Marie Brennan's Blog, page 124

Schroedinger's WFC panels

Depending on which corners of the internet you’ve been paying attention to today, you may or may not have seen the useless and offensive piece of garbage that is the harassment policy for World Fantasy this year. It translates to “unless you are subjected to a criminally prosecutable instance of harassment, we’re not going to do anything about it. Play nice, guys!”

This is unacceptable.

And I’ve told the con runners as much. It’s barely a week and a half to the con; their ability to fix it is, at this point, limited. But they can at least do something. Me, I can’t get a refund on my plane ticket or my convention membership, so that cost is sunk. But if nothing improves by the time I get there, then I will not participate in programming — and I have told the con runners as much.

Because here’s the thing. It turns out I’m actually on two panels, not one; when I posted my schedule yesterday, the second one had vanished from the program, but it’s back now. That panel? Is on violence. And I simply cannot stomach the irony of sitting behind a microphone talking about violence, while knowing the event I’m attending has abdicated its responsibility to protect the safety of its attendees.

This isn’t rocket science. Many other cons have instituted policies against harassment and procedures to enforce same. I’m serving on the board of an organization that is, right now, dealing with a very complex allegation of harassment. I know what a good policy looks like, and this is so far from that, you’d need a telescope to see it from here. Their excuses for why they can’t do better are laughable. Their failure to even communicate this so-called “policy” to all of their staff is indicative of massive dysfunction. And if they didn’t see this storm coming, they’ve been willfully blind.

I will not support this kind of crap by lending my voice and my thoughts to their program. If they fix it, I’ll go on as scheduled. If they don’t, I’ll be in the bar. And we can have a nice chat about how “violence” doesn’t always involve blood.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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My World Fantasy schedule

FRIDAY, NOV 6: But it is historically accurate…

Fantasy authors often borrow from history to create their secondary worlds, but is historical accuracy ever a defense to criticisms of problematic content in Epic Fantasy? The thorny issues of authorial intent, historical context, cultural appropriation and the freedoms of creation often rear their ugly heads. The panel will discuss the various approaches taken to incorporate historical context, cultures and world views into secondary world Fantasy, and the pitfalls that might appear.

Jen Gunnels (mod.), Marie Brennan, David Drake, Lisa L. Hannett, Gene Wolfe

Should be interesting!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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#GirlcottStarWars

One thing that comes up a fair bit in discussions of diversity and so forth is the accusation that liberal types are only buying/watching/otherwise supporting particular books/movies/tv shows/etc because those things promote a particular agenda: racial inclusiveness, gender equality, queer acceptance, and so forth.

It occurred to me today, after reading this excellent post by Jim Hines, that we seem to have no problem with boycotting things because we disagree with their political agenda and wish to not support it. That is, in fact, a time-honored and widespread tactic for registering your displeasure with a situation. So why is it wrong to do the opposite?

And clearly, if “boycotting” is avoidance for the sake of protest, then participation for the sake of support ought to be called “girlcotting.”

(Yes, I know that isn’t the actual etymology of the word. Hush you with your logic.)

So I say, those who feel that science fiction has room for bug-eyed aliens of all kinds but not women or black dudes as protagonists should feel free to boycott the new Star Wars movie. Me, I’m going to girlcott it. I’m going to try to see it opening weekend, and if it’s good, I’ll go see it again. Because sometimes you need to throw your toys out of the pram . . . but sometimes you need to grab hold of them and say, yes. mine.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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Credit where credit is due

Bad customer service is so common, I think it’s worth talking about the good stuff when it happens.

I lost the safety key for my Lifepsan treadmill, without which it will not function. Went to the website; had difficulty figuring out which version I needed, but eventually ordered one. It came. It was not the right version. So I looked on their site and found out that in order to return anything, you’ve got to email then and ask for a label to be sent — which makes sense when what you’re returning is an entire 100+ lb treadmill, but not so much for a little plastic key. I email, and in the meanwhile make plans to call them later that day and talk to a customer service rep to figure out which key I need, because it is seriously not clear from their website.

Before I can do that, however, I get a reply to my email. After a few messages back and forth, I learn that I do not need to send back the old key; they are shipping me a new (correct) one right away, at no charge.

