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| Sunday, July 5th, 2009 | 8:33 am
[wild_irises]
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Ursula Le Guin's 80th birthday ...
... is October 21 of this year. Kim Stanley Robinson had the brilliant idea of doing a _festschrift_: "a volume of articles, essays, etc., contributed by many authors in honor of a colleague, usually published on the occasion of retirement, an important anniversary, or the like." Karen Fowler and I have pounced on the idea. Festschrifts are generally published in a single volume for the recipient. What Karen and I are planning (open to some discussion) is a single high-quality printed volume for Ursula, plus a website where the contributions can be read, perhaps followed by a wider-distribution book--but we surely don't have time to do a full book by October 21. At any rate, we're looking for: 1) a personal memoir or anecdote 2) what some piece of Le Guin fiction meant to you 3) a general critical piece (obviously, this should be more admiring than fault-finding) 4) a specific critical piece on a work or a series (ditto) 5) whatever else you think memorializes Ursula for you. I'm confident that we can find ways to include music, visual art, recorded messages, and other non-printed-word media. We need finished pieces by September 7. We'd like to hear from you if you think you'd like to contribute. And we'd love for you to pass this along to anyone you think should know about it. Current Mood: excited | | Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 | 4:32 pm
[polymexina]
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Wiscon links for Whileaway?
Hey all -- can you share with me your favorite Wiscon links so that I can add them to Whileaway's archive? :) | 4:32 pm
[polymexina]
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Wiscon links for [ Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<lj-user="whileaway">') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.] Wiscon links for <lj-user="whileaway"> Hey all -- can you share with me your favorite Wiscon links so that I can add them to Whileaway's archive? :) | | Sunday, April 26th, 2009 | 10:01 pm
[wild_irises]
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2009 Tiptree Award Announced
The 2008 Tiptree award goes to: The Knife of Never Letting Go, a young adult novel by Patrick Ness (Walker 2008) and Filter House, a short story collection by Nisi Shawl (Aqueduct 2008). The Tiptree Award will be celebrated at WisCon 33. Each winner will receive $1000 in prize money, an original artwork created specifically for the winning novel or story, and (as always) chocolate. A panel of five jurors selects the Tiptree Award winners and compiles an Honor List of other works that they find interesting, relevant to the award, and worthy of note. The 2008 jurors were Gavin J. Grant (chair), K. Tempest Bradford ( ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) ktempest), Leslie Howle, Roz Kaveney ( rozk), and Catherynne M. Valente ( yuki_onna). The Knife of Never Letting Go begins with a boy growing up in village way off the grid. Jury chair Gavin J. Grant explains, "All the villagers can hear one another's thoughts (their "noise") and all the villagers are men. The boy has never seen a woman or girl so when he meets one his world is infinitely expanded as he discovers the complications of gender relations. As he travels in this newly bi-gendered world, he also has to work out the definition of becoming and being a man." Juror Leslie Howle praises Ness's skills as a writer: "Ness is a craftsman, plain and simple. The language, pacing, complications, plot this story has all of the elements that raise the writing to something well beyond good. Some critics call it brilliant. It's a page-turner, and the story continues to resonate well after reading it. It reminds me of the kind of classic SF I loved when I was new to the genre." In addition to the Tiptree Award, The Knife of Never Letting Go also won the 2008 Booktrust Teenage Prize (U.K.), which celebrates contemporary fiction for teenagers, and the Guardian Children/s Fiction Prize. Publishers Weekly, which selected Filter House as one of the best books of 2008, described it as an "exquisitely rendered debut collection" that "ranges into the past and future to explore identity and belief in a dazzling variety of settings." Tiptree jurors