I’ve been thinking a lot lately about YA science fiction – and the lack thereof. As YA fantasy took the noughties by storm, a regular refrain I heard was, but what about the science fiction?

It turned up from time to time, of course, and there have been some wildly successful examples: Scott Westerfeld’s dystopian Uglies series, Suzanne Collins’ the Hunger Games trilogy, and zombie thriller Feed by Mira Grant. Then there have been the steampunls stylings of Westerfeld (again), Richard Harland and Cassandra Clare. Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi have both written books for teens.

But… there just haven’t been enough spaceships. To be precise, not enough girls on spaceships. With robots.

Science fiction as a whole has been in a bit of a slump. More specifically, science fiction written by women has been shrinking at a rate of knots – it’s still around, but whenever publishers put out less of something, diversity is usually the first thing to suffer. A wave of spaceships and robots in YA could be just what the doctor ordered, sparking off a renaissance in the larger genre similar to what has happened with the development of urban fantasy and paranormal romance.

There’s a myth that girls aren’t interested in science fiction. It’s far more likely that this idea has come about because, in fact, science fiction has not always been that interested in girls. This post about “hard SF now with girl cooties” was very nicely timed, and those books have gone straight on to my To Read list.

Science fiction has been around a really long time. It needs new ideas, new blood and new waves in order to revitalise itself on a regular basis. The thing that still hasn’t been done to death, in fact has hardly really got started (yet) is the science fiction for and about teenage girls.

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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

@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.

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Catherynne Valente stirred up the internet a little with her ranty (and it has to be said, a touch curmudgeonly) post about the rage-inducing failings of steampunk as a literary genre. It’s worth sifting through the comments on that one because they are respectful for the most part, and consist of some very interesting defences as well as criticisms of steampunk.

One question which seems to emerge from the post and the comments is: Does it count as a legitimate literary movement if there isn’t a great work (a Neuromancer) to spark it off? I’m not sure that it doesn’t. While a single iconic work is a great way to market a subgenre and give it that kickstart to inspire a bunch of writers around it, the idea of one book representing a whole subgenre also doesn’t sit well with me. Our methods of academic and criticical literary discourse are moulded by patriarchal methods, and there is something that feels very “male dominated academia” about singling out one book and holding it up as the flagbearer of a subgenre. Even if that book is Bridget Jones’ Diary…

As a canon-buster and someone who prefers inclusionism to reductionism, I’m actually much more interested in the idea of a literary movement that isn’t led by one book.

The most interesting thing to me about steampunk (though I’m not really an enthusiast, more of a vaguely interested observer) is that it isn’t a literary movement at all. It’s very much a mixed media movement with a huge emphasis on artwork, craftsmanship and costuming. That’s where the greater passions of steampunk seem to lie, with the literary aspect desperately trying to catch up. There’s a flashmob sensibility to it, rather than a single line of influence. Many people in the comments of Catherynne’s post preferred to define steampunk as an aesthetic, rather than a literary movement or sub-genre. I also agree heartily with the many people in the comments who suggested that the most interesting literary steampunk was happening in short fiction rather than novels, though some novels like Boneshaker by Cherie Priest and Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld have certainly caught the imagination of readers.

For my own part, I find steampunk (or gaslamp fantasy, its magical twin) far more intriguing when there is an artistic aspect to the story – like Girl Genius, or the Miyazaki film Howl’s Moving Castle, or any cartoon appearance of TikTok of Oz… Also, while I really enjoyed Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan, I can’t help feeling that the illustrations from that book and particularly the “grand map” by Keith Thompson are the steampunk masterpiece of 2009 more than any single piece of fiction.

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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.

Some thoughts raised by the recent episode of The Coode Street Podcast, featuring Locus editor/debut novelist Amelia Beamer:

Amelia’s first zomromcom novel The Loving Dead sounds all kinds of awesome and if I hadn’t already pre-ordered it, I would be doing so on the strength of this podcast! The discussion of Kelly Link’s influence on how zombie stories can be told was also really interesting. Also the most recent zombie contingency plan I read was in a Glee fanfic. They get around!