So yay. That made an annoying situation much less annoying. They could still use to improve the process of figuring out which one you need . . . but in the meanwhile, my life has gotten much easier. Good on them.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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Cold-Forged Flame

Remember that novella I wrote while on tour earlier this year?

Coming soon to a Tor.com near you: Cold-Forged Flame, the first of at least two, possibly more, novellas about Ree Varekai.

Yep, I’ve done it again; I’m turning another piece of RPG material into professional fiction. This one will be very different from the Onyx Court series, though. No faeries. I’ve instead run with the more epic tone fostered by the LARP where I played Ree, and turned her into an archon — a fallen demigod-like creature that humans can summon and bind to serve them. Cold-Forged Flame begins a particular “lifetime” for Ree, when a certain group of people bound her to retrieve something on their behalf . . . and more than that, I cannot (yet) say without spoilers.

I’m ridiculously pleased that this is a thing which is actually happening. While I was on tour and working on this, I commented to Mary Robinette Kowal that I was trying to write twenty thousand words about an angry, pessimistic amnesiac with no name who spends half the story on an island all by herself. How exactly did I think I was going to make this work? But apparently I succeeded, because Lee Harris has picked up both it and a sequel for Tor.com’s novella line. I’ll be trying to write the second before I buckle down to draft the last of the Memoirs, and we’ll see what happens after that.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

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Puella Magi Madoka Magica

I’ve heard about this anime for a couple of years now, but only recently got around to watching it.

Dude. It’s amazing.

The name in Japanese translates to “Magical Girl Madoka Magica”; I’m not sure why they decided to translate the title to Latin* for the English release. It probably works best if you have at least a basic awareness of the “magical girl” genre, as exemplified by things like Sailor Moon: young girls get supernatural powers so they can fight evil. Usually this involves some kind of flashy “by the power of Greyskull”-type transformation from their ordinary, unassuming persona to their more wondrous selves. Madoka is a deconstruction of the genre, one where being a magical girl is not all it’s cracked up to be — but I think it would be good even if you don’t have any familiarity with specific genre under discussion. “You get magic powers to fight evil” is a broad enough concept that anything problematizing it will still be comprehensible.

It’s hard to say much about the show without giving stuff away. Madoka and her friend Sayaka encounter a creature called Kyubey, which offers to make them magical girls: if they make a wish, Kyubey will grant it, and that creates a contract wherein they get powers but have to fight witches to protect the people around them. But right from the start, a magical girl named Akemi Homura is trying to prevent them from signing up; eventually, of course, you find out why. It probably isn’t what you expect, though.

Right from the start, I liked the way the show approached the whole “witches” concept. Apparently the original plan was to make them basically kaiju, but instead they’re much more abstract: a witch is basically a hidden pocket realm a magical girl must enter, and only by defeating what she finds in there can she destroy the witch. The realms are surreal, trippy places, each one usually on a theme (one looked like “craving” or “addiction” to me), and so the battles proceed along less-predictable lines.

One of the nice things about the series is that it’s short and self-contained: twelve episodes and you’re done, though the franchise as a whole contains other components. This isn’t the kind of story that could support a much larger structure. Before long everything is spiraling wildly out of control for the characters; if the tale kept going, you’d lose that sense of genuine desperation.

I won’t call it a happy show. But if you’re looking for something dramatic, I highly recommend it.

*I bought the soundtrack, and discovered that most of the song titles are in Latin. One of them caught my eye: “Numquam vincar.” Hmmm,, I thought to myself, that’s an odd form. They’re probably just making up dog Latin, like most people do. But wait a sec — “vincere” is a third-conjugation verb, so the A would make that subjunctive. Why an R, though? That’s an bizarre ending. <a wind stirs, shifting the dust that has accumulated atop my knowledge of Latin grammar> Hang on. “Loquor.” That’s an R ending. What the heck is that? It’s, uh. Passive? Passive. First person singular passive. “Vincar” is first person singular present subjunctive passive. HOLY SHIT IT’S ACTUAL GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT LATIN. Yayyyyyyy!

