Science Fiction

More Kameron – Magic and Mothers

~ Cheryl

I have a couple more Kameron Hurley blog posts I’d like to draw your attention to. And by the way this blog onslaught is because God’s War comes out in mass market paperback in the UK today. First up there’s a great post about the bug-based magic system that Kameron invented for the series here. The main thing I want to talk about, however, is a pair of posts by Kameron and her mom, Terri, on Pornokitsch. Basically Terri explains that, while she is a devoted reader of popular fiction, she can’t get her head around SF. Meanwhile Kameron explains why she gravitated towards fiction where you could imaging making real change in the world.

I have much sympathy, of course. My mum doesn’t read fiction at all. And my dad, who was a voracious reader of genre novels of many types, died before I got to be well known for this stuff.

The thing that struck me about these posts was this brief paragraph from Terri:

Unlike real life, in popular fiction the good guys always win.

For most people, I am sure that they do. But one thing that I learned very early on in life is that the “good guys” are the people who are “normal”. That is, the people who are white, straight, able-bodied and cis. Other characters can be good people too, but if they don’t fit in with social norms then, in the story, they are the people who will suffer tragically. Even when I read a real-world novel about trans people that has a happy ending, I find it hard to believe. The only way I can believe a book in which someone like me might have a happy ending is if it is very clearly set in a world that isn’t ours. And if there are no trans people in a book, I just end up identifying with the character who is the biggest social outcast, for whatever reason.

That might seem somewhat self-obsessed and selfish, coming from someone who, most of the time, has a great deal of privilege. But it is something that has got itself deeply ingrained in my psyche. And in any case, I’m always aware that the abyss is right there next to me, waiting. I’m doing my best to enjoy my life as best I can while I can, because sooner or later that tragic ending will catch up with me.

You Can Help Destroy Science Fiction!

~ Cheryl

Lightspeed magazine has had so much interest in their forthcoming Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue that they are running a Kickstarter campaign to allow them to buy more stories and print a double-sized issue. They’ll be doing a trade paperback print edition too. You want this, you know you do. back it here.

Today on Ujima: Gareth L. Powell

~ Cheryl

I’ve been in Bristol today to help host another Women’s Outlook Show on Ujima radio. My main guest for the day was Bristol’s own Gareth L. Powell who has just launched his latest novel, Hive Monkey. Gareth and I got to spend half an hour chatting about his career, why everyone loves the sweary monkey, and some of the cool ideas Gareth uses in the book. The latter is a bit introductory for most SF readers, but I have to explain words like cyborg for the Ujima audience.

I was expecting to do a segment on the fabulous “This is not an excuse” anti-rape campaign that Bristol is running at the moment. Sadly that had to be postponed, and I ended up getting asked to host a segment on consumer rights law instead.

Those two segment make up the first hour of the show, which you can listen to here.

I spend a bit of time in the studio at the start of the second hour. We managed a brief break from tradition and did a “Lighter Look at Life” segment that actually had us laughing. After that we handed over to Paulette for some serious local politics, which she does much better than I do. That is all available here.

Ladies: Destroy Science Fiction Now!

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Yes girls, it is time to load up on the cooties and sally forth to terrorize those legions of 50-year-old adolescent boys who cannot bear to see their beloved genre polluted by things feminine. Lightspeed magazine is preparing a girls-only special edition with the title of Women Destroy Science Fiction! Submissions are now open. To learn more about this one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spread terror and tampons through the gleaning chrome halls of boys own fiction, go here and read a special message from guest editor, Christie Yant. Your gender needs you!

Not Dead

~ Cheryl

Yeah, I know, I have been quiet. I have a huge amount of stuff to do before I head off to Canada to see Kevin (and possibly attend SMOFcon, though that’s a very minor attraction in comparison). Progress is being made, sort of.

Anyway, today I am off to Bath for the next meeting of The Emporium Strikes Back, the Mr B’s science fiction book club. Today we will be discussing Vurt, which I have just had the pleasure of re-reading. I will be fascinated to see what the rest of the group has made of it.

Also it is my turn to suggest books for the next meeting. I have been asked to pick three. Naturally they are all science fiction books by women with some sort of feminist element to them. I’ll tell you tomorrow which ones they were, and which one the group finally chose. In the meantime you can amuse yourselves by trying to guess which three I picked.

