Science Fiction

Pembroke Lecture on Fantasy Literature in Honour of JRR Tolkien

~ Cheryl

Pembroke valkyrieAs promised over the Holidays, here are the full details of the lecture that Kij Johnson will be giving in Oxford later this month, and the writing course she is doing the following day. I hope to see some of you there.

PEMBROKE LAUNCH FANTASY LITERATURE LECTURE SERIES IN HONOUR OF JRR TOLKIEN

(Oxford, January 3, 2012) Pembroke College have invited award-winning author Kij Johnson to deliver the inaugural Pembroke Lecture on Fantasy Literature in Honour of JRR Tolkien. The first annual lecture in the series designed to explore the history and current state of fantasy literature will take place on January 18th at 6 pm, it was jointly announced today by Meghan Campbell, President of the Pembroke College Middle Common Room (MCR), Catherine Beckett, Deputy Development Director, Pembroke College, and Kendall Murphy, Representative of the Pembroke College Annual Fund. Professor Johnson will also offer a fiction masterclass at Pembroke on January 19th from 10 am until noon.

The series is intended to memorialize Tolkien, who was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke for twenty years; he wrote The Hobbit and much of The Lord of the Rings during his time at the college. The lectures are sponsored through a grant from the Pembroke Annual Fund.

‘Fantasy literature informs contemporary society’, said Campbell. ‘Any glance at current cinema offerings — or at a list of the most popular films of all time — demonstrates that fantasy is still the mode in which we tell one another stories. This and our members’ desire to celebrate Professor Tolkien’s connection to Pembroke made the lecture series an obvious choice’.

‘The Development Office is pleased to partner with Pembroke’s MCR and broader student communities in honouring the contribution made by Professor Tolkien to the life of the college and to world literature’, said Beckett. ‘Having Professor Johnson offer the inaugural lecture is a dream come true. Her humane and searing fiction, and her expansive vision of the role and possibilities of genre, will place the series on a proper foundation’.

‘The Pembroke Annual Fund connects our alumni to current students and allows them to work together to make an immediate impact on college life’, said Murphy. ‘The Pembroke Lecture on Fantasy Literature in Honour of JRR Tolkien is precisely the sort of project the Annual Fund was designed to support, thanks to its resonance within and beyond the Pembroke community’.

Kij Johnson’s ‘fiction in the fantasy mode’ has won the Hugo, the Nebula (three times running), the World Fantasy Award, and the Sturgeon Award. She has written two novels set in Heian-era Japan, The Fox Woman and Fudoki, available from Tor Books, and a story collection, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, available from Small Beer Press. Among other subjects, her writing explores the human-animal interface, ancient and medieval Japanese culture, and narrative form.

She has taught at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and is Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, where she is also Associate Professor of Creative Writing.

Both the lecture and the fiction masterclass are free and open to the public, but online registration is required to reserve a place on the fiction course. Please go to pembrokemcr.com/Tolkien for more information.

A New Online Magazine – From India

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Yes, you read that right. The latest online SF&F fiction magazine hails from India. The editor, Geetanjali, says she’s happy to accept stories from all over the world, but she particularly wants to showcase writers from India, and to bring news about the Indian SF&F scene to the rest of the world. The first issue of Indian SF contains stories by Ken Liu, Ram V and Lavanya Karthik plus flash fiction by Kat Otis and some non-fiction. It is available as a PDF and EPUB as well as online. Oh, and they pay. INR 750 is only about $13.5, but good for Geetanjali for making the effort.

Am I excited by this? You bet!

Centuries Poll – The Short Fiction

~ Cheryl

The folks at Locus have been busy over the Holidays, and the results of the short fiction categories are now available. These results are much more in tune with what I would have voted for, and I suspect that’s not unconnected with the fact that there appear to be fewer voters. I say “appear” because the lower number of voters per item could also indicate a wider selection. That may also be the case. It certainly is in the Hugos. But I’d be quite interested to see a comparison of the number of people who voted in each category, and how many picks they had. I suspect there will be variation all the way from people who filled the entire ballot to people who just voted for one or two novels.

Anyway: Ted Chaing, yay! Kij Johnson, yay! Kelly Link, yay! Margo Lanagan, yay! And so on. I’m particularly pleased to see two Clarkesworld stories: “The Things” by Peter Watts and “Spar” by Kij Johnson make the top 10 of 21st Century short stories.

One final thought. I suspect that if Dune had been published today, and been written by a woman, it would have been marketed as “fantasy”.

