Over at Last Short Story, we’ve been posting our lists of best short stories for 2011. You can read about the opinions of Sarah, Mondy, me, Alisa and Alex.

Sarah Rees Brennan has written a marvellous, loving parody of Jane Eyre, Or: The Bride of Edward ‘Crazypants’ Rochester and it turns out that she loves Press Gang, too! I knew our tastes were eternally intertwined. I’m so looking forward to both of Sarah’s new novels, to be released this year.

On a more serious note, Alisa wrote about her response to the Lovecraft-representing-World-Fantasy discussion, as a Jewish woman who recently won a World Fantasy Award and only learned about Lovecraft’s racism and anti-semitism recently.

UPDATE: Excellent, crunchy post about the awards system by the ever-sharp Ursula K Le Guin.

And yes, that’s basically it. Onwards to 2012! May there be linking frenzies, flamewars and feminist rage, as well as adorable music vids. That is what the internet is for, after all.

And more besides, because the current graphic novel fetish has taken hold and I have been binge-ordering at my local library, as well as borrowing and buying a bunch of titles. Then there’s the fact that this is Get It Read month For Last Short Story, and there’s Tiptree reading, and stuff for Galactic Suburbia, and books to review for ASif and you know, other books I want to read!

I walked into a bookshop today to look for someone (who wasn’t working that day) and walked out with Marianne de Pierres’ Angel Arias, and the new Merridy Eastman. Honestly I want to just download them directly into my head.

I’m halfway through reading Trent Jamieson’s Roil, and a Catwoman trade, and Gwyneth Jones’ new collection, because one book at a time is just not enough.

Oh, and I recently posted reviews at Last Short Story of Eclipse 4, and Subterranean’s Spring and Fall Issues.

And over at Deborah Biancotti’s blog, I contribute to a great series of (super short) guest posts about creative burnout, how to avoid it, and how to deal with it when it hits you smack in the face. I recommend checking out the whole series!

The final posts of my Slapdash Blog Tour of Doom have gone up. Here’s the complete list – and thanks to all the people who volunteered space on their blog for me to chatter away. I was particularly grateful for the various topics I was given to write on – I certainly couldn’t have blogged that much without being so inspired by the topics.

The Shattered City Slapdash Blog Tour of Doom.

Craft, Magic & Women’s Work (Voyager Online)
The Long and Short of It (Intrepid Reader)
Friday Hoyden: Jean Marsh (Hoyden About Town)
There And Back Again, by A Fantasy Author (The Journeyman Writer)
My favourite Creature Court outfits (Egoboo)
Australian Women Writing SF (The Best Audience)
On Getting an Australia Council Grant (K A Bedford)
Why the Creature Court & what Sources Did I Use? (Castle Books)
The Mega Tansypost of Doom (Helen Merrick)
Fandom: The Next Generation (Jo1967)
On Middle Books and Broken Cities (Kate Gordon)
Of Swords and Breakfast (Fablecroft)
Aufleur and Rome (Random Alex)
The Story of Book 2 (Trent Jamieson)
Backstory and the Ties That Bind (Larvatus Prodeo)
My Urban Fantasy is a Little Further Away (Nicole R Murphy)
The Fabric of the Universe (Lauredhel)
Living With a Writer (Bridal Cupcake)
Every Book is a Special Snowflake (Champagne and Socks)
Contemplating Other (People’s) Worlds (Adventures of a Bookonaut)
When is a Vampire Not a Vampire? (AsIF)

I’ve also had some great reviews go up recently of my books, of which two of my favourites are by Jason Nahrung and Stephanie Gunn.

And I’ve been reviewing again over at Last Short Story, with posts on Aussie YA anthology The Wilful Eye and stories from various anthologies & Nightsiders by Sue Isle.

So basically it’s all about me!

2010 was a great year for short fiction – a lot more fantasy and slipstream than SF, especially on Australian shores. Plenty of Aussie authors were getting published, both locally and overseas, and there were a few excellent single author collections from Kaaron Warren, Marianne De Pierres and two from Angela Slatter – though with the exception of Sourdough, they were mostly reprints. It’s certainly nice to see more Australian women having their work collected, something that has been a shameful omission in previous years.

