On Mary Sues

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

I still haven’t seen the new Star Wars movie, and while the Internet (in flagrant violation of FREEZE PEACH) is preventing anyone from telling anyone about the film I have gathered that there is something of a meltdown in fanboy circles because the lead character has Girl Cooties. Angry tweets are flying back and fore on the question of whether Rey is a “Mary Sue” or not.

Much of this depends on what one means by “Mary Sue”. Conveniently for a Twitter argument, there seems to be no actual agreement on this (see TV Tropes). This allows everyone concerned to say that they are factually right and anyone who disagrees with them is factually wrong. This is the very essence of a Twitter argument.

Historically, of course, Rey cannot be a Mary Sue because the term originated in fanfic and meant a supporting character who represented the author. Authors can’t insert themselves as the main character in fanfic because the main characters have to be the canon characters of the series the fanfic is based on.

However, as the TV Tropes article makes clear, the term has since migrated out of the fanfic community, and much confusion has resulted. TV Tropes attempts to define a Mary Sue thus:

In other words, the term “Mary Sue” is generally slapped on a character who is important in the story, possesses unusual physical traits, and has an irrelevantly over-skilled or over-idealized nature.

Once we are out of the fanfic realm, however, the word “irrelevantly” no longer has meaning. And that leaves us with, not only Rey, but also Luke Skywalker and pretty much every hero out of the Joseph Campbell school.

So why the fuss? Well, let’s go back to that definition again and focus in on another word: “unusual”. What I suspect is happening here is that for the straight cis white male community it is entirely reasonable for one of them, no matter how humble his background, to turn out to have amazing magical powers, have a royal background, and become the savior of the galaxy. For a girl to do the same (or a queer person, or a PoC) is, to them, utterly preposterous. Hence accusations of Mary-Suedom.

This is effectively another side of the coin that results in charges of fantasy fiction being “unrealistic” if it has PoC or women as heroes, or queer people existing, even though those same books might include dragons, wizards, immortal elves and trees that walk.

There is, of course, another side to this, and that’s the aspect of the Mary Sue being a representative of the author. I suppose it is entirely possible that JJ Abrams sees himself as a kick-ass teenage girl, but somehow I doubt it. I’m happy to believe that Abrams put a character in the film that young women might want to identify with, but providing characters for the audience to identify with is a thing writers do. What exactly was George Lucas’s intention when he created Luke?

In any case, such things have a fine literary tradition. If you want a classic example of an author-insertion Mary Sue (or Gary Stu if you must, but I don’t see why we can’t continue to use a female term to act as a default for all humanity) you need look no further than the literary novel about a middle-aged professor of English in an unhappy marriage who has an affair with a beautiful young student.

A Little Gay YA(-ish) Fantasy

~ Cheryl

Accepted wisdom in the blogosphere these days seems to be that diversity simply didn’t exist in SF&F prior to 2014 (or prior to the advent of YA, depending on which theory you subscribe to). Before that all of SF&F was written and read by Old White Men like me.

Well, people can believe what they like, but I seem to remember people like Samuel Delany, Joanna Russ and Rachel Pollack. There was plenty of other LGBT content as well, if you knew where to look. Sometimes I ran across it, and sometimes I even read and reviewed it.

The sad death of David Rain has reminded me of his wonderful fantasy series, The Orokon. It contained gay characters, and as they were teenagers it would probably class as YA if it were written today. Details of how to get the books are in my obituary for David.

In addition there was the Outremer series by Chaz Brenchley. As you might guess from the title, these were set in the lands of the crusades, or rather a fictionalized version thereof. They too featured young people, some of whom happened to be gay. Chaz also demonstrated his expertise as a romance writer. The books were published as three (fat) volumes in the UK and six (more sensibly-sized) volumes in the USA. Here are links to my reviews.

Finding these books is a little more difficult, partly because they are not available as ebooks, and partly because it isn’t always easy to tell if a book being offered second hand is part of the 3-volume UK series or the 6-volume US series.

Chaz sweetie, you wouldn’t happen to need someone to do ebook editions for you, would you?

Anyhow, these are two good fantasy series, each featuring gay boys, and each written by people who have an intimate knowledge of what being a gay boy is like. And if they were published today I’m pretty sure they would be packaged as YA. Why not give them a try?

