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What is the next book I should read?
Aug. 28th, 2011 08:08 pmTell me in comments. Explain why. (but only suggest one book, please)
What I'm Reading Right Now
Jul. 23rd, 2011 11:49 pmFiction:
Aliette de Bodard's SERVANT OF THE UNDERWORLD.
A very well done fantasy mystery. Because my spouse did his graduate work in Mesoamerican archaeology, I'm a hard sell on Aztec (Mexica) settings. But de Bodard has an engaging writing style and a solid grasp of the place and culture. I believe in her Mexica world.
Non-fiction:
Various books in various stages of use for research, but that's not actually quite the same as "reading."
When in New York City recently for the Liberty Challenge (outrigger canoe race--yes, I must write a post on that, mustn't I?), I went to the African Burial Ground National Historical Park, a most excellent national park. At the bookstore there afterward I bought and am now reading the really excellent
IN HOPE OF LIBERTY: Culture, Community and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks 1700-1860. By James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton. It's social history, and it's really quite well done, highly recommended.
Aliette de Bodard's SERVANT OF THE UNDERWORLD.
A very well done fantasy mystery. Because my spouse did his graduate work in Mesoamerican archaeology, I'm a hard sell on Aztec (Mexica) settings. But de Bodard has an engaging writing style and a solid grasp of the place and culture. I believe in her Mexica world.
Non-fiction:
Various books in various stages of use for research, but that's not actually quite the same as "reading."
When in New York City recently for the Liberty Challenge (outrigger canoe race--yes, I must write a post on that, mustn't I?), I went to the African Burial Ground National Historical Park, a most excellent national park. At the bookstore there afterward I bought and am now reading the really excellent
IN HOPE OF LIBERTY: Culture, Community and Protest Among Northern Free Blacks 1700-1860. By James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton. It's social history, and it's really quite well done, highly recommended.
A Question of Toes and Names
Jul. 21st, 2011 10:38 pmA ton of linkage, which some of you will have already seen. I append a final comment at the end.
A number of posts have popped up in the last few days that feel to me related, not in direct subject matter but in exploring elements of fiction and or our response to fiction and the larger experience of deciding who and what to read as well as how we write and decision we make while writing.
Kari Sperring writes an excellent post about stepping on Other people's toes: A rant. With a lot of good comments, besides.
And while I'm talking about this, let's have a look at another phrase I'm seeing a lot lately, 'Eurocentric fantasy'. This, as far as I can tell, means fantasies set in backgrounds drawn from a sort of default idea of mediaeval Europe (usually Western Europe at that). I understand what people mean by this, and what they are thinking about. The thing is, as a European myself, these fantasies don't feel 'Eurocentric' to me. They don't feel like Europe at all, they feel like a mix of 50s Hollywood historicals and Las Vegas, they are theme park fantasies.
Cora Buhlert riffs in part on Sperring's post in Sometimes it just hits a bit too close to home , talking a bit about World War II as an historical setting for fiction and film. She goes on to say:
What’s the way out of this dilemma? Just write what you know? Never use anybody else’s history or culture for fear of offending? That would make for much more boring literature and we don’t need that. The key is to do your research and take particular care with living cultures and with historical periods that are still within living memory. Nonetheless, we’ll all probably mess up somewhere.
Chris Moriarty moves into the women writing sf discussion with an interesting post called Birds, Dinosaurs, and the Secret Life of Labels.
So how can we be stuck, after all this time and all those brilliant flights of imagination, in a stupid fight about whether the genre is even broad enough to include women?
And, more to the point, how do we get out of it?
Finally, Linda Nagata posts a rumination of writing sf as a woman under a woman's name, What's in a Name? that she wrote some months ago (I read it then, in fact) but only posted now, with some trepidation.
I haven’t done a lot of interviews in my career, but the question I least like to answer goes something like this: Do you feel it’s hurt your career being a woman writing hard science fiction?
I’m sure I get this deer-in-the-headlights expression before breaking eye contact and muttering something self-contradictory. Because really, how does one answer a question like that?
To say, “Yes, I think it has hurt my career” sounds like whining and finger pointing without any evidence to back it up, and risks offending the men who are the core readers of the genre.
To say, “No, I’m sure that’s not it” would be untruthful and would imply that my books didn’t sell because they were bad. My hard SF books may not be for everyone, but I don’t believe they’re bad.
So in my own mind I mostly ignored the question. Some writers succeed, others don’t. That’s just the way it is.
But of course the only true answer is that I can’t know. I can’t go back and change my name to Greg or David or Alastair and re-publish the books and see how things go.
That's just it. We can't know. Questions of how readers may unconsciously approach a book in a way that may alter their perception of it without them necessarily realizing it are frightfully difficult to answer and possibly impossible to quantify in any meaningful way.
If I had to do it all over again knowing what I know now, I would probably write my seven volume epic fantasy series under a male or gender neutral name.
A number of posts have popped up in the last few days that feel to me related, not in direct subject matter but in exploring elements of fiction and or our response to fiction and the larger experience of deciding who and what to read as well as how we write and decision we make while writing.
Kari Sperring writes an excellent post about stepping on Other people's toes: A rant. With a lot of good comments, besides.
And while I'm talking about this, let's have a look at another phrase I'm seeing a lot lately, 'Eurocentric fantasy'. This, as far as I can tell, means fantasies set in backgrounds drawn from a sort of default idea of mediaeval Europe (usually Western Europe at that). I understand what people mean by this, and what they are thinking about. The thing is, as a European myself, these fantasies don't feel 'Eurocentric' to me. They don't feel like Europe at all, they feel like a mix of 50s Hollywood historicals and Las Vegas, they are theme park fantasies.
Cora Buhlert riffs in part on Sperring's post in Sometimes it just hits a bit too close to home , talking a bit about World War II as an historical setting for fiction and film. She goes on to say:
What’s the way out of this dilemma? Just write what you know? Never use anybody else’s history or culture for fear of offending? That would make for much more boring literature and we don’t need that. The key is to do your research and take particular care with living cultures and with historical periods that are still within living memory. Nonetheless, we’ll all probably mess up somewhere.
Chris Moriarty moves into the women writing sf discussion with an interesting post called Birds, Dinosaurs, and the Secret Life of Labels.
So how can we be stuck, after all this time and all those brilliant flights of imagination, in a stupid fight about whether the genre is even broad enough to include women?
And, more to the point, how do we get out of it?
Finally, Linda Nagata posts a rumination of writing sf as a woman under a woman's name, What's in a Name? that she wrote some months ago (I read it then, in fact) but only posted now, with some trepidation.
I haven’t done a lot of interviews in my career, but the question I least like to answer goes something like this: Do you feel it’s hurt your career being a woman writing hard science fiction?
I’m sure I get this deer-in-the-headlights expression before breaking eye contact and muttering something self-contradictory. Because really, how does one answer a question like that?
To say, “Yes, I think it has hurt my career” sounds like whining and finger pointing without any evidence to back it up, and risks offending the men who are the core readers of the genre.
To say, “No, I’m sure that’s not it” would be untruthful and would imply that my books didn’t sell because they were bad. My hard SF books may not be for everyone, but I don’t believe they’re bad.
So in my own mind I mostly ignored the question. Some writers succeed, others don’t. That’s just the way it is.
But of course the only true answer is that I can’t know. I can’t go back and change my name to Greg or David or Alastair and re-publish the books and see how things go.
That's just it. We can't know. Questions of how readers may unconsciously approach a book in a way that may alter their perception of it without them necessarily realizing it are frightfully difficult to answer and possibly impossible to quantify in any meaningful way.
If I had to do it all over again knowing what I know now, I would probably write my seven volume epic fantasy series under a male or gender neutral name.
Global SFF, Woman, Representation
Jul. 20th, 2011 09:58 pmI linked earlier to this roundtable (in which I participated) on the World SF Blog on Global Women in SF.
Now Cora Buhlert weighs in on the subject as well.
Of course, it’s likely that those stories didn’t sell because they simply weren’t very good. In fact, it’s very likely. However, over time I also began to suspect that my nationality and the unconventional settings were an additional strike against me. Because why would anybody want to buy an urban fantasy set in the secret underground world of Antwerp or a fantasy about river spirits in the Ardennes, when some ninety percent of the readership wouldn’t even be able to locate those places on a map. Of course, as an international reader was always expected to be interested in urban fantasies set in Milwaukee or Cleveland – cities I can locate on a map but don’t know anything about otherwise. But the reverse obviously wasn’t true.
The question of how open the US/UK/Commonwealth market and readers are to non US/UK/Commonwealth based fiction remains to a large degree unanswered. Even Canadian and Australian (and NZ) fiction can be a hard sell outside those regions if it is based in those regions, from my observation.
Anyway, much food for thought.
Now Cora Buhlert weighs in on the subject as well.
Of course, it’s likely that those stories didn’t sell because they simply weren’t very good. In fact, it’s very likely. However, over time I also began to suspect that my nationality and the unconventional settings were an additional strike against me. Because why would anybody want to buy an urban fantasy set in the secret underground world of Antwerp or a fantasy about river spirits in the Ardennes, when some ninety percent of the readership wouldn’t even be able to locate those places on a map. Of course, as an international reader was always expected to be interested in urban fantasies set in Milwaukee or Cleveland – cities I can locate on a map but don’t know anything about otherwise. But the reverse obviously wasn’t true.
