Today I spent a very pleasant hour chatting to Helen Merrick (esteemed author of The Secret Feminist Cabal and 50% of the much-missed-and-anticipated-to-return podcast The PanGalactic Interwebs) in an interview-lecture on the topic of author blogging for a creative writing course at Curtin University.

Definitely the most fun lecture of my academic career, and a big wave hello to any Curtin creative writing students who have followed me over here!

I had planned out in my head a discussion about different authors and the choices they make as to content, boundaries, etc. and hadn’t realised until just before the interview that in fact Helen wanted a far more direct approach, the subject being ME. So we had a lovely hour pretty much analysing and dissecting my relationship with my blog, the choices that I make, and my views on social media. It was a delicious, crunchy conversation and I am very sorry that I can’t share it with all of you! Except those of you who are taking creative writing at Curtin University, of course.

It did have the effect of making me look back on my blogging history – I hadn’t really taken in until saying it out loud how much my bloggery is tied to my parenthood. But I remember checking the overview of my LJ history and discovering that I signed up for my journal on the day I brought Raeli home from hospital as a baby. I had spent that last month before she was born on the couch, bonding with my first laptop (it was January and I was very pregnant, it was what I did instead of nesting!) and reading blogs. So I signed up for LJ in my sleep deprived haze, and started actually writing in it a few months later.

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

EPISODE 25

In which we hit and run the Locus Recommended Reading List, tackle e-books and piracy, and delve into the knotty issue of religion in science fiction.

News
Locus Recommended Reading List – hot off the press!

Philip K Dick shortlist

First annual Geek Girl Con in Seattle – would this work in Australia?

Cloud-delivered ebooks from Readings/SPUNC
Response to comments on the internet about the Cloud Publishing

“we proudly declare that we stream your ebooks — you don’t have to download them. You can of course download your Booki.sh books for offline access on most devices — you just can’t read them in anything other than Booki.sh.”

SPUNC Response: “Digital publishing presents us with a massive opportunity that has heretofore been unavailable. Namely this: that a publisher can have a book distributed wherever they want, at the click of a button”.

Discussion of ebook piracy
As Jim Hines found out the world is not the USA and the rest of the world does not experience publishing nor this ebook revolution apace with the USA. (Hines’ original post)
Charles Tan presenting the perspective from Elsewhere In the World
Karen Healey: I was wrong and I’m sorry

Weird Tales revamp
Launching new website; editor-in-chief Ann VanderMeer and publisher John Betancourt have raised the pay rate to 5 cents per word; and implemented a new submissions portal for potential contributors. In addition to the announcement late last year of the all female editorial team, for the first time in 88 years of Ann VanderMeer, Paula Guran and Mary Robinette Kowal.

Feedback
Sean, Thoraiya, Niall

Pet Subject
The place of religion in science fiction.
Modern religions, made up religions, machine religions… or no religions? What place can/does/should religion play in sf?
Jo Walton on religion in SF!

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!

Random Alex and I joined Jonathan Strahan for an Australia Day podcast on Wednesday. We discussed the nature of Australian identity, the discomfort of patriotism and colonial guilt, the relationship of people to landscape, cultural cringe and trying to overcome decades of assumption that Everything British is Better, and managed somehow to tie all of that into speculative fiction, and the concept of an Australian literary voice. We talked about how some parts of the genre more easily/comfortably convey their Australian origins (deep space opera, for example, or otherworld fantasy) but managed to come up with some examples that did. We also got a bit squeeful about some upcoming Australian spec fic for 2011. Probably left lots out (I even forgot about my books until Alex mentioned them, duh!) but we did our best.

One thing that really interested me was that we all had childhoods where we felt isolated from the rest of Australia – one in Perth, one in Darwin, one in Hobart. It’s an oddity about Australia that there are so many overlapping ‘us and them’ attitudes to geography. No wonder it’s hard to pin down the Australian Voice!

Mostly, of course, we just talked! If you enjoy Galactic Suburbia you might enjoy giving it a listen.

