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Charlie Jane Anders

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Seven Hot Takes About Star Trek

Mon Feb 27, 2023 12:00pm 34 comments 22 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: CBS

1. The Federation is most interesting when it has an ideological foil

The original Star Trek pitted Captain Kirk against fake gods, rogue Starfleet officers, and sadistic computers, but the show was often concerned with a Cold War-style rivalry between the Federation and two warlike powers, the Klingons and the Romulans. The Federation seldom needed to demonstrate its own peace-loving, liberal values—it just needed to appear in contrast with civilizations that were bent on domination and conquest. Similarly, Star Trek: The Next Generation was never so vital as when its ethos of individualism and self-improvement was in contrast with the collectivist, anti-individualist Borg. (An earlier attempt to give the TNG-era Federation an ideological foil, the hyper-capitalist Ferengi, basically fizzled.)

In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the Federation’s light touch when it came to matters of religion and self-determination (vis-a-vis the Bajorans) stood in contrast to the coercive theocracy of the Dominion. People often try to find a “bad guy” in Trek, like Khan for example—but these shows and movies usually work best when there’s an ideological struggle against another civilization or organization. Count me among those who really enjoyed the struggle against the Emerald Chain in Star Trek: Discovery, and was sad to see them dispatched so easily.

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7 Wrong Lessons Creators Learned From Game of Thrones

Wed Aug 17, 2022 11:00am 8 comments 15 Favorites [+]
Credit: HBO

Hard to believe it’s been more than a decade since Game of Thrones’ premiere on April 17, 2011. I can still remember when Thrones reigned over pop culture, and I used to spend my Sunday nights staying up until two in the morning trying to craft the perfect recap of each episode. I kind of agree with the many people who have said Game of Thrones was the last television show to dominate the conversation, before everything became fragmented into a hundred streaming services and countless niche options.

Like a few other pop-culture behemoths, Game of Thrones cast a huge shadow and spawned many would-be imitators. The Marvel Cinematic Universe led to a dozen copycat “cinematic universes”; Lost spawned a ton of TV shows that went down endless cryptic rabbit holes; The Dark Knight cursed us with a decade of “chaotic-evil dude who has magic blow-everything-up powers and gets caught on purpose” movies. The thing is, people always take the wrong lesson from these successes—they focus on the froth rather than the churn, the tip rather than the iceberg, and what a popular thing turned into over time, rather than what made it popular in the first place.

Here are seven of the wrong lessons that everyone learned from the phenomenal success of Game of Thrones—one for each of the Seven Kingdoms. (I miss writing listicles, can you tell?)

[Read more]

We Need Heroes Who Can Remind Us That Heroism Is Fun

Wed Jun 1, 2022 10:00am 12 comments 11 Favorites [+]
Screenshot: Netflix

Ever since Ncuti Gatwa was named as the latest star of Doctor Who, I’ve been watching compilation videos of Gatwa’s performance in the Netflix series Sex Education and getting more and more convinced that Gatwa will bring a whole new, much-needed energy to Who.

Gatwa has an immediate star quality, absolutely owning the screen in a way that feels immaculately GIFable. I’ve become enthralled by his manic turn as Sex Education’s Eric, a young queer person dealing with crushes, budding sexuality and friendship, along with homophobia. I can’t help imagining Gatwa bringing the same infectious, twinkling energy to the role of the Doctor. And most of all, I can tell that he’s going to have loads of fun with the part—and we need heroes who are having fun, now more than ever.

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The Bookstore at the End of America

Wed Oct 6, 2021 9:00am 6 comments 15 Favorites [+]

Tor.com is thrilled to reprint “The Bookstore at the End of America” by Charlie Jane Anders, as featured in her forthcoming short fiction collection Even Greater Mistakes, out on November 16, 2021.

The story first appeared in the anthology A People’s Future of the United States edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams.

In the words of the author:

Bookstores are my favorite places to hang out. Browsing through shelves and shelf-talkers never fails to cheer me up, even when the world is bleak AF—everything about a bookshop lets you know that you’re in a place where stories are celebrated, and you can never run out of discoveries. So when Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams asked me to contribute to A People’s Future of the United States, an anthology of stories set in a future USA, I knew I wanted to write about a bookseller struggling to hold things together. “The Bookstore at the End of America” came just a few months after I wrote “Don’t Press Charges,” and it’s another story that grapples with political nightmares—in this case, the slow dissolution of the United States into two countries that despise each other. But this story ended up being a lot less scary, because I can’t write about bookstores without nurturing a spark of hope in the midst of hopelessness.

Heads up: this story contains racism, violence, and implied transphobia.

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How “Bending the Landscape” Helped to Queer Speculative Fiction Forever

Wed Aug 25, 2021 12:00pm 4 comments 8 Favorites [+]

It’s been nearly 25 years since the first volume of the Bending the Landscape anthology series came out. (My copy says “copyright 1996,” but I guess it actually came out in early 1997.) And it’s hard to remember just how ground-breaking a whole anthology of LGBTQ+ speculative fiction stories felt at the time, now that we’re living with a wealth of queer SFF content. Editors Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel edited three Bending the Landscape volumes, separately devoted to fantasy, science fiction and horror, and along the way they launched authors’ careers and garnered tons of award nominations. Here’s the inside story of how a scrappy anthology series helped to change speculative fiction forever.

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12 Authors Answer the Question “How Do You Write in Tough Times?”