New Aussie Podcast

~ Cheryl

Thanks to Kirstyn and Mondy of The Writer & The Critic I have been altered to a new podcast by prolific Australian blogger, Sean Wright. The podcast is named after his blog, Adventures of a Bookonaut, and Episode 1 is very interesting.

It contains three interviews. The first is with Luke Preston. He’s a thriller writer, but well worth listening to as he has come to novel writing from a screen writing background. Consequently he has some interesting views on how to write (which I suspect are better-suited to his chosen genre than to other types of fiction).

Next up is Joelyn Alexandra from Singapore who introduces us to her own writing, and to several other writers from her part of the world.

Finally there is an interview with Helen Merrick, author of The Secret Feminist Cabal. This is a must-listen for anyone with an interest in feminism and science fiction.

Thanks Sean, I’m looking forward to more episodes.

Early Russian SF

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The origins of science fiction are a matter of much debate. Frankenstein (1818) is often cited as the first SF novel, while Jules Verne is lauded as the “father of science fiction”. Shelley, Verne and Wells all pre-date the launch of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories. But the more we find out about other cultures, the more complex the story gets. Earlier this year I blogged about Enrique Gaspar’s The Time Ship, which pre-dates Wells’ The Time Machine. Now Wesleyan University Press has surprised me again with We Modern People, a history of early Russian science fiction.

Anindita Barerjee’s book traces the history of Russian SF in the decades from the 1890s through to 1920s, a tumultuous period in Russian history, and one driven by a desire amongst many Russians to modernize their country. Banerjee argues that science fiction was key this movement.

If you haven’t heard of anyone else from this period, you should know about Yevegeny Zamyatin, whose 1921 novel, We, was a major inspiration for George Orwell’s 1984. There were, however, many others. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky began publishing SF in the 1890s and was also a pioneer of rocket science. Oh, that that much quoted comment of William Gibson’s about the future being unevenly distributed: Trotsky once said something very similar.

The book looks to be a fascinating read, both because of what it can tell us about the history of SF, and what it says about how SF influences actual technological development. Many thanks to Wesleyan for sending it to me. I suspect that Jon Turney will be wanting to get a look at it.

An Oxford Lecture

~ Cheryl

As you doubtless all know, Professor Tolkien taught at Oxford University, and wrote much of his famous work while there. He was a Fellow of Pembroke College, and in January Pembroke will be hosting the first in what will be an annual series of lectures on fantastic fiction in Tolkien’s honor. I’m delighted to see that the chosen speaker for the inaugural lecture is the fabulous Kij Johnson. The lecture will be at 6:00pm on January 18th, and Kij will teach a 2 hour course on fiction writing at 10:00am the following morning. Both will be free and open to the public.

You shouldn’t need me to tell you that Kij is one of the finest writers of short fiction working today. Her Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award wins stand testament to that. This is a unique opportunity for UK writers to hear a very fine exponent of the art speak.

Kij tells me that there will be some official publicity in the New Year, but for now all we have is a notice on Pembroke College’s Facebook page. I’ll link to the official announcement as soon as I hear it is up.

Thanks, Gerry

~ Cheryl

I’m very sad to hear that Gerry Anderson has passed away. The BBC announcement is here. In Gerry’s honor, I present a brief gallery of some of my childhood role models.

Doctor VenusDoctor Venus


Atlanta ShoreAtlanta Shore


Lady PenelopeLady Penelope Creighton-Ward

Centuries Poll – Results for Novels

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Locus has posted the results in the novel categories for their Centuries Poll. You can find them here. As you’ll see, most of my picks did not feature. This does not surprise me.

I don’t have much to say about the results. Doubtless the blogosphere will explode with outrage without any help from me. I’ll just mention a couple of things. Firstly the results are overwhelmingly male. And secondly I’m pleased to see The City & The City, and The Book of the New Sun appear in both the science fiction and fantasy lists. Hopefully that will cause a few people’s heads to explode.

All I Want For Christmas

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

While I might loathe most Christmas music (and almost all Christmas television), I am a total sucker for a sentimental Christmas story. Liz Hand’s “Chip Crockett’s Christmas Carol” is, of course, a particular favorite of mine. Now I have something else to get all teary over. Sandra McDonald has sent me a link to her contribution to the genre, a story about a little boy who wants nothing more at Christmas than to be a girl.

Diana Comet and The Christmas Quilt

Oh, and Diana, if you are listening, all I want for Christmas is to be able to travel to the USA again.

Robots In Spaaaace!

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Fireball XL5While many people in the US and UK are worrying about the possibility of a robot uprising, our friends in Japan are doing all they can to make it happen. Next year Japanese astronaut, Koichi Wakata, will be spending time on the International Space Station. With him will go his mission sidekick, Kibo, a humanoid robot designed to provide companionship and help with scientific experiments. Amongst his abilities will be face recognition, allowing him to converse with his fellow astronauts.

