Aren’t you tired of this already? I’m tired of this.

Liz and I were so excited to hear about the Science for Science Fiction conference being held in Melbourne in September. It’s being held by the Royal Society of Victoria, in partnership with Emerging Writers Festival and Aurealis Magazine! It features some of our friends! Our white friends.

Click through and check out that chalky line up.

14 speakers, 13 of them white. Of course such judgments are superficial. There’s a reason why I legally changed my name to reflect my mother’s — as I grew older, I started to look more like my father, and sometimes you just need a visible sign of your ethnicity. Well, I do. Maybe you don’t.

So of course this is a superficial accusation. But that looks suspiciously like only white people (and one South Asian person) get to write science fiction according to RSV. Right?

How exhausting.

Speaking of exhausting:

Employing Australians First looks suspiciously like employing white people. Also sounds racist and gross and dog-whistle-y. Also Bill Shorten is a dork, and not in the endearing way, but let’s not get distracted.

Sorry this post lacks in-depth analysis. We both had full weekends, and I trust that you know how to do the analysis on this. Plumb the depths of your feelings, you know them to be true.

Further reading:

Buzzfeed’s usual timely collection of tweets and gifs: People Can’t Believe Labor’s New “Australians First” Ad

Writers Festivals, Diversity and the Fangirl, CB Mako at Peril, my favourite mag and yours.

We need to talk about multiculturalism in Australia by Zoya Patel, who you should be reading as often as you can.