The question of how open the US/UK/Commonwealth market and readers are to non US/UK/Commonwealth based fiction remains to a large degree unanswered. Even Canadian and Australian (and NZ) fiction can be a hard sell outside those regions if it is based in those regions, from my observation.
Anyway, much food for thought.
Characters & Setting in Epic Fantasy
Jul. 18th, 2011 08:30 pmThe July issue of Clarkesworld Magazine has a huge long roundtable on Epic Fantasy in which 26 writers (13 male and 13 female, I note with approval), an agent, and an editor are asked questions about "epic fantasy."
I flagged it before, but it's still up and if you haven't read it, you still can!
Here's my answer to one of the questions:
What is the relationship between characters and setting in epic fantasy?
People exist in a cultural context. Characters live within their landscape both in the ecological and the societal sense. The society/societies the characters come from will inform how they see the world, approach the conflicts they struggle with, and interact with others.
As a writer, I do not see character and setting as separate; I see them as intertwined in exactly the way my own character and person is intertwined with the world I live in. I write from that place, so even though it's also true that my approach, and thus the plot and character decisions I make, are necessarily informed by my own experience of the world, I must always attempt to see their world from their immersion in it.
I note that a second part will be published in the August 2011 issue, with answers to questions such as:
What role does humor play in your fiction in general and epic fantasies in particular?
Do you have any advice on dealing with violence when writing Epic fantasy?
I flagged it before, but it's still up and if you haven't read it, you still can!
Here's my answer to one of the questions:
What is the relationship between characters and setting in epic fantasy?
People exist in a cultural context. Characters live within their landscape both in the ecological and the societal sense. The society/societies the characters come from will inform how they see the world, approach the conflicts they struggle with, and interact with others.
As a writer, I do not see character and setting as separate; I see them as intertwined in exactly the way my own character and person is intertwined with the world I live in. I write from that place, so even though it's also true that my approach, and thus the plot and character decisions I make, are necessarily informed by my own experience of the world, I must always attempt to see their world from their immersion in it.
I note that a second part will be published in the August 2011 issue, with answers to questions such as:
What role does humor play in your fiction in general and epic fantasies in particular?
Do you have any advice on dealing with violence when writing Epic fantasy?
Character Genres I Can't Help But Love
Jul. 17th, 2011 03:47 pmAn earlier post on Character Genres I Avoid has a lot of interesting and quite amusing answers about "character genres" I, you, we, etc as readers can't stand or are sick of.
The post was inspired by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
manga_crow's response in one of my other posts, which included this particular type which I found deeply amusing: Ungrateful jerk has life saved by being turned into something not-quite-human and won't shut up about how they want a normal life again.
BUT.
What about the flip side of this?
What about the character genres that get you almost every time? Even when you feel that perhaps you know better? Or can tell you're being manipulated, but don't care? Ones other people avoid but which you can't get enough of? The ones that if you read a version of it and it goes off the rails, you feel almost personally betrayed by what could have been?
I was going to say ones that may be guilty pleasures, but pleasure shouldn't be guilt-ridden. Life is hard enough without having to flagellate ourselves over eating ice cream, buying shoes, or liking a certain character plot just because it scratches an emotional itch.
You know what I mean. No squee-harshing here!
I am a complete sucker for:
The handsome asshole jerk (one who is actually decent at heart somewhere deep inside) who learns the hard way to be somewhat less of a jerk because of his interaction with a smart woman.
Not that you would recognize this character plot in anything I"ve written recently . . .
N.K. Jemisin writes a great version of this character genre in THE BROKEN KINGDOMS (Shiny!)
ETA: I accidentally deleted an anonymous comment that I had already answered, so if you don't see your comment here, please resend! Sorry!
The post was inspired by
manga_crow's response in one of my other posts, which included this particular type which I found deeply amusing: Ungrateful jerk has life saved by being turned into something not-quite-human and won't shut up about how they want a normal life again.BUT.
What about the flip side of this?
What about the character genres that get you almost every time? Even when you feel that perhaps you know better? Or can tell you're being manipulated, but don't care? Ones other people avoid but which you can't get enough of? The ones that if you read a version of it and it goes off the rails, you feel almost personally betrayed by what could have been?
I was going to say ones that may be guilty pleasures, but pleasure shouldn't be guilt-ridden. Life is hard enough without having to flagellate ourselves over eating ice cream, buying shoes, or liking a certain character plot just because it scratches an emotional itch.
You know what I mean. No squee-harshing here!
I am a complete sucker for:
The handsome asshole jerk (one who is actually decent at heart somewhere deep inside) who learns the hard way to be somewhat less of a jerk because of his interaction with a smart woman.
Not that you would recognize this character plot in anything I"ve written recently . . .
N.K. Jemisin writes a great version of this character genre in THE BROKEN KINGDOMS (Shiny!)
ETA: I accidentally deleted an anonymous comment that I had already answered, so if you don't see your comment here, please resend! Sorry!
Can you all come up with examples of science fiction or fantasy published prior to 2000 whose worlds or countries have marriage equality?
I'll accept "same sex relationships are accepted in society" examples, but I am particularly looking for examples of institutional marriage equality.
[If possible, specify whether it is sf or f, and year of publication.]
Thanks in advance.
I'll accept "same sex relationships are accepted in society" examples, but I am particularly looking for examples of institutional marriage equality.
[If possible, specify whether it is sf or f, and year of publication.]
Thanks in advance.
Character Genres I Avoid
Jul. 14th, 2011 10:38 pmOkay, I asked permission and am totally stealing this from manga_crow.
In my post "In common: Susanna Kearsley's A WINTER SEA and Diana Rowland's MY LIFE AS A WHITE TRASH ZOMBIE," I begin by saying
There are genres, sub genres, settings, things, character types, and plot lines that are not to my taste.
I then go on to discuss why I really enjoyed the two aforementioned books despite them being woven of elements I normally don't care for.
A discussion ensued, but I was particularly struck by this comment by the aforementionedmanga_crow:
I've really discovered over the years that I don't really care about genre conventions - it's the equivalent of the color of the paint when choosing a house. The real deal-makers/breakers are the characters and to a much, much lesser extent, the plot. Give me good characters and it doesn't matter if they're flying around on dragons trying to prevent evil wizards from taking over their kingdom, running around New York sewers fighting vampires, being a medic in the far-flung reaches of the galaxy, or, well, you get the idea.
If I were in charge of labeling genres, they would look something like this (so I could avoid them):
Supposedly brilliant detective who can't solve crimes without having the answer shoved in his/her face.
Ungrateful jerk has life saved by being turned into something not-quite-human and won't shut up about how they want a normal life again.
Supposedly experienced political figures are taken in by tricks that wouldn't fool a three-year-old.
This is a great way of categorizing things I can't read. Because it's true: I can really read anything if the characters grab me, as my love for the two mentioned books proves.
What character genres do you despise? Be as specific as you need to be. No need to spare your scorn!
I'll go next:
Serial killer is a complex, dark man of deep meaningfully depicted psychological chasms and gritty back story, and yet still is obsessed with killing nubile young women after sexual violence described in detail.
Within five minutes of first setting eyes on each other, hero and heroine are forced into a state of orgasmic confusion over the overwhelming sexual attraction between them, to the point that they must spend much of the book having intense sex as the only relief to their bewildering symptoms.
Jolly sex worker in a world without decent medical care never gets any form of venereal disease or infection.
manga_crow.In my post "In common: Susanna Kearsley's A WINTER SEA and Diana Rowland's MY LIFE AS A WHITE TRASH ZOMBIE," I begin by saying
There are genres, sub genres, settings, things, character types, and plot lines that are not to my taste.
I then go on to discuss why I really enjoyed the two aforementioned books despite them being woven of elements I normally don't care for.
A discussion ensued, but I was particularly struck by this comment by the aforementioned
manga_crow:I've really discovered over the years that I don't really care about genre conventions - it's the equivalent of the color of the paint when choosing a house. The real deal-makers/breakers are the characters and to a much, much lesser extent, the plot. Give me good characters and it doesn't matter if they're flying around on dragons trying to prevent evil wizards from taking over their kingdom, running around New York sewers fighting vampires, being a medic in the far-flung reaches of the galaxy, or, well, you get the idea.
If I were in charge of labeling genres, they would look something like this (so I could avoid them):
Supposedly brilliant detective who can't solve crimes without having the answer shoved in his/her face.
Ungrateful jerk has life saved by being turned into something not-quite-human and won't shut up about how they want a normal life again.
Supposedly experienced political figures are taken in by tricks that wouldn't fool a three-year-old.
This is a great way of categorizing things I can't read. Because it's true: I can really read anything if the characters grab me, as my love for the two mentioned books proves.
What character genres do you despise? Be as specific as you need to be. No need to spare your scorn!