My Absolute Favourite Spec Fic stories by Australian Authors in 2010 were:

Margo Lanagan, “The Miracle Aquilina,” Wings of Fire
Thoraiya Dyer, “Yowie,” Sprawl
Elizabeth Carroll, “The Duke of Vertumn’s Fingerling,” Strange Horizons

Also Highly Recommended:

Peter M Ball, Bleed, Twelfth Planet Press
Peter M Ball, “One Saturday Night, With Angel,” Sprawl
Thoraiya Dyer, “The Company Articles of Edward Teach,” The Company Articles of Edward Teach/The Angalien Apocalypse
Dirk Flinthart, “The Best Dog in the World,” Worlds Next Door
Margo Lanagan, “A Thousand Flowers,” Zombies vs. Unicorns
Garth Nix, “To Hold the Bridge,” Legends of Australian Fantasy
Angela Slatter, “Lost Things,” Sourdough and Other Stories
Angela Slatter, “Lavender & Lychgates,” Sourdough and Other Stories
Angela Slatter, “Under the Mountain,” Sourdough and Other Stories
Angela Slatter & LL Hannett, “The February Dragon,” Scary Kisses
Cat Sparks, “All the Love in the World,” Sprawl
Kim Wilkins, “Crown of Rowan,” Legends of Australian Fantasy

Honourable Mentions:

Peter M Ball, “L’esprit de L’escalier,” Apex
Peter M Ball, “The Clockwork Goat and the Smokestack Magi,” Shimmer
Deborah Biancotti, “Never Going Home,” Sprawl
Simon Brown, “Sweep,” Sprawl
Stephanie Burgis,** “Speaking English,” Belong
Stephanie Campisi, “How to Select a Durian at Footscray Market,” Sprawl
Marianne De Pierres, “Mama Ailon,” Glitter Rose
Paul Haines, “Her Gallant Needs,” Sprawl
Jennifer Moore,** “United,” Belong
Angela Slatter, “The Dead Ones Don’t Hurt You,” The Girl With No Hands
Angela Slatter, “Brisneyland By Night,” Sprawl
Angela Slatter, “The Shadow Tree,” Sourdough & Other Stories
Angela Slatter, “Dibblespin,” Sourdough & Other Stories
Angela Slatter, “The Story of Ink,” Sourdough & Other Stories
Angela Slatter, “The Bones Remember Everything,” Sourdough & Other Stories
Anna Tambour, “Dreadnought Neptune,” Asimov’s
Kaaron Warren, “Hive of Glass,” Baggage
Kaaron Warren, “Sins of the Ancestors,” Dead Sea Fruit
Scott Westerfeld, “Innoculata,” Zombies vs. Unicorns

** not actually Australian authors but published in an Australian anthology.

That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing. I have been trying to work on several short stories at once this month, which is surprisingly effective as compared to just trying to work on one – if one stalls, you move to the next, and so on – but is also a real drain on the creative energy. The thing about short stories is – they are actually just as hard as writing novels, but you can’t let your attention span waver, or get into a comfortable pace. There is no comfort in short stories! They’re constantly asking you questions like “but where is the story going?” and “but what is the THEME?” and “how are we going to wind this sucker up” rather than that nice ‘lalalala now you’ve done all the work at the top end we can just continue on under our own momentum for a few months” feeling you get from novels.

I’m going to be starting a new novel soon. I’m really quite excited about it. My brain is obviously very excited about it because it’s all “hey let’s listen to THIS music,” and “let’s daydream about THIS plot,” without actually acknowledging that there’s about another month’s work still to do on BOOK THREE of the Creature Court.

I am not by any means out of love with the Creature Court. But Book Threes are, it turns out, terribly hard and full of enormous pressures, and I am jumping out of my skin with excitement about the fact that I have a new Book One right around the corner.

Soon. Not yet. Soon.

Raeli is back at school, which is lovely for all of us, even if I do have to remember to pick her up at 2:30 every single day. Jem now has one and a half days of daycare a week, which is a profit to me of several hours.

And oh yes, I’m reading, reading like a maniac, gathering great momentum for Last Short Story, catching up on the kind of novel you read in a day or less, ripping through my library stack, and so on.

