The Reading Room

Rather than to define the category "speculative fiction" and then put [book x] into that category.

This becomes a bigger issue if you talk about, say, race

Any definition of race will automatically be either convoluted or incorrect

Aye.

I think we're talking about different kinds of category, but ultimately agreeing.

9:28 PM

not the least because race changes depending on time and location

Much better to say John became white when he straightened his hair, or Jane became white when she moved to the United States.

Or Joe became white at the moment he was conceived.

@BESW the issue with genre categories is that, like all categories, their definitions are contested, changing, and context-dependent.

Any definition of a category is a political statement.

If you want to talk about categories accurately, you can't use rigid definitions, or definitions at all.

I'm absolutely agreeing.

@Emrakul what are the next steps for our topic challenge? It seems like everyone is in agreement. And people are asking about different authors, although thos eauthors are in the same "cannon" as the author's we've already been getting questions about

@Riker ask a question about it on the site (please please please)

already drafting one ;P

@Hamlet For challenges that are about particular authors/works, we should stick to short works that are freely available online.

@Hamlet do you think "What happens to those who walk away?" would be a good question?

9:39 PM

@Riker it's OK, but it seems like you're taking things a little bit too literally

@Riker I think it's a bit literal and doesn't have much to chew on.

@Hamlet jinx.

yeah, that's what I was thinking (both of you)

Let me look at the story and give you some suggestions

You could ask how its theme differs from Brothers Karamazov.

never read that?

9:43 PM

@Riker there's a lot to talk about. I don't want to tell you what to ask questions about. My advice would be to go through the story sentence by sentence, find a sentence that is confusing, and ask about it

yeah, I'm doing that right now

@Hamlet we wait a little bit more. It's had hardly any time. After a while, we can make a meta post asking for submissions. We'll have to decide on a time frame. Then, after we have some submissions, we wait a couple days and then make a TC Meta post and feature it.

@Riker If you want a specific analytic concept, maybe look at "violence of representation". But that would be something for your fourth or fifth question about this story, not the first

...at least, that's what I would suggest.

9:48 PM

@Riker or ask about this passage

> The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants
and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual,
only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and
the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise
despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have
almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy. How

oof I hate copying from a PDF

specifically the parts about happiness

@Mithrandir I mean, I suppose, but no one's voiced any objections so far, it seems uncontroversial, we could wait but we wouldn't get much from waiting, and implementing a topic challenge doesn't affect anyone who doesn't want to participate.

@Hamlet right, but don't want to get Into the habit of making quick decisions based on meta scores. @Emrakul can tell you about how they causes fiascos :P

@Hamlet am bit busy right now will ask question later

accidentally had jalapenos and for a half mexican dude I have 0 tolerance for spicy stuff

see y'all

@Riker what's wrong with jalapeños?

They're nice and spicy. Give a bit of a kick.

I like things that've been cooked with jalapeños, but I have to pick out the peppers themselves.

user61230

@Hamlet @Mithrandir Meta Always Lies ;)

user61230

10:02 PM

I think we can afford to let this one sit for a bit. At a minimum, it'll help germinate ideas as people talk about it.

@Mithrandir i have no tolerance for them it makes me puke for multiple days straight

so right now I am eating bread and dairy so hopefully less puking

@Hamlet It's always a good idea to let a meta decision sit for at least a few days, because the point of meta is to get eyes on a thing from a good cross-section of the active site members... many of whom don't check the site multiple times every day like some of us.

(someone ping me in two hours and remind me to post my question, please)

user61230

More accurate answer, @Hamlet: challenge posts are actually pretty easy to run from the mod side of things. We'd need to draft up some guidelines for good suggestions, and some guidelines/suggestions for how to vote. And then it's kind of out of our hands, honestly.

user61230

We'd probably be the ones to kick off the first iteration, and maybe the next few if people forget or nobody else quite wants to start the next one.

user61230

10:13 PM

It's usually pretty formulaic if done right.