Marie Brennan's Blog, page 226
August 3, 2011
The DWJ Project: The Pinhoe Egg
Last of the Chrestomanci books.
Marianne Pinhoe comes from one of several "dwimmer" families, who practice a kind of magic that they keep hidden from Chrestomanci and his establishment. Doing that gets harder, though, when Gammer -- the old woman who rules the Pinhoes -- loses her wits, and a war ensues between the Pinhoes and the neighboring Farleighs. Marianne also gives Cat Chant a strange egg from Gammer's attic, which leads to further trouble.
I quite like this one, though not to the degree that I like the ones I read as a kid. It's . . . pleasantly comfortable, if that makes sense. I enjoy seeing Cat now that he's found his feet, and Marianne is fun, too, especially since she's got the "large, boisterous family" thing going on that we saw in The Magicians of Caprona.
As for the spoilers . . . .
My biggest gripe, I think, is that the underpinnings of the plot -- the exiling of the hidden folk, the reason why the dwimmer families keep secret -- comes a bit too abruptly at the end. It's a fine idea, but it's surprising in the context of the Chrestomanci setting, and I would have found it more compelling if it had been threaded in sooner. On a related note, we never really got an answer about Jed Farleigh living for two hundred years, which I would have liked.
I also have to amend what I said above, about the family. Large and boisterous -- and also goddamned sociopathic, as it turns out. What they did to Gaffer is simply unconscionable. That, too, comes a bit too abruptly; there are earlier hints about it, of course, but the motivation behind it (linked as it is to the backstory issue of the hidden folk) isn't quite strong enough to make me see them as people doing something they genuinely thought was necessary and right; they just come across as horrible.
The whole thing with Gammer, though, works pretty well for me -- the weird, frustrating, heart-breaking experience of seeing the mind of a loved one go, and the realization that an old matriarch has been manipulating everybody around her, are both dynamics that I can understand and sympathize with. That isn't easy to cope with, whether there's magic involved or not.
Finally, I just have to say that the whole "Performative Speech" thing makes my academic self grin, even if the way it's used isn't quite what it means in reality.
I think after this I'll tackle a bunch of the stand-alone novels -- but that will have to wait until after I get back from Japan.
Marianne Pinhoe comes from one of several "dwimmer" families, who practice a kind of magic that they keep hidden from Chrestomanci and his establishment. Doing that gets harder, though, when Gammer -- the old woman who rules the Pinhoes -- loses her wits, and a war ensues between the Pinhoes and the neighboring Farleighs. Marianne also gives Cat Chant a strange egg from Gammer's attic, which leads to further trouble.
I quite like this one, though not to the degree that I like the ones I read as a kid. It's . . . pleasantly comfortable, if that makes sense. I enjoy seeing Cat now that he's found his feet, and Marianne is fun, too, especially since she's got the "large, boisterous family" thing going on that we saw in The Magicians of Caprona.
As for the spoilers . . . .
My biggest gripe, I think, is that the underpinnings of the plot -- the exiling of the hidden folk, the reason why the dwimmer families keep secret -- comes a bit too abruptly at the end. It's a fine idea, but it's surprising in the context of the Chrestomanci setting, and I would have found it more compelling if it had been threaded in sooner. On a related note, we never really got an answer about Jed Farleigh living for two hundred years, which I would have liked.
I also have to amend what I said above, about the family. Large and boisterous -- and also goddamned sociopathic, as it turns out. What they did to Gaffer is simply unconscionable. That, too, comes a bit too abruptly; there are earlier hints about it, of course, but the motivation behind it (linked as it is to the backstory issue of the hidden folk) isn't quite strong enough to make me see them as people doing something they genuinely thought was necessary and right; they just come across as horrible.
The whole thing with Gammer, though, works pretty well for me -- the weird, frustrating, heart-breaking experience of seeing the mind of a loved one go, and the realization that an old matriarch has been manipulating everybody around her, are both dynamics that I can understand and sympathize with. That isn't easy to cope with, whether there's magic involved or not.
Finally, I just have to say that the whole "Performative Speech" thing makes my academic self grin, even if the way it's used isn't quite what it means in reality.
