Alisa muses on the last five years here, and also talks about how she can find positive female role models in trashy reality TV shows.

Speaking of role models, I wrote a Friday Hoyden post for Hoyden About Town, about: who else? Joanna Russ!

Kirstyn McDermott talks about the false equivalence of male and female representation on book covers, as beautifully illustrated by Jim C Hines.

Ben Peek heralds the new Ditmar ballot as ammunition in his ongoing secret rivalry against Bill Wright. Best Ditmar response so far!

Thoraiya Dyer, who has been holding out against social media for a long time, has decided to run a blog calling attention to the women making fan art in the SF community, in the hopes of bringing some diversity to next year’s Hugo ballot. It’s a work in progress, but such an important idea, keep an eye on it!

Cheryl Morgan talks about Tor going DRM-free with its ebooks.

Lynne Murray on Body Impolitic talks about the power of words, and the idea that everyday magic, for good and ill, can be performed on people through insults, jokes and compliments. People are not friends if they are bringing you down with what they say to you!

Grant Watson wants you to write or make art for his fanzine!

M.K. Hobson talks about how to run a spiritually successful Kickstarter.

Next time you hear people talking about how boys don’t want to or aren’t capable of identifying with a female character in an action series, point them at this response to the Legend of Korra series. Turns out boys like female heroes just FINE.

Smart Bitches Trashy Books critiques the media portrayal of the Romantic Times conference and how news reports can be truthful without being accurate. Reminds me a lot of media portrayal of SF cons!

Ancient Rome theme park to be built near modern Rome. I WANT THIS THING TO EXIST!!!

I was delighted that so many people knew that this great Batwoman/Batgirl comic was something I desperately needed to read. Now you do too!

What if there were superpowers in the world, but no superheroes?

Deborah Biancotti has a reputation in Australia for rich, complex prose and bleak stories about the quiet horrors that we all hope will never happen. The Book of Endings, her first collection, made a powerful statement about the kind of fiction she is known for – and Bad Power, her far more slender second collection, makes an entirely different statement about the writer she is going to be.

The stories in Bad Power have a clear, sharp narrative, and a more restrained approach to her prose. As with many of the Twelve Planets collections, the stories are connected and serve to build up a particular world, based on a single premise. In this case, it is the idea that some people have powers, what comics readers or TV/movie fans would immediately designate superpowers, and that there is something deeply sinister about those powers, and those people.

I tore through this book very quickly – it was such a fast-paced read, and so very enjoyable. Once it became clear that the order of the stories was important and that each fed something into the others, the mystery of how to fit all the pieces together added an extra layer of enjoyment. Each story has its own compelling protagonist, and distinct voice. My favourites were Detective Enora Palmer and Detective Max Ponti, just as my favourite stories were “Palming the Lady” and “Crossing the Bridge,” but this is one of those collections where the whole is far more than the sum of its parts.

BAD POWER, by Deborah Biancotti
Twelfth Planet Press
reviewed as part of the Australian Women Writers 2012 National Year of Reading Challenge

Tansy’s Australian Women Writer’s 2012 Reading Challenge.
1. Eona by Alison Goodman (fantasy)
2. Cooking the Books by Kerry Greenwood (contemporary crime)
3. Bad Power by Deborah Biancotti (spec fic, superhero)

I’m so very proud to be a Twelfth Planet author.

My, but the trophy is on the dour side.  Does anyone want to volunteer to knit a jaunty beret or bonnet or something for hers, to cheer him up a bit?

The whole list of winners can be found here.

Congratulations to all the winners – I am absolutely squeeful about the magnificent Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor winning best novel, but all the winners were worthy, and I hope very much that all the finalists are just as proud of themselves and their achievements.  It was a great shortlist this year.

Thanks to Cat Sparks who pointed me in the direction of the following vid.  You can see Alisa’s award at about the 35 minute mark.  It’s just a shame that the microphone discriminated against short people! But knowing Alisa, she was probably quite happy to be mostly hidden behind the podium.  I hope she had a great celebratory evening afterwards, and a good night’s sleep.  We’ll be interrogating her about her experience on the next episode of Galactic Suburbia!

In which Alisa and Tansy look at crimes against superheroines in the DC Universe, the good and the bad of the companions’ journeys in Doctor Who, and why we love Olivia Dunham and her gun. We also plug our own books (yes really!), Tansy is still reading comics, and Alisa confesses that e-books have broken her brain.

No, seriously, she’s broken now.

News

The WSFA SP shortlist (Tehani wooo!)

