Ruby/Jack | it/its(/they) | early 20s | jacks_long_coat on AO3 | Tags [Icon ID: a marker drawing of a pink bunny wearing a blue skirt, suspenders, and bow, leaping up with one arm raised, in front of a rainbow gradient. End ID.]
Hey. Hey. Take your eye drops. Close your eyes for a few moments. Turn down the brightness on your screen. Start carrying around your magnifier so you stop straining. Put on your glasses if you forget to wear them. Please take care of your eyes.
Re the difference between derivative and transformative works: Is it "fair" not to want our works translated? I tried explaining the difference once, to a certain audience, and I'd love to get more opinions here too. I say no to translations of my works – or podfic for that matter – but I'm perfectly fine with remixes, sequels, fanart, what have you, it would even be hypocritical not to, because they're transformative in regards to my fanfic just like my fanfic was in regards to the original material. But translation is derivative, it's just another version of my work, in a different language – and podfic in a different medium. They don't "transform" anything.
I think the idea of transformation when it comes to podfic and translation is a conversation worth having. A lot of fan translators and podficcers do transform the work in different ways as they create their versions, but according to the laws used to create the AO3 terms of service, if you - the original author of a work - say no to translations and podfics, then you can request any translations/podfics that are made of your works be taken down.
You can also, if you are a US citizen, likely go to court over a translation or a podfic - but I’m not a US citizen and I’m not a lawyer, so don’t take my word on that one.
As the author of a fanfic posted on AO3, you retain the copyright to your own work. That means you have the choice of what you allow others to do with it. That’s why permissions statements are so useful! It gives your fellow fans clear information on what you welcome and what you don’t allow when it comes to your own works. Every creator has their own preferences, and a permissions statement gives you the opportunity to let others know yours.
Whether it’s fair or not is a conversation that will never be settled. It’s a debate that will continue in fandom and it’s probably a conversation worth having even if you’ve already decided one way or another for yourself. New fans enter the space all the time, and being able to see these internal debates helps them form their own thoughts on issues.
Make your own decision on the matter. Add a permission statement to your AO3 profile page or tumblr About page or wherever other creators can find it easily. If you change your mind later, update your statement. Your reasons for choosing to say yes or no are your own, just make it easy for your fellow fans to understand what they can and can’t do with your work, and it makes it easier for everyone involved.
Countering the actual, crummy assertion being made here certainly IS a conversation worth having, given that this erroneous belief lies under a whole lot of things driving the current push to replace every creative worker with generative machine learning. “Translation isn’t transformative; we don’t need to pay a translator; Google is right there!” “Audiobooks aren’t transformative; we don’t need to pay narrators, and what’s more, we can sneak language into their contracts, steal their actual voices, and then use them in perpetuity.” “Acting isn’t transformative; just imagine how much more money we could make if we rip the images of people’s personal bodies and then program them to do what we want without them needing all those inconvenient salaries and meal breaks! Same thing, right?”
We just had a whole season of strikes over this exact question, and Anonymous is still here claiming these things aren’t transformative, and add nothing to the work?
Look. Yes, you can allow or disallow whatever transformative actions on your work that you choose, for whatever reason you like. But don’t insult performers and translators by saying “they don’t transform anything.”
Go, if you please, and read this article on Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation of Beowulf (which is a lot of fun, btw). There are of course far deeper complexities involved in translation, but just read those opening paragraphs.
Any time you open up a new translation of Beowulf — bloody, baffling Beowulf, which begins with a cannibal assassin and ends with a dragon; Beowulf, which set off the whole of English literature — your edition will begin with a tell. How does this version of the poem handle the opening Old English word hwæt?
Hwæt is an Anglo-Saxon intensifier/maybe interjection, and since it begins Beowulf, it sets the tone for the whole poem to follow. So if the edition you’re reading translates it as “Lo!” (Tolkien) or “Hail!” (John McNamara) or “Hark!” (too many to count), then you are probably going to read a version of the poem written forsoothly, in a self-consciously archaic voice. But if your translator goes all Seamus Heaney on you and translates hwæt as something like “So.”, then you’re going to be reading a version of Beowulf that wants you to think of it as fresh and modern.
