My current project at Wizard’s Tower is issuing ebook editions of Juliet McKenna’s second series, The Aldabreshin Compass. The first of those books, Southern Fire, is now available in the major bookstores. You can find purchase links here.
The new covers that Ben Baldwin has done for the books are absolutely amazing. There are three more like the one above to come.
Many of you will know Rochita Loenen-Ruiz. She’s a lovely, generous person as well as a great writer. A few days ago her partner suffered a heart attack, and late last night the doctors gave up hope and turned off life support. Aliette de Bodard has set up an appeal on GoFundMe to raise money for Rochita to help her and her young sons through this difficult time. Many of Rochita’s friends from around the SF&F community have donated books to be used as rewards, all of which will go into a draw for donors at the end of the appeal. There are currently a couple of ebook bundles from Wizard’s Tower in there, and there may be more added once I have had a chance to talk to the authors. Please do consider donating if you can. Rochita’s blog explaining the situation and giving thanks for the support received thus far is here.
Laverne Cox will be starring as Frank-N-Furter in a new television remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I’m not entirely sure what to make of this, but I have a great deal of faith in Laverne so I suspect it will be awesome. Anyway, how can you go wrong with a show like that?
BBC Radio Bristol recently ran a couple of trans-themed interviews. I wasn’t on them, but my friend Dru Marland was and she had some thoughts about the process here. Dru makes a number of good points that I would like to follow up on.
The first thing worth noting is the “born in the wrong body” narrative. The BBC Bristol presenters made a lot of use of this but, as Dru says, it is often used unthinkingly, and inappropriately. By no means every trans person wants to modify their body, nor indeed has any issue with their body. If your definition of trans extends to include intersex folks then their point is often that they very much don’t want anything done to their bodies. Also the whole idea that trans people should hate their bodies acts to push people towards surgical options when they may not want them. We are trying to get away from that situation, not encourage it.
Then there’s the question of the upbeat message. The trouble with people only ever hearing about you as a victim is that they will only ever view you with pity, not with respect. Of course it is absolutely true that many trans people have terrible lives, and we want to make them better. But you have to believe that they can be better.
All too often trans people are portrayed as hapless victims who will always need help. And that tends to discourage people from seeking help. When I first came out to my family many of them were convinced that I was ruining my life and would soon be dead. To be honest, I wasn’t that confident myself. But my living happily and moderately successfully for two decades since then I have proved those fears wrong. There’s no doubt that I would be much better off had I been able to avoid transition, but had I tried I probably would have ended up a suicide statistic.
Which brings me neatly on to the “trans people are so brave” narrative. Really, we are not. As Dru says, that suggests that we go into this voluntarily. Trust me, we don’t. We do this because we have to, and because the alternative of not doing it is worse.
To a certain extent being trans in the media is a bit like being someone who has broken their leg, but is now fit again, being interviewed about what it is like to have a broken leg. You’d much rather say how nice it is to be able to walk again, but the interviewer only wants to talk about how horrible it was for you when you couldn’t.
Then again, as Dru also notes, transition is not an end to trans people’s problems. After transition we have a whole load of different issues to deal with. Most of us cope somehow, but these are things that could be solved if only other people would stop being so shitty to us. Interviewers don’t want to talk about that, they want to talk about being “in the wrong body” and about transition, because those are the things that fascinate cis folks, not boring old discrimination.
However, not all media people are just out to exploit us. I happen to know, Laura Rawlings, one of the presenters on BBC Bristol’s breakfast show. We’ve met each other at events in town, and chatted on Twitter when they are covering science fiction. We ended up having a long phone conversation earlier this week about how they had handled the trans interviews they did, and how they might have been doing better. Being in the media myself, I hope I was able to suggest ways in which their coverage could have been better, both for trans people, and as journalism. Laura, of course, can’t promise anything. She has to work with her producer, her co-presenter, and so on. But hopefully I have at least made a start.
That reminds me of something Paris Lees said on Twitter the other day. When she and her colleagues were setting up All About Trans, a group that seeks to actively encourage positive media coverage of trans issues, they asked their media contacts where they got their information about trans people. “From the media,” was the answer. Because there was no other quick and easy way for them to get it.
Here’s the thing, then. We need better stories about trans people in the media. We are not going to get them if we just sit back and wait for them to come and ask us questions. We need to be proactively involved. That can be behind the scenes, as is often the case with Fox & Lewis, or it can be in front of the camera, as is the case with Paris.