None of this is in anyway procrastinatory about that last teeny bit of Book 3 that has to be written. Not at all. My brain wouldn’t have any reason for putting off the task I’ve been longing to get done all year, would it?

Bad, bad brain.

Wives isn’t just a great piece of fiction, it’s an important piece of fiction.

Here is what I said about it in Last Short Story last year:

For me, the brilliance of Paul Haines is that he writes stories I hate, about people I hate (and I don’t mean mild revulsion, I mean actual HATE), and yet I can’t pull my eyes away. “Wives” is his best work to date, an utterly hideous vision of the near future, exploring issues that are already very relevant to many people – the lack of women sticking around in country Australia, the sociological effect of preferring male children to female and, oh yes, the ingrained misogyny that hovers just out of sight in our culture. Haines exposes the ugliest sides of human nature in this epic story of “Bridal Services,” rape and slavery, told through the eyes of a narrator so utterly screwed up by his circumstances that it’s hard to blame him for the despicable, thoughtless way that he speaks, lives and acts. This is post-apocalyptic fiction at its best and worse, because there is no apocalypse. There’s just us.

(in discussion with my fellow LSSers about “Wives,” I said “I don’t know whether I want to nominate it for the Tiptree or BURN IT TO THE GROUND.” Yeah, that. Just that.)

I’d love to see Australian representation in all the categories of the Hugos – Peter M Ball’s Horn alongside “Wives” in the novella category, Kaaron Warren’s Slights as novel, Jonathan Strahan and Alisa Krasnostein as Best Editor (short form), Robert Hood as best fan writer for Undead Backbrain… Peter M Ball for the John W Campbell (Robert Hoge suggested Lezli Robyn for this category too, great idea)… My favourite Margo Lanagan story of the year was “Ferryman” in Firebirds Soaring, though her novella “Sea-Hearts” (in X6, the same antho as the Haines novella) was also excellent. I also loved “Seventeen,” by Cat Sparks, which won the Aurealis for YA short story.

If you’re Australian and want to see some Aussie works on the ballot, or if you’re from overseas and are coming out here for Aussiecon or otherwise eligible to vote for the Hugos (or just you know, interested in what the best Australian spec fic is right now), it would definitely be worth your while to check out some of the above people/works. But, you know. Start with Wives.

I haven’t decided all the novels, short stories and novelettes I want to nominate myself, but there will certainly be some Australian names alongside some internationally brilliant pieces like Kij Johnson’s “Spar,” Holly Black’s “The Coldest Girl in Coldtown,” (available free online), Karen Joy Fowler’s “The Pelican Bar” and Sara Genge’s “As Women Fight.”

For ‘best related book’ I will be nominating: On Joanna Russ by Farah Mendelsohn, The Secret Feminist Cabal by Helen Merrick and The Wiscon Chronicles 3 by Liz Henry.

(meanwhile my honey has recommended both Logicomix and Pluto in the graphic novel section, and I plan to catch up with both of these before the time comes to nominate)

About Aussiecon 4 and nominating: www.aussiecon4.org.au
About the Hugo Awards: www.thehugoawards.org

“Siren Beat” (novelette)
“Prosperine When it Sizzles,” New Ceres Nights (short story)
“Like Us,” Shiny (short story)

And that, because I’ve been a one-publisher woman for short fiction for the last couple of years (aka lazy) completely covers me as far as Hugo eligibility goes.

It would be awesome to see some Australian names on the Hugo ballot this year since there are a lot more of us eligible to nominate than most years – which should at least in theory mean that more people who read Aussie fiction are eligible to nominate! I’m ridiculously excited about getting to nominate, and keep going back as I think of new good ones to put in there.

My favourite Australian-written spec fic stories of the year were:

Paul Haines, “Wives,” x6 (novella)
Margo Lanagan, “Ferryman,” Firebirds Soaring (short story)
Peter M. Ball, “On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War Machines of the Merfolk,” Strange Horizons (short story)

and I also really liked:

Peter M. Ball, Horn, Twelfth Planet Press (novella)
Deborah Biancotti “This Time, Longing,” A Book of Endings (short story)
Thoraiya Dyer, “The Widow’s Seven Candles,” New Ceres Nights (novelette)
Dirk Flinthart, “Debutante,” New Ceres Nights (short story)
Trent Jamieson, “Iron Temple,” x6 (novella)
Margo Lanagan, “Sea-Hearts,” x6 (novella)
Cat Sparks, “Seventeen,” Masques (short story I think?)