Every translator — even an “amateur” one — is making a constant series of choices. Do I use this word, or that one? How do I translate this local idiom into something that the audience will understand in the new language? Do I say “slaves” or “serving girls”? A good translation can be brilliant; a bad one can be unreadable. (I tried for years to read Russian novelists in English, but only when I found a Russian postdoc’s essay on which translators, exactly, to look for did I find that War and Peace is entertaining, actually!)
As for performance, well. So you’re saying all these performances of Hamlet’s famous soliloquy are the same?
And ultimately unnecessary, right, because Shakespeare wrote the play, so it’s just repeating it in a different medium. That’s what you’re saying?
Because that is what you’re saying. You’re saying that a performer’s interpretation, inflection, emphasis, thought about your work adds nothing, that plugging your work into automated TTS would be just as good, and hoo boy. (You’re missing out, for one thing.) Every performer/reader is different. Every performer makes different choices. A performer’s narration of your own work might surprise you with nuances you’d never thought of.
Again, you are free to make whatever decisions you like about your own work. But don’t disrespect skilled labour by saying “it doesn’t transform anything.”
What’s going on in the congo rn is one of many many reasons that the right to repair is a VITAL tenant in leftism imo
At this point smartphones, laptops, and other similar devices are necessary for daily life in the US. Like if I did not have a phone and a laptop, I couldn’t hold down a job, it would be extremely difficult to access public transportation, my education depended upon my ability to access the internet, etc. Tech companies know that their products are indispensable. So do they make products that last? No of course not, they need you buying a new device every two years. That just makes sense under capitalism. But ofc this system spreads far beyond our borders; this system of planned obsolescence is supported by the plunder of the global south for lithium (like in Bolivia) and cobalt (like in Congo).
The imperialist extraction of resources could be challenged if, say, we could repair a device rather than needing to purchase a new one. Companies like apple know this, and have gone out of their way to make such things impossible just to continue making shit products for too much money. It sucks!
can i ask for some reading about what’s going on in Congo and how it’s related to cobalt mining?
Chapters:
1/1
Fandom:
The Murderbot Diaries - Martha Wells
Rating:
General Audiences
Warnings:
No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships:
Murderbot & Dr. Ratthi (Murderbot Diaries)
Characters:
Dr. Ratthi (Murderbot Diaries), Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries)
Additional Tags:
Aromantic Dr. Ratthi (Murderbot Diaries), Agender Aromantic Asexual Murderbot (Murderbot Diaries), Book 5: Network Effect, Aromantic, Friendship, Murderbot being romance/sex repulsed, (throwback to the bathroom scene), Podfic, Podfic Length: 10-20 Minutes
Summary:
[13m 51s] Ratthi stops at the closed door, and sends a message. I would like to talk about relationships. There is a pronounced pause. Is this some kind of reverse psychology shit where you are trying to get me to not talk to you actually? [Written by yewlojee.]
Treat anything on Discord as media that will be lost
Do not use Discord to host your files. Do not rely on Discord to preserve your text. DO NOT RELY ON DISCORD FOR ANY KIND OF PRESERVATION OR HOSTING!!
It CAN be lost, it WILL be lost! You must consider Discord as a part of the Core Internet, controlled by one company that hosts the servers.
I thought it was impressive at first that it replaced IRC, but now I am horrified. If the company behind Discord went under today, how many friends would you lose?
How many relationships? How much writing?
You may think this won’t happen, but I remember when AIM went down and along with it, entire novels worth of interaction with my oldest friend.
IT CAN HAPPEN TO YOU. IT WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. NO COMPANY IS INFALLIBLE.
Back up your files! Download anything you’ve saved to Discord NOW, before the API changes go into effect! And DO NOT RELY ON THEM FOR HOLDING IMPORTANT FILES!
Here is a program that lets you download any and all of your discord DMs, your servers, everything. You can set the format (raw text, html (dark and light), and others. You can even download the uploaded files not just the text, though that may be just for the command-line version not the GUI window version.
