When people ask for advice toward developing editorial skills, I have a dirty little secret to editorial greatness.* Usually, I give tips that have been repeated elsewhere. Read widely. Keep a curious mind. Decipher the technical tricks of your favorite authors. Or follow their blogs. There is one strategy I’ve not admitted to. Fact is, […]
Sheldon Teitelbaum and Eli Herstein note in the Encyclopedia Judaica that traditionally Jewish literature has avoided the purely imaginative, often framing stories that would seem on their face to be fantastic as true accounts or using the less realistic elements to make a point about the true nature of the world. Despite this, Jewish folklore […]
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Making good life choices is hard. Making good life choices when you’re neurodivergent is damn hard. Perhaps the most relatable and engaging such struggle I’ve read is that of Miles Vorkosigan, from Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Saga. Miles and his “excellent life choices” entertain, astound, and horrify me even as they dig at something deep […]
I have always felt like a monster. And on this particular morning, my brain and body transform me into a creature I barely recognize. Claws inject a longing ache deep in my ribcage, the disembodied chemicals’ lips brushing the shell of my ear whispering things no human should endure. Twins of agony perch at my […]
I dream of malfunctioning space stations. They pitch and yaw wildly; the artificial gravity works sometimes. Sometimes it doesn’t. It cuts in and out at unpredictable intervals and smashes me into the deck. I float back up, I am weightless. I am slammed into the ceiling. It is my job to fix it, and I […]
When Julian Bashir is asked to help a group of genetically engineered “mutants” on the space station Deep Space Nine, he faces an interesting dilemma. Illegally genetically engineered as a child himself, his status as a “mutant” has recently been revealed, and he now has to deal with the fallout as his friends and co-workers […]
I am the metaphor for the hero to learn a “valuable lesson.” I am your “afterschool special,” your vengeful monster and scarred villain. I will die or be killed gruesomely to serve as motivation for the protagonist, or I will overcome and be healed. This is how the world views people with disabilities; how the […]
“The future doesn’t belong to you,” a friend tells me, when we walk home together one night. Not in those words, of course. Rather, he talks about scientific advancement, genetic manipulation, and how soon, we won’t have disabled people anymore. We can fix you. We can fix those who can’t be happy because they don’t […]
The ableist world would like us to feel alone. At fourteen years old, recovering from massive medical malpractice and teaching myself to walk again, school was Hell. I was mocked, had my books thrown, and when I staggered, boys would often “bump” me to try to topple me over. It’s easy to think I was […]