That would be our Banksy, not the artist.
In the run up to the eagerly awaited release of Matter, the folks at io9 trot out their Lit Crit credentials with a post about one of my favorite Culture novels, Inversions. So I thought I’d give it an extra plug too. Great book.
OK, so now I know what Cynthia was on about (scroll down). Amberlight is one of those books that really demands a proper review. It is, in its way, quite wonderful. Yet it features an ambitious prose style that I suspect won’t be quite classy enough for those who love Hal Duncan but will be “too hard” for those who don’t. And in these days of “either with us or against us” politics it is probably nowhere near hardline enough to please the Feminist community (in fact it may well be labeled traitorous). Nevertheless it is intense, imaginative, intelligent and also a good read for heterosexual females. I loved it.
There have been a few interesting stories related to music and copyright over the last couple of weeks, and they have a definite bearing on the future of book publishing.
Continue reading
I read most of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union on the plane, and finished it off last night. I’m please to report that the Periscope Light book holder worked very well. As for the book: fabulous. It is a little difficult to get into if you are not Jewish, and therefore not familiar with a lot of the language, but us spec fic readers ought to be used to that sort of thing. It is an alternate history, so it is definitely Hugo-eligible. The writing is wonderful, as one might expect from a Pulitzer Prize winner. And along the way the book makes some interesting points about religious fanatics, terrorists and US foreign policy that it might not have been able to make so clearly if it were not set in a parallel universe.
At this point I think I’m finally beginning to settle on a short list for the Hugos. It currently looks like this:
I have to admit that it is hard to shoehorn the Hand into a spec fic category, but it is a wonderful book with a definite spooky air too it, so I’m nominating it anyway.
Yes, I know, there are three men on that list, so I’m a class traitor who will be first up against the wall when the Feminist Revolution comes.
And speaking of awards, I’ve looked at the Nebula Preliminary Ballot, and I have scratched my head in bewilderment. I suspect that SFWA members simply don’t read much these days.
Kim Newman is probably an acquired taste, but it is a taste that Kevin and I have most definitely acquired. I would have read this a long time ago had I not planned to give it to Kevin for Christmas and therefore had to keep it hidden since World Fantasy. After he’d read it, I just had time to get through the final story, “Cold Snap”, which is new for the collection and therefore Hugo eligible, before I had to rush off for Darkest Somerset which is where, coincidentally, the story is set. Having got here, I am wondering whether the situation was as fully resolved as Newman reports, because it seems pretty cold here to me. I shall keep my eyes peeled for zombie snowmen.
It looks like Mr. Wilson has another winner on his hands. Axis looks like it will appeal very directly to the sort of people who vote in the Hugos. Goodness knows what the rest of the world will make of it though. Wilson does a good job of trying to put his heroes in the middle between the gung-ho technophiles and the paranoid technophobes. But I’m sure that in a Michael Crichton book Wilson’s heroes would be the bad guys and the creepy, murderous government agents would be the heroes. Maybe SF fans are still a breed apart.
I find myself with a whole bunch of things to say about the new Charlie Stross novel, Halting State.
Firstly it is quite a while since I sat down and devoured a novel the way I did with this one. It took me less than 48 hours to finish. I’m not sure it will make my Hugo list. It is, after all, competing with the likes of Spook Country and Ysabel. But it was a lot of fun.
Secondly there was this:
Which is why you find yourself, about two hours later, standing on a street outside the conference centre, miles from anything (except for a couple of high-rise hotels, a preserved dockyard crane the size of the Eiffel Tower, and a Foster Associates’ mothership that looks to have suffered a wee navigation mishap on final approach to London’s docklands)…
Yes, our heroes have been to a convention at the SECC. On behalf of Captain Standlee and the entire crew of the WSFS Armadillo, I would like to thank Mr. Stross for his kindness in Tuckerizing our spaceship. We owe you a beer or two, Charlie.
Finally, and this will probably go right by most readers, Stross makes a very important point about the perniciousness of the UK’s Sex Offenders’ Register. Much kudos to him for doing so.
Update: And I forgot to mention the first time round that, unlike many SF&F authors, Charlie has a reasonable understanding of economics and financial markets.
Ted Chiang’s latest novelette, “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” appears in the September issue of F&SF. It was also published as a stand-alone hardcover by Subterranean Press. Yes, that is right, a stand-alone hardcover novelette. I bought a copy at World Fantasy. It cost me $20. Last time I looked it was going for $30 second hand on Amazon. This is not just any piece of short fiction, this is Ted Chiang. It is a time travel story done in the style of the Arabian Nights. I don’t think it is one of Chiang’s best, but I don’t expect that to stop it being a Hugo nominee this year, because even slightly below par Chiang is very good indeed.
Via SF Scope I learn that Justina Robson has a Cafe Press shop for her Quantum Gravity series. Naturally I scooted over there immediately, but only to be disappointed. Where is my replica Lila Black body armor? I ask. Or my replica Lila Black motorbike? These elves know nothing about merchandising.
Another new blog to follow! Nicola Griffith talks about her foray into historical fiction. So called “Dark Ages” Britain is an interest of mine, and I love Nicola’s writing, so I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one.
And for the curious, “gemæcca” is an Old English word meaning “companion, wife, mate, one suited to another”.
The new Locus arrived today. It does have a photo of me in it. Obviously I have to work harder at becoming a nobody.
Much more importantly it has not one, but two rave reviews of The Secret History of Moscow by Ekaterina Sedia, one by Gary K Wolfe and one by Farren Miller. Quite right too. It is an excellent book.