The gang discuss the growing divide in the scene between short and long fiction as one is increasingly published by small/independent presses and the other by mass market. While I agree with this discussion in the main, I do think it should be pointed out that the one area this seems to not be true (and is becoming less true if that makes sense) is YA. I’ve been saying for the last couple of years that some of the most interesting work in spec fic seems to be coming out of the YA field. I’ve also noticed more and more mass market short fiction collections emerging from that field – they might have trashy titles and seem to be mostly about vampires, zombies, boyfriends and prom dates, but they are also featuring some of the most respected writers in the field, such as Holly Black, Libba Bray, the Larbalesterfelds, and so on. I see these books popping up in places like the local Big W (the closest thing Australia has to a Wal-Mart, I think) and can never resist picking them up, because even though sometimes they will have a bunch of cheeseball Buffy wannabe tales in them, there is almost certain to be a couple of real gems, and even the average stories are a lot more readable to me than the contents of an average issue of F&SF.

This is particularly noteworthy, I think, considering the massmarket paperback release of Kelly Link’s YA collection, Pretty Monsters. I’ve seen it a few places and didn’t buy it because I knew I had all the stories, but since then the very existence of that book has (quite appropriately) been eating my brain, to the point that I know next time I go into town I am going to pick it up. It’s a freaking Kelly Link book, and seeing it on bookshelves in my home town instead of having to order a pretty hardback from Small Beer Press is all kinds of awesome. I regularly lend out her first two collections, and I know that this is a book I will regularly press into people’s hands. So yes, I’m going to be buying it.

I’m actually completely in the mood to reread Kelly Link’s body of work, and not just because of Gary Wolfe reminding me how awesome Magic For Beginners was.

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Well, that was a bizarre evening! After a day of tidying in preparation for Raeli’s birthday party tomorrow (her first ‘proper’ one at home instead of at a kids centre, with games and everything) I settled down with a baby on my lap to follow the Aurealis Awards via Twitter. It turned into a rollicking good time, with many of us playing along at home chatting away merrily. Scott Westerfeld and Donna Hanson vied for the role of star twitterer from the event itself – Donna was quicker off the mark with announcing the winners, but Scott provided fashion descriptions, which added immeasurably to the style of the whole affair.

I was especially pleased to see Jonathan Strahan take Best Anthology for Eclipse 3, which I really think was the top anthology of the year internationally, not just in the Australian scene, and was also pleased to be beaten in the Best YA short story category by Cat with “Seventeen,” which was my favourite of her stories from this year. Also cool to see Leviathan take YA novel, and Peter M Ball win one of his many nominated stories. Sad that Twelfth Planet Press won none of its 7 nominations, though I think it just earned 7 years worth of always-the-bridesmaid karma which should be good news for next year! I was very pleased to see Paul Haines win Best Horror Short Story with “Wives” though he had to share the prize with himself! I hope he doesn’t end up fighting with himself over custody of the trophy. Or will they give him two? They should totally give him two.

Congratulations and commiserations to everyone, in any case. Many worthy winners and many equally worthy not-winners. I was very pleased and touched to hear of the Kris Hembury Encouragment Award for Emerging Artists – what a lovely way to remember Kris! I dropped out a bit towards the end of the Twitter party, as my baby reached the end of her tether right around the time that my elder daughter was insisting on bedtime stories. Oh, and we iced cupcakes in the middle of the whole thing. Sadly I don’t think Twitter was able to convey them properly to Margo and Felicity, but it’s the thought that counts.

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The great thing about having a houseguest (especially the awesome kind that you want to talk to all the time), is that it has all the benefits of going away for the holidays (especially ‘I can’t possibly get any work done so this is enforced leisure time’) but with the comforts of home. Yesterday we had the girls around for a sewing circle for them to meet or catch up with GJ. I haven’t been able to go to sewing group since I had Jem, so that was rather lovely. I finally dug out my needles and yarn to start making the iPod cozy I desperately need, after spending most of the session trying to demonstrate to Raeli how awesome French knitting is (mostly she likes unravelling it).

Today, we capped off the main part of  girliejones‘s visit with a trip to the Mt Nelson signal station, in order to watch the boats come up the river for the Sydney-Hobart and share some more lovely Tasmanian scenery with GJ.