Malinda Lo, author of Ash and Huntress, talks here about the lack of diversity in YA book covers. She puts forward quite a moderate view, but some very eye opening points about books in general. I was fascinated to hear that the lesbian aspect of the storyline of Ash was entirely invisible on the UK cover, and that this invisibility may have improved her sales, when that was what I perceived as the main selling point. It was certainly why I picked up the book. Lesbian Cinderella retelling!

Sarah Rees Brennan writes marvellously about the limitations some books put on their awesomeness, and how more modern attitudes towards sexuality, disability, race, etc. can reduce those limitations. I always enjoy what Sarah has to say, and she often conceals quite devastating cleverness behind banter and mockery. In particular, I’ve appreciated her regular discussion on Twitter about the comments she receives/hears about her characters, and how gendered that can be – where male characters are adored for their perfections and imperfections quite equally, and female characters are often despised for both. It’s particularly indicative when she compares the comments she receives about the sexual/romantic attitudes of her male and female protagonists (so far in her published novels she has one of each) and how hard readers find it to forgive a girl hero who kisses more than one boy.

Finally, a comprehensive post on the biggest mistakes authors make when querying agents.

New Episode now available for streaming, direct download or from iTunes!

In which we have run out of our supply of feminist ire for 2010 and are reduced to being happy bunnies with rainbows and vanilla sprinkles. Also, we discuss re-reading, re-watching, and our (apparently unhealthy) emotional attachment to beloved books. With zombies.

News

Black Quill Nominations

Best of 2010 Tables of Contents, Rich Horton & Jonathan Strahan
[Niall Harrison tweeted about online percentage, 14/29 stories in Strahan - and 16/28 in Horton. Last year JS had 4/29 and Rich had 7/30]

Torque Control’s Week of Women & SF

http://vectoreditors.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/i-declare-this-focus-week-open/

http://vectoreditors.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/the-2010-contenders-2/

Swancon Invited guests announced

Pet Subject
On re-reading.
Did you re-read books as a teen? Do you re-read now, or would you if you had the time and the publishing industry stopped for a year (or three)? Why/not…
(on re-reading The Belgariad: http://randomalex.net/?s=belgariad)

What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alisa – Fringe Season 1 and half of Season 2
Tansy – Feed, by Mira Grant, The Five Doctors easter egg commentary (http://tansyrr.com/tansywp/the-women-of-the-five-doctors/)
Alex – The Quantum Thief (Hannu Rajaniemi), Zima Blue (Alastair Reynolds)

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 now available for streaming, direct download or from iTunes!

In which we work, play, shake up our format a little (gasp!) and cover the life & death of magazines, the changing face of the industry, respect for non fiction, sexual harassment, rants, reboots and as usual, books, books and more books. Also a few sneaky clues about what Twelfth Planet Press is publishing next year!

News

Realms of Fantasy is back, again…

Escape Pod Expands:
“We have been pushing to expand what Escape Pod does, adding an SF blog and distributing our stories via magazine format. We’re also becoming a pro market, and hope to keep paying our authors pro rates well into 2011 if the donations make it possible.”

Cheryl Morgan talks about paying for reviews as semipro

On the Cooks Source scandal and seeing stuff on the internet as ‘public domain’

Jim C Hines on reporting sexual harassment in SF/F

Old men complaining? When you get older, do you by consequence lose your sense of wonder? Just simply because you’ve read everything? And is/should all SF be aimed/written for the 60 year old man?
Jason Sanford responds

New Buffy Reboot

New Friend of the Podcast: The Writer & the Critic (Mondy & Kirstyn)

Rambly Discussion
Books that aren’t marketed as being a part of a series…
Publishing, deadlines, and attitudes thereto…
Chat, rants and backpedalling…

What Culture have we Consumed?
Alex: Blameless, Gail Carriger; The Devil in Mr Pussy, Paul Haines; Women of Other Worlds, ed. Helen Merrick and Tess Williams; Bold as Love, Gwyneth Jones; Day of the Triffids (2009 BBC production)
Alisa: works too hard, and also FRINGE
Tansy: To Write Like a Woman, Joanna Russ; Marianne, the Magus & the Manticore by Sheri S Tepper; Sourdough & Other Stories, Angela Slatter; China Mountain Zhang, Maureen McHugh, Mists of Avalon movie

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs, check out Galactic Suburbia on Facebook and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!

