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!

Some personal links first: I made a reprint sale to Beyond Binary, an anthology of genderqueer SF, edited by Brit Mandelo for Lethe Press. I’m super excited about it, not only to be a Lethe Press author now, but also to share a TOC with such amazing writers as Nalo Hopkinson, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Catherynne Valente and Sandra McDonald. The story in question is “Prosperine When It Sizzles,” which first appeared in shared world anthology New Ceres Nights. I have a soft spot for M. Pepin and La Duchesse, so delighted to see that story get a wider audience.

Also I’ve been meaning to link for ages that my story, “Taking Leaves,” which was one of the winners of the Love2Read competition of fiction about reading disabilities, now has an audio version available. You can listen by streaming it from the site.

A new Hark, a Vagrant! is always cause for celebration, but this one is especially pertinent and awesome this week because it’s all about Wonder Woman. Kate Beaton is a cynical genius.

Bluemilk often writes wonderfully about parenthood and feminism, and this post about crying babies on aeroplanes struck a chord with me. There really are two kinds of people, those who have empathy for parents struggling with noisy children/babies in public, and those who don’t. Often, sadly, that empathy can depend on how personally close you are to the experience of trying to function with small children in public.

This essay about the growing phenomenon of women cosplaying femme versions of the Doctor is fascinating, with some great pics. I find this particular aspect of fandom close to my heart because my daughter came up with it independently, playing Matt Smith’s Doctor in the playground (sometimes with male friends as companions and the Master, though on one notable occasion she had corralled four other girls to play River Song, Melody Pond, Amy Pond & young Amelia OH HELL YES that’s my girl) and back in July kept her bedroom tidy for a whole month in order to earn a red bowtie for herself.

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I was sure I had already blogged this, but possibly I just tweeted and podcasted and then fell over. Lynne Thomas (of Chicks Dig Time Lords and the SF Squeecast) has just had her first edited issue of Apex Magazine go live, and it includes an article by me!

The article is about why Australian spec fic writers seem to skew so hard towards writing about icky sinister things instead of, you know, sunshine and beer and prawns. I talked to a bunch of writers (Margo Lanagan, Deborah Biancotti, Kaaron Warren, Peter M Ball, Trent Jamieson, Kirstyn McDermott, Jason Nahrung, Cat Sparks, Rob Hood and Richard Harland) who are well known for their dark, weird short fiction, and they came up all sorts of brilliant answers to my sometimes-silly questions.

You can purchase individual copies or subscriptions of Apex here, and the content of the issue is also available (temporarily) for free on their home page.

After not quite prioritising my reading enough all year, I’m suddenly in a frame of mind where I am trying to read ALL THE BOOKS at once. Which, for those of you who have some idea of the size and scale of my To Read Shelf, is a lot of books.

And more besides, because the current graphic novel fetish has taken hold and I have been binge-ordering at my local library, as well as borrowing and buying a bunch of titles. Then there’s the fact that this is Get It Read month For Last Short Story, and there’s Tiptree reading, and stuff for Galactic Suburbia, and books to review for ASif and you know, other books I want to read!

I walked into a bookshop today to look for someone (who wasn’t working that day) and walked out with Marianne de Pierres’ Angel Arias, and the new Merridy Eastman. Honestly I want to just download them directly into my head.

I’m halfway through reading Trent Jamieson’s Roil, and a Catwoman trade, and Gwyneth Jones’ new collection, because one book at a time is just not enough.

Oh, and I recently posted reviews at Last Short Story of Eclipse 4, and Subterranean’s Spring and Fall Issues.

And over at Deborah Biancotti’s blog, I contribute to a great series of (super short) guest posts about creative burnout, how to avoid it, and how to deal with it when it hits you smack in the face. I recommend checking out the whole series!

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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Let’s just stop and bask in the glory that is Muppet nail polish. Muppet nail polish, people!

Also, a TARDIS corset. Doctor Who cosplay is one of those things that has made my internet a better place over the last few years. I love these crafty, creative geekpeople!

Check out the Strange Horizons Fundraising Drive – and as an example of some of the great work they do, try this wonderful essay about Pat Cadigan.

John Scalzi has written an important post acknowledging the difference between being a prominent male blogger and a prominent female blogger, when it comes to the abuse and hate mail they receive.

I was deeply sad to read this post by Cheryl Morgan, who is feeling beaten down by the mudslinging she has been experiencing for years, and decided to withdraw her connection to many fan, volunteer and professional projects. Cheryl’s commitment to our community and the science fiction field as a whole has always been inspiring to me, and it’s devastating to realise what the personal cost of that has been for her.

Tehani is running a blog series on the relationship between pro writers and indie press over at The Booknut. I particularly liked this guest post by Trent Jamieson.

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Power and Majesty is now both an Aurealis Awards shortlisted book AND a Ditmar shortlisted book. How awesome is that?

