Saïd Sayrafiezadeh on Debt, Cults, and Our Inner Algorithms
The narrator of your story “ Minimum Payment Due ” is mired in debt and, from the outset, trying to
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Another day, another literary scandal. Such is BookX in 2024. Buckle up, for today brings news of an especially strange case of dissembling, involving a fantasy author writing under a few different racial identities and a handful of pseudonyms. I’m sorry in advance if you were using your brain today for other things. The trouble began back in June of 2020, when a queer fantasy and science fiction writer known as Taylor B. Barton was accused of racist bullying by several of their fellow authors. Barton, a self-identifying trans person who also wrote and published under the name Taylor Brooke, was tried on Twitter—and though mounting accusations prompted them to issue a (deeply milquetoast) apology, the harm proved irrevocable. Barton/Brooke was dropped by their publishers (Inkyard Press, Carina Press), as well as their agent. Their queer fantasy novel, The Ninth Life, and their “queer holiday romance,” Full Moon in Leo , were quietly shuttled out of print. As you might be able to predict if you’ve also given away precious neurological real estate to Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk, things only got hinkier from there. The author formerly identifying as Barton/Brooke took refuge in another of their pen-names, Brooklyn Ray, and began arguing with their accusers online. A nasty back and forth followed in which Barton (now Ray, keep up) modeled poor media training. Readers attempted to educate the author with paraphrasings of Sarah Schulman’s Conflict is Not Abuse. After a final insistence that they’d done nothing wrong , Barton/Brooke/Ray appeared to leave social media for good. But as every fantasy fan knows, a dramatic exit is often as not a smoke-bomb covering…reinvention. In 2021, a “newcomer” named Jupiter Wyse appeared on the fantasy scene. Jessica Porter picked up the thread in Fanficable ; Wyse, an author who identified publicly as a “qtpoc” (or queer trans person of color), frequently alluded to their Latinx roots in fiction, and on Twitter—namely in tirades directed at a racist publishing industry. (“As a diaspora, monolingual, Latinx person…” began a characteristic Tweet.) Thanks to the machinations of a fleet of Nancy Drews, it […]
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The narrator of your story “ Minimum Payment Due ” is mired in debt and, from the outset, trying to
Hanif Kureishi You have been back in your London home for several months now, after a year in different hospitals,
