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?

(more…)

Catherynne Valente stirred up the internet a little with her ranty (and it has to be said, a touch curmudgeonly) post about the rage-inducing failings of steampunk as a literary genre. It’s worth sifting through the comments on that one because they are respectful for the most part, and consist of some very interesting defences as well as criticisms of steampunk.

One question which seems to emerge from the post and the comments is: Does it count as a legitimate literary movement if there isn’t a great work (a Neuromancer) to spark it off? I’m not sure that it doesn’t. While a single iconic work is a great way to market a subgenre and give it that kickstart to inspire a bunch of writers around it, the idea of one book representing a whole subgenre also doesn’t sit well with me. Our methods of academic and criticical literary discourse are moulded by patriarchal methods, and there is something that feels very “male dominated academia” about singling out one book and holding it up as the flagbearer of a subgenre. Even if that book is Bridget Jones’ Diary…

As a canon-buster and someone who prefers inclusionism to reductionism, I’m actually much more interested in the idea of a literary movement that isn’t led by one book.

The most interesting thing to me about steampunk (though I’m not really an enthusiast, more of a vaguely interested observer) is that it isn’t a literary movement at all. It’s very much a mixed media movement with a huge emphasis on artwork, craftsmanship and costuming. That’s where the greater passions of steampunk seem to lie, with the literary aspect desperately trying to catch up. There’s a flashmob sensibility to it, rather than a single line of influence. Many people in the comments of Catherynne’s post preferred to define steampunk as an aesthetic, rather than a literary movement or sub-genre. I also agree heartily with the many people in the comments who suggested that the most interesting literary steampunk was happening in short fiction rather than novels, though some novels like Boneshaker by Cherie Priest and Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld have certainly caught the imagination of readers.

For my own part, I find steampunk (or gaslamp fantasy, its magical twin) far more intriguing when there is an artistic aspect to the story – like Girl Genius, or the Miyazaki film Howl’s Moving Castle, or any cartoon appearance of TikTok of Oz… Also, while I really enjoyed Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan, I can’t help feeling that the illustrations from that book and particularly the “grand map” by Keith Thompson are the steampunk masterpiece of 2009 more than any single piece of fiction.

(more…)

The Hugo shortlist nominees went up on Twitter this morning, Australian time – luckily I had been woken up early by my adorable/dreadful children, so I was around to read them as they came in.

I haven’t been as excited about a Hugo shortlist in years – not just because I got to nominate and will get to vote in these particular ones, but because it does look as if there has been a bit of a demographic shift this year. There are lots of women, new writers and online publications represented across most of the categories. Many things I really liked and indeed nominated got up, which is rather nice.

Congratulations to all the nominees! Hope to see as many of you as possible at Aussiecon this September.

The shortlisted items/people I am most excited about are:
Boneshaker, Cherie Priest (Tor) [best novel nominee]
“Act One”, Nancy Kress (Asimov’s 3/09) [best novella nominee]
“Eros, Philia, Agape”, Rachel Swirsky (Tor.com 3/09) [best novelette nominee]
“The Island”, Peter Watts (The New Space Opera 2) [best novelette nominee]
“It Takes Two”, Nicola Griffith (Eclipse Three) [best novelette nominee]
“Spar”, Kij Johnson (Clarkesworld 10/09) [best short story nominee]
On Joanna Russ, Farah Mendlesohn (ed.) (Wesleyan) [best related book nominee]
The Secret Feminist Cabal: A Cultural History of SF Feminisms, Helen Merrick (Aqueduct) [best related book nominee]
Jonathan Strahan [best editor, short form nominee]
Shaun Tan [best pro artist nominee]
StarShipSofa edited by Tony C. Smith [best fanzine nominee]

And the works that have been added to or moved up to the top of my reading list are:
Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra) [best novel nominee]
The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi (Night Shade) [best novel nominee]
The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, Kage Baker (Subterranean) [best novella nominee]
Soulless by Gail Carriger [The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer nominee]
Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire [The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer nominee]

Ah yes, somehow it all comes down to more books for Tansy to read… funny, that.

(more…)

… is available for download. You can also subscribe through iTunes – just search for Galactic Suburbia!

Alisa, Alex and I gathered around our computers to chat again, this time covering awards shortlists (the Australian Shadows Awards and the Nebulas), Karen Miller’s new book deal, the approaching season of Doctor Who, Scary Kisses, Swancon, Jensen Ackles doing Eye of the Tiger, and whether Nicholas Sparks is really comparable to Euripides, Shakespeare and Hemingway.

We also discussed our latest reading – The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals, by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer; Neptune Noir, edited by Rob Thomas; Boneshaker by Cherie Priest; Mirrorshades, edited by Bruce Sterling; Women of Wonder (1940-1970), edited by Pamela Sargent.

We topped it off with a chat about what we felt about single author collections, which is a nice way of saying that Alisa totally used us as market research to figure out what kind of single author collections we would want to buy (SPOILER ALERT: awesome ones).

The other exciting bit of Galactic Suburbia news is that the simply marvellous Tony C Smith has included our promo in his latest episode of StarShip Sofa. How awesome is that?

