2012 – Page 61 – Wis[s]e Words

SF Mistressworks nominated for a BSFA Award

Published on February 15, 20121 Comment

The British Science Fiction Association (BSFA for short) has just announced the shortlist for its 2011 awards. And amongst the nominees for best non-fiction is a website I’ve contributed too, Ian Sales’ SF Mistressworks blog. Ian set the blog up last year as part of his attempts to get more coverage of female science fiction writers, inspired by the discussions about the gender imbalance in science fiction in general and British sf publishing in special. For the same reasons last year I had my own reading project, to correct the gender imbalance in my own reading.

The SF Mistressworks blog is intended as a showcase for all sorts of science fiction written by women, to demonstrate that,
as Ian puts it:

a) women have been writing science fiction since the genre’s beginnings,

b) many of their books should qualify as classics, and

c) many of their books are, in fact, better than “classics” by their male counterparts, and have at least aged better.

Such a showcase being necessary because more so than their male counterparts, female sf writers run the risk of being written out of the genre’s history, even when they were incredibly popular. For instance, around the time that Ann McCaffrey passed away, I remember reading a rant by somebody annoyed that a high profile review of Christopher Paolin’ Eregon books talked about the influence of Tolkien on them, but said nothing about the obvious Pern influences[1]. For various reasons, it’s much easier to construct male orientated histories of the genre, to talk about Verne-Heinlein-Niven-Egan-Stross, not so much to talk about Shelley-Moore-Le Guin-Cadigan-Williams.

I’ve contributed several reviews to the site, reprinted from my own booklog, for books I considered fitted in well with its aims[2]. As such I can’t help but be proud to see Sf Mistressworks recognised for its contributions, though obviously its success is mainly due to Ian Sale’s hard work and dedication. It’s a great initiative and I hope this recognition will help it continue its good work.

[1] If anybody recognises this article, let me know, as could I find it today? Could I buggery.
[2] E.g. The Sign of the Labrys, Ammonite, The Sword of Rhiannon and The Female Man.

Happy Bloody Valentine

Published on February 14, 20123 Comments

So yeah, one of the ways in which I miss Sandra this Valentine, apart from the obvious ones, is in sharing music. Between the two of us, I was always the obsessive compulsive High Fidelity gotta catch them all collecting nerd, while she was more the cool saw Blondie in Plymouth back before anybody in Europe knew who they were, used to dance at the Wigan Casino, used to have a shedload of hard to find imports when finding music was still difficult, but it’s all gone now type. She was into funk and soul, hip-hop, good, intelligent pop music, punk and jaz and everything else as long as it was mellifluous, I was more into metal and prog rock — still am, but she influenced me a lot. Not that I didn’t listen to some soul or funk or whatever before she came along, but it was she who pointed me to a lot of the artists that I couldn’t live without now.

And I’m still discovering “new” bands and artists that she knew long ago and probably saw live. Like Heatwave, that British-Swiss-American group whose greatest hit you surely recognise:

Somewhat more obscure: Brick, an Atlanta band she must’ve heard or seen when she lived there in the early eighties, but it’s too late to ask her now. They play disco-jazz, or Dazz, as seen below:

Here’s another well known song from a fairly obscure band: Lakeside, who do deserve to be better known than just for this fantastic slab of early eighties funk:

Let’s end with an old favourite of the two of us I knew she really liked a lot: Strawberry Letter 23 by the Brothers Johnson.

Valor’s Choice — Tanya Huff

Published on February 13, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of Valor's Choice

Valor’s Choice
Tanya Huff
409 pages
published in 2000

Tanya Huff is one of those science fiction writers I vaguely knew about but never had read anything from, nor to be honest, had heard much about. One of those authors that steadily plods along, has a decent following and career but never quite had a breakthrough novel. I never really had a reason to take a closer look at her work, until I found myself in the English Bookstore last Friday looking for something light to read and Valor’s Choice caught my eye. I’m always on the lookout for good, enjoyable military science fiction and continuously disappointed by what I find on the shelves, when even a cursory glance is enough to show me that yet again my expectations are set too high.

And yet my standards for mil-sf are set so low already; all any story has to be to get me to read it, is to beat the Weber minimum. If the politics are less annoying and rightwing than David Weber‘s, the writing can be just as awkward, as long as there’s something interesting the writer is doing with their story. Literary qualities be damned, just as long as you tell a good story. Tanya Huff, from what I saw in the bookstore seemed capable of delivering at least that much, so I took a gamble on her. You may guess from the fact that I’m reviewing this already that she more than succeeded: I started reading this on the way home from the bookstore and had finished it on Saturday evening.

