Some discussion went around the internets a week ago about Madonna, and how the media has always enjoyed hating her so much – and no, it doesn’t mean that people who don’t like her music are automatically sexist, but a lot of the invective used against her *is*.

Speaking of assumptions, there’s a lovely interview with Sophie Kinsella, who has made a name for herself writing the fun, comedic Shopaholic novels. She talks about the way she is perceived, and defends the moral issues of her books as well as talking positively about comedy for women. Also from a writerly point of view, I thought it interesting how the article presents her two separate author names and identities.

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series possibly being made for TV – wow. I managed to miss the Darkover series, which is one of those things like Anne McCaffrey’s Pern that makes me sad. I have heard there’s a lot of hefty 70′s style feminist type stuff in there, though, and would be fascinated to see how they adapt it, and how much the material has dated. Far more than the George RR Martin series, this intrigues me enough to read the source material and compare to the TV if it gets that far.

Sarah Rees Brennan is at it again, this time combining her Gothic Tuesday and Lady Sleuth Thursday posts to write a sharp, loving parody of Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White. Wilkie Collins is sometimes credited as the inventor of the detective story, which isn’t quite true, but he was certainly the first author to develop the idea of a female amateur detective – I have a particular love for his The Law and the Lady, which is far better than the more famous The Moonstone. I’ve never read The Woman in White though, and now I really want to!

Also from the Mary Sue: The Periodic Table of Cupcakes. Someone should totally do this for a convention book launch! And when I say someone, I mean Terri.

Now the cupcakes have softened you up, Karen Healey has been trying to research beyond anecdata to see if people really do hate female authors (in the YA field) more than male authors, and if they’re meaner about it. Short answer: yep.

@Kaelajael passed on a link to this wonderfully ranty article about how telling little girls that the boys bullying them in the playground are doing it “because they like you” needs to be stamped out, like NOW. I’d never thought about this particular meme before, but now I’m quietly horrified that, yes, of course.

Hoyden About Town are starting a regular feature, an open thread discussing Outland. If you haven’t yet found the right peeps to discuss the show with, this could be it! Assuming that you’re appropriately feminist & left-leaning, of course, otherwise NEVER MIND, NOTHING TO SEE HERE, MOVE ALONG.

One I’d missed earlier: 13 years on from Women in Refrigerators, a blog carnival. How far have we come?

I’m looking forward to this movie a lot more than I expected to be! Loving most of the character interpretations from this trailer:

A few days ago, Paul Cornell, a very popular and well regarded SF, television and comics professional writer who regularly appears on panels at conventions around the world, made a bit of a splash with his announcement about how he plans to address the problem of parity on said convention panels.

Much like the male SF and fantasy authors (like Charles Stross) who have pledged publicly to step aside from appearing in SF anthologies which perpetuate the bad SF tradition of not including nearly enough work written by women, Paul Cornell has pledged to step aside from panels that do not offer at least 2/5 female participants. Naturally enough, responses to this are mixed.

It’s a gimmick. Obviously it’s a gimmick. It’s also a stunt. It is a great big, messy, epic gimmicky stunt. It’s going to make some people angry. It’s going to make some people embarrassed. It’s going to make a whole bunch of people complain loudly on the internet. I’m sure plenty of them already have, but I’ve become better and better at avoiding that kind of thing.

But, and this is important, it’s unlikely that Paul will receive the same degree of anger, dismissive language and abuse that a woman would receive, should she pledge to enact some kind of public protest at conventions that do not offer equal numbers of male and female panellists. It’s irritating, but true.

His plan is not going to fix everything. It’s not going to heal the world. It may not even make much of a difference to a whole bunch of conventions. But that is not a reason for him not to do it. Because Paul can get away with it. He’s a lovely guy, good-humoured and presents well in public. If he does end up having to do this piece of comedic pantomime, physically stepping down in front of an audience and finding women to take his place, then people will remember it, and they will likely forgive him for it. He’ll make it entertaining, and the point will be made, with far less fallout than would occur (sadly) if a woman was the one trying to make the same point.

