Fantastika – Page 48 – Wis[s]e Words

Crashcourse — Wilhelmina Baird

Published on December 27, 2013Leave a comment

Cover of Crashcourse

Crashcourse
Wilhelmina Baird
277 pages
published in 1993

Wilhelmina Baird is an interesting writer: wrote some short science fiction at the dawn of the New Wave (as Kathleen James), then returned in 1993 with this, a cyberpunk inspired novel with overtones of the sort of fifties satirical sf Pohl and Kornbluth wrote. She wrote three more novels, two sequels to this, then disappeared. She’s obscure enough not to even have a Wikipedia entry, so it’s unclear if she stopped writing or just couldn’t get published anymore. I vaguely remember that her second novel, Clipjoint, was hailed as a minor classic when it came out, but that’s all I knew of her writing when I first got this.

In the world of Crashcourse the population is divided in a small ruling class of Aris, slightly more Techs and Arts to serve and entertain them, with the vast mass of people being unemployed umps. Cass, Moke and Dosh are three of them, trying to earn enough (illicit) money to get off Earth, Cass as thief, Moke as artist and Dosh as whore. Caught up in a love triangle, with Cass loving Dosh who loves Moke who loves Cass, only wanting to leave if all three of them can leave together. That is, until Dosh is roughed up once too many by one of his clients and temptation comes calling in the form of an Aris with a film proposal.

Wednesday Women Writers: year’s roundup

Published on December 4, 20131 Comment

So yeah, I didn’t really keep up with this series, did I? But now that I finally remembered to do this on a Wednesday, I would like to look back on the past year and give a shout out to a few of the new female science fiction writers I first read this year. My science fiction reading has been majority female this year and I’ve set out to try and find more new female writers, if only to balance out my gender stats at LibraryThing. The results so far have been good; the occasional dud, but the majority of writers I tried, I liked.

The discovery of the year for me was Elizabeth Bear, who has been writing for a long time but who I only started reading this May. Everything I’ve read of her so far has been excellent and I especially liked Hammered and sequels, especially the humanity of its protagonist:

while the setting might be cyberpunk, Jenny Casey’s life lacks the glamour a heroine in a Gibson story would’ve had. Her metal arm suffers from phantom pains, fucks up her shoulder and back where it attaches to the rest of her and while her artificial eye is an advantage in a low light situation, it’s a pain most of the rest of the time. She has had to live with her cybernetic implants, not just the arm and eye but also the enhanced nervous system that can make her reaction speed inhumanly fast when needed, for some twentyfive years and now that she’s pushing fifty, she’s suffering for it.

Another veteran writer was Linda Nagata, whose Vast I’ve just reviewed. Brenda Cooper, who I only knew from a collaboration with Larry Niven is another one; her The Silver Ship and the Sea was another good read.

Of newer writers, Kameron Hurley impressed me even though God’s War had serious flaws. I still bought the sequels. Other new writers that impressed me were M. J. Locke, whose Up Against it was old fashioned hard science fiction and Ann Leckie, with Ancillary Justice, far future space opera.

Finally there was also Margaret Atwood, who’s not a science fiction writer, but could’ve fooled me with The Handmaid’s Tale, which was much better than I expected.

So that’s half a dozen new, impressive female sf writers found so far this year. Any suggestions for next year?

Vast — Linda Nagata

Published on December 1, 2013Leave a comment

Cover of Vast

Vast
Linda Nagata
403 pages
published in 1998

Space opera used to be terrible, reactionary stories of brawny male heroes with safe anglosaxon names making the galaxy safe for terran manifest destiny by cheerfully genociding any alien races looking at them funny. Long derided as the lowest of the low, though with the occasional saving grace in the form of that elusive “sense of wonder” all science fiction strives to achieve, it was sort of rehabilitated in the seventies by a generation of fans and writers who’d grown up reading the stuff. In the eighties and nineties this led to the socalled New Space Opera, which took that sense of wonder and removed the xenophobia and human supremacy from it. Though in this New Space Opera the universe was far more indifferent to human pretensions than the old stuff, it could still be upbeat, as in e.g. Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels, where hundreds of various human races live happily ever after in an AI controlled utopia.

But not always. In Linda Nagata’s Vast the universe is not just indifferent, but actively hostile to human life. A millions years old alien war has left still active, automated warships behind, warships capable of blowing up suns. As humanity moved out of the Solar System and established colonies around other stars, these Chenzeme ships started to attack. One such attack has left only four survivors, fleeing the attack aboard the Null Boundary, a slower than light spaceship, who have decided to go look for the source of the Chenzeme coursers, somewhere in the swan direction of the Orion arm of the galaxy, all the while being chased by a Chenzeme courser themselves.

Queer characters in sf

Published on October 28, 2013Leave a comment

Nicola Griffith has a new novel out, Hild and is getting a bit fed up with people asking about her heroine’s sexuality:

Interviewers and reviewers have already asked me: So why is Hild a lesbian?

I say: First, she’s bisexual. Second, why the fuck not?

I am tired of having to have a reason for characters being queer. When my first agent told me that my proposal for Slow River was “not a selling outline,” I asked her to explain. She said, “Well, why does Lore [the protagonist] have to have a girlfriend?” I said, “Because she’s a dyke.” And fired her.

Nicola Griffith is right that it should be normal for some characters to be queer, that there doesn’t have to be a reason for them to be and that more science fiction/fantasy writers should be unafraid to use queer characters if they want to. What I’m more worried about is whether the average science fiction writer is up to writing queer characters without it coming over as exploitative or overtly preachy.

But more queer characters, yes please.

Silver Princess, Golden Knight — Sharon Green

Published on September 15, 2013Leave a comment

Cover of Silver Princess, Golden Knight

Silver Princess, Golden Knight
Sharon Green
342 pages
published in 1993

When I saw Silver Princess, Golden Knight in a second hand bookshop, it looked like a fun fantasy adventure romp, spiced up with a bit of romance to make it interesting. A quick scan of the first few pages seemed to confirm that impression. I’d never heard of Sharon Green, but it was on the strenght of this that I decided to buy this novel. It was only after I started reading it in earnest that I discovered what a piece of sexist crap it was. I can’t think of any other novel I’ve ever read which spends so much time undermining its own heroine, all but calling her a bitch at times for being so unreasonable as wanting to decide how to live her own life.

Princess Alexia (Alex for friends) has always been a disappointment to her parents. Strongwilled and disdainful of traditional womanly virtues, she instead has spent most of years out on the streets, having been taught how to fight by her father’s royal guard. After one ill thought out attempt to help those less fortunate than her, has landed herself in prison for horse theft, her exasperated father decides enough is enough and decides that she needs a man to keep her on the straight and narrow. What she thinks about this is immaterial, there’s going to be a contest for all unmarried individuals in the kingdom and she is going the prize for the winner. Alex however discovers a loophole in the competition rules and enters herself, to make sure she remains a free womam. Now had Sharon Green chosen to tell the story of how Alex out fought and out smarted her would be suitors that would’ve been awesome. But this isn’t that story.