The title from this post is quoted from one of the comments in the threads over at Bitch Magazine – which I think is the best evidence I can give that it’s not all hysteria and piling-on. There’s some marvellous discussion and some really thoughtful posts over there, even if it’s slowly being lost among the noise as more and more people join the conversation.
It’s always disappointing when you’re in the middle of a conversation that to you seems quite robust and interesting, and the people around you suddenly start complaining that it’s too noisy, and asking questions like ‘why is this even important?’ and ‘why are you so angry?’ It reminds me of how many people dismissed RaceFail as a lot of people shouting at each other and getting everything wrong on both sides, and that it hadn’t achieved anything, while the group of people who had been all inspired and had their brains turned inside out and were making exciting plans to make the world better all blinked and went, “Excuse me?”
Conversations, sometimes, are noisy. Especially for those who came in late. So for those of you who did, here are some of the blog responses to the Bitch Magazine Thing.
In short: a magazine recommended some books. A couple of these books raised red flags with commenters – I believe roughly one commenter per book, though we were told there were also some emails. Three books were removed from the recommendation list for not being feminist enough, different reasons each time. And the internet went crazy.
Except it didn’t go that crazy. A lot of things were said, and many of those things were very important. It’s not about censorship, entirely, though that word is being flung around a lot (mostly by people who are saying ‘it’s not actually censorship’). But it is about the misrepresentation of books, about taking a single scene or excerpt and placing a really powerful and negative interpretation on that scene. No books have been banned, and yet, as Maureen Johnson pointed out, this is exactly HOW books get banned. This is the process, and the mindset that lets that happen.
So here we are, typing our brains out, defending books, because that is what we do. If Bitch Magazine had chosen not to recommend a few books that would have been fine, but because they recommended the books and then took that recommendation away, their reasons for doing so take on this huge weight, and it’s distressing to see that people will in fact walk away from the conversation believing that Tender Morsels is a book about rape as revenge (hint: it’s not) and Sisters Red is a book about rape culture (I haven’t read it, though I plan to, but many people have been distressed by this characterisation of the book as there is no rape in it) and Living Dead Girl as “torture porn” (again, I haven’t read it, but several commenters were very upset by this characterisation of the book).
This is a very roundabout way of saying that I have gathered some links of blog posts on the matter by a variety of smart people! It really is worth going back to read the comments on the original Bitch list because there are some marvellous ones – Penni Russon, Paolo Bacigalupi wrote two of my favourites, but there are also some excellent contributions from writers, readers, librarians and rape survivors. On the other hand, they are past 200 posts now and some of them are on the flaily or the ‘what are you all on about’ side, so I understand people choosing to give that a miss. [worth noting for those of you who take a deep breath before reading comments that they allow anonymous commenting and there isn't a lot of moderation going on, though they are trying their best to jump in when threads turn antagonistic or abusive]
Bitch Magazine posted a list of 100 Young Adult Books for the Feminist Reader, which is a great thing, and it’s a fantastic list featuring a lot of really good books, and quite a bit of speculative fiction. The list included Tender Morsels, by Margo Lanagan, which you might recall I think is a really good book. So, hooray!
Except that, in response to a single commenter on their list who objected to the use of “rape as vengeance” in a scene in the book, the people behind the Bitch list reread the book and decided to remove it from the list, along with two others that had received complaints.
Several authors and readers, including Margo herself, have objected to this over Twitter. Some tweets have included:
@margolanagan Can’t quite believe this, but Bitch Magazine appear to have caved in and REMOVED TM from their 100 books list. http://tinyurl.com/4jx2qgd
@maureenjohnson Dear @BitchMedia, please put Tender Morsels back on the feminist YA list. You were right the first time.
@scottwesterfeld My comment on the @BitchMedia 100 Feminist YA Books do-over: http://tinyurl.com/499qdgr
@maureenjohnson Additional to @BitchMedia, please reconsider this position or please remove my book as well. @MargoLanagan is a great feminist author.
@Gwenda By the way, immediate outcry and rally against @BitchMedia’s actions? Just one reason the YA community rocks. #justsaying
@JonathanStrahan Is it just me, or does it sound like no-one at @bitchmedia has read any of the books on their own list?
@ColleenLinday Incredibly disappointed in @BitchMedia for removing both LIVING DEAD GIRL & TENDER MORSELS from this list: http://bit.ly/gbCsgO #growapair
@dianapeterfreund pausing in quest to soothe teething infant to request my novel be removed from @bitchmedia’s “safely feminist”list #bitchplease
@sarahockler: Your job is not to protect us from literature. Help us discover it. Engage us in conversation & debate. #bitchplease #speakloudly
(PS: the hashtag is awesome, guys, until you click it and realise how many people use the same hashtag WITHOUT IRONY. Ick.)