Please back up your conversations, your stories. I have a backup of everything I care about that runs once a week, with full attachment backups every several months. I write stories on discord, and would be devastated if someone happened to them. You have to have your own local copies of every file you care about.
Reminder that boycotting DOES work, there is historic proof! Don’t let anyone discourage you otherwise!
The BDS movement uses the historically successful method of targeted boycotts inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, the US Civil Rights movement, the Indian anti-colonial struggle, among others worldwide.
We must strategically focus on a relatively smaller number of carefully selected companies and products for maximum impact. Companies that play a clear and direct role in Israel’s crimes and where there is real potential for winning, as was the case with, among others, G4S, Veolia, Orange, Ben & Jerry’s and Pillsbury. Compelling such huge, complicit companies, through strategic and context-sensitive boycott and divestment campaigns, to end their complicity in Israeli apartheid and war crimes against Palestinians sends a very powerful message to hundreds of other complicit companies that “your time will come, so get out before it’s too late!”
Please reblog! Spread this! There is an effort by zionists to discourage people from boycotting! Don’t let them trample your spirits and help us in the fight for a liberated Palestine!
MIRROR — A sad, beaten old man stares at you from the shaving glass. He stands in a broken down shack by the sea, bleeding into dirty bandages, alone.
HALF LIGHT — Dying.
EMPATHY — Afraid.
He *deserves* to die alone. I hate him.
It’s not fair. How could they all abandon him?
Is there any hope for him?
ENDURANCE — Physically speaking, yes. It’s a very small hope for a very short amount of time, but it is there. There is no way of recovering the time that was stolen from this sad man, stolen by poverty, by medical neglect, by the invisible murderer. Nor the time that was wasted on visibly and invisibly murdering others.
But there is still a little left over. Change the bandages, rest your body, guard your heart.
EMPATHY — But not too closely. Or else why continue at all?
YOU — I don’t know why. I don’t know if there’s any point in hoping. I don’t know if I deserve time that is only given to me after being stolen from someone else.
VOLITION — It is not a question of deserving. The fact is that you are here, for reasons outside of your control. The true question is what you will do with that fact.
MIRROR — The beaten man’s face is pale and drawn in pain. He sits down on the bed, clutching the shaving glass in shaking hands.
YOU — What am I supposed to do if I can’t *undo* anything?
VOLITION — Bear it.
YOU — And if I can’t?
VOLITION — You don’t have a choice. Your only alternatives are to continue to live at the expense of others, or to die. Neither are acceptable. They contribute nothing.
YOU — Why *should* I contribute anything to this rotten world?
VOLITION — Because it is the only way to kill the rot.
YOU — What if… *I* am the rot?
VOLITION — That is just an excuse. Violence is not your nature. It is your choice. You must own it, and then choose something else.
CONCEPTUALIZATION — There *is* something else. I’ve glimpsed it here, in this city, in this little shack that shelters us from the bitter cold.
YOU — Do I have a right to take part in it?
VOLITION — It is not your right. It is your obligation.
YOU — And if I take it on… will they all finally love me?
VOLITION — You are still not understanding. You will never be entitled to the love of those whose murders you have been accomplice to. But you must love *them* all the same, love them enough to leave the side of the killers, to stand between them and murderers both visible and invisible. Because someone once did that for you, and that is why you’re alive. That is the only reason any of us are alive.
CONCEPTUALIZATION — True love is possible… in another world, one which will come long after us.
RHETORIC — But it will only be built if we are willing to lay even one brick in its foundation.
YOU — Why should I bother?
EMPATHY — Because *that* is love. And it is what is sheltering you right this very moment. It surrounds you. Holds you.
SHIVERS — The whole world’s suddenly gone beautiful. Every stone, every reflection, every surface weathered by human hands, it’s all calling out to you to hold it and never let it go.
It is her way of begging not to die.
MIRROR — The beaten man’s face is obscured by tears falling on the glass. He doesn’t want to die, either. For the first time in a very long time.