[there are a lot of potential problems with his proposed system of course - such as the potential embarrassment of female audirnce members called upon without preparation to take his place, and the pressure on such women to be brilliant and witty to justify the choice - it's an awkward position to put them in, and I think Paul may have to relent on his current plans not to make prior arrangements with potential replacements. Often there are quite sensible reasons why particular women are not sitting on a particular panel, such as having ALREADY been overloaded with a bunch of panels at a convention because programmers are often desperate to try to reach something close to parity, and once a woman is known to be good value on panels, she will often be massively over-scheduled. Unlike many other critics, I don't think the possibility that the female replacement might be less qualified or interesting than Paul Cornell is actually a reason not to do it - I have sat on far too many panels with dull and uninformed male participants to worry about that. But of course, a boring male participant is not seen to represent his entire gender if he fails in public... so, yeah. A lot of pressure.]

If it makes some conventions think differently about their programming, if it makes some women feel more confident about volunteering for panels, and if it makes some more men think seriously about whether they’re really the most (or only) qualified person for the topic they’ve been asked to speak on, then it’s worth doing. And if that means that Paul Cornell stops being invited to speak at conventions (which seems unlikely) then at least he’ll have more time to write! A plan with few drawbacks!

Maybe it will be a helpful stepping stone in the process of making these events more inclusive of women, and maybe it won’t – but at least it’s getting us talking about the issue, and it’s one worth talking about.

Farah Mendlesohn has some thoughts about Paul’s plan, and about positive discrimination being at times a, you know, positive thing. As ever, she speaks good sense. I also very much enjoyed Cheryl Morgan’s witty and energetic response to the Paul Parity Plan (it needs a catchier title, yes?).

Sometimes you have to stop worrying about the little details that might go wrong, and appreciate the joy that comes from a glorious, messy, gimmicky consciousness-raising stunt. While eating popcorn.

EDIT: MORE ON GENDER PARITY IN THE UK:
On the Gollancz blog.

Sure they do. Except in the many, many, tiny little ways that they don’t. Some of those ways seem small, like tiny nicks in the glass of a car window, the sort of thing you can overlook on its own. But when it’s nick after nick, dent after dent, hole after hole… once your awareness has been opened to it, it feels like the window is cracking open, from edge to edge. You can’t not see it. It’s everywhere.

Elizabeth L Huede, the powerhouse behind the gone-viral-or-what Australian Women Writers 2012 Reading challenge, blogged recently about how disappointing it is that the list of books chosen for the National Year of Reading project – one from each state, books chosen to represent ‘our story’ as Australians – consists of seven out of eight male authored works.

Elizabeth parses some of the ways in which this could have happened, noting that the longlist used for reference was also grossly weighted towards male authors, but also musing on how it is that male books are so heavily prioritised when the people choosing the long list – librarians and publishers – are both female heavy professions. Also, readers got to vote on the books – and reading is in itself identified as being a more popular pastime among women than men. So this isn’t just about men thinking books by men are more important and universal and meaningful than books by women. This is about women thinking exactly the same thing.

The comments are good, btw. There, I point out something I have noticed in the past as far as this sort of list goes – it wasn’t constructed as a balanced shortlist, it was constructed as eight single titles, each chosen by different people. When you’re narrowing down the choice to ONE, you never think about gender (well, most people wouldn’t) – the natural assumption is that it’s a 50-50 chance, because a single winner can only represent one gender. So it never feels like a decision influenced by gender. It’s only when the pattern is laid out – 7/8 ‘winners’ per state being male, for instance, or the shocking statistics of the Miles Franklin literary award, named after a woman and rarely won by one, that the question of gender bias looks to be an obvious one.

And of course there are ways to deal with this. Like the Stella Prize, for instance. Like the Australian Women Writers Reading 2012 Challenge. Like having these conversations. All necessary things.

