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”

(more…)

You can check out the new Galactic Suburbia episode on our website or at iTunes. You’ll notice we were really subtle about the Hugo nomination, because we didn’t want to be tacky.

In which this Hugo nominated podcast is Hugo nominated and discusses the Hugo nominations while being Hugo nominated. Also, the internet is full of things. Some of those things discuss gender, feminism and equality, some have wide ranging implications for the future of SF awards, and some of them are nominated for Hugos.

HUUUUUUUUUGO SHORTLIST

Hunger Games Hunger Games Hunger Games

Build up to make a hit
The reviews are in:
Topless Robot
Forbes
Our Alisa

But in the real world, the character Katniss Everdeen faces an even greater challenge: Proving that pop culture will embrace a heroine capable of holding her own with the big boys.
It’s a battle fought on two fronts. First, The Hunger Games must bring in the kind of box office numbers that prove to Hollywood that a film led by a young female heroine who’s not cast as a sex symbol can bring in audiences. And second, for Katniss to truly triumph, she must embody the type of female heroine — smart, tough, compassionate — that has been sorely lacking in the popular culture landscape for so very long.

The Clarke Award Shortlist:
Christopher Priest’s original post
Cat Valente responds:
“Because let’s be honest, I couldn’t get away with it. If I posted that shit? I’d never hear the end of what a bitch I am.”
And further she responds

(more…)

Sadly the outfit I will probably wear to the Hugos this year involves pyjamas and ug boots, cos I’m certainly not going all the way to Chicago, but, but BUT…

Galactic Suburbia was nominated for Best Fancast.

This is a dizzying and most splendid honour, and all four of us, presenters and producer, are tickled pink.

Congratulations to everyone on the shortlists, especially our fellow nominees in the Fancast category:

Best Fancast (326 ballots)
The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan & Gary K. Wolfe
Galactic Suburbia Podcast, Alisa Krasnostein, Alex Pierce, and Tansy Rayner Roberts (presenters) and Andrew Finch (producer)
SF Signal Podcast, John DeNardo and JP Frantz, produced by Patrick Hester
SF Squeecast, Lynne M. Thomas, Seanan McGuire, Paul Cornell, Elizabeth Bear, and Catherynne M. Valente
StarShipSofa, Tony C. Smith

There is dancing, much dancing, and joyful celebration. Also, there will be HUGO PINS, that most exciting sartorial item. I also love that my Twitter feed has filled up with people talking about the acquisition of frocks for the ceremony.

The most splendid Karen Healey and I chatted this morning (in one of my brief holiday internet windows) about the importance of wearable tokens of awards, and how all literary awards could be GREATLY IMPROVED. You can read a cut down version of our conversation here.

If you’re just joining us, and want to try out Galactic Suburbia for the first time, here are the top episodes that we think represent the best of 2011.

Episode 32: 11 May 2011 In which we bid farewell to Joanna Russ, talk e-publishing (again) and Alisa reads a real live actual book. With bonus raving about Doctor Who and Alistair Reynolds – in other words, another episode of Galactic Suburbia.

Episode 36: Spoilerific Book Club: Joanna Russ Featuring: “How To Suppress Women’s Writing,” by Joanna Russ; “The Female Man,” by Joanna Russ and “When it Changed,” by Joanna Russ

Episode 47: 24 November 2011 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.

Or if you’re feeling adventurous, you can check out our entire 2011 catalogue of episodes! Thanks to our silent producer for gathering those links.

I didn’t put this up before because Podbean has been down all weekend but now it’s back! You can check out the new Galactic Suburbia episode on our website or at iTunes.

Episode 55

In which we honour the memory of Paul Haines by giving ourselves nightmares, and catch up (mostly) on several months of feedback about how Galactic Suburbia is singlehandedly keeping the bookselling business alive.

News
Paul Haines in memoriam.
Death notice and information about memorial service
We discuss posts by Dirk Flinthart and Ben Peek.

If anyone does a round up of memorial posts about Paul, please let us know & we’ll add the link. In the mean time, check out this post about his complete bibliography and how to get hold of his work.

Ladybusiness on coverage of women on SF/F blogs

New Galactic Chat: Claire Corbett

What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alisa: Wives, Paul Haines; The Warrior’s Apprentice, Lois Mcmaster Bujold; Power and Majesty, Tansy Rayner Roberts), Locus Round Table featuring Nalo Hopkinson and Karen Lord
Alex: Solaris Rising (ed Ian Whates); Reign of Beasts (Tansy Rayner Roberts); Pure (Julianna Bagott)
Tansy: Madigan Mine, Kirstyn McDermott, The Opposite of Life by Narrelle M Harris

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!

New Episode of Galactic Suburbia is up (after a few problems) to be downloaded by the manner of your choosing!

In which we keep it short (truly) through restraint and perseverance, despite setting Tansy off on a tangent about Lego and lots of crunchy gender bias stuff to chew through.

News

Nebula shortlist

Stoker shortlist

Paul Cornell on Panel Parity

Elizabeth L Huede on National Year of (Gender Biased) Reading

Tansy’s thing: new feminist Doctor Who blog Doctor Her

Can princesses play with Lego? (Lego friends petition at Change.org)

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: Vorkosigan – Shards of Honor, Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
Alex: The Islanders, Christopher Priest
Tansy: After the Apocalypse, by Maureen McHugh (collection)

Feedback episode coming soon!