The director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN (UN OHCHR), Craig Mokhiber, has resigned in a letter dated 28 October 2023
the resignation letter can be found embedded in this tweet by Rami Atari (@.Raminho) dated 31 October 2023.
The letters are here:
Transcription:
United Nations | Nations Unies
HEADQUARTERS I SIEGE I NEW YORK, NY 10017
28 October 2023
Dear High Commissioner,
This will be my last official communication to you as Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
I write at a moment of great anguish for the world, including for many of our colleagues. Once again, we are seeing a genocide unfolding before our eyes, and the Organization that we serve appears powerless to stop it. As someone who has investigated human rights in Palestine since the 1980s, lived in Gaza as a UN human rights advisor in the 1990s, and carried out several human rights missions to the country before and since, this is deeply personal to me.
I also worked in these halls through the genocides against the Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, the Yazidi, and the Rohingya. In each case, when the dust settled on the horrors that had been perpetrated against defenseless civilian populations, it became painfully clear that we had failed in our duty to meet the imperatives of prevention of mass atrocites, of protection of the vulnerable, and of accountability for perpetrators. And so it has been with successive waves of murder and persecution against the Palestinians throughout the entire life of the UN.
High Commissioner, we are failing again.
As a human rights lawyer with more than three decades of experience in the field, I know well that the concept of genocide has often been subject to political abuse. But the current wholesale slaughter of the Palestinian people, rooted in an ethno-nationalist settler colonial ideology, in continuation of decades of their systematic persecution and purging, based entirely upon their status as Arabs, and coupled with explicit statements of intent by leaders in the Israeli government and military, leaves no room for doubt or debate. In Gaza, civilian homes, schools, churches, mosques, and medical institutions are wantonly attacked as thousands of civilians are massacred. In the West Bank, including occupied Jerusalem, homes are seized and reassigned based entirely on race, and violent settler pogroms are accompanied by Israeli military units. Across the land, Apartheid rules.
This is a text-book case of genocide. The European, ethno-nationalist, settler colonial project in Palestine has entered its final phase, toward the expedited destruction of the last remnants of indigenous Palestinian life in Palestine. What’s more, the governments of the United States, the United Kingdom, and much of Europe, are wholly complicit in the horrific assault. Not only are these governments refusing to meet their treaty obligations “to ensure respect” for the Geneva Conventions, but they are in fact actively arming the assault, providing economic and intelligence support, and giving political and diplomatic cover for Israel’s atrocities.
Volker Turk, High Commissioner for Human Rights Palais Wilson, Geneva
In concert with this, western corporate media, increasingly captured and state-adjacent, are in open breach of Article 20 of the ICCPR, continuously dehumanizing Palestinians to facilitate the genocide, and broadcasting propaganda for war and advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, and violence. US-based social media companies are suppressing the voices of human rights defenders while amplifying pro-Israel propaganda. Israel lobby online-trolls and GONGOS are harassing and smearing human rights defenders, and western universities and employers are collaborating with them to punish those who dare to speak out against the atrocities. In the wake of this genocide, there must be an accounting for these actors as well, just as there was for radio Mules Collins in Rwanda.
In such circumstances, the demands on our organization for principled and effective action are greater than ever. But we phave not met the challenge. The protective enforcement power Security Council has again been blocked by US intransigence, the SG [UN Secretary General] is under assault for the mildest of protestations, and our human rights mechanisms are under sustained slanderous attack by an organized, online impunity network.
Decades of distraction by the illusory and largely disingenuous promises of Oslo have diverted the Organization from its core duty to defend international law, international human rights, and the Charter itself. The mantra of the “two-state solution” has become an open joke in the corridors of the UN, both for its utter impossibility in fact, and for its total failure to account for the inalienable human rights of the Palestinian people. The so-called “Quartet” has become nothing more than a fig leaf for inaction and for subservience to a brutal status quo. The (US-scripted) deference to “agreements between the parties themselves” (in place of international law) was always a transparent slight-of-hand, designed to reinforce the power of Israel over the rights of the occupied and dispossessed Palestinians.