Support Gary Friedrich

Published on February 12, 20121 Comment

support Gary Friedrich

Capitalism is always exploitative, but the American comics industry has always been more aggressive and barefaced about exploiting their talent. The socalled Golden Age of the 1930ties to 1950ties was filled with mobbed-up distributors, shady businessmen and fly by night publishers and while after the fifties comics went respectable, the business methods remained. Sometimes it seems that just because comics are such penny ante operations compared to other media companies, that this explains the petty, spiteful and pennypinching ways in which publishers treat their workers. But then along comes Disney to show it takes a huge company to be truly spiteful.

Gary Friedrich is the creator of Ghostrider, which is a character that has been fairly succesful for Marvel/Disney, having had several series over the decades, as well as several movies in the last few years, the latest having just come out. Friedrich has not shared in this success as Marvel argues that he had signed over the rights to his creation when he signed the paycheck paying him for his writing work — the back of which had a rubberstamp agreement stating that signing it meant the loss of all rights. Friedrich obviously disagreed with this, opened a lawsuit against Marvel to claim his rights back and lost; leaving him having to recover the costs he made pursuing the case somehow. This wasn’t enough for Marvel however and they countersued him, claiming 17,000 dollars in damages for his “illegal” selling of Ghostrider merchandise — selling sketches at comics conventions. Oh, and they also want him to stop calling himself Ghostrider’s creator.

Petty, no? About the only way Friedrich (who can’t get any work for Marvel or another comics company) could make some money was by trading on his stature as the creator of Ghostrider and sell sketches and such of him, something that’s a longstanding perk for comics creators though theoretically is infringement on a Marvel or DC’s copyrights/trademarks. These companies have never sunk so low as to interfere with this trade, often the only way in which elder or retired comics artists can still make some money of their skills, but with Marvel now owned by Disney, a company never caring much for how it treats its workers, there obviously isn’t the same courtesy anymore.

This case should put the fear of god into any comics artists, because now the taboo has been broken, it may only be a matter of time before Marvel and DC go systemically after all “infringers”. Gary Friedrich therefore needs our support, not just out of ordinary human decency, but to stop this further landgrab in its tracks. If you want to help, you can donate a few bucks to him to help pay for his legal and other costs. As Tom Spurgeon put it:

It doesn’t really matter to me at this stage to come to some sort of merit-based appraisal of Gary Friedrich’s recent lawsuit against Marvel, let alone his entire professional life. I frankly never quite understood the former and I think engaging the latter invites madness and an appreciation of the trees when it’s the forest that’s maybe more important. Right now it just sounds to me like the guy could use a hand, and for whatever reason — justice, the timing of history, God’s will, stupidity, a lack of grace, boiling-cauldron evil, gremlins — the way that he was able to do his work in the comics industry was not rewarding to him in a way that would forestall such trouble. I’m willing to risk a few bucks in that I may be eventually proven wrong somehow in extending that very modest hand.

City of the Chasch — Jack Vance

Published on February 11, 2012Leave a comment

Cover of City of the Chasch

City of the Chasch
Jack Vance
172 pages
published in 1968

When I first started to discover science fiction (longer ago than I care to recall) Jack Vance was one of the more popular writers to be translated into Dutch and the local library therefore had a shitload of his books. I therefore read quite a lot of his work, including the whole Planet of Adventure/Tschai, the Mad Planet (as it was called in Dutch) tetralogy, in one of those big omnibuses Meulenhof specialised in. There’s little I remember off it, to be honest, other than that it was a typical Vancean planetary romance.

Jack Vance is of course the master of this subgenre, effortlessly creating new worlds and societies for his stories, always exotic and strange yet believable and with their own logic. Sometimes the stories he sets in these worlds disappoint, as was the case for me when I reread Big Planet two years ago. For City of the Chasch I had less expectations, just because I remembered less about it, but I was still a bit disappointed with it. Like Big Planet, the worldbuilding here is more sketched in than fleshed out, not as rich and interesting as I had hoped it would be. I had planned to read the next books in the series immediately (I’m still missing the fourth) after I’d finished this one, but now I’ll think I’ll pass.