And yes, I know I described a 5-book series and 6-book series as “a little” fantasy. It’s not like this is Robert Jordan territory now, is it?

August BristolCon Fringe Podcasts

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Oh my, I have got so far behind with these. Sorry folks. Editing audio is a very time-consuming business. Thankfully with the year winding down to a close I have been able to make a start on catching up. The August Fringe readings are now available to listen to, and with any luck the October ones will be available early in the New Year. I can’t go much faster than that because of capacity limits on the Podbean account.

The first reader for August was David Gullen who entertained us with a tale of monkeys, keyboards and works of literature, complete with sound effects (and rather a lot of swearing on behalf of one of the monkeys). I really like this story.

Following David we had Gaie Sebold who gave us three pieces of flash fiction. The first was a re-imagining of Little Red Riding Hood; the second involved an encounter with fairies; and the third a great deal of scrubbing and polishing. Also she had great shoes, and aquamarine hair.

Finally we had the Q&A session. There was talk of intelligent monkeys, fairy tales, growing old, and living in a two-writer household. We said Happy Birthday to Kevin.

There was also a lot of talk about this year’s BristolCon and Bristol Festival of Literature. Sadly those are now long in the past, but you can always look forward to next year. Pete Sutton mentioned the Fantastically Horny anthology. I’m not quite sure where they are on that one — the website says they are still open to submissions — but as far as I know my story, “Camelot Girls Go Wild”, has been accepted.

The next Fringe will be on Monday. The readers will be Simon Kewin and Sarah Ash. Details here. Hopefully I’ll see some of you there.

Bureaucratic Insanity

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Today on Twitter Juliet McKenna pointed us to this article in The Guardian which claims that a substantial proportion of the UK population would become self-employed were it not for all of the red tape involved. It is odd to see the The Guardian complaining about bureaucracy, but then again it is odd for The Telegraph to have some of the best trans coverage in UK media. We live in interesting times.

Juliet rightly highlights the EU’s disastrous new VAT rules which are driving large numbers of very small companies out of business, and forcing others (like mine) to trade solely through giant multi-nationals like Amazon who constrain what we can do and take a substantial slice of our profits.

However, the UK government is by no means blameless in this area. Their latest wheeze is to require self-employed people to file four tax returns a year instead of one. I can see no logical reason for this. It isn’t going to change the amount of tax we pay in the long run, and any gains that might result from more efficient collection are pretty certain to be wiped out by the cost of processing four times the amount of information.

For self-employed people, it might mean that tax bills yo-yo slightly less dramatically (which they have done ever since the government decided to charge an estimated bill 6 months in advance), but it means a lot more work and, in many cases, a lot more money spent on tax accountants.

It is hard not to come to the conclusion that governments these days view self-employed people as an unnecessary irritation, and they’d like to put a stop to such things if they possibly can.

There’s a petition about the new tax rules on the Parliament website. I see it is already more than half way to the number of signatures required to force a debate on the issue. If you are a UK citizen and are self-employed, or enjoy the artistic output of people who are self-employed (which means pretty much all authors, artists, actors and musicians) then you should sign.

The Expanse Arrives On Screen

~ Cheryl

It is a busy time for science fiction drama. I’m still trying to make up my mind about whether to go to see the new Star Wars film. Almost everyone I have seen comment about it on social media says it is good, but some of those people also enthuse over the current Doctor Who which make me want to run a mile from anything else they like.

Fortunately I don’t need to go to the cinema. If I want great science fiction on TV all I have to do is sit at home and watch The Expanse. This is a new series on SyFy based on the successful novels by James SA Corey (aka Daniel Abraham & Ty Franck). It doesn’t have quite the emotional punch of Jessica Jones, but that means I was able to binge-watch the first four episodes without having to stop for breath.

The setting is near future and the science looks to be pretty solid. I’ve seen physicists enthusing on Twitter about how the show gets things right. Certainly the show is well aware of the dangers of living in space, and it shows the cast dealing with those issues in a sensible manner. We are in the story of the opening novel, Leviathan’s Wake, so I know pretty much what is going to happen, but I’m enjoying the way it is told and the visuals.

The bad news is that although SyFy has a UK channel it hasn’t yet set a broadcast date. The first four episodes are available to stream via syfy.com (though you may need TunnelBear to make that work). I have no idea when I’ll be able to watch the rest. But watch it I will, because it actually looks like a story set in a real potential future with real space flight produced by people who care about science.