Scott Westerfeld, Maureen Johnson, Justine Larbalestier and Diana Peterfreund have all requested that their books be removed from the list, in protest to the removal of Tender Morsels.
The Twelve Planets are twelve boutique collections by some of Australia’s finest short story writers. Varied across genre and style, each collection will offer four short stories and a unique glimpse into worlds fashioned by some of our favourite storytellers. Each author has taken the brief of 4 stories and up to 40 000 words in their own direction. Some are quartet suites of linked stories. Others are tasters of the range and style of the writer. Each release will bring something unexpected to our subscriber’s mailboxes.
The Twelve Planets will spread over 2011 and 2012, with six books released between February and November each year.
The first three titles will be Nightsiders by Sue Isle (March), Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts (May) and the third collection will be by Lucy Sussex (July).
The Twelve Planets will be available for purchase in several ways:
Single collections will be priced at $20/$23 International each including postage.
A season’s pass will offer the three collections of the season for $50/$65 International including postage and each sent out on release.
Full subscriptions to the series are $180/$215 International including postage and each sent out on release.
More information relating to upgrades, ebooks and distribution will be made available in due course.
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Tansy’s Note: I’ve discussed my collection on Galactic Suburbia before, but not on this blog. I didn’t like to say anything until it was formally announced! But I’m supremely excited to be among such marvellous company in my fellow authors, as well as being very proud of Love and Romanpunk itself – the book that thumbs its nose at my PhD in Classics. It’s a linked suite of four stories set in what I like to call the Agrippinaverse – and to know why I call it that, you’re just going to have to read the book!
We’ll be posting our Best Of The Year lists over at Last Short Story shortly – which means it’s time to put together my Australian list!
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.
This is undoubtedly the YA anthology of the year. The line up of authors is extraordinary, and the stories are consistently good. It helps that it’s a very meme-able anthology concept as well, with authors, editors and readers alike picking a side in the “war” between Team Unicorn and Team Zombie. I was rather pleased coming into this that I didn’t have a side – swinging voters always have more power! But in fact, Team Unicorn and Team Zombie is less about which fantasy creature you love and adore, and more about which one you think is totally uncool.
In essence, Zombies V. Unicorns is an anthology about prejudice. Unicorns and zombies are both fantasy tropes which tend to provoke strong reactions in people – of a yuchhhh variety. Apart from a few notable exceptions, I’ve generally been in Camp Zombies and Unicorns Both Suck, which makes this anthology extra useful as it’s a book for people who thought they hated one, the other or both, which is full of great, vibrant stories designed to make you change your mind.
Having said all that, counting the seven stories I really liked out of the anthology, I have four unicorns to three zombies, and three out of my top four are farting rainbows. Unicorns for the win!
One of the most enjoyable aspects of the anthology is the editorial voices, who bicker and bitch their way through the story notes, and mock each other’s choices. It’s great fun to read, though I was very cranky that one of their amusing interchanges spoiled a twist element from Margo Lanagan’s story. Don’t read the intro note to hers until after the story itself!
My favourites:
Alaya Dawn Johnson’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart” was a gut-wrenching story of fear and love, showing the point of view of a zombie with brains (not the edible kind), and how a functional, intelligent zombie might be very like a serial killer. Icky, powerful stuff, with a strong thread of unrequited love which got under my skin.
Margo Lanagan’s “A Thousand Flowers” looks at the medieval tradition of unicorn stories, and tells a tale of courtly love and a disgraced, pregnant lady through the eyes of three different narrators. It’s a beautifully written piece that unfolds slowly.
Diana Peterfreund’s “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Unicorn” comes from the same world as her novels Rampant and Ascendant, and the story “Errant” which appeared in Kiss Me Deadly. In this, she tells the story of Wen, a girl with unicorn-hunting heritage whose family refused to let her go to be trained properly in Rome, thanks to their religious beliefs. Wen is charged to care for a helpless infant unicorn at a time when her whole town is being terrorised by a larger, deadlier example of the species. Caring for the unicorn means lying to her family and possibly rearing a monster who will turn on her… it’s a powerful, page-turning character story, and I was disappointed when it came to an end.
