Fantastika

Can’t judge these books by their covers

books and books review, fantasy, science fiction
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Books wrapped in brown wrappers ready for a blind date at ABC

Here’s an interesting gimmick, from my local science fiction bookstore: books wrapped in brown paper, with only a couple of keywords to keep you guessing. Can you guess which books are hidden behind thes descriptions?

  • Fantasy, paranormal, suspense, Prague. Could be anything
  • Science-fiction, planet spanning shield, Earth is doomed, teleological engineering. Perhaps Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin?
  • Fantasy, Low Countries 1421, deluge of Biblical proportions, three conspirators. Dunno, but sounds interesting.
  • Fantasy, clash of civilisations, holy war, divided loyalties. Could be any epic fantasy novel
  • Fantasy, poker tournament, monsters and demons, underdog. ?
  • Fantasy, Mississippi, riverboat, pale gentleman. This could be George R. R. Martin’s Fevre Dream.

The Magician’s Guild — Trudi Canavan

books and books review, fantasy
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Cover of The Magician's Guild


The Magician’s Guild
Trudi Canavan
465 pages
published in 2001

Trudi Canavan is an Austrialian fantasy writer who has been mostly writing epic fantasy trilogies and has become rather popular as a result. According to Wikipedia, her first series, The Black Magician Trilogy was ” the most successful debut fantasy series of the last 10 years”. The Magician’s Guildin the first book in that series as well as her debut novel, which I didn’t know when I picked it from the library to read. It was just that this was the only of her novels available that wasn’t part two or three of a trilogy when I decided to try and see if I would like her writing.

What also made me pick up this book in particular when skipping past seemingly similar fantasy books by other writers was the backcover blurb, which made it sounds like it was something more than the usual fantasy cliches in the usual medievaloid setting:

Each year the magicians of Imardin gather to purge the city streets of vagrants, urchins and miscreants. Masters of the disciplines of magic, they know nobody can oppose them. But their protective shield is not as impenetrable as they believe.

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Women to Read Wednesday 04: 100 great sf stories by women

Feminism, geekdom, science fiction
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Irritated by an old science fiction anthology, where out of the hundred stories only five were by women, Ian Sales put together the list below of a hundred great science fiction stories by women. A list like that is always a good way of hearing about writers you haven’t encountered before, so I want to keep this simple. Bold if I’ve never heard of somebody before, italics if I’ve read something of them.