For those who never studied Latin, if I’ve blown enough dust off my Latin knowledge to translate it correctly, “Numquam vincar” means “May I never be defeated.” EDIT: Sovay reminds me in LJ comments that the tense marker falls out of third conjugation verbs in the future tense, so while I could be correct in my translation — the two forms are the same — it probably means “I will never be defeated” instead.

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Dear Yuletide Writer

Hello, Yulemouse, Yulegoat, or whatever Yulecritter you may be! Before we get down to brass tacks, I want to thank you. It's always a delight to receive a fic written just for me, and I can't wait to see what you come up with.

The optional details below are optional; they are also, shall we say, a bit long. Please do not be put off by this. It's mostly me babbling about why I like the sources, and then offering a variety of tidbits that I hope will be useful to you. Basically, I'm just trying to feed the plotbunnies. (There are also more general notes about my tastes at the bottom.) (Also, way too many parenthetical asides.)

My username on AO3 is russian_blue, if you're the sort of Yuletider who mines previous gifts and/or fics for data before you start writing. :-)

***

Fandom: Gabriel Knight
Characters: Gabriel Knight, Grace Nakimura

This is the request that inspired me to create the Some Day My Fic Will Come mini-challenge. We are the few, the stubborn, the ones who obsessively ask for the same thing year after year!

If you didn’t match with me on this fandom, you probably aren’t going to write it, but juuuuust in case, I should mention that you can now buy all three games on GOG.com. Or you can buy novelizations of the first two games (not the third, unfortunately), or it looks like there are some Let's Play videos on Youtube. And there's an HD remake of the first game out now! (I've reviewed it here, if you're curious.)

Anyway, if you like the old Sierra point-and-click style adventure games, this series is really fun. (And not as horror-ish as the descriptions would have you believe: it's more a matter of horror tropes than lots of gore or jump moments.)

What I love about the source: These days, with companies like Bioware around, the notion of a computer game with character development and a genuinely dramatic plot isn't such a big deal. But back when I first played these, it was mind-blowing! There's still a lot of humour (because Sierra's like that), but it's used as leavening for some weightier stuff. I also loved the way Jensen made use of real-world history and folklore, and the sense that Gabriel was a flawed guy who was, step by step, becoming a better person.

What I'd love to get: Closure. Pleeeeeeeeease.

This is the downside to having actual character development: when the arc gets cut short, it leaves the audience hanging. The relationship between Gabe and Grace built up over three games, until they slept together in Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned, but they never really talked about it and then Grace bailed out and we didn't even get to read her note and auuuuuuuggggggggggggggh.

I'd like to see that hanging thread tied up. The closure could take whatever form you like, and be from whichever point of view you like, or both. Grace, presumably, was going to talk to that guy in India she'd been e-mailing, about how she could fight supernatural evil on her own terms. Maybe Gabe goes after her. Maybe he doesn't (I can see him not having the confidence to do so), and she shows up again a few years later, after becoming some kind of full-blown Schattenjäger equivalent herself. Maybe they run into each other without warning when they both go after the same supernatural beastie. I'd love to see Grace treated as Gabe's professional equal (I think she's always been his equal in personal terms), rather than a sidekick, and for him to accept her as such -- which is not to say he should have a personality transplant and suddenly be without flaws or blind spots, but I feel like he's been struggling with a lot of issues there, and it would nice to see him continue to grow.

I'd like there to be a happy ending eventually -- get your mind out of the gutter! I mean happy emotions! -- but I don't mind angst along the way. (Where "happy endings" are concerned, wink wink nudge nudge -- eh, I really care more about the emotional resolution. They can sleep together or not, as you like, but I'd prefer that not to be the main focus of the story.) If you have the time and energy, I would ADORE something plotty, with a supernatural threat they have to take care of. Flavor of threat is entirely up to you: rumour has it the fourth game would have taken place in Scotland and dealt with ghosts; run with that if you want, or grab any cool bits of folklore and history that you know and want to play with.

***

Fandom: Elfquest
Characters: any

A repeat request, because this is a fandom I adore so much, I don't think I could ever get tired of it.

