May 20th, 2012
The 2011 Nebula Awards were awarded last night and the deserved winner in the novel category is an old friend of mine — Jo Walton:
Novel Winner: Among Others, Jo Walton (Tor)
Other Nominees
- Embassytown, China Miéville (Macmillan UK; Del Rey; Subterranean Press)
- Firebird, Jack McDevitt (Ace Books)
- God’s War, Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)
- Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine (Prime Books)
- The Kingdom of Gods, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Unlike this year’s Hugo Awards, which were disappointing to say the least, that Nebula shortlist is fairly strong, with only the Jack McDevitt –who has never written anything not bland and workmanlike– out of place. It was also nicely diversive, with five out of six nominees being women and at least one person of colour (N. K. Jemisin) on it. In a genre where all too often award shortlists are filled with legacy white male candidates, more voted for due to their name than their books, this is a good thing.
Among Others was one of the best novels I read last year and I’m glad it got the recognition it deserved.
Categories: science fiction
Tags: Among Others, Jo Walton, Nebula Awards
May 14th, 2012
From Lavie Tidhar’s “some Notes Towards a Working Definition of Steampunk”:
Nicholls does go on to say that “it is as if, for a handful of SF writers, Victorian London has come to stand for one of those turning points in history where things can go one way or the other, a turning point peculiarly relevant to SF itself.” It could indeed be argued that, while not all Steampunk or Steampunk-influenced novels are set in Victorian London, the city, to a large extent, dominates these narratives: “a city,” Nicholls observes, where “the modern world was being born.”
But if steampunk is indeed a mulligan on the industrial revolution, a do-ocer to get all the cool toys we didn’t get in the real world (brass computers! armoured zeppelins! cogs on shoes!) as Kip Manley has it, than London surely is the wrong city to use. The industrial revolution happened up ‘orth, in the Midlands, in Lancastershire and Yorkshire, not in the capital, but in the grimy horrible industrial towns and cities Pete Wylie lists here.
Not that London didn’t have industry of course; just that the schwerpunkt of the industrial revolution was never there. Which makes the central role it plays in steampunk imagination all the more strange, until you realise most steampunk writers are as much influenced by Sherlock Holmes as real history. London fits the middle class conciets of steampunk, the desire to have an industrial revolution without the industrial classes. In that regard, London was indeed the city where the future was being born.
Categories: science fiction
May 3rd, 2012
So we all know about Ian Sales’ SF Mistressworks blog don’t we, and how it showcases classic pre-2000 science fiction books by female writers? Well, it has inspired two people to start up their own blogs, showcasing female sf and fantasy writers.
First up is the new Fantasy Mistressworks blog, which is run by Amanda Rutter and is still in the process of starting up. It aims to do exactly the same as the SF Mistressworks blog has been doing, but for fantasy.
Second, there’s Michaela Staton’s Daughters of Promotheus, which goes on where the other two leave off, by showcasing twentyfirst century female sf writers. It’s already blogging up a storm, with several reviews up.
Both are open for submission of reviews, whether new or previously published.
Categories: Art & Criticism, fantasy, science fiction
April 7th, 2012
Catherynne M. Valente explains why what Christopher Priest did could not have been done by a woman:
I couldn’t, of course, even if I wanted to. But neither could almost any other woman writer or blogger I can think of. Go after popular SF writers and a respected award? She’d have gotten death threats, rape threats, comments telling her everything from shut up and make [unnamed internet male] a sandwich to wishing she’d be raped to death because that would shut her right up.
[...]
That’s the line I walk, and most female authors and commentators walk. On one side of it is a silence which we can’t afford and on the other are the blowback and threats, which come quietly and secretly through email or boldly and baldly in comments.
This is a reality you don’t have to face as a bloke; one of the greatest advantages/privileges of being a straight, white male is that if people dislike me or disagree with me, it’s purely because of what I say or do, not what I present as. Which means that voices like mine or Priest’s are both overrepresented and overvalued, both because we are listened to more and because other voices are dismissed; even worse is that some voices aren’t just ignored but actively chased away. With rape threats even!
Apart from anything else, this impovers the dialogue we’re all having with each other about science fiction, if you can only be taken serious if you’re a straight white bloke and if you’re not, you get sexist or racist slurs (or both) aimed at you. It’s not good for fandom and it’s obviously incredibly bad for those who are subjected to it.
For those of us who don’t run this risk, there’s the obligation to do something about it, to speak out against such attacks whenever we see them, obviously not participate in them ourselves and most importantly, not blame the victims for something they supposedly done to “provoke” these attacks.
Categories: Feminism, science fiction
April 5th, 2012
Star Hunter
Andre Norton
96 pages
published in 1961
For a lot of American science fiction fans my age or older, Andre Norton was the first “real” sf writer they ever read, largely because she was hugely prolific and specialised in what we’d now call young adult novels. For some reason however she was never all that popular in the Netherlands so I’ve read little of her work so far. But that’s changing, thanks to Project Gutenberg, who have a fair few of her books available, those on which the original US copyrights had not been renewed. Star Hunter is one of them, originally published as an Ace Double. I read it during a couple of lunch breaks at work.
Ras Hume is a pilot for the Out-Hunters Guild who on a trip to the newly discovered planet of Jumala has made a discovery that could make him incredibly rich, but to exploit it he needs to make a deal with Wass, the biggest crime boss on Nahuatl. What he found was the lifeboat from the Largo Drift, a space ship which disappeared six years ago, taking with it the heir to the Kogan estate. He also has a plausible candidate to play the part of Rynch Brodie, the teenage heir. What he needs Wazz for is to condition this boy to actually believe he is this heir, then he will be let lose on Jumala for Hume to discover him when he brings over the safari party he’s scheduled to pilot there. It’s an almost foolproof plan, surely nothing can go wrong.
Or can it?
Categories: books and books review, science fiction
Tags: Andre Norton, Star Hunter
April 4th, 2012
For the second year in a row Niall Harrison has looked at the gender balance in science fiction/fantasy reviewing, looking at both which books were reviewed and who reviewed them, for a range of sf and fantasy outlets. A month ago, Renay at Ladybusiness did the same for individual bloggers, which in turn inspired Martin Lewis to take a look at his own output, which prompted me to do the same.
As you know, last year I made an effort to read more female sf writers, both by picking a reading list at the start of the year as by in general paying more attention to female writers. As you may also know, I try and review everything I read, though I don’t always succeed; I’ve read some hundred books last year and wrote only fiftytwo reviews, not all of books finished that year. But of those fiftytwo reviews, it turns out twentyseven, or roughly fifty percent were by female authors. Slightly more than a third of those (twelve) were the books I’d put on my reading list; the rest are not just fantasy and science fiction, but also include a fair few history books.
Why is this important? Because obviously, if you agree that a rough gender balance in science fiction and fantasy is a good thing, just reading more female writers is not enough, you also need to talk more about them too. One of the perennial problems with female writers after all has been that their contributions to the genre have often been overlooked, ignored or minimised. Getting more people to review them is a first step to put this right.
Below is the complete list of reviews:
As for 2012, so far I’ve continued striking the right balance: of the twentyone reviews to date, eleven were of female writers.
Categories: books and books review, fantasy, Feminism, science fiction