  1. ‘The Fate of the Poseidonia’, Clare Winger Harris (1927, short story)
  2. ‘The Conquest of Gola,’ Leslie F Stone (1931, short story)
  3. ‘Water Pirate’, Leigh Brackett (1941, short story)
  4. ‘Space Episode’, Leslie Perri (1941, short story)
  5. ‘No Woman Born’, Cl Moore (1944, novelette)
  6. ‘That Only a Mother’, Judith Merril (1948, short story)
  7. ‘Contagion’, Katherine Maclean (1950, novelette)
  8. ‘Brightness Falls from the Air’, Margaret St Clair [as Idris Seabright] (1951, short story)
  9. ‘All Cats are Gray’, Andre Norton (1953, short story)
  10. ‘The Last Day’, Helen Clarkson (1958, short story)
  11. ‘Captivity’, Zenna Henderson (1958, novella)
  12. ‘The New You’, Kit Reed (1962, short story)
  13. ‘The Putnam Tradition’, Sonya Dorman (1963, short story)
  14. ‘Lord Moon’, MJ Engh [as Jane Beauclerk] (1965, short story)
  15. ‘Weyr Search’, Anne McCaffrey (1967, novella)
  16. ‘The Heat Death of the Universe’, Pamela Zoline (1967, short story)
  17. ‘The Steiger Effect’, Betsy Curtis (1968, short story)
  18. ‘The Power of Time’, Josephine Saxton (1971, novelette)
  19. ‘And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side’, James Tiptree Jr (1972, short story)
  20. ‘When It Changed’, Joanna Russ (1972, short story)
  21. ‘Sheltering Dream’, Doris Piserchia (1972, short story)
  22. ‘Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand’, Vonda N McIntyre (1973, novelette)
  23. ‘Clone Sister’, Pamela Sargent (1973, novelette)
  24. ‘The Violet’s Embryo’, Angélica Gorodischer (1973, novelette)
  25. ‘Stone Circle’, Lisa Tuttle (1976, short story)
  26. ‘Eyes of Amber’, Joan D Vinge (1977, novelette)
  27. ‘Cassandra, CJ Cherryh (1978, short story)
  28. ‘The View from Endless Scarp’, Marta Randall (1978, short story)
  29. ‘Scorched Supper on New Niger’, Suzy Mckee Charnas (1980, novelette)
  30. ‘Abominable’, Carol Emshwiller (1980, short story)
  31. ‘Sea Changeling’, Mildred Downey Broxon (1981, novelette)
  32. ‘In the Western Tradition’, Phyllis Eisenstein (1981, novella)
  33. ‘Her Furry Face’, Leigh Kennedy (1983, short story)
  34. ‘Bloodchild’ Octavia E Butler (1984, novelette)
  35. ‘Symphony for a Lost Traveller’, Lee Killough (1984, short story)
  36. ‘All My Darling Daughters’, Connie Willis (1985, novelette)
  37. ‘Webrider’, Jayge Carr (1985, short story)
  38. ‘Out of All Them Bright Stars’, Nancy Kress (1985, short story)
  39. ‘The View from Venus: A Case Study’, Karen Joy Fowler (1986, novelette)
  40. ‘Reichs-Peace’, Sheila Finch (1986, novelette)
  41. ‘Daily Voices’, Lisa Goldstein (1986, short story)
  42. ‘Rachel in Love’, Pat Murphy (1987, novelette)
  43. ‘Forever Yours, Anna’, Kate Wilhelm (1987, short story)
  44. ‘Stable Strategies for Middle Management’, Eileen Gunn (1988, short story)
  45. ‘War and Rumours of War’, Candas Jane Dorsey (1988, short story)
  46. ‘The Mountains of Mourning’, Lois Mcmaster Bujold (1989, novella)
  47. ‘Tiny Tango’, Judith Moffett (1989, novella)
  48. ‘Identifying the Object’, Gwyneth Jones (1990, novelette)
  49. ‘Loose Cannon’, Susan Shwartz (1990, novelette)
  50. ‘Dispatches from the Revolution’, Pat Cadigan (1991, novelette)
  51. ‘The Road to Jerusalem’, Mary Gentle (1991, short story)
  52. ‘The Missionary’s Child’, Maureen F McHugh (1992, novelette)
  53. ‘The Story So Far’, Martha Soukup (1993, short story)
  54. ‘The Good Pup’, Bridget McKenna (1993, short story)
  55. ‘California Dreamer’, Mary Rosenblum (1994, short story)
  56. ‘Last Summer at Mars Hill’, Elizabeth Hand (1994, novella)
  57. ‘Coming of Age in Karhide’, Ursula K Le Guin (1995, novelette)
  58. ‘De Secretis Mulierum’, L Timmel Duchamp (1995, novella)
  59. ‘Merlusine’, Lucy Sussex (1997, novelette)
  60. ‘Noble Mold’, Kage Baker (1997, short story)
  61. ‘All the Birds of Hell’, Tanith Lee (1998, novelette)
  62. ‘Rain Season’, Leanne Frahm (1998, short story)
  63. ‘Echea’, Kristine Kathryn Rusch (1998, novelette)
  64. ‘Patient Zero’, Tananarive Due (2000, short story)
  65. ‘Knapsack Poems’, Eleanor Arnason (2002, short story)
  66. ‘State of Oblivion’, Kaaron Warren (2003, short story)
  67. ‘Inside Out’, Michaela Roessner (2004, short story)
  68. ‘Griots of the Galaxy’, Andrea Hairston (2004, novelette)
  69. ‘Riding the White Bull’, Caitlín R Kiernan( 2004, novelette)
  70. ‘The Avatar of Background Noise’, Toiya Kristen Finley (2006, short story)
  71. ‘Captive Girl’, Jennifer Pelland (2006, short story)
  72. ‘The Bride Price’, Cat Sparks (2007, short story)
  73. ‘Tideline’, Elizabeth Bear (2007, short story)
  74. ‘Arkfall’, Carolyn Ives Gilman (2008, novella)
  75. ‘Legolas does the Dishes’, Justina Robson (2008, short story)
  76. ‘The Ecologist and the Avon Lady’, Tricia Sullivan (2008, novelette)
  77. ‘Infinities’, Vandana Singh (2008, novelette)
  78. ‘Chica, Let Me Tell You a Story’, Alex Dally Macfarlane (2008, short story)
  79. ‘Spider the Artist’, Nnedi Okrafor (2008, short story)
  80. ‘Cold Words’, Juliette Wade (2009, novelette)
  81. ‘Eros, Philia, Agape’, Rachel Swirsky (2009, novelette)
  82. ‘Non-Zero Probabilities’, NK Jemisin (2009, short story)
  83. ‘Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast’, Eugie Foster (2009, hort story)
  84. ‘It Takes Two’, Nicola Griffith (2009, novelette)
  85. ‘Blood, Blood’, Abbey Mei Otis (2010, short story)
  86. ‘The Other Graces’, Alice Sola Kim (2010, short story)
  87. ‘Agents of Repair’, Rosie Oliver (2010, short story)
  88. ‘Amaryllis’, Carrie Vaughn (2010, short story)
  89. ‘I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno’, Vylar Kaftan (2010, short story)
  90. ‘Flying in the Face of God’, Nina Allan (2010, short story)
  91. ‘Six Months, Three Days’, Charlie Jane Anders (2011, short story)
  92. ‘Nahiku West’, Linda Nagata (2011, novelette)
  93. ‘The Cartographer Bees and the Anarchist Wasps’, E Lily Yu (2011, short story)
  94. ‘Silently and Very Fast’, Catherynne M Valente (2011, novella)
  95. ‘Jagannath’, Karin Tidbeck (2011, short story)
  96. ‘A Vector Alphabet of Interstellar Travel’, Yoon Ha Lee (2011, short story)
  97. ‘Immersion’, Aliette de Bodard (2012, short story)
  98. ‘The Lady Astronaut of Mars’, Mary Robinette Kowal (2012, novelette)
  99. ‘The Green’, Lauren Beukes (2012, short story)
  100. ‘Significant Dust’, Margo Lanagan (2012, novelette)

