In which the boob window is explained. Don’t say we’re not educational! You can download the new episode through iTunes or here on our website.

News

Drink Tank loves us! Download their Hugo shortlist commentary here.

Mondy loves us too! He makes us go awww.

James Tiptree Jr finally in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, and about time too.

Talking to Alistair Reynolds: he defends the idea that science fiction has a limited number of plots

Locus Award Finalists

Clarke Award

Women in (Japanese) Comics: Cheryl Morgan reports; Anime News Network

Some kickstarter stuff:
Feminist Historical Anthology from Ann & Jeff VanderMeer

Scalzi on Amanda Palmer and how she worked hard for 10 years to get her “overnight success”

(more…)

You can check out the new Galactic Suburbia episode on our website or at iTunes. You’ll notice we were really subtle about the Hugo nomination, because we didn’t want to be tacky.

In which this Hugo nominated podcast is Hugo nominated and discusses the Hugo nominations while being Hugo nominated. Also, the internet is full of things. Some of those things discuss gender, feminism and equality, some have wide ranging implications for the future of SF awards, and some of them are nominated for Hugos.

HUUUUUUUUUGO SHORTLIST

Hunger Games Hunger Games Hunger Games

Build up to make a hit
The reviews are in:
Topless Robot
Forbes
Our Alisa

But in the real world, the character Katniss Everdeen faces an even greater challenge: Proving that pop culture will embrace a heroine capable of holding her own with the big boys.
It’s a battle fought on two fronts. First, The Hunger Games must bring in the kind of box office numbers that prove to Hollywood that a film led by a young female heroine who’s not cast as a sex symbol can bring in audiences. And second, for Katniss to truly triumph, she must embody the type of female heroine — smart, tough, compassionate — that has been sorely lacking in the popular culture landscape for so very long.

The Clarke Award Shortlist:
Christopher Priest’s original post
Cat Valente responds:
“Because let’s be honest, I couldn’t get away with it. If I posted that shit? I’d never hear the end of what a bitch I am.”
And further she responds

(more…)

I didn’t put this up before because Podbean has been down all weekend but now it’s back! You can check out the new Galactic Suburbia episode on our website or at iTunes.

Episode 55

In which we honour the memory of Paul Haines by giving ourselves nightmares, and catch up (mostly) on several months of feedback about how Galactic Suburbia is singlehandedly keeping the bookselling business alive.

News
Paul Haines in memoriam.
Death notice and information about memorial service
We discuss posts by Dirk Flinthart and Ben Peek.

If anyone does a round up of memorial posts about Paul, please let us know & we’ll add the link. In the mean time, check out this post about his complete bibliography and how to get hold of his work.

Ladybusiness on coverage of women on SF/F blogs

New Galactic Chat: Claire Corbett

What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alisa: Wives, Paul Haines; The Warrior’s Apprentice, Lois Mcmaster Bujold; Power and Majesty, Tansy Rayner Roberts), Locus Round Table featuring Nalo Hopkinson and Karen Lord
Alex: Solaris Rising (ed Ian Whates); Reign of Beasts (Tansy Rayner Roberts); Pure (Julianna Bagott)
Tansy: Madigan Mine, Kirstyn McDermott, The Opposite of Life by Narrelle M Harris

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 of Galactic Suburbia is up (after a few problems) to be downloaded by the manner of your choosing!

In which we keep it short (truly) through restraint and perseverance, despite setting Tansy off on a tangent about Lego and lots of crunchy gender bias stuff to chew through.

News

Nebula shortlist

Stoker shortlist

Paul Cornell on Panel Parity

Elizabeth L Huede on National Year of (Gender Biased) Reading

Tansy’s thing: new feminist Doctor Who blog Doctor Her

Can princesses play with Lego? (Lego friends petition at Change.org)

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: Vorkosigan – Shards of Honor, Barrayar by Lois McMaster Bujold
Alex: The Islanders, Christopher Priest
Tansy: After the Apocalypse, by Maureen McHugh (collection)

Feedback episode coming soon!

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!

In which we pop the cork on the champagne bottle to welcome in the beginning of the 9 month science fiction awards season – hooray!

News

Responses to the Galactic Suburbia Award.

Crawford nominees and winner: Genevieve Valentine’s Mechanique.

BSFA nominees

SF Translation Awards Fundraiser – donate and win awesome books

The Kitschies: yes really, rum and tentacles.

LOCUS Recommended Reading List! [and Poll]

Young Australian of the Year who founded Robogals: Marita Cheng

Women of SF in their own words, reviewed by Brit Mandelo

Diana Peterfreund: following up on Brave New Love [and how the internet often fails to pick up the pieces after a controversy has died down]

Women Writing Horror (it’s new, who knew?)
[and the other Guardian article patronising genre readers, taken apart by Smart Bitches Trashy Books]

10 Great SF books for “girls”

Creature Court trilogy giveaway – we’ll be drawing it next episode, email us to tell us about one book you read because of us & you’ll enter the draw to win all three books by Tansy

Creature Court Spoilerific Blog Post – only for those who have read Creature Court Book Three, Reign of Beasts, by Tansy Rayner Roberts

What Culture Have we Consumed?
The new episode is up! Go grab it and chug it down like a glass of semi-expensive sparkling white.