spotlight Shawl's willingness to challenge the reader with her exploration of gender roles. Juror K. Tempest Bradford writes, "The stories in Filter House refuse to allow the reader the comfort of assuming that the men and women will act according to the assumptions mainstream readers/society/culture puts on them." Juror Catherynne M. Valente notes that most of Shawl's protagonists in this collection are young women coming to terms with womanhood and what that means "in terms of their culture, magic (almost always tribal, nuts and bolts, African-based magical systems, which is fascinating in itself), [and] technology." In her comments, Valente points out some elements of stories that made this collection particularly appropriate for the Tiptree Award: "'At the Huts of Ajala' struck me deeply as a critique of beauty and coming of age rituals. The final story, 'The Beads of Ku,' deals with marriage and motherhood and death. 'Shiomah's Land' deals with the sexuality of a godlike race, and a young woman's liberation from it. 'Wallamellon' is a heartbreaking story about the Blue Lady, the folkloric figure invented by Florida orphans, and a young girl pursuing the Blue Lady straight into a kind of urban priestess-hood." The Tiptree Award Honor List is a strong part of the award's identity and is used by many readers as a recommended reading list for the rest of the year. This year's Honor List is: * Christopher Barzak, The Love We Share Without Knowing (Bantam, 2008) * Jenny Davidson, The Explosionist (HarperTeen, 2008) * Gregory Frost ( frostokovich), Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet: A Shadowbridge Novel (both published by Del Rey, 2008) * Alison Goodman, Two Pearls of Wisdom (HarperCollins Australia 2008), published in the United States as Eon: Dragoneye Reborn (Viking 2008), also Eon: Rise of the Dragoneye in the United Kingdom * John Kessel, "Pride or Prometheus" (Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 2008) * Margo Lanagan ( ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif) margolanagan), Tender Morsels (Knopf, 2008) * Ursula K. Le Guin, Lavinia (Harcourt) * John Ajvide Lindqvist, Let the Right One In (Quercus (UK) 2007), original Swedish title Lat den ratte komma in(2004), first published in English as Let Me In, St. Martin's Press (2007), Translated by Ebba Segerberg) * Paul Park, A Princess of Roumania (Tor, 2005), The Tourmaline (Tor, 2006), The White Tyger (Tor, 2007), The Hidden World (Tor, 2008) * Ekaterina Sedia ( squirrel_monkey), The Alchemy of Stone (Prime Books) * Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy (Canongate U.S., 2007) * Ysabeau S. Wilce, Flora's Dare: How a Girl of Spirit Gambles All to Expand Her Vocabulary, Confront a Bouncing Boy Terror, and Try to Save Califa from a Shaky Doom (Despite Being Confined to Her Room) (Harcourt, 2008) Current Mood: accomplished | | Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 | 8:43 pm
[spiralsheep]
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| | Sunday, February 1st, 2009 | 7:48 pm
[wild_irises]
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The Tiptree Award Wants You!
Ever thought about how you could be a fabulous Tiptree Award juror, read dozens of interesting books and help decide which one or ones did the best job of exploring or expanding gender? The Tiptree Award has a lengthy list of people who want to be jurors, or who we think would be good jurors, but we might not have your name on it. And you might be a fabulous juror but we just don't know it. If this is you, send me an email at kith at spicejar dot org, and let me know that you're interested. Or leave a comment here. | | Monday, January 5th, 2009 | 1:15 pm
[spiralsheep]
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Jess McCabe reviews The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet
"I have said earlier that speculative fiction is about what cannot ever be, or what cannot be as yet. But it is also true that when it uses symbol and metaphor in certain ways, speculative fiction is about us as we are, right now. This may be the case even if the story is set on another planet, in another age and the protagonist is an alien. Because haven’t we all felt alien at some time or another, set apart from the norm due to caste and class, religion and creed, gender and sexual orientation?” - Vandana Singh Jess McCabe reviews Vandana Singh's collection of short stories The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet @ thefword: http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2009/01/the_woman_who_t | | Sunday, January 4th, 2009 | 11:23 pm