I'll go next:
Serial killer is a complex, dark man of deep meaningfully depicted psychological chasms and gritty back story, and yet still is obsessed with killing nubile young women after sexual violence described in detail.
Within five minutes of first setting eyes on each other, hero and heroine are forced into a state of orgasmic confusion over the overwhelming sexual attraction between them, to the point that they must spend much of the book having intense sex as the only relief to their bewildering symptoms.
Jolly sex worker in a world without decent medical care never gets any form of venereal disease or infection.
Science fiction is often defined as a “literature of ideas,” and many famous SF stories can be identified by the idea, or nifty concept, or “what if” speculation that lies at their heart. Is my sf novel JARAN just a rousing adventure story with a romantic element, or is there some kind of science fictional speculation involved?
Glad you asked. (Because I’ve discovered that people usually don’t ask. Too often they seem to just assume there isn’t because nothing in the book (if they’ve even read the book) fits the received and accepted definition of a sfnal “idea.”)
What if, in a low-tech, chieftain-level pastoral society in which labor remains divided along fairly traditional (by our standards) gender line, women had real authority?
Not lip service authority. Not a lot of talk about women being the repository of honor in the home, or the teachers of the next generation, or the keeper of the house in a way that specifically limits them to the house, or the biologically equipped nurturing machines whose scriptural mandate is to be mother and helpmeet, but real authority: “The right and power to command, enforce laws, exact obedience, determine, or judge.” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 1976)
As authority, that is, held over all members of society and not just over children and social inferiors. And not just some women, those who by birth or accident or exceptionalism have managed to wrest authority for themselves out of a patriarchal society by being “as good as a man,” but all women.
What would such a society look like? How might it function to grant equal dignity to women and men and yet at the same time fit realistically into a broader world and with an understanding of human nature and the needs of survival in a low-tech world with a high mortality rate?
Over the course of envisioning and revising the book, I had to ask myself a lot of questions. Am I reinforcing notions of biological determinism by splitting labor along traditional gender lines as the average USA reader knows and expects them to be observed even today but particularly in our view of the past? Yet if I can only write women as “free and powerful” by freeing them from their “traditional” roles, am I not then implicitly agreeing with unchallenged cultural assumptions that devalue women’s labor and women’s experience? How can I mediate between these two extremes?
I don’t have an answer to these questions, although I can say that over time I’ve learned how fluid division of labor by gender is from society to society. For instance, in the jaran I made men the ones who embroider, but of course embroidery is not a universal female occupation; most USAians just tend to think it is.
In any case, in JARAN and the other volumes in the sequence I explore what respect and authority mean and how they might interact through and between genders and, by doing so, shape how the culture of the jaran tribes developed in the past and continues to develop when a disruptive new force begins to alter the social fabric of the tribes.
Yet I didn’t want to create a “matriarchy” in which women rule and men submit--an inverted patriarchy. I wanted to explore the idea of a culture in which all adult roles are truly respected. So I started with an assumption: For women to maintain authority, institutions within the culture have to support that authority.
I made the tribes matrilineal, and in addition borrowed from many Native American traditions in which the right to hold certain offices and to inherit property follow down the female line.
I also made the jaran matrilocal: Under most circumstances, a new husband goes to live with his wife’s tribe. The locus of power within any given tribe centers on extended families of sisters. A woman’s relationship to her brother is considered to be the most stable female-male relationship, based on a shared mother and upbringing, and within extended families, cousins related through sisters or a sister and brother are considered like siblings (however, this is not true for cousins related through brothers).
In addition, women have possession of the tents and wagons, and they manage and distribute food and labor available to the tribe. As with the Iroquois and Cherokee, jaran etsanas (headwomen) have the power to install or depose male tribal war leaders.
These familial, economic, and political relationships give women a network of support as well as a respect and autonomy that reinforces their authority.
Another aspect I played with was the cultural norms of sexual behavior. The hoary old cliché of male sexual aggression contrasted with female sexual passivity is still with us in a multitude of forms. I chose to make jaran women the sexual initiators: They choose lovers at will when unmarried, and are free to continue to (discreetly) take lovers once they are married. To drain off a bit of the “power” implicit in sexual choice, I gave men the choice in marriage. Although in practice almost all men (at the instigation of or with the assistance of their mothers and sisters) would negotiate with the other family first, it would be possible for a man to marry a woman whom he wanted but who did not want him. This contrasting pattern assured that neither sex had complete power over the other. Even in a strongly patriarchal society that is highly restrictive toward women, women will seek avenues of balance and redress when they can, including underhanded ones. History is full of such examples. I wanted to place mine right out on the table.
I catapult my protagonist into this culture without preparing her for it. Since she comes from a future Earth where the dregs of our patriarchal past still hold some sway over her way of thinking, she often has the opportunity to misinterpret what freedom and authority mean among the jaran. And when I look back at the book now, almost two decades later, I can see ways in which my own thinking has changed, things I might have written differently but which reflect the era and attitudes in which I grew up.
Ultimately, looking back, I wish that discussing my speculative ideas behind the jaran society weren’t still timely. To quote sff writer N. K. Jemisin in her recent and really excellent post on “The Limitations of Womanhood in Fantasy,” “Here’s the problem with this wholesale rejection of both societally-imposed and self-chosen “typical” women’s behaviors — in the end, it amounts to a rejection of nearly all things feminine. And that’s definitely not good for women.”
That’s the idea I was trying to explore, back then. We’re still struggling with it now.
*** This post was adapted out of the introduction I wrote to the 2002 edition of JARAN, published by DAW Books.
Glad you asked. (Because I’ve discovered that people usually don’t ask. Too often they seem to just assume there isn’t because nothing in the book (if they’ve even read the book) fits the received and accepted definition of a sfnal “idea.”)
What if, in a low-tech, chieftain-level pastoral society in which labor remains divided along fairly traditional (by our standards) gender line, women had real authority?
Not lip service authority. Not a lot of talk about women being the repository of honor in the home, or the teachers of the next generation, or the keeper of the house in a way that specifically limits them to the house, or the biologically equipped nurturing machines whose scriptural mandate is to be mother and helpmeet, but real authority: “The right and power to command, enforce laws, exact obedience, determine, or judge.” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 1976)
As authority, that is, held over all members of society and not just over children and social inferiors. And not just some women, those who by birth or accident or exceptionalism have managed to wrest authority for themselves out of a patriarchal society by being “as good as a man,” but all women.
What would such a society look like? How might it function to grant equal dignity to women and men and yet at the same time fit realistically into a broader world and with an understanding of human nature and the needs of survival in a low-tech world with a high mortality rate?
Over the course of envisioning and revising the book, I had to ask myself a lot of questions. Am I reinforcing notions of biological determinism by splitting labor along traditional gender lines as the average USA reader knows and expects them to be observed even today but particularly in our view of the past? Yet if I can only write women as “free and powerful” by freeing them from their “traditional” roles, am I not then implicitly agreeing with unchallenged cultural assumptions that devalue women’s labor and women’s experience? How can I mediate between these two extremes?
I don’t have an answer to these questions, although I can say that over time I’ve learned how fluid division of labor by gender is from society to society. For instance, in the jaran I made men the ones who embroider, but of course embroidery is not a universal female occupation; most USAians just tend to think it is.
In any case, in JARAN and the other volumes in the sequence I explore what respect and authority mean and how they might interact through and between genders and, by doing so, shape how the culture of the jaran tribes developed in the past and continues to develop when a disruptive new force begins to alter the social fabric of the tribes.
Yet I didn’t want to create a “matriarchy” in which women rule and men submit--an inverted patriarchy. I wanted to explore the idea of a culture in which all adult roles are truly respected. So I started with an assumption: For women to maintain authority, institutions within the culture have to support that authority.
I made the tribes matrilineal, and in addition borrowed from many Native American traditions in which the right to hold certain offices and to inherit property follow down the female line.
I also made the jaran matrilocal: Under most circumstances, a new husband goes to live with his wife’s tribe. The locus of power within any given tribe centers on extended families of sisters. A woman’s relationship to her brother is considered to be the most stable female-male relationship, based on a shared mother and upbringing, and within extended families, cousins related through sisters or a sister and brother are considered like siblings (however, this is not true for cousins related through brothers).
In addition, women have possession of the tents and wagons, and they manage and distribute food and labor available to the tribe. As with the Iroquois and Cherokee, jaran etsanas (headwomen) have the power to install or depose male tribal war leaders.
These familial, economic, and political relationships give women a network of support as well as a respect and autonomy that reinforces their authority.
Another aspect I played with was the cultural norms of sexual behavior. The hoary old cliché of male sexual aggression contrasted with female sexual passivity is still with us in a multitude of forms. I chose to make jaran women the sexual initiators: They choose lovers at will when unmarried, and are free to continue to (discreetly) take lovers once they are married. To drain off a bit of the “power” implicit in sexual choice, I gave men the choice in marriage. Although in practice almost all men (at the instigation of or with the assistance of their mothers and sisters) would negotiate with the other family first, it would be possible for a man to marry a woman whom he wanted but who did not want him. This contrasting pattern assured that neither sex had complete power over the other. Even in a strongly patriarchal society that is highly restrictive toward women, women will seek avenues of balance and redress when they can, including underhanded ones. History is full of such examples. I wanted to place mine right out on the table.
