Pretty sure everyone on the internet has seen the latest feminist post by Jim C Hines, this time with him putting his male body through the bizarre poses displayed by women on various fantasy covers. Needless to say, he hurt himself in the attempt.

Malinda Lo riffs off a Kate Elliott post, talking about being a woman writer and still having to actively check your manuscripts to make sure the female characters are not being screwed over. I do this too! Did I accidentally kill off all the women in my book? Oh, crap. Rewrite!

NK Jemisin talks about why her editor, Devi Pillai of Orbit Books, should be considered for the Hugo race – she had me at ‘Paradol Protectorate’!

A lovely article about cosplaying the TARDIS, bringing steampunk into her design, and just how female the TARDIS is anyway. The cosplay/crossplay phenomenon as a feminist statement is something I never fail to find interesting, and the fannish craft evident in this post is awesome. I say this as someone who is planning to make two birthday cakes next week – a TARDIS and a Time Vortex.

Speaking of which, 3D TARDIS cookies are the best use I can think of for 3D printers…

The Guardian looks at the outpourings of mancrush inspired by the return of Thierry Henry to the Arsenal and questions why football is so institutionally anti-gay when, quite frankly, even the straightest of fannish football blokes are set all aflutter by certain men in certain shorts, scoring certain goals. It’s actually a slightly more serious article than I suggest here, and worth reading.

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A little one today because, funnily enough, many people have been a bit too busy to blog much this week, and most of the best blog posts I’ve read have been of the ‘summing up the year’ variety that are only worth reading if you follow that blog regularly.

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.

A new Galactic Suburbia episode freshly baked and ready for your consumption! Wow, we’re getting close to having 50 of these…

In which we bid farewell to the queen of dragons, squee about 48 years of Doctor Who, dissect the negative associations with “girly” fandoms such as Twilight, and find some new favourites in our reading pile.

News

RIP Anne McCaffrey
i09 obituary
Charles Tan rounds up a bunch of tributes

48th anniversary of Doctor Who!
Tansy says it with pictures

Weirdfictionreview.com – a website devoted to The Weird and created by Luis Rodrigues. The project is the brainchild of editing-writing team Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Critiquing the Bigotry of Twilight-haters, not the same thing as defending Twilight
Original article
Sarah Rees Brennan
Holly Black

Announcing the Galactic Suburbia Award – we don’t know what it is yet either but we’re figuring it out! Send emails/tweets to make suggestions.

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alex: The Steel Remains, Richard Morgan; Alastair Reynolds, Blue Remembered Earth; “The Glass Gear” in Valente’s Omikuji Project; also watched Thor.

Tansy: Batman (1989); All Men of Genius, Lev A.C. Rosen; God’s War, Kameron Hurley. Comics: Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman (abandoned); Batgirl the Greatest Stories Ever Told

Alisa: Once Upon a Time; The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood

Note: the post we discuss which looks at the believability of the war in God’s War by Kameron Hurley was in fact not written by Cheryl Morgan, but by Farah Mendlesohn. Which explains why I wasn’t able to find it on Google last night. Thanks to Cheryl for correcting my confusion and my apologies to Farah. (quietly headdesks to self)

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!

Kathleen Jennings’ excellent Dalek game continues apace, and she recently produced a new favourite for me – daleks rocking the romanpunk with an I, Claudius parody.

An eye-opening post about the kind of hardcore harassment experienced by women in tech industries, and those who blog about geek feminism.

Colleen Mondor at Chasing Ray calls bullshit about the troubling behaviour of Amazon as they launch their new publishing imprints, and how the spin that publishers are “running scared” of Amazon’s attempt at a publishing monopoly serve to underplay some of the important author rights that are being eroded, and deliberately left out of the equation.

Sarah Rees Brennan goes Gothic, and talks about how she stopped worrying and learned to love the spooky houses, plucky protagonists and turns her inimitable parody summary style on Gothic classic novel The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe.

