OK this is my favourite news article of the week – a Womble performer traumatised a nation (well, the six year old portion of the nation) when he accidentally removed his head during a live webfeed. Now, my first reaction was basically that it’s awesome that the Wombles are a THING again for today’s kiddies. As a mother of a six year old myself (who broke my heart with her reaction to finding out about the Santa thing last year)… seriously?

“Parents from around the UK said the ‘damage had already been done’ and that they had been forced to come up with ‘all kinds of explanations’ about why there was a human inside a Womble.”

HOW MANY KINDS OF EXPLANATION ARE THERE?

Elsewhere in the world, Aqueduct Press continue their marvellous blog series of posts about the Best Reading, Listening, Viewing, etc. in 2011. I like especially that the contributors are asked to talk about what they enjoyed, but not limit themselves to work published this calendar year. And I was honoured to be asked to talk about my own favourite things of 2011. I forgot lots of things, of course, but that’s what my own blog is for!

Also, Brit Mandelo of Tor.com blogs about her new reprint anthology, Beyond Binary, which includes a story by MEEEEE as well as a whole bunch of more famous and wonderful writers. Hooray for genderqueer SF being talked about!

Nnedi Okorafor blogs powerfully about her discomfort in discovering, in the wake of her marvellous World Fantasy win for Best Novel, that the trophy depicts the head of a very racist, unpleasant person. Ie. H.P. Lovecraft. Which has led to all kinds of conversations across Twitter and other forums about, you know, what kind of alternative trophy could better represent excellence in fantasy fiction, or the history of fantasy literature. I suspect TRADITION is going to win out on this one, or at least a combination of tradition and resistance to change, which are not entirely the same things, but personally I can think of a whole bunch of other unpleasant heads which could take his place. Like Medusa!

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I always think of Connie Willis at Christmas time. One of my favourite of her books is a collection of short fiction, Miracle and Other Christmas Stories, many of which were written for Asimov’s December issues over a decade or so. The title story feels like quintessential Willis short stories, because it is a romantic comedy with speculative elements, and includes references classic pop culture of some kind. In this case, it is a debate between which Christmas film is superior, Miracle on 42nd Street (the original) or It’s a Wonderful Life. At the time I first read this story, I hadn’t seen either film. They occasionally screen in Australia, more often now than when I was growing up, but they’re not as pervasive as they apparently are in the US at this time of year!

I went out and watched both movies, as I usually do when Connie Willis structures a story around a piece of Classic Hollywood. They’re both very good movies. But neither of them, for me, has a patch on the personal resonance of, say, Bernard and the Genie, which I adore beyond all reason, or even the resonance of “Miracle” itself.

It’s all personal, though. Christmas cultural texts come from our childhood, from happy moments in our lives, or they just happen like lightning – like anything else that becomes a new, instant favourite. But really, I didn’t start thinking about Christmas texts until I read “Miracle.” So it’s rather meta that, at Christmas time, I start getting the urge to re-read that story.

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Last night, just before I went to bed, the rumours were bouncing around Twitter. I didn’t know what the rumours WERE, but the implication was that maybe, just maybe, a missing episode of Doctor Who had been found.

When I woke up – boom! TWO previously lost episodes were back in the BBC archive: Galaxy Four Part Three and The Underwater Menace Part Two. It’s so long since a new episode came to light, and it was generally believe that this was it, we had reached the end of salvaged film canisters.

Having recently read Richard Molesworth’s history of the destruction and recovery of so many stories, and realising how close we came to having almost no Hartnell and Troughton available for rewatching, as well as how unlikely it seemed that anyone would have lost episodes and not realise the demand for them… I feel like the news stories reporting on this don’t have nearly enough exclamation points!!!

Sure, it’s not Power of the Daleks or the Myth Makers, but we get to see CHUMBLIES, the robots that were about the 14th attempt of the BBC to replicate the popularity of the Daleks (they weren’t even trying at this point, and apparently made mini-Daleks out of marshmallows) and we get to see Patrick Troughton being Patrick Troughton, in what is now the earliest surviving episode of his run.

Also, all over again, we have that foolish, foolish hope that some day, there might be ANOTHER film collector who hasn’t been on the internet, and one day there may be more.

Recovered clips below – because the entire things are not of course on the internet yet. We might have to wait for the DVD release!

Some personal links first: I made a reprint sale to Beyond Binary, an anthology of genderqueer SF, edited by Brit Mandelo for Lethe Press. I’m super excited about it, not only to be a Lethe Press author now, but also to share a TOC with such amazing writers as Nalo Hopkinson, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Catherynne Valente and Sandra McDonald. The story in question is “Prosperine When It Sizzles,” which first appeared in shared world anthology New Ceres Nights. I have a soft spot for M. Pepin and La Duchesse, so delighted to see that story get a wider audience.

Also I’ve been meaning to link for ages that my story, “Taking Leaves,” which was one of the winners of the Love2Read competition of fiction about reading disabilities, now has an audio version available. You can listen by streaming it from the site.

A new Hark, a Vagrant! is always cause for celebration, but this one is especially pertinent and awesome this week because it’s all about Wonder Woman. Kate Beaton is a cynical genius.

Bluemilk often writes wonderfully about parenthood and feminism, and this post about crying babies on aeroplanes struck a chord with me. There really are two kinds of people, those who have empathy for parents struggling with noisy children/babies in public, and those who don’t. Often, sadly, that empathy can depend on how personally close you are to the experience of trying to function with small children in public.