High Commissioner, I came to this Organization first in the 1980s, because I found in it a principled, norm-based institution that was squarely on the side of human rights, including in cases where the powerful US, UK, and Europe were not on our side. While my own government, its subsidiarity institutions, and much of the US media were still supporting or justifying South African apartheid, Israeli oppression, and Central American death squads, the UN was standing up for the oppressed peoples of those lands. We had international law on our side. We had human rights on our side. We had principle on our side. Our authority was rooted in our integrity. But no more.
In recent decades, key parts of the UN have surrendered to the power of the US, and to fear of the Israel Lobby, to abandon these principles, and to retreat from international law itself. We have lost a lot in this abandonment, not least our own global credibility. But the Palestinian people have sustained the biggest losses as a result of our failures. It is a stunning historic irony that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted in the same year that the Nakba was perpetrated against the Palestinian people. As we commemorate the 75th Anniversary of the UDHR, we would do well to abandon the old cliché that the UDHR was born out of the atrocities that proceeded it, and to admit that it was born alongside one of the most atrocious genocides of the 20th Century, that of the destruction of Palestine. In some sense, the framers were promising human rights to everyone, except the Palestinian people. And let us remember as well, that the UN itself carries the original sin of helping to facilitate the dispossession of the Palestinian people by ratifying the European settler colonial project that seized Palestinian land and turned it over to the colonists. We have much for which to atone.
But the path to atonement is clear. We have much to learn from the principled stance taken in cities around the world in recent days, as masses of people stand up against the genocide, even at risk of beatings and arrest. Palestinians and their allies, human rights defenders of every stripe, Christian and Muslim organizations, and progressive Jewish voices saying “not in our name”, are all leading the way. All we have to do is to follow them.
Yesterday, just a few blocks from here, New York’s Grand Central Station was completely taken over by thousands of Jewish human rights defenders standing in solidarity with the Palestinian people and demanding an end to Israeli tyranny (many risking arrest, in the process). In doing so, they stripped away in an instant the Israeli hasbara propaganda point (and old antisemitic trope) that Israel somehow represents the Jewish people. It does not. And, as such, Israel is solely responsible for its crimes. On this point, it bears repeating, in spite of Israel lobby smears to the contrary, that criticism of Israel’s human rights violations is not antisemitic, any more than criticism of Saudi violations is Islamophobic, criticism of Myanmar violations is anti-Buddhist, or criticism of Indian violations is anti-Hindu. When they seek to silence us with smears, we must raise our voice, not lower it. I trust you will agree, High Commissioner, that this is what speaking truth to power is all about.
But I also find hope in those parts of the UN that have refused to compromise the Organization’s human rights principles in spite of enormous pressures to do so. Our independent special rapporteurs, commissions of enquiry, and treaty body experts, alongside most of our staff, have continued to stand up for the human rights of the Palestinian people, even as other parts of the UN (even at the highest levels) have shamefully bowed their heads to power. As the custodians of the human rights norms and standards, OHCHR. has a particular duty to defend those standards. Our job, I believe, is to make our voice heard, from the Secretary-General to the newest UN recruit, and horizontally across the wider UN system, incisting that the human rights of the Palestinian people are not up for debate, negotiation, or compromise anywhere under the blue flag.
What, then, would a UN-norm-based position look like? For what would we work if we were true to our rhetorical admonitions about human rights and equality for all, accountability for perpetrators, redress for victims, protection of the vulnerable, and empowerment for rights-holders, all under the rule of law? The answer, I believe, is simple—if we have the clarity to see beyond the propagandistic smokescreens that distort the vision of justice to which we are sworn, the courage to abandon fear and deference to powerful states, and the will to truly take up the banner of human rights and peace. To be sure, this is a long-term project and a steep climb. But we must begin now or surrender to unspeakable horror. I see ten essential points:
Legitimate action: First, we in the UN must abandon the failed (and largely disingenuous) Oslo paradigm, its illusory two-state solution, its impotent and complicit Quartet, and its subjugation of international law to the dictates of presumed political expediency. Our positions must be unapologetically based on international human rights and international law.