What I love about the source: Oh god, where do I start? This was, for many years, the only comic book I had ever read. It's still one of the deep foundational stories in my mind. I love how well-realized the characters are, and the capacity for the narrative to be about the ensemble and subsets thereof, rather than being just Cutter's story with everybody else playing bit parts. I love the way conflict is handled, never being casually dismissed, or treated as if violence is a get-out-of-jail-free card for everything. I love the consequences, and the fact that the characters experience both real losses and real victories. And I've got a big ol' soft spot for the soul-names thing, and the various bonds that can be created from that, both voluntary and not, both good and bad.

If you need to refresh your memory or want to get in on this awesome series, virtually all of it is available for free online.

What I'd love to get: If you're willing to tackle something that isn't character-specific, I would love to get anything expanding the setting, whether geographically or historically. I've read possibly everything there is -- certainly I've read most of it, including the far-future Jink stuff, and the first volume of the Final Quest -- though nothing after Kings of the Broken Wheel hit me quite as deeply. There's so much richness there, and also so much open space to develop new things. Possible angles include:

1) A story about a tribe of your own devising, either meeting one of the canonical groups or off doing their own thing. This could explore an environment not already covered (previous gifts have included subterranean volcanic elves, polar-bear-riding elves, and arctic aquatic elves), or be your own take on something the canon already touched on. (I love the idea of sea elves, for example, but the actual canonical Wavedancers didn't really do it for me.) My academic background is in anthropology, so elves adapting socially and physically to different environments is really interesting to me -- which sounds high-falutin', but really what I mean is yay cool stuff!

2) A historical incident for any of the canonical groups. Life under a past Wolfrider chief, early days of the Sun Village, Go-Backs vs. trolls, the Gliders before they fell into decadence and apathy -- a story about any of those would be cool. The High Ones right after the fall. Etc. Whatever strikes your fancy.

3) Human contact. This one could combine with any of the other prompts. Maybe your invented tribe runs into humans, or has even learned to co-exist with them in (non-warped-Glider-style) peace. Or maybe there were other contacts that we haven't been told about, for the canonical tribes or individual characters therefrom. We've already had a few examples of how that could go, but there's room for a lot more variety.

4) If you'd prefer to stick closer to the actual series rather than haring off into the wild blue yonder with your own ideas, I am cool with any of the nominated characters! (One of the reasons I can ask for Elfquest every year is, there are basically no characters I don't like.) There are enough of them this year that I can't list individualized prompts for all of them, but I really will be happy with whichever people you offered to write. Or people you didn't offer to write, if you get a brainstorm for one of them, or tailored your offers to avoid specific kinds of prompts but are happy to write them when you have a clear field. The above bits have probably given you an idea of where my interests lie: the individual character of each tribe, the things that are unique to being an elf (long life, soul name, magical gifts), how different groups deal with things, etc. If you need some way to narrow the field, I have loved Huntress Skyfire since I saw the image of her in the very first volume, and Strongbow has always been one of my favorites of the male elves -- I like the fact that his adherence to tradition is both a limitation and a strength, and I loved both his reaction to Timmain, and the way he and Clearbrook bond in the palace. But seriously, whoever you offered, I would love to read about them.

Really, I just want MOAR ELFQUEST DAMMIT, whether it's following the existing material somewhere new or breaking fresh ground entirely. Whatever idea you have, if you think I'll like it, then go for it!

***

Fandom: Sengoku Avengers
Characters: any
Fandom: Jidaigeki X-Men
Characters: any

I'm combining my notes for these two because they have the same core concept, and what I'm looking for is more or less the same in both instances. Please don't take that as a sign that I'm less interested in either one, or less interested in this pair than my other fandoms -- nothing could be further from the truth!

What I love about the source: How awesome is this? Superheroes reinvented in a historical Japanese context! Okay, okay, I am a very special kind of nerd, and I know it. But I adore the way the artist worked in details of the time periods and the folklore, with things like Kaibutsu's ofuda or making Onryou an outright ghost.