Brit & I Do T

~ Cheryl

One of the things that I did while I was in Brighton for World Fantasy was record a segment for Claire Parker’s Trans-themed radio show, Time 4 T. The idea was to talk about Trans people’s place in the SF&F community, and in particular honor Caitlín R. Kiernan. Brit Mandelo came along too to give her perspective.

That interview is now available as a podcast. Brit and I are on about 19 minutes in, but there’s a lot of good stuff in the show, in particular some information about the amazing Angela Morley.

Bristol LitFest: Apocalypses with Toby Litt & Nikesh Shukla

~ Cheryl

The other LitFest event I went to involved Nikesh Shukla interviewing Toby Litt on the subject of apocalypse fiction. Toby does actually destroy Earth in one of his books, but I’d better avoid too much in the way of spoilers.

Neither Toby nor Nikesh would describe themselves as science fiction writers, but they have both dabbled and both recognize the usefulness of SF. Indeed, Toby said very similar things to what Nick Harkaway said when I interviewed him for Salon Futura: namely that modern fiction has to be partly science fiction, and that much literary fiction fails precisely because it ignores technology entirely.

Had I been running the event, it would have said a lot more about different types of apocalyptic fiction, and why we use them, but I would probably have bored people stupid. Most of the crowd were there to listen to Toby and Nikesh, both of who, are very amusing. A fine evening was had by all (including Gaie Sebold and David Gullen who had stuck around after the Kraen Rises event).

Lived To Tell The Tale

~ Cheryl

I did my interview on Radio Bristol today. It was a lot of fun. We talked entirely about science fiction and fantasy. I got to do plugs for BristolCon and the London Worldcon, and name check a whole bunch of people. I also got to rant a little about the lack of women writers on Waterstones’ shelves.

The programme is available for replay here for the next seven days. Sadly my bit is 2 hours & 15 mins into a 3 hour show, and the BBC Listen Again feature does not appear to allow you to fast forward through a show. I will forgive you if you don’t want to listen all the way through just to hear me.

[Update: I’m being told that it is possible to fast forward through the broadcast if you are patient. Probably you have to wait for the whole thing to download. Or maybe it is browser-dependent. Anyway, if you can, start from around 2 hours 5 minutes then skip the Rubettes.]

On the other hand, I have listened to the whole thing, and Richard Lewis runs a tight show. Three hours in the studio is hard going, though it is a bit easier if you don’t have guests in all the time. I note that the show opens with Richard enthusing about the wonders of the theremin. He also has a very eclectic choice of music. Of the four songs he played just before I came on, two were favorites of mine. One was Mott the Hoople’s “Roll away the Stone” (though to be honest just about anything from Mott would have made me happy). The other was Albert Hammond’s “Free Electric Band”, which I’m guessing a lot of you won’t know. Here, through the magic of YouTube, is a little philosophy.

Of course the less said about Gerry Monroe’s “Sally” and The Rubettes’ “Sugar Baby Love” the better. But I guess the BBC has to make room for all aspects of British culture.

Anyway, my thanks to Richard, to his assistants Marcus and Sean, and to Cheryl the Producer. I hope I did OK, and that you’ll have me back again some day.

Introducing The Dark

~ Cheryl

You can’t keep Sean Wallace down, can you? He handed over Fantasy magazine to John Joseph Adams (who then incorporated it into Lightspeed), but he got back into helping edit Clarkesworld, and now he has a new fiction magazine out. In conjunction with Jack Fisher, he is publishing The Dark. It promises, “fiction that is weird and offbeat; magic realism; the fantastic; dark science fiction…”. And the debut issue has a stellar lineup of Lisa L. Hannett, Nnedi Okorafor, Angela Slatter and Rachel Swirsky.

Now here’s the thing. It will be available online, but not just yet. You, however, can buy issue #1 from your friendly, neighborhood ebook store. Why not give it a try?