I catapult my protagonist into this culture without preparing her for it. Since she comes from a future Earth where the dregs of our patriarchal past still hold some sway over her way of thinking, she often has the opportunity to misinterpret what freedom and authority mean among the jaran. And when I look back at the book now, almost two decades later, I can see ways in which my own thinking has changed, things I might have written differently but which reflect the era and attitudes in which I grew up.
Ultimately, looking back, I wish that discussing my speculative ideas behind the jaran society weren’t still timely. To quote sff writer N. K. Jemisin in her recent and really excellent post on “The Limitations of Womanhood in Fantasy,” “Here’s the problem with this wholesale rejection of both societally-imposed and self-chosen “typical” women’s behaviors — in the end, it amounts to a rejection of nearly all things feminine. And that’s definitely not good for women.”
That’s the idea I was trying to explore, back then. We’re still struggling with it now.
*** This post was adapted out of the introduction I wrote to the 2002 edition of JARAN, published by DAW Books.
There are genres, sub genres, settings, things, character types, and plot lines that are not to my taste. Sometimes strongly so, sometimes weakly so. I try very very hard never to criticize such things in an essentialist way: All epic fantasy is crap because it is all about bad and stupid things and is written for idiots except for the one book I like because it is superior due to my decision that it must be superior because I succumbed to liking it. Just as a for example.
So what do Susanna Kearsley's A WINTER SEA and Diana Rowland's MY LIFE AS A WHITE TRASH ZOMBIE have in common?
They both are novels written with multiple elements that I generally avoid, not because I think these elements are bad things but because they're not my thing. And yet, both books really worked for me.
I am not the prime reader for urban fantasy. Most urban fantasy doesn't work that well for me. I wish it did, because there's so much out there to read. But in the main I've learned that it's a very hard sell for me.
I don't like zombie films. And the current zombie rage (as much as I joke about having zombies in Cold Fire, I don't really, well, not mostly really) in books does not float my boat, plus I'm getting a bit tired of all the attempts to do "something new" with it. Oh, and HBO's The Walking Dead? Sucked.
Yet Rowland's MY LIFE . . . is an urban fantasy with zombies, and it's appealing, and funny, and it all works in a way that I could never have predicted. What a delightful surprise! Also, this could totally be a movie or tv series.
As for the other, I do not do Scotland books. DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $100.
[ETA: Scotland/romance books, not Scotland real/sf/mystery]
And I don't like books with time slippage or weird links into the past. Particularly not when they involve Scotland.
Oh, and by the way, books in which the main character is a writer who is writing? Not my ticket.
A WINTER SEA is all that. A writer travels to Scotland to write a novel set in the past oh god.
Literally the only reason I read it was because of the DABWAHA tournament from earlier this year, when COLD MAGIC faced off (and defeated) A WINTER SEA in the first round. I was curious why it (and the other books in our "crossover" division) had been picked for the tournament.
And I have to tell you, I fell in love with this novel. Utterly, besottedly in love with this novel. It's sweet, it's romantic without being sickly, it's serious about its politics and sensible about its relationships, and beyond all that beautifully and evocatively written.
So: two strong recommends.
Have you any examples of books you've enjoyed which actually included elements or genres or plots you normally don't care for?
So what do Susanna Kearsley's A WINTER SEA and Diana Rowland's MY LIFE AS A WHITE TRASH ZOMBIE have in common?
They both are novels written with multiple elements that I generally avoid, not because I think these elements are bad things but because they're not my thing. And yet, both books really worked for me.
I am not the prime reader for urban fantasy. Most urban fantasy doesn't work that well for me. I wish it did, because there's so much out there to read. But in the main I've learned that it's a very hard sell for me.
I don't like zombie films. And the current zombie rage (as much as I joke about having zombies in Cold Fire, I don't really, well, not mostly really) in books does not float my boat, plus I'm getting a bit tired of all the attempts to do "something new" with it. Oh, and HBO's The Walking Dead? Sucked.
Yet Rowland's MY LIFE . . . is an urban fantasy with zombies, and it's appealing, and funny, and it all works in a way that I could never have predicted. What a delightful surprise! Also, this could totally be a movie or tv series.
As for the other, I do not do Scotland books. DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $100.
[ETA: Scotland/romance books, not Scotland real/sf/mystery]
And I don't like books with time slippage or weird links into the past. Particularly not when they involve Scotland.
Oh, and by the way, books in which the main character is a writer who is writing? Not my ticket.
A WINTER SEA is all that. A writer travels to Scotland to write a novel set in the past oh god.
Literally the only reason I read it was because of the DABWAHA tournament from earlier this year, when COLD MAGIC faced off (and defeated) A WINTER SEA in the first round. I was curious why it (and the other books in our "crossover" division) had been picked for the tournament.
And I have to tell you, I fell in love with this novel. Utterly, besottedly in love with this novel. It's sweet, it's romantic without being sickly, it's serious about its politics and sensible about its relationships, and beyond all that beautifully and evocatively written.
So: two strong recommends.
Have you any examples of books you've enjoyed which actually included elements or genres or plots you normally don't care for?
World SF: (Global) Women in SF Roundtable
Jul. 11th, 2011 02:53 pmWith: Aliette de Bodard (France), Joyce Chng (Singapore), Csilla Kleinheincz (Hungary), Kate Elliott (US), Karen Lord (Barbados), Ekaterina Sedia (Russia/US).
I’ve excerpted quotes but there’s lots more on the actual roundtable which you can find here.
Joyce: I feel that – as what I have ranted – is that the discussion is still very US/UK-centric. It is fine that the POC and minorities are speaking out in – say – the States, but that is still very US-centric/dominated. I also feel that women from places like Southeast Asia might not have the same experiences/common ground to talk about and we end up grappling and confused. There is a lot of intersectionality – what are Southeast Asian women (with different experiences/backgrounds) going to say? What are Southeast Asian women supposed to say? Likewise, when it comes to SFF, what we experience might be similar but vastly different as well. Often as such, we end up trying to conform to foreign-sounding standards and end up feeling confused.
How am I going to approach SFF with this skein of experiences?
Aliette: I appreciate the Russ Pledge, I really do; but it does leave a slight impression that SF is the important genre, and that fantasy doesn’t even bear mentioning. Of course, it’s always the case when you start putting genre boundaries; but there’s something about this that bothers me. You could argue that we’re making the Russ Pledge because fantasy doesn’t need it; but I’m not even entirely sure that this is the case. All major fantasy bestsellers are written by men, and there are known biases in that genre as well. I’m not quite sure what to think. Still, I guess we have to start somewhere in order to tackle inequalities.
Karen: I think that the problem isn’t whether women write or read different things. It’s the imposition of boundaries and the assigning of value that’s the problem – whether that boundary is genre vs literary, world sf vs Western, or women writers vs men. As a reader, I don’t want to miss out because the next great SF/F writer happens to be the ‘wrong gender’ and has been discouraged from writing what they’re best at writing.
Ekaterina: One thing is true: it seems that the mainstream tolerates only one level of otherness (as in deviation from white male default) at a time. You can be a woman or a POC or a non-Anglophone, but if you’re more than one of those categories, frames of reference become increasingly divergent from the conditioned default (because let’s face it, with the penetration Hollywood and Western media have all over the world, pretty much everyone is exposed to and is expected to relate to a white American dude as a hero. Once you start introducing separators — race, gender, nationality — you lose chunks of audience. Sure, some people find different perspective interesting and refreshing, but many more find them alienating and difficult, especially when they are reading “for pleasure” (another weird phrase, because why the hell else would you read?) Really, the advantage of being a cultural dominant is that you don’t have to know how to relate to anyone else, and I have no answer as to how that can be changed. The irony is that as some of the US-based SF is becoming more internally diverse, it seems more closed off to the outside influences. If that makes any sense.
Csilla: What you said made me think about non-Western fantasy and science fiction, speculative fiction so different from what we used to label SF that even the writers and readers don’t realize it’s SF. This strangeness may come from the stylistic approaches of the mainstream, the themes and sometimes merely from the fact that these works reflect very strongly the angst and mentality of a certain nation. All non-Western countries have these books, but we are so used to being told what SF is and what SF should be that anything that doesn’t follow the US/UK trends automatically falls into the mash category of the mainstream (and I am not talking about magic realism, nor those who study literature, just the general idea of SF that lives in the heads of an average reader). Now that I think about it, it’s exactly these works that could contribute the most to the dynamism and diversity of global SF (as “world SF” is used to define non-US/UK SF I have the need of a more universal term, is there one…?)
I’ve excerpted quotes but there’s lots more on the actual roundtable which you can find here.
Joyce: I feel that – as what I have ranted – is that the discussion is still very US/UK-centric. It is fine that the POC and minorities are speaking out in – say – the States, but that is still very US-centric/dominated. I also feel that women from places like Southeast Asia might not have the same experiences/common ground to talk about and we end up grappling and confused. There is a lot of intersectionality – what are Southeast Asian women (with different experiences/backgrounds) going to say? What are Southeast Asian women supposed to say? Likewise, when it comes to SFF, what we experience might be similar but vastly different as well. Often as such, we end up trying to conform to foreign-sounding standards and end up feeling confused.