Clarity of Vision: We must stop the pretense that this is simply a conflict over land or religion between two warring parties and admit the reality of the situation in which a disproportionately powerful state is colonizing, persecuting, and dispossessing an indigenous population on the basis of their ethnicity.
One State based on human rights: We must support the establishment of a single, democratic, secular state in all of historic Palestine, with equal rights for Christians, Muslims, and Jews, and, therefore, the dicmantling of the deeply racist, settler-colonial project and an end to apartheid across the land.
Fighting Apartheid: We must redirect all UN efforts and resources to the struggle against apartheid, just as we did for South Africa in the 1970s, 80s, and early 90s.
Return and Compensation: We must reaffirm and insist on the right to return and full compensation for all Palestinians and their families currently living in the occupied territories, in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and in the diaspora across the globe.
Truth and Justice: We must call for a transitional justice process, making full use of decades of accumulated UN investigations, enquiries, and reports, to document the truth, and to ensure accountability for all perpetrators, redress for all victims, and remedies for documented injustices.
Protection: We must press for the deployment of a well-resourced and strongly mandated UN protection force with a sustained mandate to protect civilians from the river to the sea.
Disarmament: We must advocate for the removal and destruction of Israel’s massive stockpiles of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, lest the conflict lead to the total destruction of the region and, possibly, beyond.
Mediation: We must recognize that the US and other western powers are in fact not credible mediators, but rather actual parties to the conflict who are complicit with Israel in the violation of Palestinian rights, and we must engage them as such.
Solidarity: We must open our doors (and the doors of the SG) wide to the legions of Palestinian, Israeli, Jewish, Muslim, and Christian human rights defenders who are standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine and their human rights and stop the unconstrained flow of Israel lobbyists to the offices of UN leaders, where they advocate for continued war, persecution, apartheid, and impunity, and smear our human rights defenders for their principled defense of Palestinian rights.
This will take years to achieve, and western powers will fight us every step of the way, so we must be steadfast. In the immediate term, we must work for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the longstanding siege on Gaza, stand up against the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, Jerusalem, and the West Bank (and elsewhere), document the genocidal assault in Gaza, help to bring massive humanitarian aid and reconstruction to the Palestinians, take care of our traumatized colleagues and their families, and fight like hell for a principled approach in the UN’s political offices.
The UN’s failure in Palestine thus far is not a reason for us to withdraw. Rather it should give us the courage to abandon the failed paradigm of the past, and fully embrace a more principled course. Let us, as OHCHR, boldly and proudly join the anti-apartheid movement that is growing all around the world, adding our logo to the banner of equality and human rights for the Palestinian people. The world is watching. We will all be accountable for where we stood at this crucial moment in history. Let us stand on the side of justice.
I thank you, High Commissioner, Volker, for hearing this final appeal from my desk. I will leave the Office in a few days for the last time, after more than three decades of service. But please do not hesitate to reach out if I can be of assistance in the future.
Sincerely,
Craig Mokhiber
End of transcription.
Emphasis (bolding) is my own. I have added links, where relevant, to explanations of concepts the Director refers to.
