S.L. Huang's Blog, page 6

Sometimes I see a “top X” list that’s, shall we say, all male (think lists of top scientists, recommended SFF authors, etc.). And when people object, others defend against the objection with,“But what if the field’s mostly male???”

There are a wholehost of problems with this, but I’m not really going to get into them here. I’m just going to do some math.

As far as I can figure, my starting assumptions are only that (1) we expect Top-X lists to sample gender randomly — that is, that a male per...

When you get pregnant for the first time, you’ll find that many pregnancy websites and apps attempt to give you a weekly update to help you visualize the size of your fetus. Most of the time, they do this using fruit. Which isn’t as helpful as one might think, because of this:

Let’s face it, it’s not the most accurate system out there. They also tend to give you the exact measurements in inches and/or cm, but that doesn’t quite cut it in terms of imagining the size of your bebe. And it’s sudd...

Due to Enormous Real Life Events, I’m still way behind on thecomments on my last Hugo post (ARGH! SORRY!), but, you know, if I made myself catch up on everything ever before saying anything new, my inbox would be empty butI wouldn’t have a writing career.

So, this Best Saga Hugo.

I instantly loved the idea, so I probed on Twitter trying to figure out why I was seeing so much negativity about it. Some people said they supported it in theory but the devil was in the details of this proposal (wh...

Source: http://www.vikingstvstore.com; Fair use – commentary

I like the TV series Game of Thrones. When I heard that the History Channel’s The Vikings was GoT-lite, I thought: Oh, let’s give that a try, but I know it ain’t gonna be as good as GoT, cuz GoT is pretty splendid.

I watched the first couple episodes of The Vikings and wasn’t impressed. It was okay, but the production value wasn’t nearly as shiny GoT’s. To be fair, GoT probably had 5,000 times the budget. Then I watched more of The...

I’ve been traveling without a laptop and have been terribly remiss on updating the Interwebz! (Still traveling, but laptop is back sohopefully I can catch up a little.) Anyway, I HAVE A NEW SHORT STORY! And my essay is in a NEW CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY!

“By Degrees and Dilatory Time” was published last week at Strange Horizons, along with beautiful illustrations (eek!) and an audio version (eek again!). It’s a story that’s very personal to me and one I’m very proud of. Many, many thanks to my gene...

I’ve been trying to stay out of saying anything about the Hugos Awards, mostly because lots of people are saying lots of things already and I haven’t felt like I have anything to add. But then Jim Hines posted today speculating about MATH, and, well, I got nerd-sniped.

Here’s the original (long, long) comment I left on his blog. I finally decided I couldn’t not do a normal distribution and standard dev, so I came back here for it, but the numbers in the original comment might be a bit more in...

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By Visitor7 (Own work) [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

I realized something the other day: LA doesn’t have squares.

I could not think of a single square in LA. In contrast, I could think of six squares in Boston off the top of my head (Kendall Square, Harvard Square, Central Square, Porter Square, Inman Square, Davis Square). And actually, technically none of those are even in Boston proper, but are in Cambridge and Somerville areas in the...

In waiting for the sun to come to just the right angle I have missed the moment entirely.

Photo: By yjenith (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Day ??

Since I’m writing this final post like a year after I went into subs with my first book, I can’t remember at which point I had The Talk with my agents. Sorry guys! But it went like this:

1. My agents informed me that they were receiving the same sorts of rejections: YA Dystopia isn’t selling.

I think we’ve figured this one out ourselves.

2. I told the agent I was interning for about it and asked him for advice. He said he would shelve the book for now because it’s futile trying to sel...

Day 43:

I totally caved and sent an e-mail to Junior Agent. She replied and told me that the MS is still with 8 editors and there have been no updates from them so far, but that she will nudge them this week. Well! That’s sorta good news! At least there haven’t been any rejections, right? Wheee!

Yes, Adam, gimme that half-hearted Yay!

She also said that she hasn’t had a chance to read much of the Adult Fantasy yet, but that she’s been enjoying what she’s managed to read so far. Another cauti...