In his blurb for Dangerous Space, Matt Ruff says,
It takes a special talent to write about emotions this raw without embarrassing yourself.
Kelley Eskridge does not embarrass herself in the slightest. This is a superb collection of short stories.
I have finally got to the end of the Valente, and I’m delighted to report that Cat has done a superb job of wrapping things up (though I did guess who The Orphan was fairly early on). I recommend that you read both books back to back, because there are so many stories going on, and they interweave in such a complex fashion, that you’ll struggle to remember who is who in the second volume if you read it too long after the first.
I see that The Green Man Review has a Catherynne M. Valente special up. Good stuff.
Update: The Valente special now comes complete with an Emerald City reprint, because it just had to have a review of The Descent of Inanna. Hopefully there will now be no mysterious sound of lion paws padding through the Green Man Review mansion.
As I had to spend a couple of hours on BART yesterday, I took a book with me. I picked up Kelley Eskridge’s Dangerous Space, because it was lighter (in weight) than the Cat Valente I was in the middle of reading. I am very impressed. Most of the stories have been published elsewhere, but the title work appears to be new. Novella by the looks of the page count. Hmm…
By the way, it was “Dangerous Space” that reminded me that Franz Ferdinand would be a good way of blasting the darn Christmas music out of my head. Not that Noir is likely to be based on any particular band, but the Glasgow boys had already drifted into my head before I discovered that Noir had a song called “Kill me now!” (Sorry folks, you have to read the story to understand this.)
I’ve spent much of the day in San Francisco. This was not really a sales expedition. I can’t be bothered with the crowds. But I have been buying books. I have got Amberlight, which I’m very much looking forward to after Cynthia’s enthusiastic recommendation here (scroll down). I’ve also got Water Logic, the third book in Laurie J Marks’ Elemental Logic series. I’ve been really enjoying these, and I’m so pleased that Small Beer Press have allowed Laurie to keep publishing the series. Finally I picked up Felix Gilman’s Thunderer because Jeff VanderMeer has been enthusing about it.
But I haven’t spent all of my time in bookstores. After all, Lush has a sale. What more can you ask for? Get on out there girls, and stock up now.
It is taking me quite a while to work my way through the new Cat Valente book. This is not because I’m busy doing Christmas things. It is very quiet here, and actually I’m working right now (and writing this while the software does test runs). But I still have a lot of time to read, and I’m making slow progress.
There are good reasons for taking time over this book. To stat with, like the previous Orphan’s Tales book, In the Cities of Coin and Spice is an interleaved collection of short fables. That means that, just like with an anthology or collection, there are many convenient put-the-book-down spots. But equally important is the denseness and richness of Valente’s prose. You feel the need to read slowly so that you don’t miss anything.
I can see that these books will not be to everyone’s taste, but personally I’m in awe of them. Even if no all of the stories grab the attention, it is always worth reading them because you may come across moments like this:
Consider this: if a unicorn is innocent, if she is the core and pivot of all possible purity, why should she seek it out? Why should she care if some other creature is innocent, if she herself runneth over with virtue? Why should she, time and time again, though she knows better – she must know! – be lured from the deep and shadowy greenwood by the simple presence of a girl in a white dress? Ridiculous. We want it because we have no idea what it is, except that we know its smell, its weight, its outline against a gray sky. We want it because it is new. We go toward it hoping that we can touch it, that we can understand it, that we may become innocent ourselves.
Or then again there is the story of the kappas who go to live in the high mountains so that the water in their head bowls will freeze and they can continue to be polite and bow without the risk of losing the precious liquid.
One of the stock stories about author readings is that there will always be someone in the audience who asks the question, “where do you get your ideas from”? I guess these people must be wannabe authors who just can’t come up with any ideas for fiction. I know that’s one of the reasons I don’t write much fiction. And yet here is Valente so overflowing with story ideas, many of them really good ones, that she can throw them all away in a handful of pages each. Awesome. (Yes Cat, it is a great word.)
My regular Google Alert for major SF awards has turned up an interesting post on a blog dedicated to eBooks. The post starts by noting that Michael Andre-Driussi’s Lexicon Urthus is currently going for between $119 and $284 on Amazon (second hand – it is out of print). It is good to know that people place such value on study of the Book of the New Sun but, as the Garson O’Toole points out, it would make so much more sense if works such as Andre-Driussi’s were available as annotated eBook editions of the original. Then you could actually read the book and look up the annotations as you went along. So much easier than footnotes (though I do dearly love Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell). Might we actually have found a purpose for eBooks at last?
Of course for such a thing to happen, various other things have to line up. To start with Gene Wolfe may not want an annotated edition made available. Equally Tor may not want the book available in electronic form. And of course someone would have to do the work. But it is an interesting concept.
I’m not doing much writing about SF these days, but Timmi Duchamp asked me to contribute to a series of “best of the year” posts for the Aqueduct Press blog. This sounded interesting, so I did one. And lo, I find myself published alongside Nicola Griffith and Eleanor Arnason. How cool is that? My own contribution is now online, and has been paired with one by Cynthia Ward that talks about a book that I think I would very much enjoy reading. Looks like a trip to a bookstore is in order.
Every so often I come across a book where I can’t explain how good it is without diving into a full-scale review. And as I’m not going to do that here you’ll have to be content with this. If you are the sort of fantasy reader who also likes Dorothy Dunnett then you will probably like Daniel Abraham’s Long Price Quartet. Book 2 is better than book 1. One of the best fantasy series around.