Peter M Ball is also eligible for the John W. Campbell Award

You can see my whole list of great short stories published worldwide in 2009 over at Last Short Story, and the combined recommended reading list of all the Last Short Story readers here. If you have some reading to catch up with before you nominate, you might get some good ideas of where to start over at those lists.

What favourite stories of the year, Australian or otherwise, would you like to see on the Hugo ballot?

One of the points Swirsky makes is that a collection can be weakened by extra material. Or, to be perhaps more accurate, a collection can be made stronger by leaving out some of the material. Her belief is that Rambo’s collection would have benefited from containing the twelve stories she considers excellent, and not the other eight stories she sees as less-excellent padding.

This is something that I’ve been harping on about for some time, whenever I can pin people down long enough to listen. There’s a tendency in small press (and not only in small press, it has to be said) to try to offer “value” for money through sheer quantity of words, or number of stories. But the older I get and the higher my reading pile teeters, the less interested I am in books that feel the need to be completionist, to pack in lots of material at the expense of the overall vibe.

I’ve read a lot of anthologies over the course of the last few years, thanks to Last Short Story as well as my own interest in short fiction. Apart from ‘best ofs’ which are another thing again, it’s hard to think of any that couldn’t have been improved by having fewer stories. This is particularly the case of theme anthologies, where 8-10 excellent stories exploring variations on a theme works much better than 20 stories that do the same. Even if the second 10 are *almost* as excellent as the best 10, the theme becomes diluted and well and can easily wear out its welcome.

I love it when publishers big and small go with a small, intense selection rather than an overpadded one. The Twelfth Planet Press books tend to do this. I also like the X6 novella anthology (yes I hear the book is huge, but it’s only 6 actual stories, which is a really good number of stopping and starting points). I’ve also been enjoying several anthos-packaged-for teens which include between three and six long-short stories from very recognisable name authors, and come in as slender volumes.

My opinion on this comes from my own reading experience. I read a *lot* of short fiction. Most of the time I’m not thinking about anthologies or magazines in of themselves, I’m reading the stories almost independently of each other. But when I go back and look at which anthologies or collections left their mark on me – one with 4 brilliant stories and 6 quite good ones is going to stand out far more in my mind than one with 4 brilliant stories, 6 quite good ones, 10 that were mildly interesting to so-so and another 5 I don’t even remember because they were that ordinary.

The most coherent argument I’ve heard against the ‘quality is better than quantity’ theory when it comes to anthologies and collections is that, quite simply, people are more willing to shell out money for the thick books than the thin books. Value or “perceived value” still counts for a lot in the general marketplace.

This is fair enough, I suppose. My privilege is definitely showing in that I receive so many review copies and freebies of the year’s short fiction that I don’t actually need to choose between purchasing one book and another. My limitation is time, rather than money. I already buy more books than I have time to read, never mind the review copies… Those of us who examine the genre critically are a very small group compared to the ordinary readers lining up to buy books – we like to think that our opinion matters more because we also buy a hell of a lot of books, but… publishers have to listen to the majority rather than minority response.

(cough there’s also the possibility that different readers will find a different ‘favourite ten’ out of an anthology of twenty stories, but unless you’re talking reprint anthologies my experience with LSS has shown that while readers might differ on which their favourite couple of stories might be, picking which half they thought was really not worth having in the book at all is usually pretty consistent)

I’m used to the idea that thick fantasy books sell better than thin ones, and that trilogies sell better than standalones, but do people really want that level of ‘value’ from their short fiction collections? Do you prefer a wider range of stories so you’re more likely to find ones that you do like? Do you weigh up the best stories vs. the so-so ones? Does size matter?

And while we’re at it, what collected works of short stories did you love this year, and why?

