Frequently Asked Questions (in-work)
Is that pen name cultural appropriation?
Why don’t you write typical sci fi tropes, like space opera, time travel, military, multiverse, etc.?
Your ‘About’ page explains you look like a typical white guy but you’re not, and that you’re feminist, multigenetic, autistic, and a CPTSD survivor. How does representation fit into your writing?
q4
q5
When did you learn that you’re a wanker?
How do I contact you?
Q1: Is that pen name cultural appropriation?
X. Ho Yen is the pen name of a Chinese-Cuban-East Prussian child of refugee immigrants. When his Cantonese grandfather immigrated (as a contract laborer) to Cuba, his Chinese name was interpreted as “Ho Yen” and spelled as “Hogen” (the ‘y’ sound is spelled with a ‘g’ in Spanish). While the family was in Cuba, their name was pronounced like Ho Yen. This pen name is not cultural appropriation. It’s roots. (Also, X. had “X.” years before Musk renamed Twitter. An old friend assigned it to him as a middle initial decades ago.)
For more on this, plus photos, visit the Media page, follow the link to the “Main” youtube playlist, and see the first several minutes of “Pt 1/4: My Galacticon 2023 Presentation”.
Q2: Why don’t you write typical sci fi tropes, like space opera, time travel, military, multiverse, etc.?
This is a multi-faceted, controversial question.
First and foremost, X. Ho Yen is driven to write about human nature, to question it, to wonder how to survive it with ethics and morals intact, to imagine harnessing it for the common good rather than being slave to it generation after generation. What X. finds is that the typical sci fi tropes are not so much about examining these things as they are about passively watching them play out. He expects he would do a poor job examining these big questions through the use of the typical tropes, so… he doesn’t.
Second, the typical sci fi tropes seem better suited to “shutting your brain off” type entertainment, which is partly why they’re so common. Many readers look for books that operate the same way as many tv shows do, allowing that “shut your brain off” escapism. X. uses tv/movies for that, but not books, so X. writes for himself and for other readers who also look for a more thoughtful experience in their sci fi books. There are already plenty of authors generating the typical sci fi tropes and entertaining countless readers in that way. There’s no good reason for X. to try to compete in that space — it doesn’t interest him, and he wouldn’t do well with it anyway.
Third, any reader of X.’s first novel, “Minimum Safe Distance”, will see and never be able to unsee the inevitability of the transbiological transition. X. grew up with Star Trek, Star Wars, and all manner of other media products imagining humanity getting better and better at space travel and ultimately going interstellar. But having grokked the transbiological transition, X. can no longer imagine it happening that way. Long before we can fly our meaty, needy bodies to the stars, we will be able to transform ourselves into cosmozoans. Interstellar life simply will not look like the simple “ships in space” extrapolation we all grew up imagining. Because of this, X. can’t even play in the “ships in space” thought-space any more, not as a writer. It’s just not real to him.
Finally, the “ships in space” paradigm, and related paradigms of the typical sci fi tropes, are simply not necessary to tell good stories that are rooted in reality and examine the human condition. There are other ways to play around with reality using sci fi writing devices that don’t rely on the tropes. That’s X.’s realm. And he aspires to write in that realm in a literary, often liminal manner, not using simplistic story templating that’s more appropriate for movies.
Q3: Your ‘About’ page explains you look like a typical white guy but you’re not, and that you’re feminist, multigenetic, autistic, and a CPTSD survivor. How does representation fit into your writing?
Please see X.’s substack article “Representation in my Writing”, which is linked at the top of the ‘About’ page. It answers this question thoroughly.
Q6: When did you learn that you’re a wanker?
When I watched “Ted Lasso”!
Q7: How do I contact you?
X.’s email address is right there in the newsletter subscribe footer on every page.
But before you contact X. with a question, do look through his newsletters and substack articles. They contain a wealth of information already about his work and his perspective. Obviously, you are encouraged to subscribe. (Subscribing to X.’s substack will yield linked notifications about new newsletters, in addition to the substack articles themselves. Subscribing to the newsletter means they’ll be emailed to you directly.)
A reply to a direct email is not guaranteed, of course. Solicitations will be ignored, especially ‘AI’-assisted con artist solicitations. (It’s nasty out there.)