Lesbian Nuns, in 17th Century Ethiopia

~ Cheryl

One of the things that comes up time and time again in the work I do on LGBT history is that, when source material has been translated into English, if there has been LGBT content then it has been left out, or mis-translated, so as to erase the evidence.

The latest example of this has been the life of Walatta Petros, a 17th Century Ethiopian nun whose struggles to protect Ethiopian Christianity against the Catholic Church earned her a sainthood. The book also happens to be the earliest known biography of an African woman (possibly excepting Egyptian material which may not exactly qualify as biography). You can read more about Walatta and her life in this Guardian article.

Alison Flood (for ’tis she writing the article) sensibly warns us against assuming that Walatta was anything like a modern lesbian. While lesbianism is named after goings on in ancient Greece, the modern idea of the lesbian is very much based on ideas about the nature of same-sex desire developed in the 19th Century. However, I suspect Alison may be wrong to assume that Walatta’s vow of celibacy meant that no hanky panky went on. Back in those days it is entirely likely that “celibacy” was interpreted as refraining from potentially procreative sex, not as refraining from any sexual contact.

Get Your African Monsters Here

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

African Monsters - Margret Helgadottir & Jo Thomas (eds.)


The good folks at Fox Spirit are doing an excellent series of books looking at monster legends around the world. Significantly they are asking writers from other countries to write about their own monsters. The first volume, European Monsters, has been available for some time, and you can now buy volume two, African Monsters. Here’s the Table of Contents.

  • Nnedi Okorafor: On the Road
  • Joan de la Haye: Impundulu
  • Tade Thompson: One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sunlight
  • Jayne Bauling: Severed
  • Su Opperman: The Death of One
  • T.L. Huchu: Chikwambo
  • Dilman Dila: Monwor
  • S. Lotz: That Woman
  • Toby Bennett: Sacrament of Tears
  • Chikodili Emelumadu: Bush Baby
  • Joe Vaz: After The Rain
  • Dave-Brendon de Burgh: Taraab and Terror in Zanzibar
  • Nerine Dorman: A Whisper in the Reeds
  • Vianne Venter: Acid Test
  • Nick Wood: Thandiwe’s Tokoloshe
  • James Bennett and Dave Johnson (artist): A Divided Sun

Yes, that last one is in comic form. The book also has illustrations from Su Opperman, Kieran Walsh, Mariam Ibrahim, Eugene Smith and Benali Amine.

Nnedi’s story was previously published in Eclipse 3 from Nightshade. Tade’s story was in Mothership but has been substantially re-written for this book. All of the other stories are original.

Some of the authors have been supplying some background about the monsters featured in their stories at the Fox Spirit blog.

So, all of you people asking for more diversity in fantasy, here’s your chance.

International Trans Studies Conference

~ Cheryl

Next September (7th-10th) the University of Arizona will be holding an international transdisciplinary conference on gender, embodiment, and sexuality in Tucson. I can’t go, of course, because it is in the USA, but it does look very interesting. I was particularly intrigued by this comment in the announcement:

It is our hope that this conference will help launch an international transgender studies association; the conference schedule will include a business meeting to discuss this possibility, and to entertain proposals to host future international conferences.

Oh yes please! And can we have the conference sometimes held in countries that I can travel to?

Anyway, if you are interested in going, the information on submitting papers is on Facebook.

Fortunately one event I can go to is Moving Trans History Forward, which is taking place in Victoria, BC in March. That should be seriously cool. And I get to see Vancouver and Victoria, which I have never done before.

I spent much of day scouring bookstores in Glastonbury for books on Mesopotamian history and religion. I got some good stuff too. Trans history FTW!

David Rain (Tom Arden) – R.I.P.

~ Cheryl

I’ve just had the sad news that David Rain died this morning after a long battle with cancer. Most of you won’t know David by that name, but as Tom Arden he produced a fabulous fantasy series — The Orokon — which I reviewed all five volumes of for Emerald City.

While the Orokon books were big, fat epic fantasy, they absolutely refused to take themselves seriously. They were irreverent, they were sharply witty, and they were outrageously camp at a time when diversity wasn’t a thing. At times they were so grotesque as to remind me of Gormenghast, at others they were pure pantomime. There were some great characters too, including the bumbling guards, Morven & Crum, the voracious Aunt Umbecca, and of course Penge the penis (who belonged to the bullying Polty but was very much a character in his own right).

