Benjanun Sriduangkaew
Benjanun Sriduangkaew is a Thai writer of science fiction and fantasy who is also known for controversial online criticism. She was a finalist for the 2014 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and the 2014 BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction, for "Scale-Bright". Life. Sriduangkaew was born in Pattani Province in southern Thailand. After attending university in Bangkok, she worked in Manila, Jakarta, and Hong Kong. In 2013, Sriduangkaew said that she had earned her bachelor's degree "some twelve years ago" and that she had not been fluent in English at the time. Work . Sriduangkaew began publishing short fiction in 2012, with "Courtship in the Country of the Machine Gods", and established a name for herself with a string of high-profile short stories in "Clarkesworld Magazine" and elsewhere, which led to her nomination for the John W. Campbell Award. Her first long-form publication was the urban fantasy novella "Scale-Bright", published in 2014. A follow-up to her three "Sun-Moon Cycle" stories, it is a love story about a young woman from Hong Kong who has to rescue her sister from Heaven. Reviewing the novella for "Tor.com", Niall Alexander described it  as "an achievement without equal", appreciating its "delicately drawn characters", "affecting narrative", and the author's prose skills. Her second novella, "Winterglass", was published in 2017. It is a science-fantasy retelling of the story of the Snow Queen. A "Publishers Weekly"s reviewer considered that the "promising novella" provided "variations on the theme of strong female characters" but was marred by an "uneven plot and some missed opportunities for complex worldbuilding". Her third novella, "And Shall Machines Surrender", was published in 2019. It is a science fiction story focusing on artificial intelligences and their relationships to humanity. Reviewing the novella  in "The Future Fire", J. Moufawad-Paul wrote: “"And Shall Machines Surrender" is the perfect example of how much can possibly be packed into a novella. The equal depth of style, story, characterization, and world-building is quite striking”; and, “Due to the strength of "And Shall Machines Surrender" — its clarity and intricacy, its ability to compress complexity into a minimalist structure — it is almost criminal that Sriduangkaew is not a household name”. Most of Sriduangkaew's work is queer-normative and trans-inclusive, and foregrounds lesbian relationships and South-East-Asian themes or influences. Online activity. In 2014, Sriduangkaew  was revealed to have been the controversial blogger and book reviewer "Requires Hate" (also known as "Requires Only That You Hate", as well as "Winterfox"). Using these internet identities, she published critiques of what she considered to be racist, sexist, heteronormative, or colonial themes in works of science fiction and fantasy; these critiques were often expressed in personal language deemed insulting or threatening by readers. Media outlets and social media users referred to Sriduangkaew as a "notorious troll". Some outlets speculated that Sriduangkaew could be fabricating her Chinese-Thai identity, though no substantial evidence for those claims has been provided . In October 2014, Sriduangkaew posted an apology on her blog, admitting to being "a horrendous asshole" and causing pain to others, while also denying certain allegations that she had made rape threats, stating that other accounts had impersonated her. The blog remains inactive. A blog post by fellow writer Laura J. Mixon critiquing Sriduangkaew's behavior won Mixon the 2015 Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer. Views on Sriduangkaew's behaviour and Mixon's article remain split. Detractors claimed that the Mixon article was a "hit piece" aimed at an up-and-coming woman of colour, conflating Sribuangkaew's insulting  language with abuse, while ignoring the content of her criticisms against the status quo in science fiction and fantasy writing. In a blog post in 2015, Sriduangkaew wrote that she had become the target of harassment and cyberstalking campaigns after her internet identities were revealed, while conceding that "I've been shitty in the past".