I think after this I'll tackle a bunch of the stand-alone novels -- but that will have to wait until after I get back from Japan.
August 2, 2011
save me from my "friends"
So I fear it may have been lost in the DDoS attacks on LJ, but I'm looking for suggestions as to what costume I should wear to the Sirens masquerade ball. The theme is "monsters," and so far, the only idea proposed -- by some people who claim to be my friends <g> -- is that I should dress up as Sarah Palin. I therefore look to you, oh Other LJ Readers Besides Those Two, to give me some better alternatives.
I like costuming a lot; I just don't have any good ideas right now. And depending on what I settle on, I'll need some lead time to prepare it, hence asking now. Any thoughts?
I like costuming a lot; I just don't have any good ideas right now. And depending on what I settle on, I'll need some lead time to prepare it, hence asking now. Any thoughts?
clearing the browser decks for the trip
If five things make a post, I think I have several posts here.
LAN party for a new game bars women rather than make the men behave -- money quote: "Why are you protecting the assholes among you, gentlemen? Why do you value their participation so much that it's worth creating a space so "dangerous" for women that they must be banned from the premises? What do the assholes bring to your experience that is so irreplaceable? Is the game better when you can throw around vicious descriptions of rape and sexual assault? Does winning feel more awesome when you can hammer your opponent with anti-gay slurs?"
How to Land Your Kid in Therapy -- I think there's some definite truth to the notion that trying to make childhood perfectly happy just creates problems later on.
JSTOR "theft" and problems with academic publishing -- I learned about fiction publishing before I got anywhere near the academic side, and was appalled to discover I'd be expected to give up my copyright.
Why Is Fantasy Always in a British Accent? -- I admit I fall prey to this, too. Regardless of the actual linguistic reality of what, say, an Elizabethan accent sounded like, in my head, "American" accents didn't exist before a couple hundred years ago at most, and therefore it's weird to use them for settings older than, say, the steampunk era. (Also, not unrelated: have you noticed that in American film, British accents can stand in for pretty much anything foreign? Italian, Arabic, whatever. Though I was fascinated by the way that Enemy at the Gates gave the Russian characters British accents, and the Germans American ones.)
Teaching About Race: 101 -- so, if you scroll down a ways, the post includes photos of people born before 1930, and asks you to assign a race to each one as if you were a census-taker back then. (The answers and explanations are in the first comment, further down.) It's a fascinating glimpse into how those categories were and are constructed.
The Decent Human Being's Guide to Getting Laid at Atheist Conferences -- which of course applies to a lot of other contexts, too. Posted in light of the Dawkins flap.
The Republicans Exit History -- Roger Ebert sums up a lot of my thoughts.
News Redux -- some very, very good points about the crappy layout of the New York Times website, and news sites in general. I don't agree with everything there, but it's a good start.
Boobs Don't Work That Way -- the first Tumblr I've felt compelled to subscribe to. Lots of horrifying failures of anatomy, like this one, with the occasional bit of useful instruction or gender-flipped examples. (If that last one makes you want to spork your eyes out, well, that's about right.)
Tropes vs. Women #5: The Mystical Pregnancy -- if I could find a place to link to that showed the whole video series, I'd do it. Lots of good points about the way women get depicted in narrative, and the problems with same.
A reminder that an artist friend of mine does good work.
Also,![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380451598i/2033940.gif)
shveta_thakrar
is more than two-thirds of the way to her goal for Sirens, and is offering up some stories.
Okay, I think that's enough to keep Firefox from crashing out of sheer overload. (Your brains may be another matter.)
LAN party for a new game bars women rather than make the men behave -- money quote: "Why are you protecting the assholes among you, gentlemen? Why do you value their participation so much that it's worth creating a space so "dangerous" for women that they must be banned from the premises? What do the assholes bring to your experience that is so irreplaceable? Is the game better when you can throw around vicious descriptions of rape and sexual assault? Does winning feel more awesome when you can hammer your opponent with anti-gay slurs?"
How to Land Your Kid in Therapy -- I think there's some definite truth to the notion that trying to make childhood perfectly happy just creates problems later on.