I met David a couple of times. He lived in Brighton. He was a really lovely man and, I gather from tributes on Facebook, a great teacher to his students at Middlesex University.

Earlier this year David and his partner, Antony, reissued the Orokon series as Kindle books in the UK under David’s own name. I guess the lack of US editions is to do with rights issues. If there’s anything Wizard’s Tower can do to help, Antony, please let me know. Here are links to my reviews:

You can buy the books here.

Telegraph Update

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

I got a call from Radhika at the Telegraph this morning and we talked through my issues with how my comments had been represented in her article on toilets. As a result she has updated the post. I am impressed.

Me On The Aqueduct

~ Cheryl

It is that time of year again, so I have written my post for the traditional end of year review series on the Aqueduct Press website. If you want to know what I have been enjoying reading, watching and listening to over the year, go here and I will tell you. Thanks as ever to Timmi and the Aquedistas for giving me the space.

By the way, since writing that I have raced through Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman. It is a fascinating book. Review coming soon.

Telegraph and Toilets

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Today the Telegraph website has an article about gender-neutral toilets. In general it is pretty good. However, I’m quoted in it, and it makes me out to say something I very much do not agree with.

Update: following discussions with Radhika the post has been updated to much better reflect my views.

The basic issue here is whether trans people should be required to use a gender-neutral toilet. Cis people often get hold of the wrong end of the stick and think that there are three genders: male, female and trans. So they think that the solution to the toilet issue is to create a gender-neutral loo that all trans people are required to use.

The trouble is that there are some trans people who would very much prefer the option of a gender-neutral toilet. That includes those currently in transition who are uncomfortable about which loo to use but may change their minds later, and those who are non-binary and will always want something non-gendered. But there are also trans people who fully identify with one or other of the poles of the gender spectrum and will strongly resent it if anyone tries to make them use a gender-neutral loo.

The point I was trying to get across is that there is no single solution (though a long term trend towards less gendering of everything would be good). I absolutely respect the right of people who want a gender-neutral loo to have one. I just don’t want that to be a requirement for all trans folk.

Of course it is hard to get concepts like this across. I talked to Radhika mainly on Twitter and in a phone call while I was on the train to London on Thursday. Misunderstandings can arise, and she will have been working on a bunch of other pieces between then and this going live. It happens.

If you happen to see anyone on social media calling me out for supposedly being down on non-binary people, please point them this way.

And also, next time you see some trans activist quoted as saying something terrible in the media, ask yourself whether they actually said what they are supposed to have said, or whether it might be a misunderstanding, or a deliberate misquote to create controversy.

Communing With The Ancestors

~ Cheryl

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Silver_cauldron.jpg/800px-Silver_cauldron.jpg

Photo by Rosemania via Wikipedia.

Yesterday I was in London. The main reason for that was to interview Stuart Milk from the Harvey Milk Foundation. You’ll be hearing a lot more about that in the coming weeks. However, as I was there I took the opportunity to visit the Celts exhibition at the British Museum.

Of course the BM has a lot of great Celtic artifacts in their normal collection. The big question for this exhibition is what it could bring that you can’t see for free. As it turned out, the Museum had brought in items from all over the UK and other parts of Europe. I think it did rather well.

The highlight is undoubtedly the Gundestrup cauldron, an item that I have seen pictures of many times but have never viewed in person. Interestingly, despite the obvious Celtic imagery, it is believed to have been made in Thrace, silverwork of that type being unknown in the Celtic world.

The largest item on display is a reconstruction of a Brigante chariot, which I suspect would be even more impressive in motion than it is just sat there. The Snettisham Hoard certainly wins for bling but it is a BM regular so doesn’t count. In any case my favorite torc was this beautiful silver one on loan from a museum in Stuttgart. It is rare to see a torc with such naturalistic end pieces.

Other items of interest were two musical instruments, a gorgeous Irish harp and the Deskford Carnyx. There were also many items from the Christian era, and I discovered that the tradition of the distinctive Celtic ringed cross started because stonemasons were unable to prevent the arms of big crosses from falling off without the additional support.