Nene Ormes Interview

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

As promised, I have another one of my Ujima radio interviews available as a podcast now. This one is with Nene Ormes, a Swedish writer whose work is not yet available in English (but I am hopeful). Topics addressed include:

  • Getting published in English
  • Urban fantasy in Sweden
  • Swedish crime novels
  • Marriage equality in Sweden
  • Vikings
  • Egyptology (Nene is an archaeologist by training)
  • The World SF Travel Grant
  • Working in a bookstore
  • Wedding tattoos

Nene asked me to add that after the show she remembered that Swedes do call some Danish pastries Viennese.

The interview was originally broadcast on July 24th.



As usual the interview is available through the Salon Futura feed on iTunes.

Stephanie Saulter Interview

~ Cheryl

The Listen Again feature on Ujima drops shows after a few weeks and now that I am aware of that I have been saving the audio files so that I can make them available again as podcasts. Also I edit them so that you don’t have to listen to ads, other parts of the show and so on.

The latest interview to go up is with Stephanie Saulter. Topics addressed include:

  • Why non-white people might want to write science fiction (because Stephanie gets asked that);
  • Diversity in SF&F (with mentions for the Writers of Color twitter account, Nikesh Shukla and Hal Duncan);
  • The Nine Worlds convention (with a mention for Rochita Loenen-Ruiz);
  • Stephanie’s life and remarkable family; and
  • The Scriptopus website

The interview was originally broadcast on August 13th.



As usual the interview is available through the Salon Futura feed on iTunes. Later this week I’ll have an interview with Nene Ormes for you.

Arab Science Fiction Event

~ Cheryl

Ottoman Star WarsOn Wednesday October 2nd the Science Museum in London is staging an evening discussion called From Sinbad to Sci-Fi: Reimagining Arab Science Fiction. It will be at their Dana Centre in Kensington and starts at 19:00. Admission is free but you do need to book so that they can check on numbers. Further details are available here.

I won’t be able to attend, though I’m sure that lots of London-based people will do so and report back. Lavie Tidhar has already tweeted his interest. Someone is doing a good job promoting this because they have an active Twitter feed and Facebook presence. Following those I discovered this Indiegogo campaign that is raising funds to create an Arabic science fiction film.

I’m delighted to see a lot happening with Arab science fiction all of a sudden. Hopefully we will see a lot more of it in the coming years.

YA in the Booker

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Adam Roberts’ post calling for more attention to be paid to YA by the Booker Prize has been gaining a fair amount of attention. I was going to comment on it but then, like Matt Cheney, found that I had far more to say than is reasonable, or even polite, to put into a blog comment. So I’m writing something here instead.

Adam’s basic point appears to be that YA is a burgeoning field of literature and that the Booker, as a prize for all literature, should look at it, and reward it if it is good enough, rather than assuming that it is of lesser quality simply because it is “for kids”.

(I note in passing that this is a somewhat different point to the argument for a YA Hugo. The Hugos can and do consider YA, and have voted YA books the Best Novel prize in the past. What we are debating now is whether there should be a Hugo specifically for YA.)

I am certainly reading a lot more YA these days. I do so for a whole range of reasons, one of which is simply that YA books tend to be shorter and more fast-paced than non-YA, and sometimes this is what I want out of a book. Here are some more complex arguments.

1. Because publishers still tend to assume that SF&F is “for kids” it is often easier to get a translation deal for a YA SF&F novel than it is for an adult one. So if I want to read translated SF&F, YA is a good place to look.

2. Equally publishers still tend to assume that YA is less serious than adult fiction, and therefore an appropriate venue for women writers. If I want to look for good new women writers, again YA is one of the places to go.

3. Finally it appears to be easier to address issues of gender and sexuality in YA than it is in adult fiction. I suspect that this is because publishers code YA as being for teenage girls. Adult SF&F they assume is for adult males, whom they think may be offended by QUILTBAG themes, and if they had YA fiction aimed at boys they’d probably worry that the audience would be harmed by such material.

Yes, I know I am making sweeping generalizations here. Not all publishers think in these stereotypical ways, and in part their thinking is constrained by what bookstore chains are prepared to stock. But these marketing considerations do still seem to be important in the industry, and consequently I find YA a good place to go for many of the things I want in a book.

The other interesting thing about YA is how it is defined. Most genre categories are defined by things like plot, setting and tropes. It certainly can be argued that a YA book must contain standard elements about growing up: about coming to terms with sexuality, and with becoming an independent adult rather than someone under parental control. However, YA does also seem to be defined by its audience. It is intended to be read by teenagers.