Death of Sara Douglass

Catwoman & Starfire – this isn’t what empowerment looks like
i09 on a seven-year-old who loves Starfire and her reaction to the new version of the character: “She doesn’t do anything.”
A great webcomic response to the Starfire issue.
Tansy blogged about it too!

DC Comics, Bunker & the Current State of LGBTQ Superheroes
(Tansy would have commented on how Bunker is portrayed as a gay superhero in the Teen Titans but he wasn’t in the first issue!)

What Culture Have we Consumed?

Alisa: Haven, Fringe S4, Doctor Who Season 4?, Ringer, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson, A Taste of the Nightlife by Sarah Zettel and one of my new reading projects

Tansy: The Almighty Johnsons, New 52 (Batgirl, Batwoman, Wonder Woman, Superboy, Blue Beetle); Justice League Generation Lost (Part I), Power Girl: A New Beginning

Pet Subject: Indie and E-books
Twelfth Planet Press Website
Twelfth Planet Press E-Store
Wizard’s Tower Bookstore (yay Cheryl)
Tansy is Rocking the Romanpunk on her blog this week in celebration of the e-release of Love and Romanpunk.

Feedback:
Björn is embarking on a quest to read all women authors for a year – and he needs a catchy title to help this become an awesome internet meme. Can you help him? Send us your suggestions and we’ll think of some prizes for the best ones.

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!

And of course the week will end with my Republic Reading in Hobart on Sunday 2 October. I look forward to seeing some of you there!

Rock the Romanpunk!

It’s a very cruel thing to do to a friend while there’s a live microphone, and I think I did very well to keep my head from exploding all over the keyboard.

The full post is here, but I’d like to quote my favourite parts:

“These collections, just four stories in a slim paperback, are an excellent idea, a tasting menu of Australasian female genre writers. Romanpunk has an intriguing twist on the noble vampire and mortal girlfriend* story (see, these vampires are really Lamia, they’re Roman in origin, and very well connected, but they find the C21 street has its uses). Ever wondered why pretty-boy Caligula was such an unmitigated horror in private life? Or why Nero was finally forced to kill his mother? Refreshingly, unlike Buffy, the mortal girlfriend is not allergic to education and actually has a life… ”

and…

“These Australians give me hope for the future of female, and even feminist, writers in sf.”

Gwyneth Jones is one of my heroes, so it’s hard enough to wrap my head around her having read my book, let alone saying lovely things about it, and the series as a whole. (she also had some cool things to say about Sue’s book, and Lucy’s)

A reminder that I’m going to be reading from Love & Romanpunk at the Republic Bar (North Hobart) on Sunday 2nd October from 3pm (I think I’m first up so come early if you want to see me), and will have a few copies of the book there if you haven’t sourced yours yet. No bookings required. If you’d like me to bring along a copy of Siren Beat for you to buy from me, let me know.

You can of course buy a copy direct from the publisher, as well as other books in the Twelve Planets series.

Jem demands extra Amy Pond content in all of Mummy's blog posts

Meanwhile, Narrelle M Harris, self-reprinter, discusses that other kind of indie press, and whether self-publishing is actually all about vanity.

Jason Nahrung has been on fire lately with some brilliant posts about our changing industry, and I particularly liked this one: Putting the eeeeee in e-books.

Meanwhile the Stella Prize for women was officially launched. Is it too much to hope that a spec fic writer wins it in the early years? Alisa, get publishing!

Aliette de Bodard wrote a marvellous rant which examines the way that US storytelling tropes are so ingrained in global culture that they basically dictate what is considered good and bad writing. I think this is a very important topic and one that bears further discussion.

Ellen Datlow is angry about the portrayal of older women in fiction, and challenged writers to do better.

Juliet McKenna has a challenge of her own, for us all to promote equality in genre writing and reviewing. Kudos to SFX for publishing this piece which criticises their own practices as well as those of the industry as a whole.

Elizabeth Bear has written a fascinating essay on Charlie Stross’ blog, about the role of the singularity in the science fiction community, and the issues she had with it as a concept. She talks about gender and diversity in this “rainbow age” of SF, and it’s well worth a read.

Meanwhile, there’s a new blog about science fiction in YA, something I know is on a lot of our minds at the moment! (not looking at Cat Sparks or Simon Haynes in particular) And if you missed it, here’s my blog post on the Locus Roundtable about our family’s favourite science fiction books for kids.

There’s a great positive news story about Jennifer Yeh Nelson, a successful female director in Hollywood.