What I'm looking for: Dude. ANYTHING. Anything at all that plays around with superpowered people in historical Japan. If there's a specific event or historical person or cultural detail you happen to know pretty well, and you want to use that as the basis for your story, GO FOR IT. I would be especially delighted to devour anything that makes use of Japanese folklore; that's already woven into a number of the characters' backgrounds, so if you want to do more like that (with religion or yokai or superstitions or what have you), I fall at your feet in glee. :-)

Character-wise, I'm totally cool with you using any of the characters, in any combination you like -- including mashing together these two canons, if that floats your boat. (There's also a Chambara JLA on his site, though I personally find their backstories less effective than the ones in these two sets.) You can also port other suitable characters in, if you have a brilliant idea for how to historical-Japanese-ify someone else from comics canon. And don't feel obliged to stick to every single detail of the backstories, either; in general I think they're cool and would love to see what a writer could do with them, but there are lots of ways they could be tweaked while still keeping to the original spirit of the thing. (For example, it would make a lot of sense if Kaminchu's people were Ainu or Ryukyuan or something like that. I would have no problem with a change of that sort.)

If "any characters; anything!" is too open-ended and you need some kind of direction to go in, I think the ladies of the Jidaigeki group are especially nifty, and in the Sengoku group, I think Kaibutsu, Kagami, and Raijin have the best backstories. (I got a Kaibutsu story last year that was faboo.) I really would be happy with any of them, though.

Pretty much the only thing I don't want is the usual continuity personalities with a historical Japanese paint job slapped on top. If I want normal Avengers fic, there is an endless ocean of it out there for me to read, and ditto the X-Men. Which is awesome, but the reason I'm asking for these versions is because I find the reinvention of the core concepts fascinating. I will eat that up with a spoon.

(Minor nitpicky note: the romanization of Takajyō's name annoys me. So please, if you include him, write it as Takajō or Takajou. Or Takazyō/Takazyou, which is at least still consistent -- but JSL kind of makes my eyeballs bleed, so.)

***

Fandom: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci
Characters: Christopher Chant, Cat Chant, Gabriel de Witt

What I love about the source: Unlike most people, I read The Lives of Christopher Chant first, and so I always view this series through a Christopher lens, rather than a Cat one. I have a biiiiiig weak spot for characters whose power occasionally outstrips their ability to figure out what they're doing with it, and I really liked watching Christopher mature.

What I'd love to get: While writing my Yuletide letter in a previous season, I came up with an idea that made me bounce in excitement at the mere thought of it. We know from the short story "Stealer of Souls" that Christopher took over as Chrestomanci and Cat arrived at the castle while Gabriel was still alive, which means that for a while there, you had no less than three nine-lived enchanters running around at once. How badass would it be if all three of them worked together on something? Especially given the wild differences in their personalities -- Cat earnest and young, Christopher sarcastic and adult, and Gabriel strict and old -- but all of them throwing around gobsmackingly large amounts of power, often in casual ways. I have no particular vision of what incident would involve all three of them; you can run with whatever suits your fancy. But I love the idea of seeing three Chrestomancis go to town on some problem, especially since it would give us a chance to see Christopher and Gabriel interacting when Christopher has grown out of being a twelve-year-old snot. :-P

I also have a (very optional!) crossover request involving this series, which is an idea that has really just possessed my brain and not let go. A passing reference in "Warlock at the Wheel" makes it clear that Chrestomanci's multiverse is the same as that in The Homeward Bounders. Which means that it's possible for Christopher to meet up with Jamie Hamilton.

I got a story for this in a previous year, and could probably read a dozen more takes on it without getting tired of the idea. What would Christopher (as an adult and Chrestomanci, not, I think, as a kid) say to Jamie? How long has Jamie been wandering, by the time the two of them run into each other? Do they meet up in Christopher's world, or somewhere out in the Anywheres? It isn't the sort of encounter that could fix anything, I imagine, though Christopher would probably offer to try; the anchor has to keep moving, and even Chrestomanci can't change that. But the encounter could be really intense. For all his sarcasm and flaws, I think Christopher would have a deep empathy for what Jamie's going through, and why. If that fires your imagination the way it did mine, then I'd love to read the result.

***

More generally: These days I try to split my general commments into clear divisions, on the grounds that it might be more convenient for my writer. These are grouped in descending order of how much I want them.