There’s a slogan being used by trans media activists these days: “Nothing about us without us.” I think that’s wise, but it means we have to put work in, and it means we have to produce good drama and journalism as a result. We also have to be aware of the need to at least acknowledge the wider trans community, even if we can’t represent it all, because our experiences and needs are so very different. These things are not easy.
Well how about that? A new review for the first book that Wizard’s Tower ever published. That’s Dark Spires, of course, an anthology of tales set in Wessex and edited by the late, great Colin Harvey. The review is at SF Crowsnest and is very pleasing. As the publisher it is of course my job to pull quotes out of a review that will show the book in the best light. Here’s the one I chose:
“… an interesting collection with a very professional level of writing throughout…â€
Oh yes, well done, Eamonn Murphy, you know how to make a publisher happy.
And if after reading that you fancy picking up the book at what Eamonn calls, “a bargain price” you can head on over to the Wizard’s Tower website for purchase links.
On Saturday, having watched the Wales rugby match at Temple Meads, I jumped straight on a train home so that I would be in time for a meeting in California. Skype does strange things to our lives. That meeting was of the Board of SFSFC, the parent corporation of the San José in 2018 WorldCon Bid, and its purpose was to appoint a prospective Chair who will run the convention should we win the bid.
Some of you may remember that (my) Kevin was Co-Chair of the last San José Worldcon. There’s no way he was doing it again. He has his Get Out of Worldcon Free Card now. However, we did end up with a Kevin. Kevin Roche, to be precise.
Many of you will know Kevin R as a brilliant costumer and masquerade organizer. He was Master of Ceremonies at the masquerade in Spokane this year. He’s also an experienced convention chair, including being co-chair of Westercon 66 in Sacramento in 2013. Also, he and his husband, Andrew Trembley, ran some of the best parties I have ever been to. Oh, and he has a great job too. Some of his science presentations at conventions involve playing with kit that allows you to move individual atoms around via a computer interface.
Of course there is a long way to go yet. We are running against New Orleans, which is one of my favorite tourist destinations. But should San José win I am sure that Kevin (Roche) will be a great con chair.
The official press release is on the SFSFC website. Anyone interested in the minutiae of WSFS politics should pop over to Kevin (Standlee)’s LiveJournal and comment there.
Well, that was creepy.
Last night’s BristolCon Fringe took a definite turn for the dark. Knowing that she was going to be followed by tentacled horror, Jo Hall chose to read a passage from Spark & Carousel in which the principal villain… well, that would be a spoiler, but it is a pretty nasty thing to do to someone.
Jonathan L Howard read the first two chapters of Carter & Lovecraft. There may have been a serial killer involved. And I might have told the audience to all make sanity rolls after hearing him read. I could not possibly confirm any of this, as I don’t want you to have to make sanity rolls too.
I am still processing the idea that Jonathan is releasing a book during the Rugby World Cup that has a hero with the same name as the All Blacks Fly Half. Synchronicity is dangerous were tentacled horrors are concerned.
Thanks to the additional publicity from the Bristol Festival of Literature we had a rather bigger crowd than usual. Hopefully some of them will come back next month. They should do, because on November 16th we have Lucy Hounsom and Stephanie Burgis, which is going to be spectacular. Details of the forward schedule can be found here.
A reminder for those of you in Bristol. Tonight is the October BristolCon Fringe event, this month with added Bristol Festival of Literature promotion. It should be a great event. We have Jo Hall reading from Spark and Carousel (which I have read and enjoyed) and Jonathan L. Howard launching Carter & Lovecraft (which I am greatly looking forward to). I hope to see some of you there. As usual we’ll be in the Shakespeare Tavern on Prince Street. The readings start at 7:30pm, but some people arrive early to take advantage of the pub’s fine food.
And yes, I know I haven’t done the podcasts from the last Fringe yet. I have been very busy. Sorry.
Making movies can take a long time, especially when you don’t have a huge budget. Back in 2012 I was interviewed for something called Trans*Geek Movie. After three years, and some 60 hours of interviews, the folks behind the film are finally on the last lap and have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise the money needed for the final few interviews and post-production. This is, of course, also a good way of pre-ordering your copy of the film (and trust me it will not be coming to a cinema near you). It should be a very important cultural document, particularly in view of all of the nonsense that has gone on around trans women in the gaming community in the years since I did my interview.
