faster than facts

 

Why we fall for fake health information – and how it spreads faster than facts

Should you share that health-related Instagram post? Catherine McQueen/Moment via Getty Images

Angshuman K. Kashyap, University of Maryland

In today’s digital world, people routinely turn to the internet for health or medical information. In addition to actively searching online, they often come across health-related information on social media or receive it through emails or messages from family or friends.

It can be tempting to share such messages with loved ones – often with the best of intentions.

As a global health communication scholar studying the effects of media on health and development, I explore artistic and creative ways to make health information more engaging and accessible, empowering people to make informed decisions.

Although there is a fire hose of health-related content online, not all of it is factual. In fact, much of it is inaccurate or misleading, raising a serious health communication problem: Fake health information – whether shared unknowingly and innocently, or deliberately to mislead or cause harm – can be far more captivating than accurate information.

This makes it difficult for people to know which sources to trust and which content is worthy of sharing.

The allure of fake health information

Fake health information can take many forms. For example, it may be misleading content that distorts facts to frame an issue or individual in a certain context. Or it may be based on false connections, where headlines, visuals or captions don’t align with the content. Despite this variation, such content often shares a few common characteristics that make it seem believable and more shareable than facts.

For one thing, fake health information often appears to be true because it mixes a grain of truth with misleading claims.

For example, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, false rumors suggested that drinking ethanol or bleach could protect people from the virus. While ethanol or bleach can indeed kill viruses on surfaces such as countertops, it is extremely dangerous when it comes into contact with skin or gets inside the body.

Stopping to check the facts helps stem the spread of misinformation. World Health Organization adaptation from Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris in The Spinoff, CC BY-SA