Consequently, my concern about YA in the Booker is very similar to my concern about YA in the Hugos. If the Booker is to reward YA, it needs to judge it from a teenage perspective, which means having teenage jurors. If it doesn’t have that, then it is just a bunch of adults telling kids what they should be reading. That, of course, has value in its own way, but doesn’t connect properly with the readership of the books, and may end up rewarding books that are poorly written YA, in that they appeal more to adults rather than to the target audience.

In The Guardian Again

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

In the wake of yesterday’s #DiversityInSFF campaign on Twitter, David Barnett rushed an article into The Guardian. He quoted from one of my recent blog posts about Worldcon.

The article didn’t go down that well. Mary Robinette Kowal was upset that David hadn’t talked to any women writers. This turned out to be a practical issue. David didn’t actually talk to anyone, he just quoted from what other people had said online. Sometimes you have to do that because the only way to get an article accepted is to deliver it in a tearing hurry while the issue is still hot. David has taken Mary’s complaint on the chin and promised to try to do better.

I spent most of the day doing stuff in Bristol and Bath, and haven’t had much of a chance to study the article until now. I’m pleased that David has managed to get the issue aired, but my impression is that the article was probably accepted because it appeared to paint the SF&F community in a bad light. As usual, there wasn’t nearly enough space to examine the nuances and subtleties of the issue.

Which reminds me of a point I’ll be making at the “bloggers have destroyed criticism” panel at WFC. One of the interesting things about the Internet is that there are no practical space restrictions. You can write very long and tightly argued posts. Some people do. It is the mainstream newspapers, and websites that emulate them, that hold to the “everything we publish online must be very short and simple because our readers have no attention span” philosophy.

Liburnicon: The Urban Fantasy Panel

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

This is a brief write-up of the Urban Fantasy panel at Liburnicon, which featured Jacqueline Carey and myself. I’m doing this mainly for the benefit of the Croatian fans who attended, because we mentioned an awful lot of authors and no one was taking notes. Hopefully others will find it interesting.

I note that we did not attempt to define Urban Fantasy. Farah Mendlesohn attended an Urban Fantasy panel at Dragon*Con today and she tweeted that when the panel was asked for a definition they fell about laughing. I can see why. Rather than attempt to state definitively what Urban Fantasy is, Jacqueline and I attempted to look at the range of things that could be described as Urban Fantasy.

On an historical note, I mentioned that Dracula could be seen as an Urban Fantasy novel. It is set in 1893 and was published in 1897, so Stoker was clearly writing contemporary fiction for his time. However, it might be disqualified on the grounds that it is Horror. See below for discussion of the difference between Urban Fantasy and Horror.

We then looked at the origins of the term Urban Fantasy in the 1980s with the work of Charles de Lint (the Newford stories) and Emma Bull (particularly War for the Oaks). These books use fairy mythology, don’t have a crime novel plot, and have a strong musical element to them. For further information about The Flash Girls, the folk duo that Emma formed with Lorraine Garland, see here.

After the panel someone asked me if I could recommend some other writers who are like Charles de Lint. I could not think of anyone at the time, and still can’t. The various suggestions I got from the hive mind on Twitter didn’t seem very close to me. I’ll try again here. Any suggestions?

Next up came the 1990s and the rise of the vampire slayer: both Buffy and Anita Blake, who appear to have been invented in parallel. Incidentally, Laurell K. Hamilton books are all over the newsagents in Croatia, but it is the Merry Gentry series, not the Anita Blake books. I have no idea why.

The phenomenal success of the vampire slayers brought us a whole slew of similar material. The books featured “kiss ass” heroines, paranormal creatures usually found in horror novels, and crime novel plots. Other writers whose works have some similarity to Laurell K. Hamilton include: Jacqueline Carey’s Santa Olivia, Patricia Briggs, Kelley Armstrong, Kim Harrison, C.E. Murphy, T.A. Pratt.