I’m really enjoying this podcasting lark right now. It’s lovely to chat to Alisa & Alex more often. Skype is a wonderful, wonderful thing.

UPDATE: I just listened to it and Tony says such lovely things about us! I’m bouncing ridiculously. Hard to get a better recommendation than that! Also he hinted that maybe someday the Sofanauts might come back. I am willing to grasp at straws here!

This is one I have taken a while to read; I think because it’s so unlike what I normally do that I have had to wait between stints to be in the right mood again. I finished the last third at a fine lick today and enjoyed it greatly. This is the first steampunk novel I’ve read that was aimed at adults rather than children/YA and I enjoyed the extra crunchy levels of relationship drama that this entailed. (it’s also, incidentally, the first steampunk novel I have read which is written by a woman)

In short, this is the story about Briar Wilkes, a widow who lives a hard life in the area outside late 19th century Seattle, a city no longer habitable because of an environmental crisis called the Blight that has poisoned the city’s air and turned a good chunk of its population into zombies. Briar keeps her head down, working hard and protecting her teenage son Zeke as much as she can from the truth about his father Leviticus Blue, the most hated man in the history of Seattle, whose grand digging machine brought the Blight into the city.

When Zeke disappears into the ruined city, supposedly to find out more about his grandfather the hero (though Briar suspects he is following rumours about his father), Briar has no choice but to chase after him, into a world of gas masks, air-pumping machines, zeppelin pilots, armoured warriors, amputees with mechanical limbs, mad scientists and, you know, zombies. Lots and lots of zombies. Will Briar find Zeke before he gets himself killed? Is Leviticus Blue really still alive in the bowels of the destroyed city?

I’m sure the fun action adventure aspects of the story are what has made this book so popular, especially I think amongst male readers, but for me the thing that kept me coming back was the relationship between Briar and her son, and the secret history of Briar and her husband. A simple personal story in between all the steampunky goodness – and how often do we get to see a Mum front and centre in a speculative fiction novel? Not enough, I say! Briar kicks arse, like a slightly saner version of Sarah Connor v. the Terminator, with nothing but the safety of her son spurring her on. I liked how real and sensible she seemed, though, at the heart of it – ordinary people doing extraordinary deeds are far more interesting to me than those with superpowers.

There is a sequel, Clementine, coming along at some point, but Boneshaker is nicely contained with a satisfying finale.

So after my thwarted attempt to have a no buying books for myself month in December (I swear, feminist tomes kept hurling themselves at my head, it was a moral imperative to take them home) and because my bank balance is looking somewhat sickly, I decided that I was going to refrain from buying books for the months of February AND March.

This is a very big deal.

What this means is nothing that gives me the ‘hit’ that comes from purchasing a book – which includes clicking pre-order buttons. So far what I have learned from the exercise is that yes, I am an addict.

I thought I would track the experiment (and keep myself from clicking ‘buy’ buttons) by keeping track of all the books I had more than a fleeting impulse to buy – ones that I definitely wanted for at least three moments. I should add that it is unlikely I would have bought all the books on the list without the pledge holding me back – at least, I really hope not.

So far I’m ten days in and I have 17 books on the list.

(more…)

In my last post I talked about how there are many different kinds of strength in female characters, and it rubs me up the wrong way when an emotionless, damaged and violent ‘Ms Kickass’ is the only acknowledged type – as if that is the only alternative to the fainting damsel.

So in the interest of giving some actual examples, a variety of strong heroines I have been thinking about lately:

Emma Donohue in White Tiger and other novels by Kylie Chan

I once had a long conversation with someone about the lack of mothers in fantasy – and whether you could have a mother as an epic fantasy heroine. The problem with this of course (and the reason Xena didn’t get to keep her baby) is that taking a child along on a dangerous adventure is completely irresponsible. Chan was one of the first authors I found who had a solution – what if the child is immortal/powerful in her own right but still needs parenting? Emma develops powers and martial arts ability throughout the books, but which she isn’t technically a parent, she does fulfil that role throughout the books, and the juggling act of trying to sort out the school situation when you and your child are embroiled in a supernatural war was actually pretty awesome.

Briar Wilkes in Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Another mother hero! In this case, a woman almost entirely defined by her relationship with men – Briar goes in search of her teenage son, who is himself hoping to clear the names of his father and grandfather. I’m still only halfway through the book, but after reading so much steampunk centred around boy heroes I’ve been really enjoying the novelty of a middle-aged heroine with a complex past.

Polly & Eileen in Blackout by Connie Willis

The Blitz is famous as a time when everyday people had to cope with the most extraordinary horrors while still keeping the shops open, putting food on the table, and trying not to fall apart. In this time travel novel, stranded historians Polly and Eileen learn more than they intended about the fragility of life and survival in wartime. While their male counterpart Mike gets tangled up in the “manly” dramas of Dunkirk and military hospitals, Eileen and Polly show us the day to day stresses and challenged of living through the Blitz. Just something as simple as the constant interrupted sleep… with a new baby’s habits still fresh in my mind, I’m surprised the whole population of London didn’t just go insane.

(more…)