Kibo will only be 13 inches tall, and he won’t have the piloting skills of Robert the Robot from XL5. Hopefully he won’t have the personality of C3PO either. But it is a start. And we all know how it ends, don’t we.

Women In Sensible Social Situations

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

There has been quite a bit of talk around the blogosphere recently about how “realistic” having strong female characters in epic fantasy novels might be. Apparently various authors have been getting complaints from outraged fanboys over their use of strong and independent women. Didn’t they know that in medieval times women were all busy in the kitchen or having babies? Having them actually go on adventures totally ruins the careful world-building that you have done to justify the inclusion of magic, dragons and so on. And as for pirate queens, well, no self-respecting, red-blooded fantasy writer would ever do that!

There have been some quite entertaining responses. Tansy Rayner Roberts put on her professional historian hat over at Tor.com, while Foz Meadows has done an awesome amount of actual research (including covering the race angle as well).

Because such things tend to run and run, I’m guessing that there will be follow-up articles popping up all over the place. One of the things I am expecting to see people say is that it is about time that someone actually wrote more epic fantasy with strong women in it, because there is so little of it about. Which of course is silly, there’s plenty of it. The trouble is that much of it is written by women, and so it doesn’t get noticed by a lot of people.

I’m naturally proud of my authors, so I’d like to point out that Juliet McKenna has been writing fine epic fantasy for years, all of which contains plenty of female characters of different types. Some of them are adventurers, or professional magicians, while others are wives and mothers. You could try her out, starting at the beginning.

I’d also like to give a shout-out to my pal Glenda Larke. Her latest series, the Watergivers trilogy, is excellent, and is also set in a very different world from the run-of-the-mill pseudo-medieval fantasy. Finally, of course, there is Mary Gentle’s Ash, which is a magnificent piece of work.

The other thing I’d like to note is that the reverse argument is not true. That is, while it is not “unrealistic” to have strong, independent women in your fantasy, it is not “sexist” to not have them. Sure, remarkable women have existed in all periods of history; doubtless far more than have actually had their stories recorded. They have a place in adventure novels for the same reason that remarkable barbarian boys from far off Cimmeria have such a place. But not everyone was like that. The majority of women in medieval societies had fairly tough lives, and unless your fantasy world has invented modern medicine the dangers of pregnancy will loom large over your female characters. Even with modern medicine, women still have it tough, especially in less wealthy countries.

If we produced fantasy novels where the only female characters were strong and independent then we’d both be erasing the very real struggles of women in the past, and forfeiting the opportunity to create parallels with women’s struggles today. Besides, I have a sneaking suspicion that a fantasy novel that only has strong, independent women in it will probably only have one or two women in it (the heroine, or the heroine and her rival). Realistic worlds have all sorts of people in them, and roughly 50% of them will be female.

A Meme That Won’t Die

~ Cheryl

Mainstream literary critics are always wringing their hands about something, it seems, and one of their favorite topics is the death of short fiction as an art form. This quarter, Mslexia has a feature on the subject. They did a survey of readers to find out the true state of the market. I helpfully filled it in, pointing at the huge amount of short fiction published in SF&F, and the wealth of talent that we have: Kelly Link, Kij Johnson, Liz Hand, Karin Tidbeck, and so on. Did any of this get into the article? No, of course not. The focus was all about how it is impossible to sell short fiction these days. You’d think that a feminist magazine would understand a bit about invisibility.

Still, they do have articles on SF&F these days. They make a point of mentioning them prominently on the cover. And when you look inside the promised article is hidden away at the back. This month, clearly taking its cue from last year’s fuss about how hard it is for women to get published in SF&F, there’s an article explaining how the field is a boom industry for women. It does quote a number of people, including Jaine Fenn and Trudi Canavan, though I somehow doubt that they were told about the general thrust of the article (ladies?).

Apparently, dear reader, we are just coming out of the Bad Times. The 1970s, as we all know, was a golden age for feminist SF. Then came the 1980s, and all that changed. What happened? Well cyberpunk obviously. Neuromancer hit the field like a freight train and women (Pat Cadigan being an honorable exception) seem to have had trouble getting on board. Mslexia, however, knows better. Here’s how Danuta Kean characterizes the science fiction of the 1980s.

… a slew of poorly-written and horribly packaged books by men that alienated a female audience — think busty space maidens with weaponry.

Yeah, that sounds like Gibson and Sterling doesn’t it? It’s OK, you can laugh, I did.