Mention of Tim Pratt and his cunning disguise led us to discussion as to whether Urban Fantasy was only “for women”. We noted that writers such as Jim Butcher (Dresden Files) and Mike Carey (Felix Castor) produce books very similar in style to the women writers, but often don’t get recognized as Urban Fantasy because the writers are not men and the lead characters not female. We also established that although Jacqueline has a brother called Mike he is not the same Mike Carey who wrote the X-Men and produced the fabulous The Unwritten and the Felix Castor novels.

I also addressed the issue of the supposed characteristics of Urban Fantasy heroines. Tim is reported to have said of Marla that she is, “an ass-kicking sorcerer who doesn’t wear a leather catsuit, doesn’t suffer from low self-esteem, doesn’t wallow in angst, and is almost always absolutely certain she’s right… even when she’s dead wrong.” However, I noted that Felix Castor also suffers from low self-esteem and wallows in angst. I suggested that what is going on here is not necessarily belittling of a female heroine, but giving urban fantasy characters weaknesses in the same way that Stan Lee gave his superheroes weaknesses to make them more interesting than Superman. Jacqueline added that there is a lot of similarity between and Urban Fantasy and Superhero stories: both involve lead characters with super powers in an urban setting.

Jacqueline asked whether stories set in small towns, such as Santa Olivia, count as Urban Fantasy, or if the books have to be set in big cities. I suspect that the distinction is lost on non-US readers.

Finally we went on to discuss other fantasy stories in an urban setting that might appeal to Urban Fantasy readers. These are the ones I can remember.

Nalo Hopkinson’s Toronto stories: Brown Girl in the Ring and Sister Mine (which are unrelated except by the setting).

Gwenda Bond’s YA novels: Blackwood and The Woken Gods (two very different novels).

Emma Newman’s Split Worlds books: Between Two Thorns, By Any Other Name and All Is Fair (the latter not yet published).

Liz William’s Inspector Chen series (though the later books tend to be set almost entirely in the fantasy worlds, not in Singapore 3).

Nene Ormes’ books, which are set in Malmö and feature creatures from Swedish folklore (and are written in Swedish).

Tate Hallaway’s Precinct 13. (And for that matter, as Tate is also Lyda Morehouse, the AngeLINK books would probably be marketed as Urban Fantasy today as they contain angels.)

The Engelsfors Trilogy by Sara B. Elfgren and Mats Strandberg: Chosen, Fire and a third book currently in copy edit. They are YA, set in Sweden but available in English translation.

Lou Morgan’s Blood & Feathers books.

I’m sure that there are lots more, and people are welcome to add their own suggestions in comments.

There was time for questions from the audience, and the best one was the person who asked me to distinguish between Urban Fantasy and Horror. This led me to giving a quick precis of the basic ideas of Farah’s Rhetorics of Fantasy. I suggested that Urban Fantasy is usually set in a Secondary World, albeit one very similar to our own, in which magic works and paranormal creatures exist. In contrast Horror is a form of Intrusion Fantasy in which the fantastical element is not normal in the world of the book, and is expelled from that world at the end of the book.

LARB Does SF

~ Cheryl

The Los Angeles Review of Books is refreshingly diverse and welcoming for a literary magazine. Yesterday they put up a whole section on science fiction. Admittedly it was on the relationship between science fiction and California, which may limit interest a bit. Then again, I presume I still have a lot of readers on the Left Coast. Also it features my friend Sherryl Vint and Rob Latham. There’s an index to all of the features here.

In The Mail: Parabolas of Science Fiction

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Every so often, the nice people at Wesleyan University Press send me presents. One arrived this morning. It is Parabolas of Science Fiction, a collection of academic essays edited by Brian Attebery and Veronica Hollinger. The title seems a little contrived, but the content looks interesting. According to the blurb:

The fourteen original essays in this collection explore how the field of science fiction has developed as a complex of repetitions, influences, arguments, and broad conversations.

The contributors include Gary K. Wolfe, L. Timmel Duchamp, Graham Sleight and Rachel Haywood Ferreira. I’m looking forward to reading it. Also, thank you Wesleyan, I note that for an academic title it is very reasonably priced in ebook and paperback forms, so you lot can check it out too.

Finncon – The Russians Have Come

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

With the St. Petersburg Eurocon now being a real thing, Russian fans very sensibly turned up at Finncon to promote the event. They also kindly put on a panel to update us on the state of SF in their country. And boy is there a lot to catch up with. Last year there were 777 new novels published in Russia. Add into that anthologies, collections and reprints, and you have a heck of a lot of books. Never mind one person not being able to read everything eligible for the Hugos; no one in Russia can keep up with all of the SF in Russian.