This essay about the growing phenomenon of women cosplaying femme versions of the Doctor is fascinating, with some great pics. I find this particular aspect of fandom close to my heart because my daughter came up with it independently, playing Matt Smith’s Doctor in the playground (sometimes with male friends as companions and the Master, though on one notable occasion she had corralled four other girls to play River Song, Melody Pond, Amy Pond & young Amelia OH HELL YES that’s my girl) and back in July kept her bedroom tidy for a whole month in order to earn a red bowtie for herself.

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I am now going to be desperately disappointed if the 50th anniversary doesn’t feature a similar round-table with all living Doctors talking about the role while eating jelly babies. We have eight, that could be quite a bun fight!

Also, Verity Lambert has always been a feminist hero of mine – a 28 year old woman who was the youngest producer, and only female drama producer, at the BBC, and was given this bizarre white elephant of a TV show to run back in 1063, she not only made a success of Doctor Who (she approved the first Dalek script against advice from others, sealing the show’s early triumph of ratings and pop culture madness), but went on to have a long and substantial career elsewhere. She was Head of Drama at ITV when they were producing The Sweeney, Minder, Rumpole of the Bailey and the Naked Civil Servant, she produced John Cleese’s feature Clockwise during a brief film production interlude, and finally set up her own independent production company, Cinema Verity, which was responsible for one of my favourite obscure TV shows, Class Act (starring Joanna Lumley, John Bowe and Nadine Garner). She also moonlighted freelance producing work with the BBC, such as Jonathan Creek, another old favourite of mine.

I was extra delighted to learn recently that she was also a devoted Gooner, when Alan Davies reminisced about being at a particular game with her, on his Arsenal podcast The Tuesday Club. Female Arsenal fans are far more of a minority than female Doctor Who fans have ever been, so I grabbed this piece of information with great joy.

Ahem, got a bit sidetracked there. I’d never seen her interviewed before, at least while so young, and this one is very cool, with the added bonus of several Doctor actors bickering amiably together.

Well, Tumblr and Nanowrimo are joint culprits, I think. I’m about 500 posts behind on my blog reading for the week, so no Friday links today!

Instead, I give you FESTIVE FRIDAY LINKS IN PICTURES!

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Roseanne Barr talks about how fabulous life is on the other side of menopause. Inspiring and feisty!

There have been many inspiring posts about Anne McCaffrey over the last few days, but I especially liked this one, about why women belong in science fiction, and the impact of McCaffrey’s work.

Exciting announcement from Big Finish that they are recording a full cast adaptation of classic Virgin New Adventure novel Love and War by Paul Cornell, featuring the Seventh Doctor, Ace and introducing Professor Bernice Summerfield.

Narrelle Harris talks about our changing attention spans, and how a tech-free holiday shows up the electronic addictions in her life.

Kate Elliott devises a hypothetical Star Trek reboot which would have been far more subversive and interesting than what we actually got – and oh I want to watch the hell out of that show!

Cheryl Morgan (yes, really Cheryl, honestly) talks about the wave of SF YA fiction that isn’t necessarily being recognised as SF by SF readers.

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A new Galactic Suburbia episode freshly baked and ready for your consumption! Wow, we’re getting close to having 50 of these…

In which we bid farewell to the queen of dragons, squee about 48 years of Doctor Who, dissect the negative associations with “girly” fandoms such as Twilight, and find some new favourites in our reading pile.

News

RIP Anne McCaffrey
i09 obituary
Charles Tan rounds up a bunch of tributes

48th anniversary of Doctor Who!
Tansy says it with pictures

Weirdfictionreview.com – a website devoted to The Weird and created by Luis Rodrigues. The project is the brainchild of editing-writing team Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Critiquing the Bigotry of Twilight-haters, not the same thing as defending Twilight
Original article
Sarah Rees Brennan
Holly Black

Announcing the Galactic Suburbia Award – we don’t know what it is yet either but we’re figuring it out! Send emails/tweets to make suggestions.

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alex: The Steel Remains, Richard Morgan; Alastair Reynolds, Blue Remembered Earth; “The Glass Gear” in Valente’s Omikuji Project; also watched Thor.

Tansy: Batman (1989); All Men of Genius, Lev A.C. Rosen; God’s War, Kameron Hurley. Comics: Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman (abandoned); Batgirl the Greatest Stories Ever Told

Alisa: Once Upon a Time; The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood

Note: the post we discuss which looks at the believability of the war in God’s War by Kameron Hurley was in fact not written by Cheryl Morgan, but by Farah Mendlesohn. Which explains why I wasn’t able to find it on Google last night. Thanks to Cheryl for correcting my confusion and my apologies to Farah. (quietly headdesks to self)

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!

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Any chance of catching up with all my blog reading this week was heartily delayed by my discovery of awesome Doctor Who rewatch blog The Wife in Space in which a diehard Doctor Who fan talks his wife into experiencing his favourite show in chronological order. Their conversations are funny and incisive, and I adore Sue’s take-no-prisoners attitude. She is tough but fair (scoring stories across the full range of 1-10), and watching her get sucked into a world of Billyfluffs, Base Under Siege and of course the dread reconstructions of lost episodes is horribly fascinating.

Sue (explaining the experiment to her flabbergasted brother-in-law): That was a walk in the park compared to something like The Toymaker or The Zarbi Planet. Some of the episodes don’t even exist and we still watch them!

I do especially like the fresh perspective of someone who doesn’t care about conventional fan wisdom, and takes every episode as they find it.

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