With any luck, the bits with me in won’t make the final cut, but if you want to have a good laugh at how horrible I look on film, and also listen to some very smart other trans people talk about their work, you can see a series of clips from the early interviews here.
On Saturday morning it was off to the Harbourside, where the Festival of Literature was putting on a day-long Book Bazaar. Many local small presses were taking part, including Tangent and Silverwood whose products I know well.
Our little corner of the event featured books by Wizard’s Tower, Kristell Ink and the North Bristol Writers group. The photo above (for which thanks to A A Abbott) shows me happily surrounded by lovely hardcover books. My thanks to Jo, Roz and Kevlin who have all taken a turn selling my books when I could not be there.
The event also included talks by authors and publishers. I particularly enjoyed Lucienne Boyce talking about how to research historical novels (complete with discussion of Samuel Pepys’ sanitary arrangements).
My final event in the Festival will be BristolCon Fringe tomorrow night, where the readers will be Joanne Hall and Jonathan L. Howard. It will be my first opportunity to hear some of Carter & Lovecraft, so I’m very much looking forward to it.
On Friday evening I headed into Bristol for my first event in this year’s Bristol Festival of Literature. It was a comics-themed event featuring Mike Carey, Paul Cornell, Cavan Scott and Jess Bradley, and it took place in the Bristol Waterstones.
The basic idea of the event was to talk about the process of making comics, and about the comics business. Hopefully some of the audience went away inspired to make their own comics. My panel did a fine job of talking through the issues. I’d given them a list of questions I wanted to address in advance, and in several cases they moved effortlessly from one topic to another without my having to prompt them. Special thanks to Paul who often managed to do the moderator things I wanted to do before I could get a word in to do them.
Paul and Mike are, of course, very high profile. I was delighted to see Mike so happy about the film of The Girl with All The Gifts, which should be in cinemas this time next year. But we all agreed that Cav had the best job in the world — writing Minnie the Minx — and of course he’ll be a superstar next year when his World Book Day Star Wars novel comes out. Nevertheless, when we all got together for dinner after the event, it was Jess’s creations that we ended up talking about. She’s very funny. Check out her website, and the Squid Bits strip she does for The Phoenix. (Warning, may contain farts.)
Apex Publications are running a flash fiction competition – maximum limit 250 words. All entrants get a free issue of Apex magazine. The three winners will feature in the December issue (paid at 6c/word) and get their choice of three free books from the Apex catalogue. Full details are available here.
The latest edition of the StarShipSofa podcast includes an interview with a trans woman, Serah Eley. Tony Smith kindly gave me a preview of this one and I found it fascinating. Unlike me, Serah came into her understanding of her trans identity quite late in life. Her experience is just as valid as mine, but it is one that is only rarely seen in media coverage of trans issues. So well done to Tony and Serah for doing this interview. I hope it helps dispel some stereotypes.
The trophy for the National Diversity Award won by Ujima Radio has now made it back to Bristol. While I was in the studios yesterday I took the opportunity to get a photo with it (thanks Melody!).
Of course I only played a very small part in winning the award. There are many other areas in which Ujima has championed diversity, but I have been assured that I was mentioned on our submission to the jury and I’m very pleased that Ujima saw fit to promote its being trans inclusive.
It was all books all the time on yesterday’s Women’s Outlook show.
First up I had a great interview with Nicola Griffith, mainly about her wonderful novel, Hild. Naturally that brought us on the the position of women in Anglo-Saxon society and the more general issue of how women’s roles in history are erased. We also touched on the work Nicola has been doing on women and literary awards, and on the forthcoming film of Kelley Eskridge’s novel, Solitaire.
The full interview with Nicola ran to about half an hour, so I had to cut quite a bit. I’ll put the whole thing on Salon Futura when I get the chance.
After that it was all Bristol Festival of Literature. I was joined in the studio by Amy Morse, Kevlin Henney and Pete Sutton. We talked through just about every event in the Festival. You can find more details about all of them here.
To listen to the first hour of the show click here, and for the second hour click here.
The playlist for the show was as follows:
Yeah, I did play the new Duran Duran single. If you don’t know why, listen to the show. All is explained. (And it is a great song.)