Then we put her on the bus and sent her off to the land of dodgy internet (aka Flinthartsville) for the second half of her holiday. It’s sad to see her go (“I miss Alisa,” Raeli said sadly, two minutes after we had left her at the bus station) but we are looking forward to the weekend at which apparently  flinthart will be bringing her back early and setting up an overnight camp in our garden with his kids. House party!

It’s hot and the house feels empty without Alisa, so we are zoning out in the living room, inhaling a Christmas DVD of Justice League Unlimited. The belated turkey is cooking in the oven (we got distracted!) and there’s still plenty of chocolate in the house. Life is really not that hard.

Back in the world of the living (which is to say, the internet), Justine Larbalestier wrote a blog post post in response to my review of Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld, confirming my theory on the book appealing to a different (though overlapping) audience to Scott’s other YA books. Definitely worth a read!

There are very few novels written in this century that leave you with the urge to shout things like “jolly good show!” Leviathan is most definitely one of them.

Over the last several years, Scott Westerfeld has established himself as a writer of fast-paced, edgy YA novels in a variety of flavours: future dystopia teenagers, vampire apocalypse teenagers, magical demon-slaying teenagers… With Leviathan he now turns his hand to steampunk, presenting the first volume of an action-adventure epic trilogy set in an Alternate Universe version of World War I.

It is 1914. Living airships roam the skies. Walking metal tanks prowl the ground. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austro-Hungary has been murdered along with his wife and while the political ramifications of this event spiral towards world war, their teenage son Alek goes on the run with a handful of allies. Meanwhile, British lass Deryn Sharp has disguised herself as a boy in order to train and serve as an airman. The (beautifully illustrated) world map is divided into Darwinist countries with their hybrid animal technology and Clanker countries with their more “traditional” steam-and-gears machinery, and the teen protagonists are on different sides of the technological divide as well as the war. But it’s getting harder to draw that line…

Yep, this is the steampunk everyone’s been talking about.

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I want to post my review of Booklife by Jeff VanderMeer, but apparently my brain is still sorting that one out (or rather is pushing everything else to the back so it can concentrate on turning stacks of square bracketed pleas of desperation into half-decent fight scenes), so instead I will share some links of other people’s thoughts on writing, and how it relates to meeee. Because right now, NaNo being NaNo, it’s hard to see past the end of the novel on my face.

Did I say novel? I meant nose. But mostly I meant novel.

Jo Walton writes on the fantasy technique of madey-uppy words – when it works to add depth of worldbuilding, and when it makes you look like a tool.

This fills me with due apprehension because I am indeed writing book 3 of a trilogy which does exactly this thing. Only hopefully in the depth of worldbuilding way and not the tool way. I have deliberately pulled a messed up hybrid of French, Italian, Latin and English into play, and have insisted in some cases of using particular words where ordinary English ones would do. In all cases, though, it was when the ordinary English version was not just ordinary, but so overused that it came with far too many connotations.

‘Princess’ for instance. It’s one of those words I can’t write with a straight face any more. Not with Disney’s finest staring out at me from my daughter’s schoolbag every day. I also banished ‘night’ and ‘girl’ because it was the only way, I decided, to avoid using them in every single sentence in the book.

Most of the trilogy, incidentally, takes place at night.

Anyway, I will hug my madey-uppy words to myself and brace myself for the displeasure and judging looks of  girliejones. I solemnly swear I have not added any apostrophes in the middle of names (cough except where grammatically accurate).

Meanwhile, Scott Westerfeld talks about “Passages of Disbelief,” a lovely term to describe that moment when the ordinary people of the familiar world are faced with magic, or aliens, or the Other for the first time. [I have lots of this in my book too, as it's basically urban fantasy that happens to also be otherworld fantasy]

Reading his post my first thought was ‘ooh, Buffy did lots of that, especially that lovely Oz reaction to vampires being real’ and Scott promptly linked to an essay he wrote on those moments in Buffy. The essay is awesome, and makes me want to a) buy the book (damn you, SmartPop, are you never satisfied?) and b) watch all the Buffy. Like I have time for that. Though it might help me with those damned fight scenes…