I have, on occasion, been rather scathing of Best Of lists, shortlists, and collected works which skew towards celebrating the work of male authors over and above the work of female authors. I frequently challenge the idea that “taste” matters in these cases. I do continue to believe that it is a problem when the majority of people who tell us where to find the best fiction of year have “taste” that skews towards the male. Because it ceases to become a matter of personal taste and starts to be a matter of politics when the pattern is so wide, so all-encompassing that it is considered the default.

My cards on the table: I skew towards the celebration of the female. This isn’t a political decision on my part. I don’t set out to ‘see’ the value of women’s art over that of the male. I just do. I was raised by a very feminist single mother who made sure that I was exposed to female artists and themes. I was very aware from a very young age about how this stuff works – how themes preferred by female artists are often treated differently to those preferred by men. I saw my mother and other women at the Art School (especially the very male-oriented Sculpture Department) risk failing grades for making art about motherhood. So there is that political edge there, and it has informed the construction of my personal taste, in that I was never taught to not value women’s art.

When I make a list of stuff I liked, it’s exactly that. Stuff I liked. And generally speaking, when it comes to short stories, I come up roughly 75% stuff I liked by women, and 25% by men. My lists with novels skewer much higher, because unlike short fiction, I often self-select male authors out of the equation. Male writers have to be very, very good and come recommended by people I trust for me to spend time on them. My current tally for 2009 is 12 – 2 non fiction, 4 fiction and 6 anthologies written, edited or co-edited by men. Which sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Though it is out of a total of books read of 108…

I’m okay with my reading choices. I read for several reasons: enjoyment, to increase awareness of what’s going on currently in the fields of literature I’m most interested in (children’s, YA, fantasy, some crime, some SF), to educate myself about the classics, and to find good books to recommend to others. The aspects of my current reading I feel most guilty about lately are: not reading enough classics (particularly those by female authors) and not reading enough “grown up books” (YA tastes so gooood). Not reading enough books by men doesn’t actually bother me at all.

The main reason it doesn’t bother me? I’ve been there, and done that. If my Mum taught me to see women’s art, my Dad taught me to read men’s books. The majority of adult novels I read from ages 10-15 were informed by his personal taste, and while he did introduce me to Sara Paretsky (whom I loved) and Sue Grafton (whom I hated), the majority of authors he slid in my general direction were by male authors. Walter Tevis, Dick Francis, Robert B Parker. Then there was school and college and university, where I had to take specialist ‘women author’ courses to get more than a 60-40 or 80-20 balance of male to female authors. Dickens, Trollope, Hardy. Then there was my fantasy reading, which brought me some amazing (and of course mediocre) work by female authors, but so much moooore by men. Ditto for science fiction, only more so. By the time I found the amazing Women of Wonder compliations by Pamela Sargent, I had already made my way through Asimov’s, Heinlein, Herbert… Et cetera. Many et ceteras.

Women are taught to read men’s books from an early age. We’re told that girls will read books about boys and boys just won’t read books about girls… and we buy into that. Women learn to read the world through male eyes very early on, because so many stories just don’t make sense without at least being able to fake and understanding of that point of view.

I read a lot of books. You may have noticed this. Before I started having babies, I averaged 200 novels a year. Back in my teens I think it was more but the numbers are skewed because of the sheer weight of re-reads. I read everything, across the board, and still found myself with too many books to read. These days I only have 100 or so precious reading slots per year, and most of them are filled with quick-fixes of favourite authors, escapism, and books that just plain make me feel happy that they exist.

I’ve still never read novels by Joanna Russ, Elizabeth Gaskell, Edith Wharton, Anne Bronte, Zora Neale Hurston, Daphne Du Maurier, Vita Sackville-West and Octavia Butler. I have so much catching up to do.

When I do read more evenly across genders, as I do for short fiction (though I do tend to reach for the YA female-heavy anthologies first, and I haven’t been able to bear opening an Analog in two years or more) the numbers bear witness over and over to the fact that, statistically, I prefer works by women. I believe this would be the case even if I had read all those stories without bylines – it’s about content, not the name of the author – though I have no way to prove that’s the case. I’m sure there are occasions when I have given a story a little more time and attention, or a bit more of a chance to prove itself, with a female byline, but for the most part it comes down to content.