We need to change the way we look at literature and art. We need to change the way we read it, and teach it. You can’t declare that equality exists and therefore parity doesn’t matter. I’ve seen too many lists that promote the outdated idea that to be Important or Universal or even that completely pure and unbiased and rational philosophical ideal of GOOD, they have to be written by men. I don’t buy it. I don’t buy it in comics, or movies, or television, or kids toys, or football, or anything else I consider important. Hell, I don’t even buy it in politics.

So no, I won’t take it lying down when it comes to books. Because books are important. And ‘our story’ has a far more complex, diverse and interesting meaning than the National Year of Reading is managing to convey so far.

No gender bias in that list of books, huh? Really. I wonder how they can be so sure. Because the universe that the list exists in is pretty riddled with gender bias, and if you don’t actively build defenses against it, you end up with the same story, over and over again.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one.

She didn’t write it. She wrote it, but she shouldn’t have. She wrote it, but look what she wrote about. She wrote it, but only one of it. She wrote it, but she isn’t really an artist, and it isn’t really art. She wrote it, but she had help. She wrote it, but she was an anomaly.

She wrote it, BUT…
Joanna Russ, the original cover blurb of How to Suppress Women Writing

Why has the world not yet rendered that quote utterly irrelevant???

Hoyden talk about the myth of the bra-burning feminists, an idea which has been used to try to make women look stupid for decades, and how the false story was spread.

The Moffat’s Women series continues on Tor, with a comparison between the main female character in this Christmas special and last year’s. I find it very interesting how quickly people have leaped to criticise Moffat for writing a story in which the mother is the hero, so this article made me happy.

Sarah Rees Brennan’s response to the post we linked to in Galactic Suburbia about the wealth of positive girl heroes in YA right now.

One that I meant us to discuss on GS but forgot at the last minute (sorry, Sean!) – Sean the Blogonaut surveys his reading after a year of trying to change his reading habits, genderwise.

Linda Nagata talks about her rationale for self publishing rather than going back to big publishers.

The ever awesome Mary Beard comments on the latest salacious media drama about Ancient Romans and brothels. Yes, really. As ever, her pragmatism wins the day.

Alison Bechdel’s new book is to have an opening print run of 100,000 copies and a massive publishing/publicity campaign when it’s published in May, which is extraordinarily good news. It’s a comic book about a lesbian and her relationship with her mother, people!!! In all seriousness, Bechdel is an extraordinary writer-artist, and Fun Home was a brilliant, fascinating memoir about her father and herself. The only flaw in it was the almost-invisibility of her mother as a character, which was why I (and I imagine, 100,000 other people) was so keen to hear she was working on a sequel about their relationship. To see an LGBTQ title getting such mass promotion and support is excellent, because it is a book which should absolutely transcend any idea of a niche market.

And it gives you all five months to read Fun Home while you’re waiting!

I was interested in this article about how DC Comics have beat the pants off Marvel with their New 52 and then kind of horribly fascinated at how little information the article actually has. It entirely focuses on the print sales, mentioning the whole e-sales and day and date matters as some kind of quirky twist on the tale, but not actually citing those RATHER MORE INTERESTING statistics.

I continue to be annoyed that this entirely dull and by the numbers rendition of Justice League is in their top three sellers. Thereby proving, sadly, all over again, that comics readers don’t care about women. BAH I SAY. Still, could be worse. It could be Red Hood and the Outlaws.

“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!

Sarah Rees Brennan continues to point out the horrible double standard we have in our culture when it comes to talking about female fictional characters, as opposed to male characters, and the extra levels of perfection (BUT NOT TOO PERFECT) that fictional women are supposed to attain.

Meanwhile, a chap explains male privilege to other chaps. I always enjoy a good explanation of such things, that can be widely linked to, and makes a postitive contribution to the conversation. A part of me though is always a little bit sad, knowing that women have been patiently (and sometimes less than patiently) explaining things rather a lot longer, and it often seems like the message is more heartily supported and embraced when it comes in a male voice. Sigh.

