In which the boob window is explained. Don’t say we’re not educational! You can download the new episode through iTunes or here on our website.

News

Drink Tank loves us! Download their Hugo shortlist commentary here.

Mondy loves us too! He makes us go awww.

James Tiptree Jr finally in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and about time too.

Talking to Alistair Reynolds: he defends the idea that science fiction has a limited number of plots

Locus Award Finalists

Clarke Award

Women in (Japanese) Comics: Cheryl Morgan reports; Anime News Network

Some kickstarter stuff:
Feminist Historical Anthology from Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Scalzi on Amanda Palmer and how she worked hard for 10 years to get her “overnight success”

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Two new DC comics launched in the last week or so, and they were the ones I had been hanging out for: World’s Finest, in which Huntress and Power Girl are refugees from an alternate version of reality, trying to get home; and Earth 2, the story of what happened in that alternate reality after a war that wiped out Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (and the loss at the same time of Robin and Supergirl, who of course… are busy in their own comic, calling themselves Huntress and Power Girl).

So how did they stack up?

I did enjoy World’s Finest greatly – the concept of the comic is fantastic, the pacing and dialogue are excellent, and there’s nothing in there yet that makes my inner feminist want to set fire to things. As with many fans of Power Girl and Huntress, I found the reading experience a bit unsettling, because of having to get used to these different versions of the characters, who are now all that we get. But this isn’t the first time I’ve had to do that.

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I’ll be appearing tonight on The Storyteller, a program on Edge Radio 99.3 FM (Tasmania) from 9pm to 10pm. Apparently the show involves me reading excerpts of my new book plus music and chat. You know me and chat!

So I’ll be there with a copy of Reign of Beasts (yes, reading from book 3, am I evil or what?) and I hope very much that those of you who are local will tune in to hear me!

“The Shakespeare Code” – Season three, episode two

The Doctor – David Tennant
Martha Jones – Freema Agyeman
Shakespeare – Dean Lennox Kelly

TEHANI:
So, Martha’s first adventure and we get Shakespeare! There’s a lot to like about this episode. Ten is clearly enjoying himself on this one, and Martha does well for her first time travelling, don’t you think? Asking the important questions for us not in TV-land and getting timey-wimey explanations in return.

TANSY:
Yes I like that Martha has a very down to earth and practical approach to time travel, and while she has just as much sense of wonder as Rose, there’s a bit more of – I don’t know, is it snobbish to say she feels more intellectual in how she takes in history? Less giggling, more cynical nodding.

TEHANI:
I don’t think it’s snobbish – true, maybe, but just another way to identify the differences between the companions I guess. Martha is better educated and a little more worldly than Rose, so showing Martha reacting quite differently to how we saw Rose reacting is reasonable.

TANSY:
I also think it’s important that Martha raises the race question early, and that the Doctor answers it – it’s a little glib for him to suggest she just walk around like she own the place, because he’s speaking from white male privilege, but at the same time it is important to note that there were people of colour (if not as many as now) in British history, and it’s only a century of whitewashed movies and television that makes us think otherwise. Important that the race issue is addressed in the time travel stories, because pretending Martha isn’t black would be bizarre. I rather like her “not exactly white, in case you haven’t noticed” line because, let’s face it, the Doctor probably WOULDN’T think about that sort of thing.

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Ditmar nominations are open! These are fan awards for the best Australian spec fic awesomeness of the year. I won some of them last year and cherish them dearly – even more so when I went back through the history and discovered that only six women had won Best Novel in the whole history of the award, going back to the 1970′s.

You can run over there right now and nominate as many things as you want – you don’t have to be a member or supporting member of a recent convention, though that’s a helpful thing to cite if you think the committee might not know you. (the whole ‘known to committee’ thing isn’t about elitism, it’s about checking you’re a real person) Otherwise you may need a reference, someone who has attended a recent con who has interacted with you in real life or online and is prepared to say ‘yep, this is a real person.’

If you can’t remember all the stuff you read and liked this year, then there’s a Wiki trying to keep track of Australian spec fic that eligible – it’s not all-encompassing so if you see a gap there, please add the book/person etc. that you know is missing.

If you are keen to nominate any of my work, here for reference is what I published last year:

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So it’s a new month and along with hatters and hares, March is bringing a whole lot of new writing issues for me to talk about in what seems to be a theme of writing process vs. lifestyle this week (started with Writing – Mothering – Balancing and continued with Mothering, Writing, Pilating, Guilt).

My plan for this year is still pretty loose, but the big goal was to have the revised, polished and generally awesomecaked Nancy Napoleon novel ready to submit by the end of March. Which seemed pretty sensible to me – I had ROR at the end of January, and school holidays ended the middle of February, which gave me a whopping SIX WEEKS to revise the book at make it awesome.