Well that was a long day. Radio in Bristol followed by Bath for the book club, with a bit of shopping in between. I’ll do the post for the radio tomorrow morning. In the meantime I’m doing a brief post about the book club.
The Forever War is an old book, written in the early 1970s. As with any early science fiction, it is liable to date. I was worried that the book club members might not like it much. I’m pleased to say that they liked it better than I expected, and I was quite surprised at what they didn’t like.
There were a few remarks about the characterization, but given that this is a 1970s science fiction novel, and Joe’s novel, I think it does pretty well in comparison to its contemporaries. Obviously it doesn’t stack up as well against modern novels.
What surprised me is that some of the club members found the book misogynist and homophobic, which I suspect will rather upset Joe. It does, of course, accurately reflect attitudes of 1970s America. It also includes an episode in which our hero, William Mandella, returns to Earth to find that society has evolved to become almost exclusively homosexual. That was revolutionary at the time.
Mandella, of course, is discomforted by this, being straight himself. There’s a definite tendency, I think, for readers to assume that the lead character in a book told in first person is speaking for the author. That effect is magnified when the introduction tells you that the book is partly autobiographical.
However, talking it through we hit upon another possible explanation for the readers’ reactions. When we read a book by, say, Jane Austen, or Thomas Hardy, and find some of the social attitudes expressed by the characters reprehensible, we excuse that because the book was written in, and set in, the distant past. When we read a book set in the future, however, we expect that book to be at least as socially progressive as our own time. If it isn’t, we assume that the author must be some sort of throwback. It is hard to make the mental adjustment to understand that this is a book that is set in the far future, but written quite a long time in the past.
Having got through this issue, the club members then went on to enthuse about all of the neat ideas in the book. It is a great piece of science fiction, and a brilliant book about the Vietnam War. Joe can still be proud of it.
My interview with Joe from SofaCon 2, in which we spend quite a bit of time talking about The Forever War, is still available here.
Next month the book club is reading Anno Dracula.
I have email from HarperVoyager announcing an Open Door period for submissions. As with the Angry Robot one I wrote about last week, this means that you can send them manuscripts direct without having to go through an agent.
Full details should be available here, but it looks like the site is creaking under the excess level of traffic right now so I can’t be sure. The link should at least direct you to where you need to be.
What I do know is that you don’t have long. Angry Robot gave you the whole of NanoWriMo to write the book. HarperVoyager are looking for submissions in early November, so unless you have something ready this is probably not enough notice. But I know a lot of you do have something. Good luck!
I’m pleased to see that the necessary electrons have found their way through to Amazon and the Colin Harvey hardcovers are now available to order. You can get them at the following links:
Of course I get next to nothing for selling a paper book through Amazon thanks to the massive discount that they demand. If you are in the UK and want a copy of either book, let me know. If you are in the Bay Area and want a copy of either book I may be able to get some shipped to Kevin.
The latest issue of Fafnir, the Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, has just been published. This issue has three articles in English: two about Sir Terry Pratchett and one about Michael Crichton.
The Pratchett articles are a memorial, written by my friend Liisa Rantalaiho, and an article about the Wincanton Hogswatch which should be of interest to fan studies scholars.
Please note that this is not the post-Archipelacon issue, so it doesn’t contain any of the papers from the academic conference. Yes Merja, I know I owe you a paper. I need to format the bloody citations, which I’m sure is easy if you are used to it, which I’m not.
Today I took the car out for a run. I headed up to Fairford where Paul Cornell was doing a home town launch event for his Witches of Lychford novella. Fairford is a small country town on the edge of the Cotswolds, so I got to drive along a lot of those twisty country roads that are lined by the stone walls of country estates, and where the trees are carved into tunnels by the passage of double-decker buses. I wish Kevin had been with me, it was lovely.
I got to see the church where Paul’s wife, Caroline Symcox, is vicar. The signs you see on entering the town actually note that the church is world-famous, though whether that’s because of the vicar or for some other reason wasn’t made clear.
The event, which was in the town library, was well attended, apparently mostly by members of Caroline’s congregation. Aside from a friend of Caroline’s, I think I might have been the youngest person in the audience. They all listened patiently to Paul’s explanation of a story of witchcraft in a small, English country town, and they all bought the book so he must have explained it well.
There were lots of good questions, and I got to hear Paul effectively doing rehearsals for the comics panel I’ll be hosting on Friday. If we get more of that sort of thing it will be well worth attending.