Reckoning 3: In Pursuit of a Future

On by in Reckoning

Reckoning 3 is out today, edited once again by me, this time in concert with Danika Dinsmore, Mohammad Shafiqul Islam, Giselle Leeb, Johannes Punkt, Sakara Remmu and Aïcha Martine Thiam.

This was a challenging issue for us. I tried to step down in favor of a guest editor, and at first that went wonderfully; it got us incredibly badass cover art from Stylo Starr along with the pleasure of her acquaintance, it pushed us into some editorial decisions that wilder and darker and more intense and more serious and we might not have made otherwise, which was exactly why I wanted to take on a guest editor in the first place. So in that sense it has been an amazing year. But Sakara had to back out a little more than halfway through, which left us scrambling to take over her responsibilities, caused us to drop a few balls and have to go chasing them halfway across August. It stretched out our submission response times and no doubt annoyed many a potential contributor. I hope we didn’t lose anybody. That is the opposite of what I want.

In the interest of honoring the work Sakara put in as well as the creative influence of Reckoning’s amazing staff, I decided to keep my name out of the editor slot for this issue and call it a communal effort.

Undaunted, unrelenting, with Reckoning 4 we’re trying it again. I think I shall not yet reveal our guest editor(s) for the new issue, but I’m excited.

Also, of course, this year happened.

I’d already been expecting Reckoning 3 to be darker than Reckoning 2. The issues were always meant to reflect the state of the world in the year of their release; this whole project, the premise of calling it “Reckoning”, is about looking both forward and back, finding the way. This issue is full of both hope and dread. Sometimes the people we’re rooting for drown. Sometimes they have to kill the people holding them down. This issue has a knife and a gun on the cover—Stylo put them there without having seen it all, but that’s how these things go; prophecies fulfill themselves. We’d already accepted Osahon Ize-Iyamu’s “More Sea Than Tar”, Andrew Kozma’s “Exit Here”, Tania Fordwalker’s “The Blackthorn Door” and Michelle Muenzler’s “Flowers for the Living, Flowers for the Dead”—most of what’s full of brutality and grief in the issue—long before the IPCC report came out. We’re reprinting a bunch of #ExtinctionRebellion protest art; I hadn’t even heard of Extinction Rebellion in August.

All of which is just by way of a heads-up: please read, just be ready.

2019 feels like it’s going to be a whirlwind.

World Fantasy 2018

On by in News, Reckoning

I’ll be at World Fantasy Convention in Baltimore this weekend, November 1-4, 2018. I get to do a reading and a panel.

Reading

Time: Saturday – 10:00 AM to 10:30 AM
Location: Guilford

I think I’m going to read my Reckoning 2 editorial, even though I’ve been avoiding doing so because it’s deeply personal and emotional and hard, because it’s directly relevant to the panel they put me on, because after the IPCC report and three days before the election I feel like it’s time and I’m out of excuses.

Optimism in the New Dark Age

Time: Sunday – 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
Location: WaterTable BC
Panelists: Michael J. Deluca, Sarah Beth Durst, Matthew Kressel, James A. Moore, A.C. Wise (M)
Description: The ’00s brought us a glut of dystopian fiction, but in this new dark political era, what value or function can positive or so-called “hope-punk” fiction bring? Is optimistic fiction head-in-the-sand denialism, or is it mindfully visionary? Who are some of the writers creating this type of fiction? #HopePunk

Climate Action

On by in Angry, Environmentalism

In the interest of all of us working together to help each other mitigate the in-progress climate apocalypse, I thought I’d update my list of actions.

Maybe a lot of this will seem tiny and pedantic, it seems that way to me, but I include it because I don’t want anybody else to think anything they can do is insignificant. Some of it likely also will seem huge and daunting; believe me that it felt that way to me before I built up the momentum to make it happen.

It all matters. What you’re doing matters.

Please–and especially if you’re doing something I’m not–would you share your own version of this?

New as of this week:

  • Cooking with meat only one night a week.
  • Using no plastics to wash dishes.

Forthcoming:

  • Using no plastics in dental hygiene.
  • I might have a line on some very local eggs I can get with net zero packaging.
  • More as I think of it.