Speaking of men fighting the feminist fight (and don’t think I’m not grateful, cos I’m busy baking shortbread and wrapping Christmas presents, yo no this is not sarcasm, I am actually too busy being barefoot & domestic to deal with internet feminism right now) Mondy has been talking about the latest Gardner Dozois Best of Science Fiction anthology, and the importance of looking at gender breakdowns. I’m linking to his blog because that’s how I take my internet these days (livejournal, I do not miss you and your nested comments of rage) but apparently there’s a whole lot of something-something going on in the comments of said LJ, which I think is under the name mondyboy. My Christmas present to myself this year is not reading said comments. LIFE IS WONDERFUL AND I AM ON HOLIDAY.

Meanwhile, DC Women Kicking Ass, a fabulous Tumblr, is talking about the failure of mainstream comics to market effectively to women, when they have actual properties women who don’t necessarily hang out in comic shops (WHO KNEW?) might be interested in.

Another of my pet topics, that of gendered toys, made the news this week with the announcement that Hamleys, the iconic toy store in London, is getting rid of its ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ floors. This comes after an ongoing Twitter campaign complaining about them, though they claim it is a coincidence that they made the decision. At a time when the gender divide of toys is getting worse and worse, it’s nice to see such a positive step. Having been raging about Lego excluding girls from their main range of toys for years, I’m now discovering the wonderful world of action figures thanks to Raeli’s action figure obsession. And once again, it turns out, the representation of female characters in comics and superhero movies turns out to be a hell of a lot better than what happens in the toy industry. Damn it.

(after feeling guilty for realising that it didn’t occur to me until recently to buy my Doctor Who fangirl daughter a sonic screwdriver, purely because she’s a girl, I had a revelation this week that I have also never been able to bring myself to buy her a toy oven/kitchen set BECAUSE SHE’S A GIRL, even though she adores such toys when she plays with them elsewhere. She’ll live, I reckon.)

Some baking goodness, because linking is easier than actually baking. My friend Iz who is currently building a Moomin House out of gingerbread sent me a Finnish gingerbread recipe which comes with images and instructions that have been enabling her in this wild endeavour. And elsewhere on the internet, keeping in mind that I have to figure out what kind of Doctor Who birthday cake I am going to produce a certain little girl in January, I found this brilliant design for a Dalek Smash Cake, which can be taken apart to discover the jelly mutant dalek inside.

Finally, my favourite Christmas post of the week is by Neil Gaiman, who talks about his Jewish childhood and the desirability of Christmas trees. As a non-Christian, lapsed pagan who is big on traditions being flexible, the Christmas tree is probably the most powerful image of what the festival means to me, and I love hearing about other people’s emotional attachment to it.

I can’t express enough how awesome it was to have two little girls decorating the tree with us this year, and that Jemima is now old enough to hang decorations without automatically gnawing on the tree branches, or stealing plastic-wrapped candy canes to see how many she can fit in her mouth. Also, that Raeli has now heard my stories behind every collected-while-travelling Christmas decoration so many times that she can recite them herself, and she has her own collection of decorations and stories from daycare, kinder and prep, thanks to the crafty factory that kicks into gear in schools across the country at this time of year.

Did you know that the Wombles were aiming for the Christmas No. 1 single this year in the UK? DID YOU?

Meanwhile Bitch Magazine is doing a new blog series which looks at the portrayal of pregnancy, childbirth and early childhood/parenthood in TVland. I have Strong Opinions on this topic, so looking forward to reading what they have to say.

Tehani posted this link about which comic book superheroines deserve their own movies. Which is all very well, but let’s face it, Hollywood has badly let down the female superhero (and not the other way around). I can’t help thinking their stories would be better served by taking visuals out of the equation and going straight to the novel.

So if anyone wants to hire me to write a Huntress novel, I’m available! Or Wonder Woman, come to that…

Gail Simone tweeted this article which looks at two different kinds of representation of race in current DC Comics, comparing the Static Shock approach (he just happens to be black, yanno) with the Firestom approach (actual discussion of racial issues in the text). It’s a thoughtful piece, and I think demonstrates that both approaches have value, and it’s important to have both kinds of representation of race in stories – if all stories with characters of colour were about race, or all stories with characters of colour were NOT about race, we would have a real problem.