The exhibition was at pains to point out (presumably primarily for American visitors) that the term “Celtic” has only recently been applied to native British peoples (and by “British” I mean “not English”). Greek and Roman writers never used the word to refer to the inhabitants of these islands. However, there is a distinct cultural connection between the British tribes and those continental peoples who were described as Celtic. It also demonstrated how Celtic artistic styles influenced Romano-British culture, and the art of Anglo-Saxon and Viking arrivals to the islands.

The so-called Celtic Revival was also part of the exhibition. I was particularly impressed by the Book of the White Earl, a collection of early Irish literature put together by an Irish earl in the early 15th Century. There was some fairly impressive Welsh cosplay nonsense too. We do seem to have a talent for inventing this stuff.

Druids dress and regalia © Medievalhistories

Photo via MedievalPictures.com

Film Review – Tangerine

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Last night I took myself off to the Bath Film Festival to see Tangerine. The showing took place in a small arts center that looked and felt more like a folk club than a cinema. The audience looked more like a folk club too, in that they were mostly older than me (sorry Talis). Except of course this was Bath, so they also looked very staid and English middle class. We might have been in church. C of E, of course. I rather wondered what they were going to make of the film.

Hey bitches, we gon’ tell you what’s goin’ down, yo!

Welcome to Los Angeles, alien people of Bath.

Tangerine is a film set among the trans hooker community of LA. It is famous for two things. Firstly it was shot entirely on iPhone 5s. I am not competent to judge the effect or quality of this, though the colors did seem interesting at times. Secondly it not only stars trans women as trans women, it involved them in the production as well. Indeed the script is based on a true life experience of one of the stars, Kiki Rodriquez, who plays Sin-Dee Rella.

The basic plot is that Sin-Dee gets out of jail on Christmas Eve to find that her boyfriend, Chester, has been unfaithful while she was inside. She determines to take revenge. Chester is a pimp and a drug dealer, so perhaps this was all rather predictable.

Yeah, Chester is an arsehole. But then, when you sit back and think about it, every male character in the film is an arsehole in one way or another.

Quite a few of the women are not very nice either. This is, after all, a film about very poor people doing what they think they need to do to get by, and often making very poor decisions in the process.

The film is also a black farce. Because people do make poor decisions and then shit happens and it all kicks off.

This is a very long way from the sort of thing that is currently being done over here, or indeed in shows like I am Cait, to improve public opinion of trans people. I can just imagine the torrent of concern trolling that Sarah Ditum is going to produce over this. “Oh! *clutch pearls*, trans women are criminals, they are drug addicts, they swear all the time. How horrible! We must help them by locking them away and preventing them from doing those disgusting things that they do! Or at least stop them from doing them where we can see them.”

But you come to that conclusion only if you don’t think about what goes on in the film. Here are a few pointers.

Sin-Dee and her best friend, Alexandra (beautifully played by Mya Taylor) are women, pretty much indistinguishable from other LA hookers save for the thing in their pants that makes them valuable to a certain type of John. They are not “men in dresses” because they are not being played by men in dresses trying to channel what it is like being trans.

People do what they need to do to get by. Even Yeva, the Armenian immigrant woman whose husband has a thing for trans hookers, knows that.

Dinah, the white hooker, thinks that she’s better than Sin-Dee and Alexandra. She has, after all, been socialized to think that. She’s not.

Everyone has dreams, whether it is Alexandra’s singing career, Sin-Dee’s relationship with Chester, or Yeva’s happy home life. In Los Angeles most dreams are paper thin, masking the ugly reality beneath.

And when it comes down to it, trans women of color are on the bottom of the pile. All that they have is each other. The relationship between Sin-Dee and Alexandra is the most powerful thing in the film.

The end of the film was greeted in absolute silence. But that means that no one booed, and no one walked out. My indispensable new pal Ceri had her ears well tuned to comments as people left and there was some concern that the film had been exploitative. Trust me, it wasn’t. It was real. The Danish Girl will be exploitative, though most cis people watching it won’t understand why.

The bottom line is that Alexandra and Sin-Dee are girls very like me. They are girls like Roz Kaveney wrote about in Tiny Pieces of Skull. Roz went through a period of having to swim in that world; I got lucky and found Kevin so I avoided it. What Alexandra and Sin-Dee go through is reality for very many trans women around the world. If you can’t accept them because of how they live — if you need to have stories about white, middle class trans women in order to accept us — then you are not really doing the job.