How am I going to approach SFF with this skein of experiences?
Aliette: I appreciate the Russ Pledge, I really do; but it does leave a slight impression that SF is the important genre, and that fantasy doesn’t even bear mentioning. Of course, it’s always the case when you start putting genre boundaries; but there’s something about this that bothers me. You could argue that we’re making the Russ Pledge because fantasy doesn’t need it; but I’m not even entirely sure that this is the case. All major fantasy bestsellers are written by men, and there are known biases in that genre as well. I’m not quite sure what to think. Still, I guess we have to start somewhere in order to tackle inequalities.
Karen: I think that the problem isn’t whether women write or read different things. It’s the imposition of boundaries and the assigning of value that’s the problem – whether that boundary is genre vs literary, world sf vs Western, or women writers vs men. As a reader, I don’t want to miss out because the next great SF/F writer happens to be the ‘wrong gender’ and has been discouraged from writing what they’re best at writing.
Ekaterina: One thing is true: it seems that the mainstream tolerates only one level of otherness (as in deviation from white male default) at a time. You can be a woman or a POC or a non-Anglophone, but if you’re more than one of those categories, frames of reference become increasingly divergent from the conditioned default (because let’s face it, with the penetration Hollywood and Western media have all over the world, pretty much everyone is exposed to and is expected to relate to a white American dude as a hero. Once you start introducing separators — race, gender, nationality — you lose chunks of audience. Sure, some people find different perspective interesting and refreshing, but many more find them alienating and difficult, especially when they are reading “for pleasure” (another weird phrase, because why the hell else would you read?) Really, the advantage of being a cultural dominant is that you don’t have to know how to relate to anyone else, and I have no answer as to how that can be changed. The irony is that as some of the US-based SF is becoming more internally diverse, it seems more closed off to the outside influences. If that makes any sense.
Csilla: What you said made me think about non-Western fantasy and science fiction, speculative fiction so different from what we used to label SF that even the writers and readers don’t realize it’s SF. This strangeness may come from the stylistic approaches of the mainstream, the themes and sometimes merely from the fact that these works reflect very strongly the angst and mentality of a certain nation. All non-Western countries have these books, but we are so used to being told what SF is and what SF should be that anything that doesn’t follow the US/UK trends automatically falls into the mash category of the mainstream (and I am not talking about magic realism, nor those who study literature, just the general idea of SF that lives in the heads of an average reader). Now that I think about it, it’s exactly these works that could contribute the most to the dynamism and diversity of global SF (as “world SF” is used to define non-US/UK SF I have the need of a more universal term, is there one…?)
In a previous post I asked people to name the first science fiction or fantasy novel they read, if they remember.
I just went through and did a very casual analysis of the results.
I suspect more people would have said fairy and/or folk tales, as many did (as I did), but I did specifically request genre, that is, a story that we would consider to fall into fairly clear genre parameters. The kind of stuff, you know, that some journalism outlets write snarky articles about, wondering why the heck it is those strange people (us) read that geeky unreal childish stuff. But I'm digressing.
As expected, The Hobbit was mentioned many times.
I was surprised by how many people started with C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, but I shouldn't be. I suspect that's only because I didn't find those books until I was in college; they simply weren't on my radar. My parents did not read sff, and for some reason my high school English teacher who did read sff and who greatly encouraged me in my writing and reading habits (some of you know him: Chip Sullivan, former president of IAFA) never steered me to them.
Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.
A couple of mentions of the Oz books (which were big early reads for me, possibly before the Silverberg novel I tend to identify as my first clearly sff title).
And a few mentions for Lloyd Alexander, Alan Garner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Richard Adams' Watership Down, as well as miscellaneous other fantasy.
SF mentions are less frequent but include multiple mentions of Robert Heinlein and the aforementioned Silverberg, as well as the Star Wars books.
However, I expect a prize ought to go totwinsuns who writes:
Basically, you were my first favorite modern-day sff writer.
Aww! That's sweet, but also terrifying.
Let me tell you my Robert Silverberg story.
[Be aware this is merely my take on the story. I can't vouch for Silverberg's recollection of the same events.]
Two fucking decades ago (damn), I was introduced to Robert Silverberg at a convention when I was a newly published writer. Robert Silverberg has of course been an immensely prolific and notable writer and seemingly around forever (from my perspective).
I said, perkily (and cluelessly), "So glad to meet you! You wrote the first science fiction novel I ever read, REVOLT ON ALPHA C! I was in fourth grade!"
He got A LOOK on his face of perhaps that disjunction we hit once we pass a certain age when we are periodically forced to recall the inevitable crawl of advancing years as they slowly obliterate us. But he graciously smiled and replied, "thank you. I was ten when I wrote it." {That was a joke. Or maybe not . . . he did start writing early.}
I never got to know Mr. Silverberg beyond occasionally saying hello to him at conventions. In fact, the second time I met him, I said, "You probably don't remember me, but -- " At which point he cut me off and said, "oh, I remember you."
Time passes in the way it does in films where water flows under the bridge, usually accompanied by a musical piece.
Dear reader, you will find me at AussieCon, in September 2010 (just last year!), in scenic Melbourne.
Who do I encounter there but Robert Silverberg! (at the after-Hugos party, to which I was not invited but I got in anyway -- that's another story).
And I said to him, "I know you remember me, and I have a story to tell you."
He gave me A LOOK like oh god what is it going to be this time?
I smiled and said, "I just had a new novel come out with a new (to me) publisher and editor. And my new editor, Devi Pillai, sent out the Advance Reading Copies accompanied by a letter which began, 'I first read Kate Elliott's Jaran when I was 13.'"
Trust me, you would have paid money to see his expression.
Because, you know, it's kind of like being a grandparent.
I just went through and did a very casual analysis of the results.
I suspect more people would have said fairy and/or folk tales, as many did (as I did), but I did specifically request genre, that is, a story that we would consider to fall into fairly clear genre parameters. The kind of stuff, you know, that some journalism outlets write snarky articles about, wondering why the heck it is those strange people (us) read that geeky unreal childish stuff. But I'm digressing.
As expected, The Hobbit was mentioned many times.
I was surprised by how many people started with C.S. Lewis' Narnia books, but I shouldn't be. I suspect that's only because I didn't find those books until I was in college; they simply weren't on my radar. My parents did not read sff, and for some reason my high school English teacher who did read sff and who greatly encouraged me in my writing and reading habits (some of you know him: Chip Sullivan, former president of IAFA) never steered me to them.
Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time.
A couple of mentions of the Oz books (which were big early reads for me, possibly before the Silverberg novel I tend to identify as my first clearly sff title).
And a few mentions for Lloyd Alexander, Alan Garner, Ursula K. Le Guin, Richard Adams' Watership Down, as well as miscellaneous other fantasy.
SF mentions are less frequent but include multiple mentions of Robert Heinlein and the aforementioned Silverberg, as well as the Star Wars books.
However, I expect a prize ought to go to
twinsuns who writes:Basically, you were my first favorite modern-day sff writer.
Aww! That's sweet, but also terrifying.
Let me tell you my Robert Silverberg story.
[Be aware this is merely my take on the story. I can't vouch for Silverberg's recollection of the same events.]
Two fucking decades ago (damn), I was introduced to Robert Silverberg at a convention when I was a newly published writer. Robert Silverberg has of course been an immensely prolific and notable writer and seemingly around forever (from my perspective).
I said, perkily (and cluelessly), "So glad to meet you! You wrote the first science fiction novel I ever read, REVOLT ON ALPHA C! I was in fourth grade!"
He got A LOOK on his face of perhaps that disjunction we hit once we pass a certain age when we are periodically forced to recall the inevitable crawl of advancing years as they slowly obliterate us. But he graciously smiled and replied, "thank you. I was ten when I wrote it." {That was a joke. Or maybe not . . . he did start writing early.}
I never got to know Mr. Silverberg beyond occasionally saying hello to him at conventions. In fact, the second time I met him, I said, "You probably don't remember me, but -- " At which point he cut me off and said, "oh, I remember you."
Time passes in the way it does in films where water flows under the bridge, usually accompanied by a musical piece.
Dear reader, you will find me at AussieCon, in September 2010 (just last year!), in scenic Melbourne.
Who do I encounter there but Robert Silverberg! (at the after-Hugos party, to which I was not invited but I got in anyway -- that's another story).
And I said to him, "I know you remember me, and I have a story to tell you."
He gave me A LOOK like oh god what is it going to be this time?
I smiled and said, "I just had a new novel come out with a new (to me) publisher and editor. And my new editor, Devi Pillai, sent out the Advance Reading Copies accompanied by a letter which began, 'I first read Kate Elliott's Jaran when I was 13.'"
Trust me, you would have paid money to see his expression.
Because, you know, it's kind of like being a grandparent.
A Random Survey re: YA Preferences
Jul. 9th, 2011 03:24 pmI can't do a poll thing because, um, well, I dunno. Because I never have done one before, and I don't have a Paid or Plus Account, and am generally lazy. My apologies.