ISF #1 Reminder

~ Cheryl

And while I am reminding you about things, if you haven’t already done so then you can pick up a copy of International Speculative Fiction #1 as a free PDF download here.

French Author Lionel Davoust Interviewed

~ Cheryl

France’s biggest SF&F convention, Utopiales, took place recently in Nantes. The guests included Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock and Nancy Kress. The fabulous Moira Young (you are following her career, aren’t you, Canadians) won the award for Best YA Novel. A local radio station, Euradionantes, covered the event, including an interview with my friend Lionel Davoust. The interview is in English, so it provides a rare opportunity to listen to a very fine French author talk about his work. Lionel has posted a link to the interview on his blog.

LoneStarCon 3 Call For Papers

~ Cheryl

I’m delighted to see that my friend Karen Burnham has been put in charge of the academic track for next year’s Worldcon, LoneStarCon 3. I’m sure she will do a fine job. I’ve received a Call for Papers. Karen is looking for work that focuses on the convention’s Guests of Honor: Ellen Datlow, James Gunn, Willie Siros, Norman Spinrad, Darrell K. Sweet, Leslie Fish & Joe R. Lansdale. Papers on Steampunk, Old West/frontier themes, and Spanish language science fiction will also be particularly welcomed. I wish I could be there. For those of you who can, here are the important details:

Paper proposals must include a 300-500 word abstract and appropriate bibliography. Proposals are due by December 31 2012, and participants will be notified by February 1, 2013 if their paper is accepted. All participants must be members of the convention. They will deliver a 15 minute reading of their paper as part of a panel, followed by a Q&A. Attendees may present only one paper at WorldCon, so please, no multiple submissions. All submissions (and any questions) should be sent to the head of the academic track: Karen Burnham (academic@texas.lonestarcon3.org).

I’m willing to bet that there will be one or two papers about this particularly famous piece of Spanish language science fiction that has recently been re-issued.

International Round-Up

~ Cheryl

Why yes, Virginia, there is science fiction written in Arabic. It even gets written by women. See here for an interview with Arab writer, Noura Noman.

You may also want to check out this article about Tunisian literature. Naturally the Tunisians have a strong interest in Carthage.

Meanwhile the tireless Jonathan Clements has made a major update to the China entry at the SF Encyclopedia. He talks about it here.

And finally, Small Beer Press have announced a new novel by the great Argentinian science fiction writer, Angélica Gorodischer. Translated by Amalia Gladhart, Trafalgar will be available in February 2013.

Plus ça change…

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

1987: Ellen Kushner publishes Swordspoint. As Tansy Rayner Roberts notes in the latest Galactic Suburbia podcast, it has become notorious because it is a “fantasy” novel with no actual magic in it. That was apparently revolutionary at the time.

2012: “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong” by K.J. Parker wins Best Novella in the World Fantasy Awards. In the latest Coode Street Podcast Jonathan Strahan notes that the story has attracted criticism because it is a “fantasy” story with no actual magic in it.

I guess some people enjoy having something to get a bee in their bonnets about, but personally I am very bored of arguments about genre purity.

In A Brave New World…

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Well, any excuse to quote Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds… And this is an actual excuse. Way back in Easter 2012, Kevin and I attended an Eastercon panel about a new iteration of the legendary British SF magazine, New Worlds. The new staff had the blessing of Michael Moorcock himself, and great things were promised. Well, as I know only too well, running a magazine isn’t easy. However, a debut issue is now available online.

It looks very smart. It has four short stories, including one by Jetse de Vries. It has a rant about Rand and Hubbard by no less than Iain (M.) Banks. It has art by Jim Burns. It has reviews, and it has video. For some unexplained reason you have to log in to read/watch anything. That’s probably worth doing, as one of the videos is Moorcock talking about Mervyn Peake. They also feature Alan Moore, Brian Aldiss and John Clute.

So far so good, then. But I did do the usual thing. My congratulations to Laura E. Goodin for being the only named female contributor or subject in the whole darn thing. (Roz Kaveney is clearly moderating a panel in one of the videos, but she doesn’t get named.) Can we do better next time, please, boys?

New From Lethe

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

My friends at Lethe Press have sent me a new ebook edition of a classic work of gay science fiction. Exile in Paradise by Dirk Vanden (Richard Fullmer) was first published in 1969, the same year as the Stonewall riots. The original publisher called the book Twin Orbs because they liked salacious puns, but I believe that Exile in Paradise is the author’s preferred title.

I see that there is no mention of Vanden in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia. I shall have words with the management. There’s a good interview will him at Lambda Literary.