If you’d like to see more of Mya Taylor, she has a staring role in a forthcoming short film about the life of Marsha P Johnson. The production company could do with some help with post production costs. Here’s the trailer.

Official Trailer for Happy Birthday, Marsha! from sasha wortzel on Vimeo.

Best of British?

~ Cheryl

Normally I don’t pay much attention to mainstream “Best Of” book lists. We all know the drill, right? Men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men, men. Oh, and any SF&F books included are excused as being not really SF&F because they are Literature.

But Timmi Dumchamp clearly has a stronger stomach for such things than I do, which is presumably how come she discovered a list of Best British Novels compiled by 81 international literary critics. Surprise! Almost 40% of the books listed were by women.

I think that tells us quite a lot about the British literary establishment.

For more see Timmi’s post here.

Legal Limbo

~ Cheryl

Yesterday the Ministry of Justice announced that they will be conducting a proper review of how trans people are housed in UK prisons. This is very welcome. The release of the new guidelines, originally scheduled for just before Christmas, has been shelved and the review will report back early in the New Year. Details of the MoJ statement and the Terms of Reference for the review can be found here.

Naturally I have a few comments. Firstly I am rather disappointed that the MoJ could not manage to find a trans woman to advise them on the review. I’m sure that Jay Stewart will do his best, but this is an issue that specifically affects trans women so we really ought to be consulted.

The ToR says that the review is expected to, “engage widely, openly and transparently at all times”. I trust that will actually be the case.

Mind you, the ToR also says, “the usual practice is for them to be held in a supportive environment away from the main regime of the prison and protected from risk of harm from other prisoners”. What this actually means is, “we keep them in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day”. So just how much transparency we will get is open to question.

However, the key statement in the ToR is the last one. This:

Legal gender is determined by the individual’s birth certificate.

The only way that you can change the gender on your birth certificate is by getting a Gender Recognition Certificate.

It is perfectly possible to live a mostly normal life as a trans person without a GRC. You can change your passport, your driving license, your bank account and any other form of ID that you wish. But you cannot change your legal gender without a GRC. That means that without a GRC the government can, at any time, decide to treat you as having the gender to which you were assigned at birth and claim that this is “the law”. Which prison they put you in is only the tip of the iceberg. Our legal system is riddled with gender-specific clauses.

The latest figures that I have are that around 13,000 people have completed treatment at British gender clinics. A further 13,000 have started treatment but have either not yet been discharged or have elected not to go through the whole process (or have been thrown off the program for some reason, which appears to be distressingly common). An unknown number will be getting treatment privately and/or abroad.

To date only 4,000 people have been granted Gender Recognition Certificates.

That means that at least 9,000 UK citizens have completed gender reassignment but for various reasons have not changed their legal gender. A similar number, possibly more, are likely to be living full time in their preferred gender but, because they have not completed the medical process, are not eligible to apply for a GRC. All of these people are effectively in legal limbo as far as their gender is concerned.

The fine folks who ran the Tara Hudson petition have a new one going about general prison reform for trans people. It is worth signing because it calls for things that the review is only considering. We do need to keep the pressure up.

However, what we really need is a major overhaul of the Gender Recognition Act. If you have a system where less than a third of the people who ought to be eligible for legal gender recognition are actually getting that recognition then something is badly wrong.

Prison Trans Form banner

Supergirl Hits Her Stride

~ Cheryl

Elsewhere (not yet published) I have described the Supergirl TV series as Cosmopolitan does superheroes. I still stand by that, because every episode seems to have at least one plot element straight out of a women’s magazine guilt column. I have stuck with the show because it is fun (yeah, OK, and because of the eye candy), but it does have its serious moments and episode 6 was one of them.

To start with, this is the episode in which Cat Grant (Calista Flockhart is amazing in this role) explains to Kara that women aren’t allowed to get angry at work. Perry White can get away with throwing a chair through a window. Heck, he can probably get away with throwing a chair at an employee. Women, on the other hand, aren’t allowed to get angry. If they do, it will count against them. Being angry is a manly thing to do, it is not womanly.

This is also the episode in which we are introduced to General Sam Lane, Lois and Lucy’s father. General Lane hates aliens, especially Kryptonians. He also hates Jimmy Olsen. He doesn’t quite go as far as to say that this is because Jimmy is black (which he is, these days), but you can see it in his eyes. He’s a very clear representation of a particular sort of American, and I’m pleased to see the show taking that on.