[wrdnrd]
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early days of (fan)zines & women's involvement
I originally posted this in my own LJ. A friend suggested i re-post it here because it would be a community knowledgeable about early (fan)zines and women's involvement. - - -I've been trying for months to read Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity by Anne Elizabeth Moore. The university library is eventually going to knock down my door and repossess this book. It looks like it should be a fascinating book: i'm interested in the subject in the 1st place, and this looks like a good treatment. It's gotten good reviews from some of my zinemaking friends. But i keep getting stalled on the 1st page. I just can't get past her very 1st footnote. I mentioned it to littlebutfierce the other day and she found it perplexing, too. So we decided that i needed to post to about it. On page 1, AEM gives a footnote next to the phrase "zine libraries." The footnote reads as follows: Zines, if you're unfamiliar with them, are self-published booklets that got their start in the 1940s when several individuals simultaneously became entranced by certain science-fiction writers, stories, and movements. These individuals -- many of whom had tired of not seeing their own work in print due to rampant sexism and their feminine names -- wrote and published their own responses to and elaborations on this work. Althought originally called "fanzines" to distinguish them from their mainstream counterparts, magazines, the term was shortened to "'zine" by the mass media, which covered them extensively in the early 1990s, and then was shortened again to "zine." I don't claim to be a zine historian, but as far as i understand the development of zines in the 20th century, AEM's brief history above is just ... wrong. And if the 1st footnote on the 1st page is wrong, i'm having a hard time getting past it to trust any of her other research. Thoughts? I'm even tempted to write to AEM herself to ask what the footnote is about. I mean, it's kinda right ... sort of ... if i squint and look at it from an angle. Current Mood: curious | | Sunday, December 7th, 2008 | 12:59 pm
[calico_reaction]
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Griffith, Nicola: Slow River
 Slow RiverWriter: Nicola GriffithGenre: Science Fiction Pages: 343 The premise: Lore is the daughter of one of the world's most powerful and wealthy families, but when she's kidnapped, she becomes a nobody. Naked, beaten, and left for dead, she finds help and solace in a woman named Spanner, an expert data pirate who can give Lore exactly what she needs: a new life, a new identity, and a place to hide from the police, her family, and her kidnappers. But all of this comes at a price, which Lore is forced to pay over and over and over again. Told from three threads, we meet Lore as a child growing up with her family, the post-kidnapping Lore who's rescued by Spanner and the life that follows, and then finally the Lore who's trying to hard to make a new, respectable life for herself while still hiding from her own past and her own fears. But the past keeps nipping at Lore's heels, and she soon finds she can't hide forever . . . My RatingWorth the Cash: this is no action-packed, fast read. Like the title suggest, it's meant to be read slowly, to be absorbed, so that the reader can fully live and experience Lore's life, all three perspectives on it. It might feel a little too slow, a little too dull at the start, but Griffith does a wonderful job focusing on the scientific element of water treatment, and the relationships Lore experiences are painful and real and you want her to succeed. The payoff at the end is worth it, but Griffith takes her time getting there, make no mistake about that. Fans of soft SF and feminist SF can't miss this book. If you do, well, it's your loss. The full review, which does include spoilers, may be found at my new, improved! journal. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome. :) REVIEW: Nicola Griffith's SLOW RIVERHappy Reading! | | Thursday, November 6th, 2008 | 5:33 pm
[bibliofile]
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| | Tuesday, November 11th, 2008 | 10:39 pm
