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Tansy Rayner Roberts

Posts Tagged ‘locus’

Spaceships for Growing Girls

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

The new Locus Round Table topic is Fantastic literature for kids, with a particular focus on SF. Karen Burnham, currently at home with her brand new baby, outlines the beginning of the series here.

And the first post is BY ME! I made the science fictional personal by talking about some of the SF I read when I was young, but particularly what robots and spaceships are on my daughters’ bookshelves. Including our favourite Play School modern classic, Jemima To The Rescue:

“A great feminist moment. She rescues the honey. The day is saved because Jemima is a big damn hero who is also good at her job. In space.”

I don’t know who else will be participating, but I’m excited to see their posts this month.

Elsewhere, Sherwood Smith talks about the perception that kids don’t want to read science fiction. I was surprised at the premise as I have seen quite a bit of SF for middle grade around, and from what I hear, publishers are very keen for YA SF to take off as the next big thing. But the discussion & the comments so far are an interesting read.

Friday Links are Too Perfect To Be Believable

Friday, August 12th, 2011

One of the key points of Joanna Russ’ How to Suppress Women’s Writing which really struck a chord with us at Galactic Suburbia was the way that female authors are so often assumed to have written a single book, with the rest of her backlist quietly ignored. (yes, this sometimes happens to male authors too, but not to the same massive degree) Vintage Classics are duly releasing 14 of the novels written by Stella Gibbons, who is famous for writing Cold Comfort Farm. I’d never heard of these, and Westwood has already leaped on to my to read list.

Holly Black has added to the ‘Mary Sue does not mean what you think it means’ discussion with a great post: Ladies, Ladies, Ladies. Her driving point is that a Mary Sue was a character inserted into someone else’s canon, and every time you stick that label on a female protagonist, you’re basically saying that she doesn’t belong in her own story. It’s also horrible how often wish fulfilment is ascribed to female authors (she wants to be her oh so perfect heroine, she wants to shag/marry her amazing hero) because that takes so much away from the perception of her as a writer.

She wrote it, but look what (who) she wrote about.

Ah, Joanna Russ. If only there was a week where quoting you was inappropriate.

Helen Razer at the Age interviews Karen Healey and others about this weekend’s female superhero conference at Monash. Jealous!!

Great post at Feministe about the invisible women at tech conferences, and arguments people make against bothering to include female speakers.

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Galactic Suburbia Episode 23 Show Notes

Thursday, January 6th, 2011

There’s a new episode up! Grab it from iTunes, from direct download, or stream it on the site.

EPISODE 23

In which we greet a brand new year with discussion about digital media, awards, books, feminism, feedback, more books, anti-heroes, gender roles and take a look at what to look forward to in 2011.


News

Follow up on the Jewish fantasy discussion by Rachel Swirsky

Locus to go digital with issue #600

Launch of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, new critical zine with focus on women’s work

The i09 Power List: 20 people who rocked SF & Fantasy in 2010

Carl Brandon Awards: Hiromi Goto and Justine Larbalestier

Hugo nominations open – last year’s members of Aussiecon 4, don’t forget you’re eligible to nominate!

Feedback: Kaia, Kathryn & Thoraiya

What Culture Have we Consumed?
[AND what culture are we most looking forward to consuming in 2011?]

Alisa: Fringe Season 3, Dexter Season 4, Being Erica (ep 1), Nurse Jackie, How I Met Your Mother, reading Managing Death
Looking forward to: LSS 2011

Alex: Zombies vs Unicorns, ed. Larbalestier and Black; Factotum, book 3 of Monster Blood Tattoo, by DM Cornish; Dervish House, Ian McDonald; The Killing Thing, Kate Wilhelm; Surface Detail, Iain M Banks.
Looking forward to: Blue Remembered Earth (probably), by Alastair Reynolds; books 2&3 of The Creature Court, Tansy Rayner Roberts; the 2011 Women in SF Book Club; Bold as Love sequence (Gwyneth Jones); Twelve Planets (from Twelfth Planet Press).

Tansy: Wiped, Richard Molesworth; The Doctor Who Christmas Special! The Gene Thieves & the Norma, Ascendant, Diana Peterfreund, Big Finish Podcast
Looking forward to: Doctor Who and Fringe (SHOCK, I know), Sherlock, Torchwood, The Demon’s Surrender by Sarah Rees Brennan, Burn Bright by M. de Pierres.

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 Year Starts Here

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

It’s the last day of my honey’s holidays, which means the last day of having a second parent at home to help with the girls. I’m on my own for the rest of the school holidays! (apart from, you know, grandparently help, baby daycare, and weekends)

I’ve been slugging away at my page proofs, which are due back on the 10th – not quite as bad as some of my writerly peeps who have Jan 4th deadlines! I feel for you, my darlings. One of those secrets about the publishing industry you probably wouldn’t think about unless you are on the inside is that editors clear their desks before Christmas by sending edits and proofs to writers, which means if you’re working under contract, you’re probably working over the holidays!