Things That Are Yay: plot! (Casefic, etc. If you have the time and energy -- I know it can be a lot of work.) Exploration of character motivations, exploration/expansion of the setting. Fic that could fit into canon. Drama, up to and including aaaaaangst. Characters getting whumped on. Witty humour, especially if it's used as the jab to set up the dramatic roundhouse that follows.

Things That Are A-okay: violence, up to a point (see below). Non-explicit sex. AUs of the "what if this event went differently?" sort. Inclusion of nominated characters I didn't request. Inclusion of canonical characters who haven't been nominated. Original characters as needed for the story (in the case of my Elfquest prompt, the whole story can be OCs if you like). Most povs, tenses, narrative formats, etc.

Things That Are Meh: straight-up character introspection. Nonfiction-style worldbuilding. Second person pov without a really good reason.

Things That Are Nay: radical AUs like coffee shop, genderswaps, a/b/o, etc. Explicit smut and its associated kinks/tropes. "Five Things"-type stories (I've read some good ones, but that format rarely does it for me; I much prefer one continuous tale). Requested characters having only a cameo in the story, unless otherwise specified in the prompt. Gross-out humour. Humiliation. Characters being flat-out stupid. Bashing characters or canonical relationships. Torture porn, especially with female victims: go ahead and hurt characters, but don't make gore and suffering the whole point.

***

As mentioned before, I'm russian_blue on AO3, so feel free to rummage around in the entrails of what I’ve got there if you need more data on what I like. And above all: have fun!

Books read, July, August, and September 2015

I was busy enough in early August that I completely forgot to make my book log post for July’s reading. Then in early September, I was on a cruise ship in the middle of the Mediterranean. So you get a SUPER-SIZED THREE MONTH EDITION! . . . which is still approximately the size of some people’s one-month edition. Oh well.

Onward to the books!

Arabella of Mars, David Levine. Read for blurbing purposes, and the author is a friend. The book is a splendid YA adventure that marries Napoleonic nautical adventure to Edgar Rice Burroughs under the auspices of a girl protagonist, and I already want somebody to write crossover fic blending it with Chaz Brenchley’s “Old Mars” setting (which presently exists only in short stories, so far as I know, but I eagerly await the novel). A race to prevent a murder collides with an interspecies conflict as the native inhabitants of Mars rise up against their colonial overlords. Fun.

Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes, Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver. I picked this up for the “Age of Empire” part and wound up reading the whole brick, which tells you something. Takeaway: HOLY SHIT MOUNTAINEERS ARE CRAZY. Seriously. Do not read if you are bothered by people losing bits to frostbite or just saying “yeah, okay, so thirty people have already died trying to reach the top of this mountain but let’s give it another shot.” Or by the section where they talk about women mountaineers and the sheer, gobsmacking sexism of one Galen Rowell, who not only tried to hold the women who summited Annapurna to a standard none of the men were expected to meet — not only made slimy innuendo about their sexual behavior — but did so in a letter he signed with his girlfriend’s name because “it would carry more weight.” Ahem. Anyway, good book.

Another, Yukito Ayatsuji. I no longer have my copy, so I can’t note the translator’s name. Japanese YA horror novel. I came very near to putting it down and not coming back, because dear sweet baby Zeus it took its own sweet time getting to the point where you learned anything concrete about the weird stuff going on. I’m also not sure how much of what bugged me about the narration is the author’s style, how much is the translator’s style, and how much is just Japanese doing its thing. I suspect a lot of the elliptical sentences where the characters hem and haw around things without quite saying them is a reflection of Japanese, but the (first person) text also had a habit of stepping back oddly to report what it had just done: the protagonist would ask a question, and then the narration would say “That was the question I asked her.” Etc. Interesting to read, but not really my cuppa overall, especially since the entire plot hinges on a specific unreliability on the part of the narrator. Which is why I no longer have the book on my shelves.

Elfquest, the Final Quest, vol. 1, Wendy and Richard Pini. . . . look, I can’t review this, okay? Partly because single volumes of graphic novels are pretty slight things and don’t leave me with much to say, but mostly because it’s Elfquest and I’m not very objective. I’ll try to say things when the whole story is done, but that won’t be for a long time.