Meg Cabot’s “Princess Prettypants” makes fun of the kind of unicorn any right-thinking hipster loves to hate – up to and including rainbow-coloured farts! It’s a very cool teen story about friendship and loyalty and bad choices. Those of you who were angry and frustrated at the recent don’t-sext-your-boyfriend-or-we’ll-shame-you ad campaign will enjoy a particular aspect of this story, in which one girl and her unicorn help a friend to get revenge against a badly behaved dude at a party.
I also really enjoyed Naomi Novik’s “Purity Test,” Maureen Johnson’s “Children of the Revolution” and Scott Westerfeld’s “Innoculata.”
Not only do I recommend this book heartily to fans of good YA spec fic, regardless of their opinions of zombies and unicorns, I recommend you buy it in hardcover. It’s not that expensive, and the production is gorgeous.
Day 17 – Favorite story or collection of stories (short stories, novellas, novelettes, etc.)
I think I have to go for Kelly Link’s beautiful stories in the collections Stranger Things Happen and Magic for Beginners, though I have to give a shout out for the recent paperback collection Pretty Monsters, which I bought despite having copies of all the stories inside! No one writes stories like Kelly Link.
I also deeply adore Kim Newman’s Diogenes Club stories, which are collected in two volumes so far.
In my teens the most important anthologies to me were the Sword and Sorceress collections, which showed me that there was a world of fantasy fiction that was all about female characters. I used to lap these up, and discovered many awesome authors thanks to them.
Probably the short story collection which has stayed with me the longest is one called Dragons and Warrior Daughters, which I loved so much I even painted a copy of the dragon from the cover on my bedroom wall. Among other things, it introduced me to Diana Wynne Jones’ fantastic “Dragon Reserve, Home Eight” which I read at exactly the right age for discovering Diana Wynne Jones, and yet didn’t actually discover her until my twenties. Later, reading a collection of her short stories, I was stunned to discover that one was by her.
Black Juice, by Margo Lanagan, is a collection that means a lot to me, not only because I read it for the first time in manuscript form, but because it has some of the most powerful and lyrical stories in it which redefine what fantasy is – and of course it has Singing My Sister Down, which I don’t dare re-read now that I have children. I remember discussing how amazing it was in the group, and being mildly surprised that, while I knew it was brilliant, the other women in the group had such a visceral, horrified “I love it but never want to read it again” response to the text. They were all mothers.
I liked Susannah Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, but didn’t love it. It was so heavily male-centred that it felt empty to be. And then I was drawn to the gorgeous grey cloth-covered hardback of her short story collection, The Ladies of Grace Adieu, and bought it without even thinking about it. The stories in this collection are amazing – beautiful and lyrical, and all contribute to the worldbuilding of her faery-contaminated version of history. It’s a book I would buy multiple copies of, in order to give away as presents.
The short story collection I’m most excited about this year (and it has lots of healthy competition) is Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See and Other Stories, coming out imminently from Small Beer Press.
I promised myself I would get to this one eventually. I had read most of the individual stories before the release of this, Deborah Biancotti’s first short story collection, and I read all of the new stories last year, as I read most original short stories, in electronic form and in a rush, in order to sift out the best ones for Last Short Story blogging.
But that’s the whole point of a short story collection. It doesn’t matter if you’ve read the stories before. They are being presented anew, forming part of something else, and you haven’t actually read it as a collection unless you have sat down and read it, in order, turning all the pages.
I promised myself that one day I would lounge on a couch, with a box of chocolates or a tall jug of iced tea, and spend a whole afternoon taking in this particular book properly, instead of just waving my hands and telling other people to read it. Of course, my life doesn’t work that way. I consumed it in three parts – one part lying on the bed in my library, glaring at the various members of my family attempting to visit me in there and loudly announcing THIS IS MUMMY’S QUIET TIME, one part perched on my couch while the baby ran ever so slightly amok at my feet, and one part in an armchair today, while eyeing the workmen busily digging holes and swapping power poles outside my window.
Each time, despite my surroundings, I dipped into a source of calm while reading these stories. It’s hard to explain, if you haven’t read Deb’s work. She does creepy and weird and murderous and horrific (and someone *really* has to do a study one day on how many excellent Australian writers also do creepy, weird, murderous tales so very well, a Biancotti-Warren-Lanagan triptych anyone?) and very few of her stories make a complete amount of sense if you stare at them too hard (sometimes it’s better to sneak up on them from the side) but the language is so fluid and lovely, the characters regularly grab you by the throat and make you feel their pain/angst/confusion, and the overall reading experience is simply… well. Calming.
The lovely ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
editormum linked me to this poll attempting to determine the top 100 YA novels of all time. They are requesting each participant to vote for their own top 10 of YA books, in order of preference.