[morchades]
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| | Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 | 1:41 pm
[spiralsheep]
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| | Thursday, October 9th, 2008 | 8:21 am
[polymexina]
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nadya by pat murphy
hey, fen! i hadn't seen this book mentioned here before, so wanted to let y'all know about it. i'm reading it now and it is AMAZING. Nadya by Pat Murphy A female werewolf roams the Old West in this deeply absorbing dark fantasy from Murphy (The City, Not Long After), whose The Falling Woman won the 1987 Nebula Award for Best Novel. While the story kicks off in rural Poland, it soon moves to the American frontier and the descendants of the Old World's hardy, furry peasants?foremost among them, Nadya Rybak, who tries to accommodate both her human and her lupine natures. The heart of the novel consists of Nadya's trek in the mid-1800s from Missouri to California. Having come through great personal tragedy brought about by a trusting nature and her own burgeoning sexuality, Nadya befriends the more cultured Elizabeth and the prepubescent Jenny. Together, the three young women fight their way across the swollen rivers, parched deserts and frosty mountains of the vast American frontier. En route, they encounter rattlesnakes, Indians, the remains of the cannibalistic Donner party and Elizabeth's repressed sexual urges, which lead to an affair between her and Nadya. While Murphy's description of the trek sometimes reads more like a historical travelogue than a fantasy, it features welcome bursts of supernatural flourishes. Especially fine are the passages dealing with the Cheyenne, in which the author highlights the strengths of Nadya's werewolf heritage by contrasting it with the Indians' spirituality. With its strong heroines and passionate storyline filled with romance, adventure and dangers both physical and moral, this novel will appeal to a wide array of readers, not just those who shiver with delight when the moon is full and the wolf's bane blooms. http://www.amazon.com/Nadya-Pat-Murphy/dp/229030543XETA: i have not yet gotten to the spiritual indians part... hm. | | Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 | 8:06 pm
[morchades]
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Call for Submissions: 22nd Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy Fans
Where: Space Westerns: Sideshow ( Announcement) When: November 2nd How Long Until Submissions Close: Until October 28th Who: Nathen E. Lilly submissions2018[AT]spacewesterns[DOT]com or the submission formWhat: Women in Space Westerns The 22nd Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction will be hosted on the SpaceWesterns.com Sideshow. Our specific topic suggestion: Women in Space Westerns. Send submissions (blogged between May 3rd, 2008 and October 28th, 2008) to Nathan E. Lilly. Additional submission information is available on the submissions page.
What is a Space Western? A simple definition: Western genre themes in Outer-space. Often, if the protagonist of the story could accurately be described as a Space Cowboy, then you’ve got a Space Western. A more serious definition is fiction that explores the effect that the frontiers of outer-space have on the human condition.
Space Westerns in film and television include (but are not limited to): Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Captain Video and the Video Rangers, Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Alien, Galaxy Rangers, Sabre rider and the Star Sheriffs, Marshal Bravestar, Space Hunter, Earth 2, Babylon 5, Farscape, Trigun, Outlaw Star, Cowboy Bebop, Firefly/Serenity, Coyote Ragtime Show, Gun X Sword. Additional works in various other formats can be found at the (Nearly) Complete List of Space Westerns. If you have any questions about why a specific work was included, please feel free to contact me.
Female characters in Space Westerns include (but are not limited to): Wilma Deering, Dale Arden, Nurse Chapel, Lt. Uhura, Yeoman Rand, Princess Leia, Queen Amidala, Ellen Ripley, Lt. Athena, Medtech Cassiopeia, Serina, Cassiopeia, Devon Adaire, D’lenn, Faye Valentine, Radical Ed, Zoe Washburne, Inarra Sera, Kaylee Frye, River Tam, Wendy Garrett, Laura Roslin, Lt. Kara “Starbuck” Thrace, Lt. Sharon “Boomer” Valerii, Six.