YOUR BOYFRIEND: is tall, dark, sinister, looming, maybe trying to kill you, definitely has secrets
YOUR BOYFRIEND: is a house, which is just another of many problems in your relationship

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The voice of 80′s cartoon Jem muses on the show, and how those wacky Misfits might have turned out.

Yes, I’ll admit it, I was a huge Jem and the Holograms fan. It may have been the first cartoon I took to my heart – well, that and Battle of the Planets, and Astro Boy and Mysterious Cities of Gold, and, and, and…

I don’t know how anyone could possibly read this Big Idea post by Kate Elliott and not want to read her new series! Luckily for me I have Book One, Cold Magic on my to read shelf already! I also love the description of how she worldbuilt with her kids.

“Which is how I ended up with an Afro-Celtic post-Roman icepunk Regency fantasy adventure with airships, Phoenician spies, and the intelligent descendants of troodons.”

Seanan Maguire adds a marvellous post to the old ‘Mary Sue does not mean what you think it means’ discussion. It’s articulate, funny and conveys its message (that by its definition, a protagonist can’t be a Mary Sue) perfectly. Which is why I was frustrated to see the comments fill up with people who agreed with her heartily but still felt the need to claim that [insert female protagonist here] was a classic Mary Sue. Sigh.

Sarah Rees Brennan talks about being self conscious and how that can affect an author’s ability to blog, or indeed do much of anything in a public space without overthinking it.

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Tor.com tells you why you should be watching Fringe in a very non-spoilery-for-the-last-three-seasons way. Alisa and I discussed Olivia and her FBI competence in the recent Galactic Suburbia episode.

Sarah Rees Brennan follows up the #YesGayYA story with a discussion of the Circle of Suck that can happen with the portrayal of minority or diversity issues in fiction, and the various roadblocks to publication.

Paula Guran wrote a moving post about leaving Weird Tales, and posted a link to a fabulous article she wrote about Margaret Brundage, and how sexy artwork of women isn’t necessarily an unfeminist thing. I love Brundage’s pastel women, and really enjoyed the article.

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This one’s for Jonathan, Gary & Mondy, who have been speculating a lot lately about what are the best books published in 2011 so far, that they should be paying attention to.

These are mine. It’s entirely personal, of course, and based what I’ve actually read (as opposed to the towering To Read pile that will one day cause me major injury) but given that I haven’t done nearly enough this year of reviewing the books I love, I think it’s worth doing.

ADULT FICTION

Jo Walton
Among Others

A wonderful, wonderful book about the reading habits of young girls, with subtle magic and a fabulous theme of iconic SF books. At some point I hope I will write that essay I want to, about my lifelong relationship with Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin and how that book trained me to get the most out of this one despite the fact that I’ve never read Delaney, Zelazny or more than two novels by Heinlein.

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New episode up on iTunes! Grab it from iTunes, by direct download or stream it on the site.

EPISODE 39

In which we defend Mary Sues everywhere, point at superheroes with their pants down, plan a Hugo Twitterparti and reveal which of the three of us is secretly a hardcore horror fan. But most importantly, Alex is watching Blake’s 7 completely unspoiled and she loves Avon the best, hooray!

News

The Mary Sue Conversation:
Zoe Marriott
Sarah Rees Brennan
Holly Black
Elizabeth Bear
“Sometimes a book is about a female character because there are female people in the world.”

What if Male Superheroes posed like Wonder Woman?
Gender Bent Justice League
Bonus, superheroes without pants (except Wonder Woman):

Cat Valente steps down from Apex Magazine as fiction editor, Lynne M Thomas steps up.

Alex wants to be in Reno.
Watch the Hugos!
Join @GalacticSuburbs in whatever the right time zone is and Twitterparti the Hugos with us!

What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alisa – The Hunger Games, Life on Mars UK, The Women’s Hour Podcast, Doctor Who
Tansy - Lords & Ladies, Terry Pratchett; Love Songs for the Shy and Cynical, Rob Shearman; Rob on the Big Finish Podcast, Xena & the mystical pregnancy
Alex - Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi; Blake’s 7; Across the Universe, Beth Revis.