On the one hand, these things make me kind of cynical – on the other, lists are good. I love lists, especially the deeply subjective ones. They encourage people to read books, and I do love it when people read books.
So here we go. This was a tricky one. The list I started out with was weighted far more heavily with books I’d read in the last year or two, but then I kept remembering classics from my own childhood, that bounced out the more recent books. I am rather pleased I ended up with 50% Australian authors, too 
I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
This is the queen of floaty old fashioned girls novels for me – I loved Anne Shirley and Laura Ingalls Wilder and Jo March and Katy, but there’s something particularly wonderful and soppy about Cassandra Mortmain, her bohemian family, and the twisting dance of her sister’s (and her own) first romances, that just makes me melt inside. The movie was also weirdly perfect, even though it had Riley from Buffy in it. The casting was so good that it has imprinted now on to my memories of the book.
Howl’s Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones
Choosing which DWJ book to include here was tough, as I could of course fill an entire top 10 with novels by this author. But when it comes to favourite – it’s not about which has the best plot (Archer’s Goon) or the best romance (Fire & Hemlock) or the best magic (Charmed Life) or the best worldbuilding (The Merlin Conspiracy) or the deepest melancholy (Time of the Ghost) – it’s about which one you love best. Howl’s Moving Castle has all the hallmarks of a great DWJ novel – tangled plot, quirky characters, great dialogue, weird magic, bad parents, REALLY complicated plot, sweet romance – but on top of that it has Howl, and Sophie, and Howl’s hair. So it wins.
Tender Morsels, Margo Lanagan
I can never stop talking about this one – it made it to my top 10 standalone fantasy novels too. I can only repeat what I said there: I don’t have an unbiased bone in my body when it comes to this literary retelling of Snow White and Rose Red with added dwarf smut, extra sexy bear men, and deep psychological trauma. I feel it’s one of the most important fantasy novels published in recent years, precisely because of its powerful themes about trauma and recovery from abuse, over-protectiveness, and indeed, the nature of fantasy itself.
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Going Bovine, Libba Bray
A deeply important, epic story of a boy dying of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, who runs away on a crazy, magical adventure to save his own life, and the world. Quite possibly one of the best road trip novels ever, this deserves to be the bible of disaffected & nihilistic teens for at least a generation, and to serve as a snapshot of weird 00s pop culture for every generation that follows.
After yesterday, I’ve been thinking about how many fantasy novels are truly standalone. Girlie Jones declared on Twitter that she doesn’t read fantasy because she’s not interested in waiting for volumes to be written. It’s a fair cop – if the concept of a journey through an elaborate magical world doesn’t grab you from the outset, it’s hard to find a half-decent gateway drug to introduce you to the genre.
Fantasy certainly lends itself to extended series, either of the to-be-continued type or the ‘many standalone novels set in the same world/based around the same character’ type. One of the pleasures of fantasy is the exploration of a world and the ongoing consequences of changes to that world – but that isn’t all that fantasy has to offer and sometimes there is a deep pleasure in a short burst of magical fiction. It’s also a great way to lure a new reader into the genre. I suspect that his many and varied standalone novels are a big part of why Neil Gaiman, for example, has such a broad fanbase.
Standalone novels are, if you are not Neil Gaiman, mostly a luxury for fantasy writers. They turn up at the very beginning of their careers, in many cases, or sidle in from time to time. The accepted wisdom is that standalones simply don’t sell as well as trilogies or series books, even when by the same author.
I wanted to assemble a list of fantasy books I love that are not only standalone, but continue to be so – they don’t share their world or characters with other books. There are no sequels, sideways or direct. @crankynick pointed out on Twitter that I had set myself a hard task because “it’s a rare writer that doesn’t go back to the well if a book takes off.” This is a cynical but let’s face it, not untrue view of how the publishing world works.
By only including pure solo standalone novels in my list, that means I am excluding many great fantasy novels which share a world or character with one or some other of their author’s works, even though they stand perfectly well on their own: such novels as The Hobbit, Valiant, The Curse of Chalion, Anansi Boys. Even Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell can be excluded on these grounds, I think, as The Ladies of Grace Adieu is very much a sequel and companion volume, while not actually a novel. Thanks to Tehani and Nicole I also learned that Threshold, Sara Douglass’ lovely novel of maths, magic and glassworking is now linked to some of her other novels and no longer counts as a standalone in that pure sense. Damn it! There goes another of my best examples.
So: THE LIST (my top 10 super-solo-unsequelled-standalone fantasy novels) presented below…