Alisa: Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby; The Last Little Blue Envelope by Maureen Johnson

Alex: Clockwork Rocket, Greg Egan; A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, Ursula le Guin; The Business of Death, Trent Jamieson; Skyrim

Tansy: Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti; Batgirl: the Lesson; Redwood & Wildfire by Andrea Hairston; Blake’s 7: The Turing Test [Big Finish], Doctor Who: Foe From the Future [Big Finish]

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!

The new episode is up! Go fetch it and consume it with digital gusto!

In which women aren’t funny, don’t write important books, but come in handy as assassins and thieves.

News

Connie Willis named SFWA Grand Master

Liz Bourke on Strange Horizons & the art of the mean review

Survey shows that men (as well as women) often play characters of the other gender while gaming – in many cases, men are bored with or alienated by the big musclebound male characters, which game designers think they want. Sound familiar?

Hoyden about Town are asking for guest bloggers to crosspost their Australian Women Writers Challenge reviews on Hoyden (ASIF also keen to do so)

More on feminine tosh: a good solid article in the Australian media (shock!) about the women in literature issues of recent months (and, you know, decades).

Have we been following the “Women aren’t funny” stoush that played out in NYT? This interesting development.

DC Comics – cancellations & new titles – Tansy is especially excited by World’s Finest (featuring the Earth 2 Huntress & Power Girl)

Stranger with My Face – Women in Horror film festival in Hobart, Tasmania – 17-19 February

Tansy’s book launch for Reign of Beasts (Creature Court Book Three) on 2 February at Hobart Bookshop, 5:30pm.
(more…)

Hard to believe we’ve made it to 50 episodes. Of course the alternative is that we stop talking, and that would never happen! Sadly we didn’t eat cake, but we did namecheck Joanna Russ at least once, so that’s almost the same thing, right?

You may eat cake while you listen to it, if you want to. If you do, you know we want to hear about it!

Check out EPISODE 50 now!

In which we leap happily back and forth (with occasional ranting) over those fine lines between feminist critique and anti-female assumptions, plus share our bumper collection of holiday culture consumed. Happy New Year from the Galactic Suburbia crew!

NEWS AND LINKS

Hugo nominations open and we’re gonna have our say

Aqueduct Press to publish Brit Mandelo’s thesis, “WE WUZ PUSHED: On Joanna Russ & Radical Truth-telling”!

Islamic superhero comic turned animated series The 99 to screen in Australia (ABC3)

Amanda Palmer’s wedding post

Great piece on how the very idea of ‘Mary Sue’ is sexist, ties into this episode’s theme about the criticism of female characters.

The wealth of powerful girl heroes in today’s YA

WHAT CULTURE HAVE WE CONSUMED?

Alisa: Shades of Milk and Honey, Mary Robinette Kowal; The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman (with cover art by Kathleen Jennings); The Vampire Diaries; Primeval; The 99; Planetary; Homeland and Boxcutters.

Alex: The Double Life of Alice Sheldon, Julie Phillips; Changing Planes, Ursula le Guin; Perchance to Dream, Lisa Mantchev; Twilight Robbery, Frances Hardinge; Chronicles of Chrestomanci vol 1, Diana Wynne Jones. DOA and Going Postal

Tansy: The Freedom Maze, Delia Sherman; Beauty Queens, Libba Bray; Snuff by Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (TV) – Batman (animated) & My First Batman Book by David Katz, David Tennant & Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing (DIGITAL THEATRE DOWNLOAD AWW YEAH).

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!

The new episode of Galactic Suburbia is up, go download it, stream it, or do whatever it is you crazy kids do with podcasts these days!

In which we save the Tasmanian Devils, take on the Classics, review cars, discover that toy fandom exists, plan to read LOTS of Australian women writers, and Wonder Woman still doesn’t have pants.

News

Coffeeandink on The Erasure of women writers in SF and Fantasy

Mur Lafferty – My Problem With Classics

Open letter to publishers: book bloggers are not your bitches

Kate Gordon’s Devil Auction – help to save the Tasmanian Devils! (kitten pictures with TEETH)

Australian Women Writers Challenge
Sign up now

Jason Nahrung posted a list of the books he plans to read for the challenge – let us know what yours are!

In association with this, Tansy produced a list of award-winning SF/Fantasy books by Australian women.

Please keep sending in your suggestions for a Galactic Suburbia Award – we hope to have a plan for this by our 50th episode and are loving reading the tweets and emails so far.

(more…)

Howie needs a Hat

Hurry over to Podbean or iTunes now to get the new episode! Or just sit back, relax and read the show notes.

News

World Fantasy Awards!

Realms of Fantasy sinks for the third time

Graham Joyce calls BFS Extraordinary General meeting December 9th –

Authors kickstarting their own projects:
Matt Forbeck – 12 novels in 12 months.
Laura Anne Gilman’s novella
CE Murphy’s novella
(mentions also of self publishing projects of Tracy & Laura Hickman, and Liz Williams)
Catherynne Valente’s Omikuji project looking for subscribers in order to keep the project going.
And Tobias Buckell talks about how just because you’re self publishing doesn’t mean you have to be a …

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: Power and Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts, The Courier’s New Bicycle by Kim Westwood

Alex: the Stone Key and The Sending, Isobelle Carmody; I Shall Wear Midnight, Terry Pratchett; end of Life on Mars S2; This is Not a Game, Walter Jon Williams; Distress, Greg Egan

Tansy: Ally Condie, Matched; Lisa Goldstein, The Uncertain Places; Gail Simone, Secret Six: Six Degrees of Devastation; Geek Tragedy, Nev Fountain

Feedback: well overdue!

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!