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!

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!

The GS Team: Alex, Alisa, Tansy and our Producer (AKA Gentlemen's Auxilary)

Yesterday Galactic Suburbia put up a Very Special podcast, announcing the honours list and winner of the inaugural Galactic Suburbia Award.

After much discussion, and wanting in particular to create something that wasn’t already out there in the multitudinous world of spec fic awards, we came up with this definition:

The Galactic Suburbia Award: for activism and/ or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction in 2011

We didn’t put links to the honours list and winner as show notes to the podcast, because we wanted our regular listeners to have at least SOME sense of anticipation as they listened, but now it’s well and truly out there, so here is the list:

Honours List

Carrie Goldman and her daughter Katie, for sharing their story about how Katie was bullied at school for liking Star Wars, and opening up a massive worldwide conversation about gender binaries and gender-related bullying among very young children.

Cheryl Morgan for Female Invisibility Bingo, associated blogging and podcasting, and basically fighting the good fight

Helen Merrick, for the Feminism article on the SF Encyclopedia

Jim C Hines for “Jane C Hines” and associated blogging, raising awareness of feminist issues in the SF/Fantasy publishing field.

Julia Rios, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond for Episode 11 of the Outer Alliance podcast (The Writer and the Critic special episode)

L. Timmel Duchamp – for continuing to raise issues of importance on the Ambling Down the Aqueduct blog and various Aqueduct Press projects

Michelle Lee for the blog post “A 7-year-old girl responds to DC Comics’ sexed-up reboot of Starfire”

Winner

Nicola Griffith – for the Russ Pledge, and associated blogging

The winner will receive a Deepings Doll hand-painted figurine of a suffragette with a Galactic Suburbia placard, hand-painted by Jilli Roberts of Pendlerook Designs. (Tansy’s very talented mother!) Each Deepings Doll is individual, so the one each winner will receive (we do plan to make this an annual tradition) will be unique.

If you have ideas for our Honours list for 2012, please email us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com or tweet @galacticsuburbs

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It’s been lovely to see such a positive response from our honourees and winner. Already, Nicola Griffith, Cheryl Morgan and Timmi Duchamp have posted the award details on their blogs with gracious commentary. We at Galactic Suburbia had a great time chewing over what our award should be, and what we wanted to celebrate in the SF community.

The new episode is up! Go fetch it and consume it with digital gusto!

In which women aren’t funny, don’t write important books, but come in handy as assassins and thieves.

News

Connie Willis named SFWA Grand Master

Liz Bourke on Strange Horizons & the art of the mean review

Survey shows that men (as well as women) often play characters of the other gender while gaming – in many cases, men are bored with or alienated by the big musclebound male characters, which game designers think they want. Sound familiar?

Hoyden about Town are asking for guest bloggers to crosspost their Australian Women Writers Challenge reviews on Hoyden (ASIF also keen to do so)

More on feminine tosh: a good solid article in the Australian media (shock!) about the women in literature issues of recent months (and, you know, decades).

Have we been following the “Women aren’t funny” stoush that played out in NYT? This interesting development.

DC Comics – cancellations & new titles – Tansy is especially excited by World’s Finest (featuring the Earth 2 Huntress & Power Girl)

Stranger with My Face – Women in Horror film festival in Hobart, Tasmania – 17-19 February

Tansy’s book launch for Reign of Beasts (Creature Court Book Three) on 2 February at Hobart Bookshop, 5:30pm.
(more…)

Hard to believe we’ve made it to 50 episodes. Of course the alternative is that we stop talking, and that would never happen! Sadly we didn’t eat cake, but we did namecheck Joanna Russ at least once, so that’s almost the same thing, right?

You may eat cake while you listen to it, if you want to. If you do, you know we want to hear about it!

Check out EPISODE 50 now!

In which we leap happily back and forth (with occasional ranting) over those fine lines between feminist critique and anti-female assumptions, plus share our bumper collection of holiday culture consumed. Happy New Year from the Galactic Suburbia crew!

NEWS AND LINKS

Hugo nominations open and we’re gonna have our say

Aqueduct Press to publish Brit Mandelo’s thesis, “WE WUZ PUSHED: On Joanna Russ & Radical Truth-telling”!

Islamic superhero comic turned animated series The 99 to screen in Australia (ABC3)

Amanda Palmer’s wedding post

Great piece on how the very idea of ‘Mary Sue’ is sexist, ties into this episode’s theme about the criticism of female characters.

The wealth of powerful girl heroes in today’s YA

WHAT CULTURE HAVE WE CONSUMED?

Alisa: Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal; The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman (with cover art by Kathleen Jennings); The Vampire Diaries; Primeval; The 99; Planetary; Homeland and Boxcutters.

Alex: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon, Julie Phillips; Changing Planes, Ursula le Guin; Perchance to Dream, Lisa Mantchev; Twilight Robbery, Frances Hardinge; Chronicles of Chrestomanci vol 1, Diana Wynne Jones. DOA and Going Postal

Tansy: The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman; Beauty Queens, Libba Bray; Snuff by Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (TV) – Batman (animated) & My First Batman Book by David Katz, David Tennant & Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing (DIGITAL THEATRE DOWNLOAD AWW YEAH).

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!