But then I convinced myself that I had all these other bits and pieces of things to do, like writing my talk for the Horror film festival, and a few short stories, and… well the main thing was that at that point I’d put down very few new words since November, and much though my ‘no writing school holidays’ experiment was a great success, I was starting to get the itch. So I gave myself a different goal of writing 10,000 words on various fiction projects, and happily played with the idea of getting back into some kind of writing routine.

At least, that’s what the top part of my brain thought was happening. The public face of the brain. The secret, dingy underbelly of my brain had a whole different agenda, which I have been circling around for the last few days, waiting for the bad news to be revealed. Here we go:

The truth is, I hate editing myself.

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For those who haven’t got this link already from my Why Amy Pond Should Live post, I wanted to draw attention to Seanan McGuire’s “Bodybag Blondes” about the way female characters are treated as disposable in TV & film drama.

Meanwhile, my post about Fabulous Graphic Novels For People Who Hate Superheroes has been gathering steam with readers jumping in to offer their own lists of recommendations. For once, please read the comments!

I’ve been gathering links about writing opportunities, interesting competitions etc. and thought this was the best place to post them. If anyone hears of competitions open to kids in particular, please let me know, as I’ve been tasked with finding some for several talented young kids.

In the mean time:

Lian Tanner is offering audiobooks of Museum of Thieves and City of Lies, read by (I’m so jealous!) the fabulous Claudia Black, as prizes in two contests – one for kids and one for adults. Both contests sound creative and fun. Closing date Feb 19th.

Allen and Unwin has announced the Voiceless Writing Prize, in partnership with Australian Ethical Investment: for a short story between 5000 and 10,000 words long “which advances the understanding of animal sentience, human – animal relationships and the ethical treatment of animals, with a focus on food animals and animals found in the Australian landscape.”

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In which we pop the cork on the champagne bottle to welcome in the beginning of the 9 month science fiction awards season – hooray!

News

Responses to the Galactic Suburbia Award.

Crawford nominees and winner: Genevieve Valentine’s Mechanique.

BSFA nominees

SF Translation Awards Fundraiser – donate and win awesome books

The Kitschies: yes really, rum and tentacles.

LOCUS Recommended Reading List! [and Poll]

Young Australian of the Year who founded Robogals: Marita Cheng

Women of SF in their own words, reviewed by Brit Mandelo

Diana Peterfreund: following up on Brave New Love [and how the internet often fails to pick up the pieces after a controversy has died down]

Women Writing Horror (it’s new, who knew?)
[and the other Guardian article patronising genre readers, taken apart by Smart Bitches Trashy Books]

10 Great SF books for “girls”

Creature Court trilogy giveaway – we’ll be drawing it next episode, email us to tell us about one book you read because of us & you’ll enter the draw to win all three books by Tansy

Creature Court Spoilerific Blog Post – only for those who have read Creature Court Book Three, Reign of Beasts, by Tansy Rayner Roberts

What Culture Have we Consumed?
The new episode is up! Go grab it and chug it down like a glass of semi-expensive sparkling white.

Alisa: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby; The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson

Alex: Clockwork Rocket, Greg Egan; A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula le Guin; The Business of Death, Trent Jamieson; Skyrim

Tansy: Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti; Batgirl: the Lesson; Redwood & Wildfire by Andrea Hairston; Blake’s 7: The Turing Test [Big Finish], Doctor Who: Foe From the Future [Big Finish]

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

Night Watch, by Terry Pratchett (audiobook read by Stephen Briggs)

Deriders of the Bechdel Test tend to gravitate immediately towards what I like to call The Shawshank Redemption Clause. They cite as many works as possible which are completely awesome, and have no ladies in them, as evidence that the test is stupid.

Me, I see that as evidence that their faces are stupid. And that they have entirely missed the point of the Bechdel Test.

No one would ever deny that it’s possible to create a masterpiece that has no women in it. However… there are few true masterpieces in the world, and there are very few stories in the world that are so VERY good that having more than one interesting female character in them is something that wouldn’t improve the narrative.

I had this in my head upon revisiting Night Watch, because I remembered very clearly that a) this is primarily a story about men and b) this is one of my favourite Discworld novels of all time. And I say this as someone who is meh about Small Gods and Reaper Man, two of the most celebrated of the Discworld novels, precisely because the overwhelming focus on male characters and point of view left those books, in my opinion, lacking something.

Mostly, I was scared that my focus on female characters would spoil this book. It’s not like it would be the first thing that my developing feminist perspective has utterly ruined for me.

But it turned out okay. Because (spoilers, sweetie!) Night Watch is still awesome. It’s mostly a male narrative, AND it’s awesome.

(But, as it happens, it passes the Bechdel Test. Just.)

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