I do love it when people point out that these things are not either/or!

Jo Anderton, whose debut novel Debris (Angry Robot) I loved when she sent it to me for blurbage (it’s about magical architects! and magical garbage collectors! And it has technology mixed in with magic, plus a professional heroine who is flawed and cranky and acquires a TEAM, and has sex without it having to be her true love!) has done an interview over at Rowena’s blog.

The Indie Publishing (from pro perspective) posts are continuing in abundance at Tehani’s blog. Shaun Tan is her latest guest, and I thoroughly recommend his love letter to the Australian SF small press, with some insights into how working for Aurealis and Eidolon led to his later, dazzling career.

Nisi Shawl talks about queer themes (and often the lack thereof) in steampunk, over at Tor.com with the brilliantly-titled article ‘The Steampunk That Dare Not Speak Its Name‘.

Some Tansy-specific links: Kylie Chan’s recent reading including some lovely comments about Power & Majesty; Sean the Blogonaut did a great review of Love and Romanpunk as an e-book; you can find me guesting on the Book Nut podcast, talking about children’s and YA fiction; and I am excited to be reading at the Reading Room exhibit at the Tas Museum in Hobart this Sunday.

Strange Horizons have found their fundraiser slowgoing this year, I think, possibly because the Kickstarter phenomenon means that many of us have reached donation fatigue. But it’s the last week for donations, and such a good publication that many of us take for granted. If you like what they publish and you haven’t donated yet, please head over there – or help out with passing the word. There are some wonderful prizes up for grabs, including my own trilogy and an entire subscription to the Twelve Planets. And bonus prize draws all this week!

The final of season 6 of Doctor Who screens tomorrow in Australia – and sure I’ve already seen it (romanpunk for the win!) and love it to bits, but I now get to watch it with Raeli and see if she can wrap her head around all the anachronisms and timey plot twists. I’ve enjoyed this season very much, and luckily for me I like River Song a lot, and have enjoyed getting to see a whole lot of different sides to her in the arc stories this year – I think how much you enjoyed the arc probably depended a lot on how pro-River you are.

This (spoily for the last ep!) post talks about River’s actual timeline, as based on the last ep of Doctor Who Confidential – I think we need charts, people!

I’ve enjoyed Amy and Rory too – as companions they have got lost at times in this busy season but the final episode ties it all together and shows yet again that a journey doesn’t make complete sense until you get to the end of it. I wanted to put up a vid that sums up how squeeful I was about them in the last ep, but decided not to risk spoiling people yet. So instead, here’s the story so far of River & the Doctor [before The Wedding of River Song, spoilery for all her other eps]

EPISODE 38

In which none of your fearless podcasters are impregnated by mysterious aliens for the duration of a single episode, nor do any of us experience a rapidly accelerated pregnancy or give birth to an otherworldly demon/alien/vampire. Also: Batgirl, Bujold and a cranky feminist rant or two.

News

Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award – given to a living writer for the first time, Katherine MacLean.

Mythopoeic Awards

World Fantasy, of course!

World SF Travel Fund raising money to send Charles A Tan to WFC

The Mystical Pregnancy trope - torture porn? Reproductive terrorism, exploiting women for being female.
Violent degradation of women’s bodies for plot.

