When I reviewed Cathrynne Valente’s The Habitation of the Blessed for Salon Futura I made mention of the fact that Cat was experimenting with writing science fiction. That isn’t necessarily an easy thing for someone whose expertise is primarily in mythology. However, Cat has persevered, and with the novella she had in Clarkesworld recently I think she has cracked it.

Silently and Very Fast is a story about an AI called Elefsis. One of the enduring problems of AI research is how you can train a software system to think like a human; how you can get it to pass the Turing Test. Cat approaches this by taking an advanced house management AI and getting it to play with the children of the house. She uses fairy tales — something she knows very well — to help it understand the human world, and I think it works brilliantly.

Of course there are issues along the way, and this particular passage delighted me:

I still think of myself as a house. Ravan tried to fix this problem of self-image, as he called it. To teach me to phrase my communication in terms of a human body. To say: let us hold hands instead of let us hold kitchens. To say put our heads together and not put our parlors together.

But it is not as simple as replacing words anymore. Ravan is gone. My hearth is broken.

And if that gets you thinking that the human world isn’t always a safe one for a young AI, you’d be dead right.

Anyway, the story was published in three parts at Clarkesworld, which is free but a bit of a pain to read. It is also available as a limited edition small press book from WSFA, but that’s rather expensive. Fortunately Neil has now made it available as a stand-alone ebook, and of course it is available in the store. It’s just £1.99 (about $3). You know you want it, right?

I’ve been busily reading books with trans characters in them in advance of my talk tomorrow. Thoughts on Samuel Delany’s Triton may follow soon, but in the meantime I have a review of Nightsiders by Sue Isle, the first in the Twelve Planets series from my feminist pals in Australia. I was impressed. Find out why here.

Here we go again with a book review. Up this time is A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files, which I have tried to describe by inventing the sub-genre of Queer Steampunk Dark Fantasy Western. So if you like your cowboys gay, with added mad science and sorcery, not to mention a few rather unpleasant Mayan gods, this is the book for you. You can find my review here.

That’s another review done. Téa Obreht’s novel went down very well with the literary community, despite having several supernatural elements to it. Is it actually a fantasy novel, and why does it remind me of Neil Gaiman? You can find my views here.

There’s another one done. You can read my thoughts on Stina Leicht’s Northern Ireland-based debut fantasy novel here. This is one that makes a real effort to get the setting right.

I’m off to London shortly. Bloggage may be sparse until Sunday.

Yes, I know, there isn’t any point in my directing you to Neil Gaiman’s blog. You all follow him anyway, right?

But maybe you didn’t read this entry. And you should have done, because Neil is talking about M. John Harrison, who is one of my favorite writers too.

There is, as I have already mentioned, and as you will discover, no consistency to Viriconium. Each time we return to it, it has changed, or we have. The nature of reality shifts and changes. The Viriconium stories are palimpsests, and other stories and other cities can be seen beneath the surface. Stories adumbrate other stories. Themes and characters reappear, like Tarot cards being shuffled and redealt.

Yes.

And yes, Viriconium is everywhere. Mostly because it is in our hearts and nagging at the edges of our minds.

This is one of those books that is very good as long as you know nothing about the part of the world where the author claims to have set much of the action. Unfortunately Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is supposed to be set in Wales, though geographically it appears that the author thinks Wales is actually Devon and Somerset. This, as I say in the review, is a real shame, because otherwise it is a great little book with very imaginative packaging. I have American friends who loved it to pieces. You may do too, especially if you know nothing about my part of the world. I’m almost tempted to say that if you don’t you should not read my review to I won’t wreck the book for you, but here it is anyway.

Rarely have I read a first novel that is so astonishingly accomplished in some aspects, and so mediocre in others. Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus was fascinating to read and challenging to review. Watch me get totally conflicted about the book here.

Yeah, I have finally got to read it. Yeah, I loved it. New Ian McDonald novel, what can I say? Except of course that it is aimed at younger readers, so this something new and different. And it has Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth of the airship Everness. You can read my fangirl gushing here. Mr. Picacio, can we have her on the cover of the next book, please?

Here’s another book review for you. This one is for Across the Universe by Beth Revis, a generation ship story. Your enjoyment of this book will hinge crucially on whether you believe that a critical passage is the result of a strategic error by the author and editor, or that it is conclusive proof that girl cooties destroys your ability to do physics.

My friend Mike Berry who does SF&F reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle has done his own post of books he’s looking forward to in 2012. Two of them were on my list, but the others are not and a couple of them have just got added.

Firstly there’s a new Matt Ruff novel, The Mirage, due in February. The fact that it is a Matt Ruff novel immediately gets it onto my list, but look at the description:

set in an alternate Middle East after Christian fundamentalists have flown jetliners into the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad

Interested yet?

Also fascinating is Liminal People by Ayize Jama-Everett. This is a Small Beer book, and if Gavin and Kelly are pushing something strongly I always sit up and take notice. The blurb describes the book as an SF thriller comparable to Richard Morgan, which is not the sort of thing I expect from Small Beer, which raises the interest level. Then there’s the author bio:

Ayize Jama-Everett was born in 1974 and raised in Harlem, New York. Since then he has traveled extensively in Northern Africa, New Hampshire, and Northern California. He holds a Master’s in Clinical Psychology and a Master’s in Divinity. He teaches religion and psychology at Starr King School for the Ministry when he’s not working as a school therapist at the College Preparatory School.

Yeah, I need to read this book too.