I’m also rather pleased to be on fan shortlists for my Modern Woman’s Guide To Classic Who blog posts, and especially for Galactic Suburbia. How exciting! The Fan Production category has turned into a podcastapalooza which is marvellous (the only non podcast there is ASiF, another project I love). Listening to podcasts has become one of my primary interactions with fandom and criticism, and it’s really special to see the Year of Aussie SF Podcasts honoured in that shortlist.

In other news, some of my favourite fiction from last year is on the shortlists too! I loved Trent’s book, and all the other novel nominees are teetering near the top of my To Read pile. I’m glad to see Cat Sparks’ “All The Love In The World” on there, which was one of my favourite Aussie stories last year. Nice also that Thoraiya Dyer’s “The Company Articles of Edward Teach” made it on, as it was a very late release in 2010 and I thought people would miss how great it was. Thoraiya made Best New Talent, too, which I wanted to see last year, though admittedly I was in the position of having read some of the great stories she hadn’t published yet. Since then she’s not only had some good stuff published for Twelfth Planet Press but also sold a story to pro market Cosmos! Looking down the lists, there are people I love and respect all over these Ditmars. How wonderful!

Congratulations to all the nominees. I look forward to seeing most of you at Swancon for the ceremony!

In other Nice Things News, a few reviews have flitted past my screen this week: a very thoughtful review analysis of Power and Majesty (it’s so nice when readers completely get what I was doing with my characters, and I love how she described Ashiol as being a Bruce Wayne type) and a nice little teaser review of “Relentless Adaptations” from Sprawl.

Full Ditmar Ballot below:
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I’ve actually got to the point where it BUGS ME if I like a book and for one reason or another, don’t get around to reviewing it on my blog. Sometimes I don’t have time, or I can’t figure out what to say, or what I have to say is too big, or I just read too many awesome books in the one fortnight and some get lost along the way. Or I talked about it on Galactic Suburbia and lost impetus to write my thoughts down. There are also the books that I feel odd or uncomfortable about reviewing, because they’re written by friends (weirdly sometimes I do feel okay about doing this and sometimes not, and it has nothing to do with the degree of friendship) or because there’s some other perceived conflict of interest – there are some TPP books where I have contributed more editorial input than others, and of course there are anthologies in which a story of my own appears.

And there are the ones I just forgot about at the time. And the ones I finished really close to the end of the year, when all my blogging mojo was directed at Ace and the baseball bat.

Part of me wants to go, “REALLY? You REALLY can’t let it go? You’re going to actually feel guilty about not reviewing a small handful of awesome books that people probably know about anyway, rather than feeling proud about the zillions you have reviewed?”

To which I reply, “Okay, you’re obviously a part of me that does not know me very well AT ALL.”

Here then is a super post of a bunch of books I meant to review in 2010 but didn’t, so I can move on into 2011 with a clear conscience. Or something.

Russell T Davies & Benjamin Cook, The Writer’s Tale: the Final Chapter
I very much resented having to buy this book a second time, even if the extra amount added to the paperback was totally worth the price. I now have TWO copies on my shelves, and who’s going to want my hardback of the first half? It was, sadly, completely worth it. A fascinating behind the scenes look at the creative genius (and it has to be said, creative flukitude) of Russell T Davies, it’s a very candid correspondence and one of the best books I’ve ever read as far as capturing what it’s like to be a writer. All writerly spouses should read it, regardless of their interest or lack thereof in Doctor Who!

Helen Merrick, The Secret Feminist Cabal
A fascinating, crunchy examination of the history of fan culture, which happens to have an awful lot in it about women, attitudes to women, feminism, and attitudes to feminism. Awesome stuff.

Clayton Hickman (ed), The Brilliant Book of Doctor Who
One of two very well-chosen Christmas presents I bought myself! I’ve never bothered with the annuals or any of the tie in books about New Who, because they seem to mostly be aimed at kids – this was totally aimed at kids, but luckily the kids in question were mostly TWELVE YEAR OLD ME so I enjoyed it very much as a lazy Christmas read. Far closer to a Doctor Who Magazine Special than some boring old annual, this was full of cool bits and pieces, Moffatt quotes, cast interviews, making of features, and extras. The Brian Aldiss story was a bit of boring old tripe that didn’t capture the character voices at all, but the rest of the book was tip-top. My favourite bit was the collection of Churchill diary entries with mentions of all the Doctors who have crossed his path over his lifetime, which was genuinely funny and sweet.

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I’ve been giggling away over Trent’s homemade author vids over the last couple of months, and this is one of my favourites – not least because he recs my book as well as many others I love or am looking forward to.

I hope to see more of Trent and Trent in the new year! And that reminds me that it’s time to hassle my local bookshop again about that copy of Managing Death I pre-ordered…