Vote For Top-100 Science Fiction, Fantasy Titles
Swedish Writing Fairy crunches the numbers

Andromeda’s Offering Offspring Issue 1 – new fanzine to “open up new female voices in SF, raise the awareness of female SF writers and share ideas.”
(you can find them on Facebook apparently)

Where are the women in the new DC Comics?
newsy report
proper interview with Batgirl crusader

SF Signal Episode 70 – 6 men talk about their favourite podcasts and illustrate what we mean by gender disparity in SF gatekeeping
Alisa makes reference to recent Mind Meld

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa – Passage by Connie Willis; Red Glove by Holly Black; The Lifecycle of Software Objects by Ted Chiang;
Alex - Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn, Bujold; Chicks Dig Time Lords, ed. Lynne Thomas; The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell; Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal (http://wp.me/p11HLi-Nf); Songs of the Earth, Elspeth Cooper (abandoned). SF Squeecast.
Tansy – Glenda Larke-Stormlord Rising; Malinda Lo-Huntress; Penni Russon-Only, Ever, Always

Feedback
lovely review at Hoyden About Town

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!

image by perpetualpanda on Deviant Art

Timmi Duchamp at Aqueduct Press looks at the Women’s Hour SF discussion with particular concern for what Gwyneth Jones said about feminist SF vs. SF written by women.
EDIT: Gwyneth Jones’ right of reply, also on Aqueduct Press.

My Mum passed me this link to a cheering and inspirational article about the new generation of activist feminists in the UK (though as Kirstyn McDermott pointed out to me, obviously whoever composed the photograph of the group was not thinking with the feminist half of their brain)

Niall at Strange Horizons links to some Wiscon panel summaries. Sniff. One day my Wiscon will come.

A powerful post by Colleen at Chasing Ray about the ‘are books too dark for our teenagers because everyone knows bad things don’t happen unless you read about them’ stupidity.

Diana Peterfreund on why her latest book was so hard to write, how having babies makes books even HARDER to write, and why it’s important to own the hard work as well as the magical moments of the writing life.

Nicola Griffith (she has been on fire lately!) comparing two LAMBDA acceptance speeches and considering the gendered differences between them.

And oh, the piece of news that most excited me this week: the new Chameleon Circuit album has finally finished production and is available for pre-order, shipping in July. Eeeeee!

EPISODE 34

In which we surf the wave of feminist SF news that has deluged the internet this fortnight, plus Margaret Brundage, why YA books are allowed to be as dark as they want to be, the Tiptree Award, Connie Willis, were-thylacines, Ted Chiang and Alex finally discovers Bujold…

News

Nicola Griffith on the m/f imbalance in an informal SF favourites poll in the Guardian
The Guardian: Damien Walter, author of the poll & followup articles revises his comments in response to Griffith
Niall Harrison follows up on Strange Horizons
Cheryl Morgan on invisibility of women (some really interesting discussion in the comments, too)
The Guardian again, asking with wide innocent eyes if SF is inherently sexist
Ian Sales announces the SF Mistressworks blog project
Nicola Griffith asks you to take the Joanna Russ pledge

Gwyneth Jones, Karen Traviss & Farah Mendlesohn talk on radio about the perception of women in British SF http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b011c220
Transcript here: http://vectoreditors.wordpress.com/2011/06/04/womans-hour-women-and-sf/

MK Hobson on the term ‘bustlepunk’ and why there is a place for a domestic sub-genre of steampunk
MK Hobson’s follow up post on the assumptions made about works coded ‘female’

2011 Chesley Award Finalists
Cheryl Morgan on female & trans artists

Nine Reasons Women Don’t Edit Wikipedia
(interesting, I think, in light of the recent spout of incidents we’ve watched, notably the one with Nick Mamatas where winning World Fantasy Award was considered too regional to be significant)

Wall Street Journal on YA fiction

Change to the Norma eligibility guidelines

Why Galactic Suburbia T-shirts are no longer available through RedBubble.

Con Quilt

What Culture Have we Consumed?
Tansy: Thyla, Kate Gordon; Will Supervillains Be on the Final? Naomi Novik
Alisa: Coode St Podcast with Ellen Klages, Eileen Gunn and Geoff Ryman; Connie Willis – Even the Queen; Octavia Butler – Bloodchild
Alex: Chill, and Grail, Elizabeth Bear; The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang ; Welcome to the Greenhouse, Gordon van Gelder; Steampunk! Kelly Link and Gavin Grant.

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!