God’s War — Kameron Hurley

books and books review, science fiction
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Cover of God's War


God’s War
Kameron Hurley
286 pages
published in 2011

The main problem with God’s War is its setting. Kameron Hurley’s debut novel is set in an unspecified far future, on the alien planet of Umayma, featuring an unending, religious war between Nasheen and Chenja, Umayma’s biggest nations. The war has warped both nations’ societies, with each country’s men either dead or at the front, leaving only the very young and very old at home. Despite both societies’ innate conservatism that has left women to take up the slack, having to take on traditional male roles, resulting in what’s best called a violent matriarchy in Nasheen, with women in all positions of power and the men constantly being sacrificed at the front. Nyx, its protagonist, is a brutalised, aggressive, scary woman, a deliberate attempt by Hurley to create the female equivalent of somebody like Conan while the background against which Nyx plays out her story was meant to show how a brutal, violent hierarchical society doesn’t magically become better because women are now in power, how easy it is for women to keep perpetuating the same violence and abuse as the men, just with different people in the victim and oppressor roles.

It’s an interesting concept, but the execution is troubling. Because while it is set on another planet far in the future and the politics and religion that’s being fought about is fictional, the images that Hurley creates are very familiar, because the religion she creates looks a lot like Islam, veiled women, multiple daily prayers, holy book and all, with the war and the societies it has left in its wake familiar from what we’ve seen on the news from Iraq or Lybia or even Chechnya. The landscapes are all desert landscapes, the cities are Middle Eastern, with mosques and minarets, often broken, often bombed out. As Tariqk put it, it’s as if Hurley “took every stereotypical Arab world depiction & TURNED IT TO 11”. It’s this orientalism that fails this novel, this inability to do more than use orientalist stereotypes, that reduces it to just another grim and gritty adventure story when it could’ve been so much more.

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Adrift on the Sea of Rains — Ian Sales

books and books review, science fiction
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Cover of Adrift on the Sea of Rains


Adrift on the Sea of Rains
Ian Sales
75 pages
published in 2012

Ian Sales is a blogger and science fiction critic with strong options about what science fiction should and shouldn’t be and the conviction to put his opinions into practise. So for example, being dissatisfied with the lack of attention to women writers in science fiction and especially in the Gollancz science fiction Masterworks series, he launched the Sf Mistressworks blog to showcase overlooked classics by women writers. I don’t always agree with him, but he’s always interesting. Which is why I took a gamble on his fiction writing with Adrift on the Sea of Rains, a self published chapbook; normally something I wouldn’t bother with.

As he mentions in his biography page, Ian Sales was only three years old when Neil Armstrong set foot on the Moon, but it clearly left a deep impression nonetheless. It makes him about a decade older than myself, of the right age to be impressed by the seeming inevitability of nuclear war in the late seventies and early eighties, a Third World War that like the first seemed destined to be stumbled into rather than actively desired, all the more difficult to stop because of this. Somewhere in the mid-seventies we crossed the threshold where any nuclear war could still be survivable and reached the point where it just meant the end of the world. That was also the point at which the space race, the symbol of early Cold War machismo, ended, not in victory or defeat, but in a stalemate. The link between a better space programme and nuclear war is an old one in science fiction, as writers like Jerry Pournelle or Ben Bova, both in their fiction and outside it, arguing that space was vital for American national security, honest enough to understand that the space programme they wanted was only possible this way. Adrift on the Sea of Rains shows what could’ve happened had they been right, a story of nine astronauts in the US moonbase, left adrift after nuclear war destroyed the world.

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