“So, Murderbot. One of the questions I get asked a lot is what inspired the character. I think people want/expect there to be a crystal clear single moment where something tangible and identifiable sparked the idea. But there really wasn’t; or if there was, I don’t remember it. What I remember is a whole lot of things, all coming together at once. It started when I was working on the ending of The Harbors of the Sun, the last novel in the Books of the Raksura series. It was the conclusion of the series, and I was sweating over it. This was the series that, with great difficulty and many setbacks, dragged my career back from the dead, and I loved it and wanted to do the finale justice. I was having something like a creative surge, with ideas for new books, fanfiction, redecorating my house, digging up my backyard, all kinds of things. (My brain is what we call non-neurotypical and sometimes it goes very fast.) One day, somewhere in there, the plot idea popped up for an enslaved security person who had destroyed their governor module but would have to reveal that to save an innocent group of scientists. I had an image of a scene which turned into the moment in All Systems Red where Mensah knocks on the wall of Murderbot’s cubicle, an act of transgression which sets off the story. It was going to be a short story with a sad ending. I decided to quickly type some notes on the idea so I wouldn’t forget it. I ended up writing the cubicle scene and then forced myself to stop and go back to work on the novel. The day after The Harbors of the Sun draft was finished, I started on what ended up being All Systems Red, though at the time it was just called The Murderbot Diaries. All my books, except for my Star Wars and Stargate Atlantis media tie-ins, had been fantasy, but this was a science fiction idea. I’d been reading SF all my life, and some of my favorites were Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, Tanith Lee, Janet Kagan, Phyllis Gotlieb, and recently Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, Karen Lord’s The Best of All Possible Worlds, and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. It quickly developed into something too long for a short story, but I had been reading some of TorDotcom’s new novella line, stories like The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson and Binti by Nnedi Okorafor. I checked the submission requirements and thought that around 33,000 words would be just about the right length for what I wanted to do. The sad ending got thrown out early on, though I didn’t decide on the actual ending until I got close to that point in the story. Murderbot needed time to grow and change on its own; going home with Mensah would be like trading up to a better owner. It needed to leave. The draft took from May 26, 2016 through June 26, 2016 to complete. It would have been faster, but I fell and had a back injury in the middle of it, possibly not unrelated to the rheumatoid arthritis that I didn’t know I had at the time. Then I had to go be on programming (with a cane and a back brace) at Comicpalooza in Houston. The day I got back home I started writing again. A lot of things were coming to a boiling point that year. I had a lifetime of anxiety, depression, and undiagnosed developmental disorders. I was sick of being told that if you’re not completely open and spilling your feelings for the approval of everyone around you then you must not have any feelings. Books, but also TV and Star Wars had probably saved my life as a kid, but that wasn’t the narrative people wanted to hear. (It’s cool if literature saves your life; if literature got a major assist from Land of the Giants and the Saturday afternoon Godzilla movie, not so much.) I was still hanging on as a working writer in a field that expected women my age to quietly fade away. I’d been angry all my life, but the oncoming election of Trump was making me exhausted with rage. I was terrified of what would happen, to me, to my family, to our friends, to all the people I knew. I had to put it all somewhere, so I put it into Murderbot. There were other influences. The movie War Games where the sentient supercomputer decides for itself that playing games is better than waging war. The Lord of the Rings documentary about the program used to create the massive battle scenes and how they had to tweak it to stop it from making all the pixel people run away instead of fight. I wanted to write an AI that didn’t want to be human, and I was thinking a lot about what an AI would actually want, as opposed to what a human might think an AI would want. Once the novella was finished I sent it to my agent, Jennifer Jackson, who submitted it to Lee Harris at Tordotcom. Then we waited, and I went back to work on The Harbors of the Sun. I went to the WorldCon in Kansas City with friends, and ran into Lee as he was about to go to the Hugo Awards, where he would accept Nnedi Okorafor’s Hugo for Best Novella for Binti. He told me he was buying the novella and I was ecstatic while trying to be cool and professional. The next day I did a panel with Lee while Nnedi’s Hugo sat in a box on the floor behind the table. I was trying not to see that as a good omen, because in my career (all twenty-three years of it up to that point) I’d long ago accepted that my time for awards was past. But it turned out I was wrong about that. Lee asked for a second novella and I decided to write what happened next, which turned into Artificial Condition. After that, I wanted to keep going and offered to do two more. Each subsequent novella has been harder to write than the previous one, each taking me about three to four months of writing, cutting, and rewriting to get to a first draft. The novel Network Effect took me almost twice as long to write as any of my other novels. It was published last week, in the middle of a world-spanning pandemic, and here we are. I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who has embraced Murderbot (figuratively, because we all know it would hate that in real life) and to everyone who sees themselves in Murderbot. It’s a gift, to have readers love a character as much as you love writing it, to have readers identify with a character and to feel comforted by it. It’s a gift to still be able to write Murderbot, with everything going on in the world. So thank you for that gift.”
— The text of Martha Wells’s introduction to the Subterranean edition of The Murderbot Diaries, published March 2021.
Full text here.
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