Two Serpents Rise, Max Gladstone. I agree with those who say it isn’t as strong as Three Parts Dead, largely due to the leading characters: I am very difficult to sell on “I just met this person and now I’m totally obsessed with them.” On the other hand, this one pretty much had me at Aztecs. The city of Dresediel Lex is heavily based on Mesoamerican societies, with little reflections of that squirreled away in every corner of the worldbuilding, and the protagonist is the son of a priest a generation after the war against the gods left his father without a job. But the morality isn’t black and white: instead of torturing and murdering humans to keep the world going, now they torture and murder gods. Is that better? How about the ways in which Dresediel Lex is wildly out of balance with its environment, sucking down water faster than it can be replaced, and the price of that gets passed along to society’s lower classes in ways that are less obvious than cutting out their hearts but maybe not much kinder? Is it really justifiable to refuse to allow even voluntary self-sacrifice? (And if not, how can you be sure it’s really voluntary?) I said about the previous book that I would call it grimdark based on content but not on tone; that continues to be true. Gladstone explores the thorny edges of morality without assuming that everybody’s a shitheel at heart. I will definitely go on reading.

Gemsigns, Stephanie Saulter. So, I finished this book and promptly went to my computer to email Saulter and ask whether she wanted to blurb Chains and Memory (which she did, yay). Because this is a book about the gifts and disabilities of a genetic minority, and the question of where the line is between appropriate regulation and unacceptable abridgement of their human rights. Which is more or less what C&M is about. Plus it’s really good; it does an excellent job of balancing the larger-scale issue (the legal emancipation and protection of “gems,” genetically engineered humans who used to be the property of the firms that made them) with the more intimate stories of the actual people involved. I saw the big reveal with a certain character coming a long way off, but that’s okay — it was still effective. I need to pick up the sequel.

The Martian, Andy Weir. I basically picked up this one on the strength of an XKCD comic, because that is me yes sign me up. I could criticize the writing in some respects; these days I am very alert to the challenges of writing the sort of first person narration where the protagonist is consciously telling their story to someone, and there were places where I think Weir could have done a better job shaping Mark Watney’s recordings to sound like the way a person would actually record their thoughts. (Also, there were some very jarring shifts in the third-person sections of the book, though I’m not sure how much of that was an issue of ebook formatting — there may be breaks in the print edition.) However, all of that should come with the salt of “and then I devoured it in a single sitting.” Take that for what you will. :-)

Not Our Kind, ed. Nayad Monroe. Anthology; I think I backed a Kickstarter? <lol> It’s difficult to remember which books came from what source. Short stories about alien perspectives. I’m bad at reviewing anthologies without going through them story by story; it pretty much always boils down to “I liked some of these and didn’t like others.”

The Confusion, Neal Stephenson. Lordy, I don’t even remember when I started reading this one. Possibly February of last year, which is when I finally finished Quicksilver, though I said then that I was going to take a break, so maybe not. I know that by the time I picked this up again on my vacation, I had utterly lost track of what was going on. Then I remembered that I had described the previous book as “a giant pile of words and characters and events and places and historical tidbits [which] wanders vaguely in the direction of several different things that might, in the hands of a different writer, be a plot.” And you know, if I wasn’t sure what was going on while it was fresh in my mind, it didn’t much matter if I didn’t know what was going on now. So I kept reading, and it kept being amusing, even though I really don’t know where the hell it’s going in a more macro sense. If you like Stephenson and historical fiction and don’t mind a whole lot of rambling, these are excellent. Otherwise, probably not for you.

The Check Your Luck Agency, KS Augusin (Cara d’Bastian). I bought the omnibus ebook on somebody’s recommendation; so far I have only finished the first volume. Not sure if I’ll keep reading. The concept sounded great: the protagonist Ursula Formosa works for a business in Singapore that “checks your luck,” i.e. investigates to find out whether your sudden good or bad fortune has a supernatural cause. Nineteen times out of twenty, it’s utterly mundane. The twentieth . . . unfortunately, the story is kind of shapeless, especially when you take each volume on its own. There’s a case, which turns out to be non-supernatural. Then Ursula gets recruited for a TV show, which has zero connection to the first half of the book. Oh, by the way, all that time she spent telling you she doesn’t believe in ghosts and the supernatural? Apparently she can see ghosts. And she admits they’re real. Which would be fine if she expressed disbelief to the other characters, but she expresses it in her own head, too, in ways that don’t actually read like her being in denial, and then she’s like “oh yeah ghosts are actually real and I can see them.” I like the setting detail; it’s pretty clear the author knows Singapore well, though she’s uncomfortably prone to broad generalizations about Asians en masse. But the story really isn’t hooking me, and the writing isn’t, either.