Instead of a poll, consider this a Short Answer Question.
If you read or have ever read YA with a fantastical element (as opposed to straight this world no fantasy or future elements), which setting (s) do you prefer? Which don't you like?
Dystopia (either near or far future).
Science fiction (spaceships or space opera or near future)
Portal (person from this world is drawn into another world)
Secondary world fantasy (the entire story takes place in another world which has no link to our own)
This world with a supernatural element of some kind
Some other option, which I have sadly neglected
Thanks in advance.
Instead of a poll, consider this a Short Answer Question.
If you read or have ever read YA with a fantastical element (as opposed to straight this world no fantasy or future elements), which setting (s) do you prefer? Which don't you like?
Dystopia (either near or far future).
Science fiction (spaceships or space opera or near future)
Portal (person from this world is drawn into another world)
Secondary world fantasy (the entire story takes place in another world which has no link to our own)
This world with a supernatural element of some kind
Some other option, which I have sadly neglected
Thanks in advance.
The Appeal of SFF
Jul. 7th, 2011 09:45 pmThanks, all. I found that really interesting. Lots of The Hobbit, Narnia (which I didn't read until I was an adult), a number of mentions of L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, and a surprising selection of Silverberg stories. Remind me to tell you my Silverberg story; it has two parts.
I know people who don't read science fiction and fantasy. It's not "real." Or it's too genre. I don't see anything wrong with this. I'm not much of a mystery reader, for instance, and I almost never read memoirs as the form doesn't generally work for me. So it makes sense that there are readers for whom sff has no appeal or even an anti-appeal.
It's an odd thing, though, the appeal of sff. For me it was like coming home. The stories spoke to me instantly, fully, and deeply. And yet I know how some describe sff as immature for its insistence on things that can't be true, not to mention its genre roots and wings.
But sff are the literature of marvels, myth, wonder, adventure, and the exploration of the unknown.
What do you think the appeal of sff is for those of us who love to read it?
I know people who don't read science fiction and fantasy. It's not "real." Or it's too genre. I don't see anything wrong with this. I'm not much of a mystery reader, for instance, and I almost never read memoirs as the form doesn't generally work for me. So it makes sense that there are readers for whom sff has no appeal or even an anti-appeal.
It's an odd thing, though, the appeal of sff. For me it was like coming home. The stories spoke to me instantly, fully, and deeply. And yet I know how some describe sff as immature for its insistence on things that can't be true, not to mention its genre roots and wings.
But sff are the literature of marvels, myth, wonder, adventure, and the exploration of the unknown.
What do you think the appeal of sff is for those of us who love to read it?
First SFF Novel
Jul. 6th, 2011 09:33 pmWhat's the first science fiction or fantasy novel you remember reading?
I'll go first.
If we go by fantastical elements, then I would have to say Mother West Wind Stories by Thornton Burgess, which I read and re-read obsessively in my early reading days.
If we go by books that fall more canonically into genre, then Robert Silverberg's REVOLT ON ALPHA C, which I got as a Scholastic Book selection back in the fourth grade.
I should note that I was not a precocious reader. I read a lot, but I didn't move into adult books until I was in what was then called junior high school, so early teen years.
I'll go first.
If we go by fantastical elements, then I would have to say Mother West Wind Stories by Thornton Burgess, which I read and re-read obsessively in my early reading days.
If we go by books that fall more canonically into genre, then Robert Silverberg's REVOLT ON ALPHA C, which I got as a Scholastic Book selection back in the fourth grade.
I should note that I was not a precocious reader. I read a lot, but I didn't move into adult books until I was in what was then called junior high school, so early teen years.
Cold Magic paperback. Global awakening.
Jul. 5th, 2011 10:18 pmTwo things tonight.
First, I unexpectedly received my author's copies of the mass market edition of COLD MAGIC. Its official release date is August 1 but it will probably start showing up in stores before that. Obviously the ebook remains available, but now the mass market will be too. Orbit altered the cover somewhat for the mass market. You can see the old and new covers compared at this Tumblr post.
What this means for you is that the mass market will be available very very soon. COLD FIRE follows in September.
Second, read here an excellent post by Ghanaian writer Jonathan Dotse on "Developing Worlds: Beyond the Frontiers of Science Fiction."
there are more signs that we are at the beginning of a global awakening to the role of the developing world in the future of science fiction. My own novel-in-progress began as a cyberpunk thriller set in a future North America, simply because whenever I tried to imagine an African future I found myself having to deal with issues I wished someone else had already dealt with; having to answer questions I wished someone else already had. I realized that I had no groundwork; no foundation whatsoever, and that to imagine a future Africa I would have to begin from scratch.
First, I unexpectedly received my author's copies of the mass market edition of COLD MAGIC. Its official release date is August 1 but it will probably start showing up in stores before that. Obviously the ebook remains available, but now the mass market will be too. Orbit altered the cover somewhat for the mass market. You can see the old and new covers compared at this Tumblr post.
What this means for you is that the mass market will be available very very soon. COLD FIRE follows in September.
Second, read here an excellent post by Ghanaian writer Jonathan Dotse on "Developing Worlds: Beyond the Frontiers of Science Fiction."
there are more signs that we are at the beginning of a global awakening to the role of the developing world in the future of science fiction. My own novel-in-progress began as a cyberpunk thriller set in a future North America, simply because whenever I tried to imagine an African future I found myself having to deal with issues I wished someone else had already dealt with; having to answer questions I wished someone else already had. I realized that I had no groundwork; no foundation whatsoever, and that to imagine a future Africa I would have to begin from scratch.
Over at Book View Cafe, the fine novelist and essayist sartorias talks about "Book Talk," that is, the love some (many?) readers have of book discussion. She writes about how, as a teen, she took a long bus journey in order to get in book talk, and how reading the work of writers talking about reading was another form of book talk.
The literary criticism or analysis that I found myself responding to was more in the nature of exploration, someone recording their experience of reading—what they found (or did not find) in the text, and how it related to other books, to other experience.
Growing up, I do not recall having anyone to discuss books with except my high school English teacher Charles Sullivan (later a president of IAFA). The idea of a book club still leaves me cold, not because I have an inherent objection to book clubs -- quite the contrary -- but because I don't understand how to negotiate them. I learned early to identify reading as a solitary activity, and yet one of the great pleasures I find when attending the few conventions I can make it to is book talk.
I do not discuss books, especially novels, online as much as I suppose I might wish to because I feel a genuine sense of reluctance to express, shall we say, the fullness of my opinion. I'm very aware of how interconnected the community is. I'm far more likely to discuss film in a wide-ranging way because it seems distanced from me; I am merely a consumer of film/tv.
Yet I noted that one of the commentators to the "Book Talk" post had a strong opinion on writers discussing their own work: “I think authors should be banned from discussing their own books.”
I asked for a clarification, so will update when I have it, but there are many ways of looking at this statement. I'll note three.
One is through the lens of promotion. I admit, I think it's a little harsh to expect writers never to mention their own work in the context of any promotional content whatsoever, i.e. my book is out today or here is a review of my book I'd like to share. On the flip side, if 90+% of a writer's social media communication is blatant promotion, I too will stop listening.
Two is through the lens of responding to talk about one's own work. The old wisdom prevails: Never ever argue with a bad review. But these days it all gets so much more complex. Should a writer thank a reviewer for a favorable or particularly insightful review? Should a writer enter discussions of their own work at any point? At a convention, of course, or a talk or reading, writers are often interviewed or encouraged to discuss their work; it's often the point of the panel or event. Is online a different space from this? Do readers want the space (quite reasonably) to discuss books without writers looking over their shoulders? As a reader entering a discussion, I would want that unless the venue was specifically a place in which readers asked writers questions and engaged them in discussion, but once you've entered that venue, the sort of book talk you're having changes, it seems to me.
Third is through the lens of a writer who reflects, discusses, analyzes, and reports on their own work, either that which they have already finished or works in progress. As a writer, I have a hard time thinking I ought never discuss my own work on my own blog or, to expand the definition, anywhere online. I don't say this to suggest that commentator above meant that writers should never discuss their own work in public or online; I'm just saying it seems odd to ME if that were the proposition.
I know that social media have changed the dynamic profoundly, and that there is a huge variety of responses to and reactions with the new online networking, not to mention the increasing reliance publishers have in using social media as promotion and publicity and especially in encouraging writers to do a lot of their own social media work.
As I have said before, I find the explosion of book blogging to be really exciting; book talk is all over the place these days in a way I could not have imagined when I was a teen reading reading reading in my solitary way.
So what do you think about book talk online and whether the presence of writers in social media helps or hinders it? Where is the balance? What are the issues?
sartorias talks about "Book Talk," that is, the love some (many?) readers have of book discussion. She writes about how, as a teen, she took a long bus journey in order to get in book talk, and how reading the work of writers talking about reading was another form of book talk. The literary criticism or analysis that I found myself responding to was more in the nature of exploration, someone recording their experience of reading—what they found (or did not find) in the text, and how it related to other books, to other experience.