It’s been oddly productive around here, for a Saturday. Usually Saturdays are a mad haze of parenting, unrealistic expectations about work goals, a bit of hasty housework and occasionally managing to snatch a chapter or two of reading by flinging the children at my honey and locking myself in the library. Usually there’s guilt, either for not spending enough time with the girls, or for getting cranky with the girls after spending too MUCH time with them, or for not getting anything done, or for the house looking like a circus threw up on it.

But today I manage to hang out with the girls all morning (including a cranky teething baby), threw together a delicious lunch for me & my honey (leftover potato & cauliflower soup goes VERY WELL with added chorizo & bacon, served with hot cheesy muffins), put out some laundry, finished reading my 100th book for the year (a Joanna Russ, which seems appropriate), did a last minute podcast with Jonathan Strahan, got to the two-thirds mark of my copy edits, and played outside with the kids. I got to see Jem on a bike for the first time!

All this, and my honey is cooking dinner. Awesome!

Elsewhere in the world, Mary Robinette Kowal talks about how amateur writers should be given the same respect as hobbyists in other fields. I still can’t get over that Shades of Milk and Honey is a Nano novel! I had been meaning to lend it to  godiyeva already, but once I learned that, I practically forced it upon her, for inspiration.

John Scalzi puts his weight behind Nano being awesome rather than a waste of everyone’s time – I particularly enjoyed the comments on that one!

Ekaterina Sedia makes a great post about what you can say when men who don’t feel they’re sufficiently benefiting from the patriarchy derail a feminist conversation to talk about themselves.

Finally, some Bujoldy goodness. On Tor.com the very learned and well-read Jo Walton analyses the appeal of Aral Vorkosigan (lotsa spoilers) while on i09, Charlie Jane Anders asks whether Bujold writes “hard” science fiction, leading to many tangled comments as everyone tries to define what hard SF is. Sigh. At some point I am going to write my hard SF post. I think my philosophy comes down to “if Bujold isn’t it, and one of the best examples of it, then I don’t understand what it’s for.” Possibly I shouldn’t write that post.

New episode is up on iTunes! You can also download it directly, or stream it from our Galactic Suburbia site.

While Alisa is away, Alex & Tansy play… in ANCIENT GREECE! We talk awards, the end of publishing as we know it, stressful feminist debates, Vonda McIntyre, Twitter fiction, Stargate, and whether there’s enough Greek & Roman mythology in modern fantasy.

News
Tansy wins WSFA Small Press Award for Siren Beat

Last Drink Bird Head Award Winners

John Joseph Adams takes over from Cat Rambo & Sean Wallace as editor of Fantasy Magazine

Realms of Fantasy dies – farewell notes from the publisher and editor Shawna McCarthy

Wiscon committee disappoints through inaction…
and then finally moves to disinvite Elizabeth Moon as GoH
(warning, many of the comments on that one are pretty awful to wade through)
Reaction posts from Cheryl Morgan and Catherynne M Valente.

Paul Collins on how the ebook revolution isn’t working so well

Cat Valente on tedium, evil, and why the term ‘PC’ is only used these days to hurt and silence
Peter M Ball on how white male privilege uses requests for civility to silence the legitimate anger of others.

on Vonda McIntyre’s “Dreamsnake”, a controversial Hugo winning novel from 1979 which has been out of print for 10 years and an interview with Vonda McIntyre about the book.

What have we been reading/listening to?

Tansy – Death Most Definite, Trent Jamieson; Blameless, Gail Carriger, Bleed by Peter M Ball, “Twittering the Universe” by Mari Ness, Shine & “Clockwork Fairies” by Cat Rambo, Tor.com.

Alex – Silver Screen, Justina Robson; Sprawl; Deep Navigation, Alastair Reynolds; The Beginning Place, Ursula le Guin.
abandoned Gwyneth Jones’ Escape Plans
listening to The 5th Race, ep 1 (Stargate SG1 fan podcast).