The Islands of Chaldea, Diana Wynne Jones (finished by Ursula Jones). I don’t know where DWJ’s sister picked up the manuscript to finish it, but I do know that I can feel the difference. The ending felt rushed, a few too many revelations coming up too rapidly, with not enough time for their implications to breathe. Still and all: I had to read it, and I’m glad I did.

Living in Japan: A Guide to Living, Working, and Traveling in Japan, Joy Norton and Tazuko Shibusawa. This is specifically a book about the arc of culture shock (and reverse culture shock when you go home), written by people with a counseling practice who deal with those issues a lot. Its major flaw is that it’s really, really short: I would have loved to see it fleshed out with example scenarios, rather than just mentioning “people may have trouble with X” and then moving on.

Turbulence, Samit Basu. I think Rachel Manija Brown recommended this one. A plane full of people on a flight from London to Delhi all get superpowers based on their dreams: this ranges from a supersoldier to a little girl who is a full-bore anime magical girl. It’s amusing, though it has a substantially higher body count than the tone led me to expect. I wish it had delved further into the ethical questions it raised; possibly the sequels will do so? One of the characters can basically control all kinds of digital stuff, and at one point he decides he’s tired of waiting around for the others to get their act together and do stuff to improve the world, so he goes and starts flinging money around online, bankrupting bad people and giving their money to good causes. Then he finds out this has backfired and made things worse and led to a lot of people dying. I wanted the story to keep going with that, but instead it dropped that aspect and went for a more conventional showdown — with the characters questioning the entire “conventional showdown” motif the whole way, but still, it kept going. And then it ended with some wildly unaddressed questions about the ethics of mind-control powers. So, entertaining but uneven. Also, the text is unfortunately riddled with comma splices, to the point where I had to keep reminding myself the book wasn’t self-published. The copyeditor must have been asleep at the wheel.

Writing Fight Scenes, Marie Brennan. I needed to fix an error in the ebook, and wound up finding several more as I went through.

Himalayan Circuit: A Journey in the Inner Himalayas, G.D. Khosla. A slim book from the ’50s, written by an Indian civil servant who participated in an expedition to some remote valleys for official purposes. If you want to write about that kind of terrain, he has excellent descriptions of the landscape, though he only touches on the inhabitants relatively briefly. It’s also surprisingly hilarious in places, like his extended description of what it’s like to ride a tiny Himalayan pony.

In the Labyrinth of Drakes, Marie Brennan. Page proofs.

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The Onyx Court is coming to the UK!

I’m delighted to announce that Titan Books, publishers of the Memoirs of Lady Trent in the UK, will also be bringing the Onyx Court to its homeland!

Long-time readers may recall that the first two books of the series were published there by Orbit UK back in the day, but the mid-series publisher shift meant the latter two never saw UK shelves. Titan have picked up the entire series and, as you can see from the above, are reissuing them with splendid new covers — not to mention UK spelling and date formatting, like God and the Queen intended. ;-) My understanding is that they’ll be coming out in rapid succession, on a three-month cycle, so by early 2017 you’ll have the whole set. I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to hold ’em in my hands!

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My Convolution Schedule

I’ll be at Convolution this weekend, on the following items:

Magic Vs. Religion (Friday 2-3:15)
To Be or Not To Be: Listening to Critique (Friday 3:30-4:45)
RPG Gamemastery (Saturday 10-11:15)
Reading 1 (Saturday 11:30-12:45)
Magic – Diverse Views (Sunday 10=11:15)
Autograph Session (Sunday 12-1)

No idea yet what I’ll read. It’s a group reading, and I’ll only have about fifteen minutes to work with, so whatever I choose, it’ll have to be short.

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