Finally, a major plot element of the episode is Kara having anger issues. Cat takes her off to a cocktail bar and explains that if you are angry and stressed at work that probably means you have deeper issues bothering you. Kara has a bit of a workout and realizes that she’s angry because she’s different from everyone else, and will never have a “normal” life. Right on, Kara. There are lots of women who will agree with you on that one. Because like you, we are deemed to be not quite human. And we don’t get super powers in exchange.

Book Review – Radiance

~ Cheryl

Radiance - Catherynne M Valente

Every time I write a review of one of Cat Valente’s books I end up feeling horribly inadequate. I’m sure that there are subtleties of the plot that I haven’t grasped. I’m sure that I have failed to convey the beauty of Cat’s prose. I’m sure that I haven’t managed to convince my readers that this book is just the Best Thing Ever.

There’s a spoiler issue too. I find myself unable to avoid explaining just a little bit of the plot, because it is so lovely. And the books are so complex that I feel that people need a little help, just in case. Of course with Radiance there’s also the issue that we get told that Severin Unck is dead right there in the chronology that Cat presents at the start. Radiance is one of those books in which you get told what has happened and then have to go back and find out why. Sorry, authors do that sometimes. I don’t think I have told you too much. I hope so anyway.

I suck. I want you to love this book as much as I do. That may not be possible.

Ah well, I have written something. You can find it here. Or just take my word for it and buy the book.

Give Us Back Our Henge

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

This week’s archaeology story of note is that someone has discovered the quarry in Wales from which the bluestones at Stonehenge were cut. The Guardian has a report.

From an archaeological point of view the main story is that we now know a lot more about how the stones were quarried. However, the thing that has excited the journalists is that the stones appear to have been cut several hundred years before they were raised at Stonehenge.

Now of course it is possible that it took that long to get the stones to Salisbury Plain, but that seems unlikely. The other possibility is that they were originally erected somewhere in Wales and only later moved to Stonehenge.

All of which has given rise to lots of silly speculation about the English having stolen a Welsh monument, or having been sold one by some neolithic Taffy second hand monument dealer, presumably at a vastly inflated price (and possibly under the pretense that they were buying a bridge).

Except of course that the bluestones were erected at Stonehenge around 2900 BCE. There would not be any English in these isles for over 3000 years. It is entirely possible that one of the social groups that lived in southern Britain at the time stole (or bought) the stones from a rival group. It is also possible (and bear in mind that there is strong evidence of a thriving trade between Stonehenge and Orkney) that the inhabitants of the island saw themselves as a more or less united social group. No one really knows.

Of course I could argue that all of the inhabitants of the islands at the time were Brythons, whom we can describe as either Welsh or Cornish, and that the Scots and Irish were Goidels who arrived much later. But then Kari would probably tell me that I’m spouting Victorian twaddle so I shall restrain myself.

But Stonehenge is Welsh, obviously.

The VanderMeer Winter Mix Tape StoryBundle

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

The BestiaryThe fabulous Ann & Jeff VanderMeer have a thing going over at StoryBundle. It is a collection of works that they have been involved in, and which will make up one of those bundle things that people seem so obsessed with these days. I haven’t really caught up with this trend yet, but Ann & Jeff sent me the bundle as a holiday present (because they are lovely people) and anyway it is an excuse to run this gorgeous piece of art by Ivica Stevanovic which forms the cover of one of the included titles.

The bundle is notable to me because it contains a lot of translated fiction. In particular it includes the fabulous Leena Krohn’s Collected Fiction (in two volumes). Krohn is one of Finland’s finest writers and has a deeply weird imagination. As I understand it, the two volumes contain everything of hers that it available in English. That’s a bundle in itself.

Then again, there’s also The Best of Spanish Steampunk, and there’s The Eisenberg Constant by German writer, Eugen Egner, which The Times compared to Kafka and Monty Python. The English language material contains Clarkesworld: Year 6, and the World Fantasy Award winning Crandolin from the talented Anna Tambour.

And of course there is The Bestiary, which includes stories by Karen Lord, Rochita Loenin-Ruiz, Cat Valente, Karin Tidbeck, Vandana Singh, China Miéville and many others.

Go ye forth and bundle, people (or whatever the appropriate verb is).