Pet Subject
Classical mythology in modern fantasy. Can it still work? Do you have to get it ‘right’?

Book mentioned:
The Firebrand, Marion Zimmer Bradley
Medea, Cassandra, Electra by Kerry Greenwood
Olympic Games, Leslie What
Dan Simmons’ Ilium and Olympos
Gods Behaving Badly, Marie Phillips
Troy, Simon Brown
Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad and Jeanette Winterson’s Weight, also David Malouf’s Ransom – along the same lines as Lavinia by Ursula Le Guin
Robert Holdstock’s Celtika, Iron Grail, Broken Kings

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs or on Facebook, and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes!

New episode is up on iTunes!
UPDATE: New episode is also up for download, streaming

in which we discuss translated awards, constructive feminist discourse on the internet, make a special Swancon announcement, and dissect our complex relationship with the horror genre.

News
Geffen Awards (Israel)

Torque Control discussion on women & the Clarke & the dire state of women in British SF, with list of all British releases of SF or SFnal books by women in 2010.

inspired by interview with Tricia Sullivan

Torque Control announces they will be blogging about 2010 British SF releases by women in December and ask for readers to join them. Also call for contributions of top 10 female authored SF books in the last decade for a theoretical “future classics’ list.

Super Special Swancon Announcement!

What have we been reading/listening to?
TANSY: The Wiscon Chronicles IV edited by Sylvia Kelso
Azu Manga Daioh by Kiyohiko Azuma; Asimovs & F&SF, Salon Futura
ALISA: secret projects & another Book I Am Not Reading

Pet Subject: while Alex is away, let’s talk about HORROR
- we’re both pretty selective about the horror/dark fiction we read. What does it have to do to catch our eye?
- favourite horror/dark writers
- where do we draw the line on what we like/can appreciate in horror?
- does our feminism get in the way of reading/enjoying horror fiction?

Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs and on Facebook! and don’t forget to leave a review on iTunes!

Our special spoilerific book club episode of Galactic Suburbia is available for streaming, download and at iTunes! We separated this from our other episodes so that people who haven’t read the featured novel – Liar by Justine Larbalestier – could easily skip it.

SHOW NOTES:

Consider yourself warned. This is an incredibly spoilery discussion of LIAR by Justine Larbalestier. It’s not a little bit spoilery. It’s a LOT spoilery. And if you don’t believe us that this is the kind of book that you really truly don’t want to be spoiled for, consider the facts:
1) We invented the Galactic Spoilerific Book Club purely to discuss this book
2) We actually feel a bit uncomfortable even mentioning how much you don’t want to be spoiled for this book, because that in itself might mess with your reading experience
3) You trust us, right?
If on the other hand you have read LIAR by Justine Larbalestier, come on by and listen to us flap our hands as we try to articulate just what’s going on in this book.

Also, stretching back into the mists of time before Galactic Suburbia existed (hard to imagine, I know) check out Alex, Alisa and Tansy podcasting back in 2008 with our friend Kathryn, on the (then) entire bibliography of works by Justine. Yes, it’s a Larbalestpalooza!

New episode is up for download, streaming or on iTunes.

In which we talk about awesome women, excellent short stories, and make Alisa throw away a book! Our pet topic is film-to-book, book-to-film and why you’d want to move a story from format to format.

News
The Winners of the British Fantasy Awards 2010

FemSpec: announcement of new feminist press

365 Days of Women Writers blog

New podcast: Helen Merrick and Tama Leaver

What have we been reading/listening to?
Tansy: Diana Comet, Zombies v. Unicorns
Alisa: Watching: Moon. Listening: Bad Film Diaries (discussion on “identify”) also first ep of Pangalactic Interwebs. Embargoed Reading sigh. For Aurealis Awards and TPP 2011 Toss out for the week: Succubus in the City
Alex: Subterranean (spring and summer), Is Anybody out There? (ed. Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern), Glitter Rose, Marianne de Pierres.

Pet Subject: book –> film –> book
- why make films of books?
- what makes a good film adaptation?
- conversely, why make books of films, why do they get less attention, can they be as good as the film?

Please send feedback to galacticsuburbia@gmail.com