What I was already doing:

  • Residential rooftop solar panels, 4.2Kw.
  • Electric car, 2017 Chevy Bolt, charging exclusively in my garage, from the solar panels.
  • Two 80 gallon rain barrels, from which I do 85% of my watering.
  • Fractional greywater reuse from dishwashing, shower and basement dehumidifier, amounting to maybe another 5% of my watering.
  • Making all my own bread and yogurt saves on some packaging. Kneading my bread by hand saves some energy.
  • Two apple trees, a cherry tree, an elderberry bush, strawberries, grapes, hops, sunflowers, sunchokes, garlic, raspberries, serviceberries etc, feeding my family and local wildlife as much as I can from our tiny third of an acre.
  • Compost, both using redworms in the basement and a big old compost pile outside.
  • No pesticides, no fertilizer.
  • Homebrewed beer and cider accounts for maybe half of the alcohol consumed in my household, saving some packaging and shipping. Also the electricity for my brew kettle comes from solar, I reuse waste water for cleaning or next batch and compost or bake with spent grains. Also 100% of the apples I use for cider are wildcrafted or home-grown.
  • Biking. To the grocery store, liquor store, garden store, hairdresser, health food store, hardware store, post office, to the woods and fields for foraging. And of course for exercise.
  • Volunteering with my town’s environmental resources committee.
  • Volunteer litter cleanup.
  • Reckoning is a nonprofit annual journal of creative writing on environmental justice, which I founded in 2016 and fund 90% on my own.
  • No plastics for shaving.
  • Buying local as much as I can, less than I could/should, but things like fruit, veg, honey, grain for brewing, beer. I try to buy beer in cans for the reduced packaging, though I’d go back to glass if anybody in this country would reuse beer bottles.
  • Living in a freshwater-locked state (Michigan), I don’t eat ocean fish unless I travel to a coast.
  • Volunteering and donating to Elissa Slotkin, who is running for my local flippable House seat, MI-08.
  • Foraging for herbs, mushrooms, wild fruit. I do this responsibly and small-scale, but it saves having to buy those things, saves packaging and shipping.
  • I wear clothes and shoes until they fall apart. Wife constantly pointing out holes in everything.
  • Human-powered lawnmower. Also human-powered snowblower (shovel), human-powered leafblower (rake), human-powered weedwhacker (sickle/shears).
  • I buy few new books (I use ebooks and the library and buy used and share).
  • My kid has a million toys, a lot of them are hand-me-down, but I do pretty well keeping him entertained with sticks and leaves and stuff around the house. That’s got to mean something.
  • I don’t play video games. Not a judgment, but it’s got to account for some energy use.
  • I carry a travel mug everywhere and use it for tea, coffee, soda, water. I don’t buy bottled water. I don’t use straws.

Areas where I’m not there yet:

  • Gas heat and hot water.
  • I still own one gas car and use it maybe 20% of the time.
  • Electricity I use in excess of solar panel generation (electric car takes up a lot) comes from shitty Michigan power generation, which was still 60% coal last I checked.
  • I take a plane occasionally, though I pack ridiculously light and rarely fly anywhere further than the East Coast. I’d use more trains if there were more.
  • My mental health necessitates I live near woods, so I am farther from things than if I lived in a city.
  • I have one kid. I hear they are resource hogs. Sigh. I do hope and work hard to prepare him to overcome that.
  • If you see something I’ve got a blind spot about, please tell me? Thank you in advance.

Thank you for reading and caring. <3

Readercon 2018 Schedule

On by in News

I submitted a lot of panel topic and content suggestions for this year’s Readercon, and lo, they took some, and lo, they even put me on a couple.

Friday, July 13, 1:00 PM: Reading: Michael J. DeLuca

My solo reading, at which I’ll read “Forest Spirits”, a short story forthcoming in Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Friday, July 13, 3:00 PM: Group Reading: Reckoning 2

Contributors to Reckoning 2, the second annual nonprofit journal of creative writing on environmental justice, read from their work.

Featuring contributors Marissa Lingen, Jess Barber and Justin Howe.

Sunday, July 15, 12:00 PM: Solarpunk for Everyone

Solarpunk has become established as a progressive, proactive, optimistic, climate-aware, politically aware field of speculative fiction. As solarpunk authors imagine the future, how can they make sure that future includes everyone? How can solarpunk develop and showcase remedies not only [to] the climatological errors of the present and past but the social flaws of oppression, bias, and exclusion?

This conversation will feature T.X. Watson, Marissa Lingen, Darcie Little Badger and Tom Greene. I’m moderating.

Sunday, July 15, 1:00 PM: Speculative Economics

Many theoretical economic systems have been proposed by economists, academics, and writers. Some of those cross the line—if there is a line—from theoretical economics into speculative economics. What are some of the more interesting and entertaining possible economic systems that could form the basis of speculative stories, from utopian SF to dystopias and horror? What makes a depiction of a fictional economic system feel plausible?

Featuring Sioban Krzywicki (moderator), John O’Neil, Malka Older, Michael Cisco, and me.