Growing up, I do not recall having anyone to discuss books with except my high school English teacher Charles Sullivan (later a president of IAFA). The idea of a book club still leaves me cold, not because I have an inherent objection to book clubs -- quite the contrary -- but because I don't understand how to negotiate them. I learned early to identify reading as a solitary activity, and yet one of the great pleasures I find when attending the few conventions I can make it to is book talk.
I do not discuss books, especially novels, online as much as I suppose I might wish to because I feel a genuine sense of reluctance to express, shall we say, the fullness of my opinion. I'm very aware of how interconnected the community is. I'm far more likely to discuss film in a wide-ranging way because it seems distanced from me; I am merely a consumer of film/tv.
Yet I noted that one of the commentators to the "Book Talk" post had a strong opinion on writers discussing their own work: “I think authors should be banned from discussing their own books.”
I asked for a clarification, so will update when I have it, but there are many ways of looking at this statement. I'll note three.
One is through the lens of promotion. I admit, I think it's a little harsh to expect writers never to mention their own work in the context of any promotional content whatsoever, i.e. my book is out today or here is a review of my book I'd like to share. On the flip side, if 90+% of a writer's social media communication is blatant promotion, I too will stop listening.
Two is through the lens of responding to talk about one's own work. The old wisdom prevails: Never ever argue with a bad review. But these days it all gets so much more complex. Should a writer thank a reviewer for a favorable or particularly insightful review? Should a writer enter discussions of their own work at any point? At a convention, of course, or a talk or reading, writers are often interviewed or encouraged to discuss their work; it's often the point of the panel or event. Is online a different space from this? Do readers want the space (quite reasonably) to discuss books without writers looking over their shoulders? As a reader entering a discussion, I would want that unless the venue was specifically a place in which readers asked writers questions and engaged them in discussion, but once you've entered that venue, the sort of book talk you're having changes, it seems to me.
Third is through the lens of a writer who reflects, discusses, analyzes, and reports on their own work, either that which they have already finished or works in progress. As a writer, I have a hard time thinking I ought never discuss my own work on my own blog or, to expand the definition, anywhere online. I don't say this to suggest that commentator above meant that writers should never discuss their own work in public or online; I'm just saying it seems odd to ME if that were the proposition.
I know that social media have changed the dynamic profoundly, and that there is a huge variety of responses to and reactions with the new online networking, not to mention the increasing reliance publishers have in using social media as promotion and publicity and especially in encouraging writers to do a lot of their own social media work.
As I have said before, I find the explosion of book blogging to be really exciting; book talk is all over the place these days in a way I could not have imagined when I was a teen reading reading reading in my solitary way.
So what do you think about book talk online and whether the presence of writers in social media helps or hinders it? Where is the balance? What are the issues?
Two things recently have caused me to contemplate yet again the vexed question of spoilers.
One was an online discussion that took place long enough ago that I’m not going to link to it. The other was watching the Taye Diggs’ produced-and-starred-in miniseries DAY BREAK.
I don't like spoilers.
I say that not to take a belligerent stance. I know there are people who don’t mind spoilers and that seems to me as valid a stance as mine; it’s just a different stance. So when I say I don’t like spoilers, I don’t mean that I have a moral objection to spoilers or that I think no review or critical essay should include spoilers out of respect for delicate sensibilities like my own or that people who put spoilers in their reviews are horrible thoughtless wankers, I just mean that I PERSONALLY don’t like spoilers and I avoid them.
Here’s why I personally don’t like spoilers. It matters for ME ONLY, and is not meant to reflect badly on sensibilities different from my own.
When I experience a work for the first time, I want to experience it with as few preconceived notions as possible. I say that because I do bring in preconceived notions to every fictional work I read or view. I can’t help myself. I just do.
The more preconceptions I haul in, the less likely I can interact with the work in the way I best like: that is, in which I am discovering what the work is about and how I am reacting to what I am discovering the work is about. Much of the pleasure for me is not “surprise,” but rather “getting to know” the piece. I prefer to do that unmediated by outside opinion and influence beyond what I already bring because of the cultural baggage, and knowledge, I drag along as part of my daily existence. I’m also an emotional reader and viewer; the experience of my emotional interaction with the story is a great part of the enjoyment for me. I should note here that I can have an emotional interaction with intellectual content as well as characterization and plot and landscape.
I have discovered that I can increase my reading and viewing enjoyment by deliberately going in with as little knowledge of a specific work as possible. Oddly, this enhances the experience. It’s as if the less I know about the work, the more I can enjoy it for what it is to me because I am less likely to walk into it tainted by expectations.
Alas, I am obliged to add here, lest someone believe otherwise, that by this I do not mean I value ignorance and think ignorance makes books and films better. I value being well read and well educated and make myself as well read and educated as possible, so when I say that I go into a work “knowing as little as possible” I don’t mean in the larger sense of my general attempts to be knowledgable about the world and current events.
I will also tack on a brief paragraph to note that I am not an uncritical, I-just-go-in-with-low-expectations viewer and reader. Just ask my children how much they like to go see a film with me. When the lights come up, they look at me and say, “Well, Mom?” and brace themselves for the usual torrential criticism of the writing, characterization (or lack thereof), and stupid plot idiocies. I shall always fondly recall their befuddled expressions after the second X-Men film, in which they asked, and I said, “Gosh! I enjoyed that!” Please do not ask me what I thought of the third X-Men film as to even think of that abomination still makes my blood to boil.
DAY BREAK is a series starring Taye Diggs and an unusually diverse cast (for mainstream Hollywood) including three major female characters. He plays a cop in LA, but the story has a spec-fic element. I didn’t even know that much when Spouse and I watched the first episode. What I knew was that it starred Taye Diggs, and I’m sorry to have to tell you that the reason I stumbled across it at all was that I was wasting time online one day “fantasy casting” Cold Magic by checking out handsome black male actors to see if any of them had the kind of look I have in my head for Andevai.
As we watched the show (13 episodes that tell a complete story), I reflected how much I was enjoying my dearth of expectations. Nothing got in the way between me and my idiosyncratic experience of the show. Each night as we watched another episode or two via Netflix, Spouse and I speculated over possible directions that the story might take characters and plots, a pleasant diversion we could not have enjoyed had we known the story in advance. Indeed, I think the shows I’ve most enjoyed in the last few years have been the ones I’ve known the least about when I started watching them, including the iconic and superb The Wire (HBO, 5 seasons). I’m thrilled I knew as little as I did about the The Wire when we watched it--all via Netflix--and that I avoided reading about seasons we hadn’t yet seen because I didn’t want to read spoilers.
Let me be blunt. In some conversations about spoilers I sometimes sense a kind of condescension from people who are sure that anyone who objects to spoilers is a lesser sort of reader compared to, oh, them.
I just don’t see the utility of making a hierarchy out of ways in which people read.
Because not only is creating such a hierarchy a suspect exercise, it also closes off the possibility that people may have more than one facet, more than one set of tools, more than one strategy and approach. In other words, I don’t want to be told that I OUGHT NOT be the kind of reader/viewer who prefers no spoilers before reading or viewing a work.
Likewise, at times I sense an implied or stated idea that if “you” don’t like spoilers, then you must also by definition not ever want to engage critically with anything you read or view. Is it really so difficult to imagine that someone might dislike spoilers but like critical essays? My personal dislike of spoilers does not mean I ALSO do not like critical essays. I like them just fine (and I believe that critical essays by definition will and indeed must contain spoilers, in contrast to reviews which may or may not contain spoilers depending on how much the reviewer described the plot)
However, I don’t want to read critical essays until I’ve also read/viewed the work in question (or in those cases where I am pretty sure I am never going to read the work in question). Indeed, I get a great deal of enjoyment out of seeking out critical engagement with works I’ve particularly liked because it’s not only interesting and occasionally enlightening but it also creates a re-engagement with the work through analyzing and examining it, akin to re-watching or re-reading. In fact, I wish there was more critical engagement in the sff field and that it ranged farther afield: that is, I wish what critical essays there are would not roll over the same set of works and authors that get considered multiple times while rafts of other works and authors remain ignored.
At the same time, I understand that people who don’t mind spoilers can get frustrated by militant anti-spoiler readers and comments. Spoilerphilics don’t want to get scolded or accused of being snobs or killjoys. Why should they want that? They’re reading and viewing in a way that works for them. As far as I can tell, some people really want to know more about a work before they invest time and/or money in reading or viewing it, or they want to make sure the work will not contain triggering plot elements that they have good reason to prefer to avoid, or they just don’t care, or some other of many possible reasons and ways of reading and viewing.
As for DAY BREAK, both Spouse and I really enjoyed it, so that would constitute a two thumbs up. With no spoilers.
One was an online discussion that took place long enough ago that I’m not going to link to it. The other was watching the Taye Diggs’ produced-and-starred-in miniseries DAY BREAK.
I don't like spoilers.
I say that not to take a belligerent stance. I know there are people who don’t mind spoilers and that seems to me as valid a stance as mine; it’s just a different stance. So when I say I don’t like spoilers, I don’t mean that I have a moral objection to spoilers or that I think no review or critical essay should include spoilers out of respect for delicate sensibilities like my own or that people who put spoilers in their reviews are horrible thoughtless wankers, I just mean that I PERSONALLY don’t like spoilers and I avoid them.