I don’t want to get bogged down here in trying to explain the difference of female-authored content vs. male. Obviously women, like men, write such a variety of stories and in such a variety of styles that there is no such thing as ‘women’s fiction’ or ‘men’s fiction’ and I would be in very shaky ground if I tried to define either of those things. You can say stuff like ‘soft science vs hard science’ or ‘emotional vs rational’ but I think any attempt to make definitions like that are just screaming out to be debunked. I’ve seen people analyse such phrases and point out that ‘soft science fiction’ often can be translated as ‘science fiction written by a woman’ and that people are just more likely to notice the people in women’s fiction and the action/plot in men’s because that is what they expect to see. I think there’s a good case for that.

In any case, given my history, when reading for pleasure it makes complete sense to me that, given a choice between two works, of potential equal interest (if there were such a thing, which there is not) I reach for the female authored work first.

And while I don’t deliberately construct ‘best of’ lists that are skewed towards celebrating women, the fact that my lists always turn out that way is a big reason why I continue to read publicly – reviewing books and stories whenever I can, and participating in projects such as Last Short Story. There are so many tastemakers in the world (both male and female) who skew male in their preferences, often without even realising that they do so, and we have a long way to go (we have barely even started) before the balance of power shifts enough that an extra reader-reviewer who skews female would be unnecessary.

Sure, I could work harder to read an exactly even number of men and women, but I don’t feel that’s a necessary or even desirable thing for me to do. You can’t fight an imbalance of power by aiming for middle ground, unless everyone’s doing it. The only way to balance out a seesaw is to have heavy weights at both ends. I don’t consider myself a heavyweight as a reviewer, but despite my annual qualms (am I a hypocrite? if so, am I okay with that?), I remain very comfortable with which end of the seesaw I am sitting on.

For the record: books written or edited by men that I have read this year and loved are The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss, Horn by Peter M Ball, Worldshaker by Richard Harland, My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kruger, Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby, Eclipse 3 by Jonathan Strahan (ed), and Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer. Hopefully after reading this post you realise what a huge compliment that is. When it comes to male-authored books, I am very hard to please.

Despite NaNo commitments and all the Last Short Storying, I managed to read 8 books in the last month, which is only two short of my monthly target.

The three I loved best were Derby Girl by Shauna Cross, Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer and Rampant by Diana Peterfreund (I’ll link to my review of that one when ASif posts it).

I also very much enjoyed Luv Ya Bunches by Lauren Myracle and I’m afraid rather dragged myself through Vacations From Hell, a YA short story collection which was not nearly as diverting as Prom Nights From Hell.

I really liked The It Girl: Adored, one of the Gossip Girl spin off Jenny-Humphrey-goes-to-boarding-school books, though I’ll admit I don’t remember much about it. This is my favourite Gossip Girl series. I also went back to the classics by reading the second of the ‘real’ Gossip Girl books, You Know You Love Me, which is kind of… weird to be reading now, after seeing the series. Alternate history!

Yes, I’m hoping to get to more crunchy books in future months as my post-baby fatigue ebbs away but I do love my YA…

I read The New Space Opera II, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Gardner Dozois, as part of my final round up of stories for LSS (favourite stories recced here) and that totally counts toward my book total even though the 200,000 odd words of Shadow Unit doesn’t… sigh. I enjoyed TNSOII though overall the stories were less exciting/inventive/generally wondrous than in Eclipse 3, also edited by Jonathan, which I did not read this month, but which may well be my anthology of the year… I’ll let you know on Dec 31st!

TNSOII does have the distinction of being the first entire book I read on the iPod, via Stanza, which may well change the way I read in the future. Considering the wealth of e-material we receive for LSS can I just say… YAY! The iPod touch is remarkably easy to read even in a sunny playground, and I love the page turny facility of Stanza even if it does turn docs into random chapters. Also it makes reading while a) breastfeeding, b) babyjoggling, c) big girl cuddling, d) cooking, e) driving (KIDDING) awfully easy.

Finally I have a reason to develop a love affair with Project Gutenberg!

As a final note, Glenda Larke is guest blogging over at Ripping Ozzie Reads, about her experience as a pro writer tackling NaNoWriMo for the first time. Go check it out!