Glenda Larke has been writing a series of posts on her transition to using Dragon Dictate software to write her novels, and she talks eloquently here about the writing-related technological changes she has seen in her lifetime, and how writers with RSI or other medical issues that limit their typing abilities shouldn’t be afraid to embrace the new.

Jim C Hines is once again showing off his chops as a good ally: in this case discussing what subtle (and in some cases not so subtle) differences he would face in his career if he had been born Jane.

Stirring stuff, but I also wanted to quote a tweet from Ekaterina Sedia which is certainly relevant, even if this wasn’t one of the posts she had in mind:

@esedia Ultimate irony: male bloggers writing about the difficulties of female bloggers get gazillions positive comments!

Podcast of the week is the Outer Alliance/Writer and the Critic crossover, in which Julia, Kirstyn & Mondy discuss a range of queer fiction (including Horn & Bleed by Peter M Ball) and many of the issues that emerge from writing and reviewing work with queer characters. And stuff. It’s brilliant, so listen to it! Also, the show notes are a work of art.

Congrats to all the nominees – I’m particularly delighted by the diverse and exciting novel shortlist, but also crowing over Rachel Swirsky’s novella “The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers beneath the Queen’s Window,” Jonathan Strahan’s anthology “Swords and Dark Magic,” and Angela Slatter’s exceptional collection, Sourdough and Other Stories. Also, extra congrats to Charles A Tan & Lavie Tidhar for their nods in the same category as Alisa, for Bibliophile Stalker and the World SF blog respectively.

But now, links!

I haven’t spotted quite as much analysis as I had expected about the significance of the SF Gateway, but here are some key posts from the last week or so:

The Announcement
Nicola Griffith on being one of the Gateway authors.
Cheryl Morgan on The Gateway Opens
io9 presents a vid of authors talking about their favourite out-of-print SF classics
Over at the Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan & Gary interview John Clute about the SF Encyclopedia, and how it ties into the SF Gateway project.

And now some more random linkage:

Chris Alpha of The Ood Cast has been writing a season by season recap of Doctor Who, in haiku. Oh yes, he has.

Apologies for the LJ links at this time of great LJ unreliability, but these ones are worth it. Michelle Sagara talks about how to be a good panellist at a convention, and what not to do.

Catherynne Valente is delighted by the sheer writerfantasy of Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris.

Cheryl Morgan is republishing Linda Nagata’s SF novels as e-books.

Diana Peterfreund blogs about choosing surnames for your fictional characters.

Mary Robinette Kowal continues her interesting blog series on the writerly/practical use of Google Plus: in this case, how to teach a class using Google Hangouts.

N.K. Jemisin wrote a very cool post about women’s roles in fantasy and the problematic nature of judging the strength and value of female characters by masculine standards – the conversation in the comments is interesting, as so many people jump in to talk about domestic skills and values in fantasy, and why giving a woman a sword isn’t the only way to make her a “strong” character.

Also, I’m on the fence about Google+ and expect to continue so until too many friends of mine are in there for me to ignore it any longer (was I not right about Google Buzz? Thankyew and goodnight) but this post by Mary Robinette Kowal about constructing writing dates & writer gatherings in Google+ makes me think I’m going to have to get my arse in there before this year’s Nanowrimo.

Meanwhile, over at Twelfth Planet Press, Alisa has revealed the gorgeous cover of the new Twelve Planets collection by Lucy Sussex, and info to tantalise you about this book from one of Australia’s veteran science fiction & fantasy writers. Alisa also revealed the titles this week of the next season of TPs, by Deborah Biancotti, Narrelle Harris and Kaaron Warren… and what titles they are!

But you know, when it comes down to it, the most awesome thing about this week was Noni Hazlehurst reading modern classic picture book, Go The Fuck to Sleep. Text Publishing hit on a genius method of publicising the fact that they are the Australian publishers of this instant classic for exhausted parents everywhere. Noni is a goddess as well as a national icon, and her performance of the book, including traditional Play School commentary & asides to the viewer, and a deeply authentic ‘going downhill rapidly’ emotional journey, is note-perfect.

The glee on Twitter as Noni’s reading was announced (you can keep your Samuel L Jackson, Americans!), the outrage as YouTube canned the video for offensive conduct (you know where you can go, YouTube…) and the joy as the video was re-released on other platforms… honestly, this is the most patriotic joy I think most Aussies have felt in years.

Go the Fuck to Sleep – read by Noni Hazlehurst from sswam on Vimeo.