The Science Fiction Translation Awards are running a fundraiser, accepting donations now towards the running of their awards, which aim to promote and celebrate great science fiction translated into English, and to provide a substantial cash prize to the original author as well as translator.

It’s a great cause, and there are a bunch of great book prizes up for grabs for a few lucky donors. I’ve contributed a complete Creature Court trilogy (feels so GOOD to be able to offer that!) and it’s in some very good company.

Speaking of the Creature Court trilogy, Sean the Blogonaut wrote a lovely review of Book 2: The Shattered City: “Action, blood and lust and a little bit of dressmaking. If you enjoy well written action, political intrigue, anime like transformation of characters into monstrous beasts and well written sex scenes give the whole series a go.”

I’ve been enjoying Tor.com’s current theme of military SF – I don’t think of myself of a fan of that particular subgenre, and yet I am familiar with so many of the works they discuss! I guess that means something. I liked this post about Starbuck and gender in Battlestar Galactica. Ahh, Battlestar Galactica. You got it so right, before you got it so wrong…

Speaking of military SF, over at i09 Jen Heddle makes a compelling argument that they should have brought Robotech back already. Hell, yes they should! Want me to write it?

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Funnily enough I have been drawn to links this week that tackle the ‘girl lego’ issue. The one closest to my own opinion & sensibilities is from Wandering Scientist, who points out how badly Lego has skewed “boy” for so long, and that while Lego is aware that boys consider “a castle without a dragon to be worse than no castle at all,” they don’t seem to have the same respect for girls who think a castle without a PRINCESS might be worse than no castle at all.

I also enjoyed reading her post, Princesses are not the Problem, about how she deals with her daughter’s craving for Disney Princess Culture, by allowing it in and working to help her daughter understand there are more options out of there, rather than forbidding it.

Disney princesses are problematic, but I have a similar policy in my house, and I find it frustrating when people automatically criticise pink and girliness as if these are terrible things. My daughter had her pink phase. I didn’t push it on her, but I didn’t kick and scream, either, and now she’s come out the other side and she likes purple and yellow and Batgirl and, yes, Lego. And if she was still super princess-feminine-sparkly-rainbows in her outlook, I’d still be rather fond of her. Kids need choices, and it irritates me beyond all measure when pink is the only choice for girls, but that doesn’t mean it’s okay to provide a castle without a princess in it.

(Megabloks, btw, provides a castle with a princess AND a dragon. How is this not the best of both worlds?)

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So was anyone else bizarrely entranced by the finale of Lost, despite having never watched it apart from occasional glimpses and one random episode after it was already universally judged to have jumped the shark?

Or was it just me?

I’ve always been remotely fascinated by Lost, actually, mostly because the first season was a phenomenon that I missed out on entirely, and the waves of disappointment started coming in round about the first episode of season two, and there were so many comparisons to the ways in which X Files both failed and succeeded, and yet… the show kept going. For six years.

And for most of those six years, the two kinds of sayers (doom and nay) have been gleefully reporting that, you know, it was never going to end well. Seriously. It was going to disappoint. All of you who love it? DOOMED to be disappointed.

Now the episode has screened the reports are in, and it’s a mixture of wailing, gritted teeth, WTF, disappointment, and even a few ‘well I liked it actually’s sneaking in here and there. Opinions seem to be divided, depending on expectations – those who never wanted explanations for every event are certainly the happiest! I’ve been fascinated to read the various viewer responses, despite having little to no investment in the show itself.

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