Women writers of Space Westerns include (but are not limited to): C.L. Moore, Andre Norton, Leigh Brackett, and Jane Espenson. Repost far and wide, please. | | Sunday, September 7th, 2008 | 2:15 pm
[spiralsheep]
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On Discworld and insanity (with special reference to villainy)
I posted a short review of Making Money on my journal ( here) including some comments on Pratchett's presentation of insanity in his Discworld novels. To paraphrase... I was slightly disturbed by the use of insanity as the motivation of one of the main villains in Making Money. I understand that insanity/alienation is a convention of fairy tales and therefore also of parodies set in fairy tale worlds but this story was about banking and not the supernatural. The fact that the insane!villain in this novel meets a kinder end, receiving sympathy and psychiatric treatment, than I recall in previous Discworld stories, is interesting and makes me wonder if the author has reconsidered his fictional treatment of insane villains (possibly influenced by his recent diagnosis?). No doubt all the Pratchett fans with better memories for detail than mine will now correct my misconception on this matter. ;-) I should also add, for the non-regular Pratchett readers, that many of his heroes and heroines could also be seen as insane by the standards of either their society or our society or both so there is some balance in the portrayal of madness. So I worked out some fast and dirty stats (warning: small sample. Also, known inaccuracies detailed here). About 7/36 or 20% of Discworld novels feature insane villains without the fairytale/parody excuse.* Of the "real world" Discworld stories** (subjective list: Men At Arms, Jingo, possibly Fifth Elephant, Truth, Thief of Time, Night Watch, Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal, Thud, and Making Money) the figure is at least 4/10 or 40% or twice as prevalent as in the stories which have a better excuse due to the material they're parodying. Hmm, interesting. Opinions? Observations? Note: I haven't considered Discworld, insanity, and gender imbalance yet. * Example: Mister Teatime is a proper fairy tale villain and he's up against a proper fairy tale heroine (even though she'd probably deny it) so his insanity is, at least partly, a convention of the genre (or the genre parodied). ** Those stories about the police, journalists, the post office, bankers etc instead of wizards, witches, DEATH etc. | | Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 | 11:55 pm
[madam_silvertip]
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| | Saturday, August 2nd, 2008 | 10:23 pm
[calico_reaction]
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Le Guin, Ursula K.: Lavinia
 LaviniaWriter: Ursula K. Le GuinGenre: Fiction Pages: 280 I just finished reading Ursula K. Le Guin's latest release, Lavinia. The book's got a touch of poetry to it, which is appropriate, because this is Le Guin's translation (in prose) of the end of Virgil's The Aeneid, but told through the eyes of Aenea's future wife, Lavinia. And it goes where Virgil was not able to follow, to the roots of Rome. It's a good read, if a little slow, but enjoyable. Those fond of feminist re-tellings of history and myth (as found in Marion Zimmer Bradley's works) should enjoy this especially. The full review, with some spoilers, may be found in my LJ. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome. REVIEW: Ursula K. Le Guin's LAVINIAHappy Reading! :) | | Friday, August 1st, 2008 | 11:50 am
[heavenscalyx]
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Nana (manga) and my frustration
I saw a lot of people posting about Nana, so when I discovered that my library had volumes 1-9, I started reading it. There's a good reason it's one of the hottest-selling shoujo titles in Japan. The art is interesting, the characters are compelling, and the writing is excellent. The plot, which can only be summarized as "a bunch of 20-somethings get emotionally intertwined, have a lot of fucked-up relationships and miscommunication, and occasionally music happens," does, surprisingly enough, propel one along. I was really enjoying myself through the first 5 volumes. And then I just sort of burnt out. ( Cut for potential spoilers and a rant ) | | Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 | 7:54 pm
[calico_reaction]
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Winterson, Jeanette: The Stone Gods
 The Stone GodsWriter: Jeanette WintersonGenre: Fiction Pages: 207 I've been wanting to read more of Jeanette Winterson's work ever since I fell I love with The Passion. The Stone Gods seemed right up my alley, as it's fiction that utilizes science for its plot (and therefore science fiction, I don't care what side of the genre-fence you're on). I'll admit I was disappointed at first, because while the writing is still very, very good, it's nothing like The Passion. Still, once I got into the story, I began to appreciate what Winterson was doing more and more. She preaches, yes, and it's obvious to see how current events influence this book, but this is about more than simply humanity's ability to destroy itself and the world around it, but it's also about the permanence of soul, and that's a beautiful thing. The full review, which does contain spoilers, may be found in my LJ. As always, comments and discussion are most welcome. REVIEW: Jeanette Winterson's THE STONE GODSHappy Reading!! Also, if you're interested, don't forget about the fantasy giveaway at my LJ! For details, just click here. | | Wednesday, June 18th, 2008 | 4:13 pm
[spiralsheep]
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