Here’s why I personally don’t like spoilers. It matters for ME ONLY, and is not meant to reflect badly on sensibilities different from my own.
When I experience a work for the first time, I want to experience it with as few preconceived notions as possible. I say that because I do bring in preconceived notions to every fictional work I read or view. I can’t help myself. I just do.
The more preconceptions I haul in, the less likely I can interact with the work in the way I best like: that is, in which I am discovering what the work is about and how I am reacting to what I am discovering the work is about. Much of the pleasure for me is not “surprise,” but rather “getting to know” the piece. I prefer to do that unmediated by outside opinion and influence beyond what I already bring because of the cultural baggage, and knowledge, I drag along as part of my daily existence. I’m also an emotional reader and viewer; the experience of my emotional interaction with the story is a great part of the enjoyment for me. I should note here that I can have an emotional interaction with intellectual content as well as characterization and plot and landscape.
I have discovered that I can increase my reading and viewing enjoyment by deliberately going in with as little knowledge of a specific work as possible. Oddly, this enhances the experience. It’s as if the less I know about the work, the more I can enjoy it for what it is to me because I am less likely to walk into it tainted by expectations.
Alas, I am obliged to add here, lest someone believe otherwise, that by this I do not mean I value ignorance and think ignorance makes books and films better. I value being well read and well educated and make myself as well read and educated as possible, so when I say that I go into a work “knowing as little as possible” I don’t mean in the larger sense of my general attempts to be knowledgable about the world and current events.
I will also tack on a brief paragraph to note that I am not an uncritical, I-just-go-in-with-low-expectations viewer and reader. Just ask my children how much they like to go see a film with me. When the lights come up, they look at me and say, “Well, Mom?” and brace themselves for the usual torrential criticism of the writing, characterization (or lack thereof), and stupid plot idiocies. I shall always fondly recall their befuddled expressions after the second X-Men film, in which they asked, and I said, “Gosh! I enjoyed that!” Please do not ask me what I thought of the third X-Men film as to even think of that abomination still makes my blood to boil.
DAY BREAK is a series starring Taye Diggs and an unusually diverse cast (for mainstream Hollywood) including three major female characters. He plays a cop in LA, but the story has a spec-fic element. I didn’t even know that much when Spouse and I watched the first episode. What I knew was that it starred Taye Diggs, and I’m sorry to have to tell you that the reason I stumbled across it at all was that I was wasting time online one day “fantasy casting” Cold Magic by checking out handsome black male actors to see if any of them had the kind of look I have in my head for Andevai.
As we watched the show (13 episodes that tell a complete story), I reflected how much I was enjoying my dearth of expectations. Nothing got in the way between me and my idiosyncratic experience of the show. Each night as we watched another episode or two via Netflix, Spouse and I speculated over possible directions that the story might take characters and plots, a pleasant diversion we could not have enjoyed had we known the story in advance. Indeed, I think the shows I’ve most enjoyed in the last few years have been the ones I’ve known the least about when I started watching them, including the iconic and superb The Wire (HBO, 5 seasons). I’m thrilled I knew as little as I did about the The Wire when we watched it--all via Netflix--and that I avoided reading about seasons we hadn’t yet seen because I didn’t want to read spoilers.
Let me be blunt. In some conversations about spoilers I sometimes sense a kind of condescension from people who are sure that anyone who objects to spoilers is a lesser sort of reader compared to, oh, them.
I just don’t see the utility of making a hierarchy out of ways in which people read.
Because not only is creating such a hierarchy a suspect exercise, it also closes off the possibility that people may have more than one facet, more than one set of tools, more than one strategy and approach. In other words, I don’t want to be told that I OUGHT NOT be the kind of reader/viewer who prefers no spoilers before reading or viewing a work.
Likewise, at times I sense an implied or stated idea that if “you” don’t like spoilers, then you must also by definition not ever want to engage critically with anything you read or view. Is it really so difficult to imagine that someone might dislike spoilers but like critical essays? My personal dislike of spoilers does not mean I ALSO do not like critical essays. I like them just fine (and I believe that critical essays by definition will and indeed must contain spoilers, in contrast to reviews which may or may not contain spoilers depending on how much the reviewer described the plot)
However, I don’t want to read critical essays until I’ve also read/viewed the work in question (or in those cases where I am pretty sure I am never going to read the work in question). Indeed, I get a great deal of enjoyment out of seeking out critical engagement with works I’ve particularly liked because it’s not only interesting and occasionally enlightening but it also creates a re-engagement with the work through analyzing and examining it, akin to re-watching or re-reading. In fact, I wish there was more critical engagement in the sff field and that it ranged farther afield: that is, I wish what critical essays there are would not roll over the same set of works and authors that get considered multiple times while rafts of other works and authors remain ignored.
At the same time, I understand that people who don’t mind spoilers can get frustrated by militant anti-spoiler readers and comments. Spoilerphilics don’t want to get scolded or accused of being snobs or killjoys. Why should they want that? They’re reading and viewing in a way that works for them. As far as I can tell, some people really want to know more about a work before they invest time and/or money in reading or viewing it, or they want to make sure the work will not contain triggering plot elements that they have good reason to prefer to avoid, or they just don’t care, or some other of many possible reasons and ways of reading and viewing.
As for DAY BREAK, both Spouse and I really enjoyed it, so that would constitute a two thumbs up. With no spoilers.
Writer Sherman Alexie writes a moving and searing piece responding to the now infamous Wall Street Journal essay by Meghan Cox Gurdon bemoaning the "fad" for dark, dangerous YA because of how it might, like, warp children's minds.
Alexie:
Almost every day, my mailbox is filled with handwritten letters from students–teens and pre-teens–who have read my YA book and loved it. I have yet to receive a letter from a child somehow debilitated by the domestic violence, drug abuse, racism, poverty, sexuality, and murder contained in my book. To the contrary, kids as young as ten have sent me autobiographical letters written in crayon, complete with drawings inspired by my book, that are just as dark, terrifying, and redemptive as anything I’ve ever read.
And, often, kids have told me that my YA novel is the only book they’ve ever read in its entirety.
So when I read Meghan Cox Gurdon’s complaints about the “depravity” and “hideously distorted portrayals” of contemporary young adult literature, I laughed at her condescension.
Does Ms. Gurdon honestly believe that a sexually explicit YA novel might somehow traumatize a teen mother? Does she believe that a YA novel about murder and rape will somehow shock a teenager whose life has been damaged by murder and rape? Does she believe a dystopian novel will frighten a kid who already lives in hell?
Read the whole thing.
Alexie:
Almost every day, my mailbox is filled with handwritten letters from students–teens and pre-teens–who have read my YA book and loved it. I have yet to receive a letter from a child somehow debilitated by the domestic violence, drug abuse, racism, poverty, sexuality, and murder contained in my book. To the contrary, kids as young as ten have sent me autobiographical letters written in crayon, complete with drawings inspired by my book, that are just as dark, terrifying, and redemptive as anything I’ve ever read.
And, often, kids have told me that my YA novel is the only book they’ve ever read in its entirety.
So when I read Meghan Cox Gurdon’s complaints about the “depravity” and “hideously distorted portrayals” of contemporary young adult literature, I laughed at her condescension.
Does Ms. Gurdon honestly believe that a sexually explicit YA novel might somehow traumatize a teen mother? Does she believe that a YA novel about murder and rape will somehow shock a teenager whose life has been damaged by murder and rape? Does she believe a dystopian novel will frighten a kid who already lives in hell?
Read the whole thing.
Tankadere is:
A comics anthology by up and coming graphic artists from around the world! Twenty artists and thirteen exciting stories of time and travel await aboard the first volume of Tankadere, a comics adventure spanning the globe. Volume 1: Around the World in 80 Pages contains blimp races, panicked couriers, strange birds, hidden temples, land sharks, dazzling illustrations, and more. Join us on our maiden voyage into the comics world!
You can find more about Tankadere here.
I note for the sake of full disclosure that my daughter is one of the two co-editors and publishers of this project, as well as an artist.
So here is my question.
What questions would you want to ask the artists, if you had a chance to do so? Daughter is preparing some followup publicity material and one thing she wants to do is mini interviews with the artists who contributed stories, so what kind of interview questions would you be interested in hearing answered?
A comics anthology by up and coming graphic artists from around the world! Twenty artists and thirteen exciting stories of time and travel await aboard the first volume of Tankadere, a comics adventure spanning the globe. Volume 1: Around the World in 80 Pages contains blimp races, panicked couriers, strange birds, hidden temples, land sharks, dazzling illustrations, and more. Join us on our maiden voyage into the comics world!
You can find more about Tankadere here.
I note for the sake of full disclosure that my daughter is one of the two co-editors and publishers of this project, as well as an artist.
So here is my question.
What questions would you want to ask the artists, if you had a chance to do so? Daughter is preparing some followup publicity material and one thing she wants to do is mini interviews with the artists who contributed stories, so what kind of interview questions would you be interested in hearing answered?