Wed Aug 11, 2021 12:00pm 11 Favorites [+]

When the world gets bleak, that’s when we need the power of story more than ever. But during the really horrendous times, such as a global pandemic, generating all that storytelling goodness can become way more difficult. Bad news can drown out that inner voice that creative people need to listen to, and it’s easy to get demoralized. So to celebrate the upcoming release of my book Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories, I asked a dozen of my favorite writers how they manage to keep creating during the awful times we’ve been living through.

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To Survive a Year of Covid, Indie Booksellers Had To Reimagine What it Means To Be a Bookstore

Wed Apr 28, 2021 10:00am 7 comments 3 Favorites [+]
The brand new reopened Booksmith, now in the former Bindery/Red Vic space at 1727 Haight St., San Francisco (Photo by Charlie Jane Anders)

Like many other booksellers, Margaret (not her real name) was forced to shut down her store a year ago. When she reopened, she mostly sold books online, allowing customers to come by and pick them up. But when the number of new covid-19 cases in her area started to decline, she decided to let in one household at a time for in-store browsing—and within two weeks, she had contracted covid-19.

This past year has been an unprecedented challenge for physical bookstores, which have had to find ways to keep their relationship with their communities alive during social distancing and lockdowns. It’s a heartbreaking paradox: more people than ever have been reading, and publishers reported record profits in 2020, but bookstores have struggled to make ends meet. To survive, owners and staff have had to come up with new answers to the old question: What makes a great bookstore? But also: when things that seemed central to the bookselling experience, like browsing and hand-selling, become impossible, what’s left?

[Read more]

7 Wrong Lessons That Creators Learned From Game of Thrones

Mon Mar 15, 2021 12:00pm 37 comments 26 Favorites [+]
Credit: HBO

Hard to believe we’re coming up on the tenth anniversary of Game of Thrones’ premiere on April 17, 2011. I can still remember when Thrones reigned over pop culture, and I used to spend my Sunday nights staying up until two in the morning trying to craft the perfect recap of each episode. I kind of agree with the many people who have said Game of Thrones was the last television show to dominate the conversation, before everything became fragmented into a hundred streaming services and countless niche options.

Like a few other pop-culture behemoths, Game of Thrones cast a huge shadow and spawned many would-be imitators. The Marvel Cinematic Universe led to a dozen copycat “cinematic universes”; Lost spawned a ton of TV shows that went down endless cryptic rabbit holes; The Dark Knight cursed us with a decade of “chaotic-evil dude who has magic blow-everything-up powers and gets caught on purpose” movies. The thing is, people always take the wrong lesson from these successes—they focus on the froth rather than the churn, the tip rather than the iceberg, and what a popular thing turned into over time, rather than what made it popular in the first place.

Here are seven of the wrong lessons that everyone learned from the phenomenal success of Game of Thrones—one for each of the Seven Kingdoms. (I miss writing listicles, can you tell?)

[Read more]

Never Say You Can’t Survive: Write The Book That Only You Could Have Written

Tue Nov 17, 2020 12:00pm 18 comments 16 Favorites [+]

Charlie Jane Anders is writing a nonfiction book—and Tor.com is publishing it as she does so. Never Say You Can’t Survive is a how-to book about the storytelling craft, but it’s also full of memoir, personal anecdote, and insight about how to flourish in the present emergency.

Below is the twenty-fifth chapter, “Write The Book That Only You Could Have Written” You can find all previous chapters here. Enjoy!

[Read more]

Series: Never Say You Can’t Survive

Never Say You Can’t Survive: Irony Doesn’t Have To Be the Enemy of Feels. They Can Team Up, In Fact!

Tue Nov 10, 2020 12:00pm 4 comments 5 Favorites [+]

Charlie Jane Anders is writing a nonfiction book—and Tor.com is publishing it as she does so. Never Say You Can’t Survive is a how-to book about the storytelling craft, but it’s also full of memoir, personal anecdote, and insight about how to flourish in the present emergency.

Below is the twenty-fourth chapter, “Irony Doesn’t Have To Be the Enemy of Feels. They Can Team Up, In Fact!” You can find all previous chapters here. New chapters will appear every Tuesday. Enjoy!

[Read more]

Series: Never Say You Can’t Survive

Never Say You Can’t Survive: When the World Goes Loopy, You Can Become a Master of Time and Space

Tue Nov 3, 2020 12:00pm Post a comment 5 Favorites [+]

Charlie Jane Anders is writing a nonfiction book—and Tor.com is publishing it as she does so. Never Say You Can’t Survive is a how-to book about the storytelling craft, but it’s also full of memoir, personal anecdote, and insight about how to flourish in the present emergency.

Below is the twenty-third chapter, “When the World Goes Loopy, You Can Become a Master of Time and Space”. You can find all previous chapters here. New chapters will appear every Tuesday. Enjoy!

[Read more]

Series: Never Say You Can’t Survive

Never Say You Can’t Survive: A Strong Narrator Can Help You Weave a Spell of Protection

Tue Oct 20, 2020 12:00pm 1 comment 5 Favorites [+]

Charlie Jane Anders is writing a nonfiction book—and Tor.com is publishing it as she does so. Never Say You Can’t Survive is a how-to book about the storytelling craft, but it’s also full of memoir, personal anecdote, and insight about how to flourish in the present emergency.

Below is the twenty-second chapter, “A Strong Narrator Can Help You Weave a Spell of Protection”. You can find all previous chapters here. New chapters will appear every Tuesday. Enjoy!

[Read more]

Series: Never Say You Can’t Survive

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