Featured Feedback:

Grant Watson (as well as our producer) pointed out to Tansy that Jason Todd died in “A Death in the Family” and not “The Killing Joke.” She is very sorry.

Kirstyn McDermott took us to task over our dismissive attitude to horror, and we decided to address her concerns and chew over our complicated relationship with the darker side of spec fic.

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 up! Grab it from iTunes, by direct download or stream it on the site.

In which we discuss the SF Gateway and some great additions to the Women in SF conversation, Alex eats all the Bujold in one bite, and Alisa’s puppy does his very best to oppress us.

News
The Locus Awards
Prometheus Award winners
Sturgeon and Campbell Awards
Shirley Jackson Awards

Recent announcement – Gollancz announces the SF Gateway, huge project to digitise & make available thousands of SF classics as ebooks.

Linda Nagata on ‘What’s in a Name’ and her career trajectory as a female writer of hard SF
Chris Moriarty on labels in the women & SF conversation
Women and the chilly climate at Scientific American

Liz Williams at the Guardian on the way science fiction reflects human belief

Alastair Reynolds to write Doctor Who novel: Tansy and Alex’s obsessions in one package!

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: Maureen Johnson on www.whyy.org/podcast; Twin Peaks; Mercy (not genre but interesting feminism);
Alex: sooo much Bujold (3rd, 4th and 5th omnibi, and Memory); lots of books, because of holidays! But particularly Heartless, Gail Carriger; Blackout, Connie Willis; Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, NK Jemisin… also Harry Potter 7 and Transformers 3.
Tansy: The Demon’s Surrender, The Holy Terror & Robophobia (Big Finish), Subterranean’s YA Issue

Pet Subject: Feedback from our Joanna Russ episode

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!

On Saturday, I read a book. I read, and read. I begged my daughter to let me read instead of being Mission Control to her game of Super Sisters, I did the occasional household chore and then ran back to my book straight after. I ate lunch while reading. I left my family to their own devices, went and lay on my bed and read until I was done.

This, needless to say, is a rare event in our household. Once upon a time, reading all Saturday afternoon was a normal thing for me, but that was before I became a mother of two. My reading is usually snatched in ten minute intervals, between larger and more immediate demands on my time.

But this was The Demon’s Surrender.

When my honey lifted an eyebrow at my complete immersion in the book, I said firmly, “I have been waiting for this book for FOURTEEN MONTHS” and he nodded gravely and left me to it. Wonderful man.

I review books all the time, and I was expecting to be able to review this one sensibly, but it turns out I have no ability to distance myself enough from my sheer crazy fan love of this series to be thoughtful and articulate. I’m more – “wheeee, all the right people in the tree, K – I – S – S – I – N -G!” because, baby, all my ships came home to roost, every single one of them.

Brennan has created a very fast-paced, entertaining series of YA urban fantasy with an elegantly simple magical system at its centre (you’re either part of the Goblin Market, or you’re a Magician, and by the way? Demons are scary), and a whole lot of horrible, angsty things happening to cute, witty people with knives. Like if Buffy was British, but better.

She has also done some extremely clever things, sneaked in amongst all the distracting banter and hot boys taking their shirts off. At first look, constructing a trilogy in which each volume has a different point of view character, sounds nuts. But in fact, it was the perfect choice for this story. With each point of view change, we get different ways of seeing the various characters, and the world looks slightly different. It’s a way to delve into different corners of the story, quite intensely. The danger of course is that if you don’t like one protagonist, you aren’t likely to wait around for the next book to come out. There are plenty of readers who didn’t engage with Nick, the teenage sociopath who narrated The Demon’s Lexicon, and plenty more who objected to the shift of POV to Mae, a girl with pink hair who has kissed more than one boy, in The Demon’s Covenant. There were even some who were concerned to hear that Sin, a minor character in both those books, was lined up to narrate Book Three.

Ahem. Some spoilers abound below. But I am quite restrained, honest.
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