Of course the quality is not always that great. If you are familiar with the Black Library series of books about the Warhammer universe you’ll have some idea of what the Russians mean by a “literary project”. They have lots of these, the most successful being an ongoing series about a group of meddling time travelers.

Oddly, at the same time, their magazine publishing is declining. The only Russian language short fiction print venue left is Mir Fantastika, which is more like SFX with fiction than like Asimov’s. (Apparently there used to be a Boris Strugatsky’s Magazine, but that has gone out of business.) Weirdly there is still a Russian language SF fiction magazine published in Israel, and possibly one in Germany too. And the Russians are starting to do online magazines, which is good news.

Something else that is on the decline is translation of English language works into Russian. That’s down to piracy, which is a shame, but doesn’t surprise me.

There isn’t much Russian short fiction available in English, but that will change. The St. Petersburg committee are planning to follow the excellent example of Zagreb and produce an anthology of modern Russian SF for Eurocon members. I’m very much looking forward to that. In the meantime I’m hoping to have a Small Blue Planet episode devoted to Russia fairly soon, and my new pal Nikolai (who lives in Estonia and appears to speak more languages that I have heard of) is hoping to write an article for someone about modern Russian SF.

I recorded the panel. It may appear as a podcast at some point if the quality is OK.

Madeline Ashby Interview

~ Cheryl

One of the things I did while I was in Toronto was meet up with one the the most promising new feminist SF writers, Madeline Ashby. I had originally intended to do an interview with her for my Talking Books slot on Ujima Radio, but as Madeline and I got talking it soon became apparent that this was going to be too long for the show, and probably also it bit too academic for a mainstream radio audience. It is, however, a great interview, and Madeline has some fascinating things to say about how she uses the well-worn trope of the robot to ask interesting questions about gender.

Madeline’s new book, iD, isn’t out in print in the UK until next week, but the ebook and North American releases are tomorrow, so this is an ideal time to air the interview. Hopefully most of you can see the media player below, but for those who can’t you can also find it here, or download it directly from this link. As and when Apple get their act together, it will also appear in the Salon Futura podcast feed.

Geeks and Professionalism

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Most of the time I don’t bother posting here when some high profile person goes on an anti-trans rant. It would get very boring if I did, because there is at least one a week. Besides, many of these people are folks I’ve not heard of, and don’t care about. I have little interest in video games or web comics, and consequently was only vaguely aware of Penny Arcade. I still wouldn’t have any interest, had I not found out about them from this article.

What’s so special about it? Well, it is in the National Post, which is a right-leaning newspaper from Canada. What is more, it is in the financial pages of that newspaper. Succinctly, a young geek with a successful business is being taken to task by a financial newspaper for damaging his brand by going on an online rant about trans people.

That’s amazing to me. What people regard as offensive changes with time. When I first transitioned, the mere existence of trans people was deemed offensive by many. For an employer to send me to a meeting with a client would have been seen as an insult to that client. Many people, of course, still think that way, including, apparently, lots of people in the UK’s Civil Service, and a substantial majority of the House of Lords. And yet here is a financial newspaper telling a young man that he should be more circumspect about airing his prejudices, because it will offend potential customers and cost him business. How the world has changed.

Personal issues aside, however, this is another prime example of the issue confronting SFWA. Painful as it may be for some people, the world does change. Nowadays, if you express contempt, not just for trans people, but for the whole QUILTBAG community, for people of color, for women, and so on, the Internet is liable to fall on your head. People may think that this is horribly unfair. They may decide to form pressure groups to fight for the right to be allowed to hate and despise their fellow human beings without being discriminated against for doing so. Perhaps one day the world will change again and they will be able to vent their spite more freely. But until that time, if you are running a business or a professional organization, you need to be aware that certain types of behavior can cost you dearly.

I’m sure that there will be people who find this outrageous. But you know, having spent most of my life being told that people like me are freakish, disgusting and a social embarrassment, not to mention a danger to children by our mere existence, I have very little sympathy. Boot, welcome to the other foot.