Still, ‘under contract’ is totally not old yet, so no complaining here :D

I just finished reading the January issue of Locus as a digital epub on the family iPad – it’s brilliant! After years of sadly reading 1-2 month old news and updates in the magazine, it feels a lot more current. It took us (which is to say, my honey) some squiggling around to figure out the best ways to download, transfer and set up the file, but now we have it sorted and it’s SO NICE to read.

I’ve been subscribing to Locus for years now, even with the postal time delay, (much of the news like books sold was stuff I wouldn’t read anywhere else anyway) and with the proliferation of news blogs and the like, there really is nothing to match it for explaining the industry we work in. Only recently, I psyched myself up to turf out a decade or so of the magazines, to clear out space, and have been trying to throw them out as I read them, but it’s a wrench each time.

I’m really impressed that the Locus crew were smart enough to offer the digital download free to international print subscribers – as well as getting our news earlier (and can if we choose save the more substantial articles and reviews to read later when the print version arrives) it’s a fantastic way to audition the format, and make the choice as to whether we go fully digital when the subscription is due.

Subscribing to Locus is a pretty major expense for those outside the US – it’s something I try to do when I get in a big writing cheque, so I don’t notice it (often subscribing for two years in those instances) – and I’ve tried to quit it in the past only to resubscribe in a panic. I’m sure there are plenty of Australians who have balked at the expense – however worthy a magazine it is (and it really is), it’s a major investment and international postage is only getting more and more expensive…

I am a little askance at subscribers only getting a month (later 2 weeks) to download the issue, as I would have thought one of the benefits of being a subscriber would be getting a chance to re-download past issues that you ‘own’ – if you accidentally delete it, or need it for a different platform, for instance. I think letting past issues disappear is a bit of a holdover from print publication – one of the things I love about buying audios directly from Big Finish rather than getting a slightly cheaper price somewhere like Book Depository is that I often get the digital version too, on an electronic bookshelf, and can get hold of it again.

But, hey, that’s a minor niggle compared to the glory that is Digital Locus – I may have to wrestle with my own nostalgia about tiny print and red bordered covers, but this might finally be the thing which weans me off the paper subscription. I suspect quite a few Aussies will be following me, and many more might take the plunge now that postage is out of the equation.

More Locus Recommended Reading List

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

In all this excitement about being on it for the first time ever, I forgot to add, I used to play a game with the Locus Recommended Reading List. In the early noughties, I would make my own copy of the list and then go through, highlighting and counting how many I had read. (it would usually be a small number, low teens including short fic) Then, over the next year, I would work my way through, trying to read as many items off the list as possible. The delay helped accessibility, as often books would appear in my library the year after they had been released in the US. I discovered many new favourite writers this way, and found others that – really, I just didn’t want to read ever again.

Eventually, the more I read blogs, the more I started reading books I wanted to read before they came out, and getting my recommendations that way. The game changed, and became: how many have I read when the list comes out? rather than using it as a reading guide for the year. I eventually discovered that I had a better hit rate from reading books by bloggers I liked, and those recced by said bloggers.

Writing reviews for ASiF and for my own blog, and reading so much short fiction for Last Short Story, I became my own gatekeeper, and worked on filtering the good stuff for others, rather than reading purely for myself.

Looking at my old docs, I haven’t played the Locus Recommended Reading List game for some time. So out of curiosity, I did some counting…

I have read 71 items from the list. Of which, 13 are books and 58 are shorts. I also have 4 books on my To Read shelf, or part-read, which I didn’t count. Also I may not have a completely accurate count on the short stories, because I do often blank out stories I have read if I didn’t like them much.

Still. Not bad at all, really. I like this game!

Locus Recommended Reading List

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

is here.

I am on it, under Novelette, for Siren Beat. This makes me happy. One of those major career goals ticked off the list, then.

Other people I like are on there too. I am happy for them. Especially for Alisa of Twelfth Planet Press (aka [info] girliejones who has worked so hard to bring Australian authors to an international audience.

I have been a tragic Locus Recommended Reading List fangirl for many years. Among other authors, it is responsible for me discovering the works of Kage Baker, Dan Simmons, Lucius Shepherd, Gwyneth Jones, Michael Chabon, Karen Joy Fowler, Ian R MacLeod, Cornelia Funke, Jeff VanderMeer, Charles Stross, Sean Stewart, Jennifer Stevenson, Leslie What, Holly Black and Kelly Link.

I am quite stupidly pleased with myself right now. That is all. Carry on.

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