Yes, I am a diehard Locus Recommended Reading List fangirl. It’s where I got my book recs from before the blogosphere inserted itself into my brain. Which is why it was so exciting for me to appear on there twice – under Collection for Love and Romanpunk, and Short Story for “The Patrician.” Heady stuff! The Collection recommendation is especially exciting, as I’ve never had a whole BOOK recommended by the Locus crew. And it really didn’t hurt to be poring over the list with fellow recommendee Margo Lanagan over our breakfast bowls…

I’m really excited and proud about how much positive response I have got from people about “The Patrician” – it’s a story that felt right when I was writing it, so it’s fantastic to see it mentioned several times in this issue of Locus, by reviewers whose opinions I greatly respect. The book as a whole has gone very well too – Alisa told me this week that she opened the last box of Love and Romanpunk! How exciting is that, for a small press title to be so close to selling out, less than a year after its release?

Jason Nahrung points out all the Aussies on the list. It’s lovely to see such a diverse range of Australian authors mentioned – that is, old favourites as well as new names. And lots of women! I was particularly excited to see Thoraiya Dyer and Jo Anderton on their for their work, so early in their careers – potential Campbell nominees, perhaps? But congratulations to everyone to made it, especially those of you who are friends. Cos, you know. I like my talented friends BEST OF ALL.

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.

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.

Such-heights has written a substantial post looking at how both of the modern Doctor Who showrunners have handled such issues as gender, disability and race – what I like about it especially is that she isn’t trying to make RTD out as a hero at Moffat’s expense or vice versa. Shockingly, she acknowledges the successes and failings of both! Ditto, she looks at how the various female companions have been handled, without an agenda about how much she hates or loves them.

Bitch Magazine has been running a fabulous series of blog posts by Jess McCabe about women in detective fiction, Murder She Blogged. They’re all good, but my favourites are: Detectives in Distress, Class and Fashion in Miss Marple, and the First Female Detectives.

At Tiger Beatdown, What Do You Mean When You Say You Want Strong Female Characters?

Podcast of The Week: Locus presents Karen Burnham and Karen Lord in Conversation. Two intelligent women compare their science backgrounds and discuss, among other things, communication and linguisitcs, Greg Egan, Ursula K Le Guin, the double standards involved in ‘hard’ vs. ‘soft’ SF, & how silly it is to try to write ‘pure’ science fiction without social structures, politics and personality being relevant, because the actual practice of science is hugely influenced by those things.

This vid is for Zeft! And because you can never have too much Joanna Lumley, or Victoria Wood, or in fact just about every working comedian in the UK.

“You can’t talk now, the music has started!”
“But we haven’t finished the scene yet…”
“You’ll soon get used to our ways.”

[does in fact contain many, many spoilers for season one]

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!

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

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.

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!

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  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.