JSTOR "theft" and problems with academic publishing -- I learned about fiction publishing before I got anywhere near the academic side, and was appalled to discover I'd be expected to give up my copyright.
Why Is Fantasy Always in a British Accent? -- I admit I fall prey to this, too. Regardless of the actual linguistic reality of what, say, an Elizabethan accent sounded like, in my head, "American" accents didn't exist before a couple hundred years ago at most, and therefore it's weird to use them for settings older than, say, the steampunk era. (Also, not unrelated: have you noticed that in American film, British accents can stand in for pretty much anything foreign? Italian, Arabic, whatever. Though I was fascinated by the way that Enemy at the Gates gave the Russian characters British accents, and the Germans American ones.)
Teaching About Race: 101 -- so, if you scroll down a ways, the post includes photos of people born before 1930, and asks you to assign a race to each one as if you were a census-taker back then. (The answers and explanations are in the first comment, further down.) It's a fascinating glimpse into how those categories were and are constructed.
The Decent Human Being's Guide to Getting Laid at Atheist Conferences -- which of course applies to a lot of other contexts, too. Posted in light of the Dawkins flap.
The Republicans Exit History -- Roger Ebert sums up a lot of my thoughts.
News Redux -- some very, very good points about the crappy layout of the New York Times website, and news sites in general. I don't agree with everything there, but it's a good start.
Boobs Don't Work That Way -- the first Tumblr I've felt compelled to subscribe to. Lots of horrifying failures of anatomy, like this one, with the occasional bit of useful instruction or gender-flipped examples. (If that last one makes you want to spork your eyes out, well, that's about right.)
Tropes vs. Women #5: The Mystical Pregnancy -- if I could find a place to link to that showed the whole video series, I'd do it. Lots of good points about the way women get depicted in narrative, and the problems with same.
A reminder that an artist friend of mine does good work.
Also,
shveta_thakrar
is more than two-thirds of the way to her goal for Sirens, and is offering up some stories.Okay, I think that's enough to keep Firefox from crashing out of sheer overload. (Your brains may be another matter.)
yes, I do mean to use that icon
Looks like Tor is doing a giveaway for A Star Shall Fall on their site. All you have to do is leave a comment on that post there. So if you're looking to pick up the book, go forth and comment! (They're actually giving away three copies, it looks like.)
Also, in Fate-related news, this in from the Romantic Time review: "Appealing characters, a fully realized historical setting and more than a touch of steampunk flavoring collide to create a book that is difficult to put down." So that's pretty good.
And now I go back to preparing for my trip.
Also, in Fate-related news, this in from the Romantic Time review: "Appealing characters, a fully realized historical setting and more than a touch of steampunk flavoring collide to create a book that is difficult to put down." So that's pretty good.
And now I go back to preparing for my trip.
Books read, July 2011
A lot of short things, a lot of re-reads; it was about all I had the brain-power for. But it adds up to a reasonably respectable-looking list.
The Merlin Conspiracy, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Warlock at the Wheel, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Sense and Sensibility, adapted by Nancy Butler and Sonny Liew. Comic-book adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. Not entirely successful; it depends way too much on captions to explain stuff, and (naturally) the dialogue bubbles tend to the extremely wordy side. But I'll say this for it: I felt like it told the story about as completely as the film adaptation I've seen did (the one with Alan Rickman et al). That's pretty good, for something this length. (I haven't read the original novel -- I know; I know -- so that's the only metric I have.)
Charmed Life, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Conrad's Fate, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 2, CLAMP.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 3, CLAMP.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 4, CLAMP.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 5, CLAMP.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 6, CLAMP.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 7, CLAMP. The Parallelsfic exchange reminded me that I'd started a re-read of this manga series a while ago, so I went back to it. Tokyo Babylon is urban fantasy in a way that not many urban fantastists try to achieve: it spiritualizes the way the city (in this case, Tokyo) chews people up and spits the bones back out again. It isn't happy, as that description might suggest; it's extra not happy once you get into the character-level metaplot. But the individual stories resolve . . . not hopefully, I guess, but well. The episodes basically all concern Subaru using magic to lay ghosts to rest, and his empathy and patience are kind of beautiful.
Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan. Discussed elsewhere.
Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett. So I started reading Sourcery twice and kept getting distracted from it; the beginning just didn't hook me. I'm sure it's a perfectly fine book and I'll go back to it someday, but for now, I said "screw it" and went ahead to the book with Granny Weatherwax and Shakespeare and other such fabulous things. This is probably my favorite Discworld so far, simply because I want to copy down into my quotes notebook entire paragraphs of Granny Weatherwax thinking about theatre and words and art and truth.
Pride and Prejudice, adapted by Nancy Butler and Hugo Petrus. Another comic-book adaptation; this one was written before Sense and Sensibility, but I read it second. I found it the less successful of the two, but that may be because I know the source better. The intro talks about how Butler knew she'd be pilloried if she changed around Austen's story too much; me, I wish she had, to make it work better within the medium. Then she might have avoided the heavy reliance on captions and two-panel scenes and all the rest. (On the other hand, it could be a stellar case study in why a faithful adaptation is not necessarily a good one. If that sort of thing is useful to you.)
Witch Week, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Ovid, David Wishart. I nearly bounced off this on the first page because the first-century Roman narrator called the woman who came to hire him a "tough cookie." But it ended up being a nicely intricate (and well-researched) historical mystery -- "mystery" of the political sort, rather than the evidence-and-prosecution sort; it revolves around Emperor Tiberius' refusal to let Ovid's ashes be returned to Rome -- so if you aren't turned off by mythological and historical allusions rubbing shoulders with hard-boiled detective tropes, I do recommend this one. And there's more in the series, too.
The Magicians of Caprona, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Jules Verne. I don't think I've ever read any Verne before, though I know of his work pretty thoroughly. This made for a fascinating read, in that you're 40% of the way through the book before they even start her descent; everything prior to that is a) discovery of the notion and b) the logistics of getting from Germany to an obscure mountain in Iceland. And then at that, they don't even make it all the way to the center of the earth! But it reminded me a lot of the Golden Age SF that came later, with its scientist-heroes and unabashed willingness to spend pages on the discussion of scientific theories.
His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik. Re-read, because I needed to get my brain into nineteenth-century-dragon gear early in the month, and then didn't finish it until the month was nearly over. It remains a very fun read, especially if you're fond of Patrick O'Brian and his ilk; the blending of the Napoleonic Wars (and the British naval mindset therein) with dragons is just cool.
Traveling for a chunk of this month, so I expect the next list will be shorter.
The Merlin Conspiracy, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Warlock at the Wheel, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Sense and Sensibility, adapted by Nancy Butler and Sonny Liew. Comic-book adaptation of Jane Austen's novel. Not entirely successful; it depends way too much on captions to explain stuff, and (naturally) the dialogue bubbles tend to the extremely wordy side. But I'll say this for it: I felt like it told the story about as completely as the film adaptation I've seen did (the one with Alan Rickman et al). That's pretty good, for something this length. (I haven't read the original novel -- I know; I know -- so that's the only metric I have.)
Charmed Life, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Conrad's Fate, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 2, CLAMP.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 3, CLAMP.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 4, CLAMP.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 5, CLAMP.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 6, CLAMP.
Tokyo Babylon, vol. 7, CLAMP. The Parallelsfic exchange reminded me that I'd started a re-read of this manga series a while ago, so I went back to it. Tokyo Babylon is urban fantasy in a way that not many urban fantastists try to achieve: it spiritualizes the way the city (in this case, Tokyo) chews people up and spits the bones back out again. It isn't happy, as that description might suggest; it's extra not happy once you get into the character-level metaplot. But the individual stories resolve . . . not hopefully, I guess, but well. The episodes basically all concern Subaru using magic to lay ghosts to rest, and his empathy and patience are kind of beautiful.
Crossroads of Twilight, Robert Jordan. Discussed elsewhere.
Wyrd Sisters, Terry Pratchett. So I started reading Sourcery twice and kept getting distracted from it; the beginning just didn't hook me. I'm sure it's a perfectly fine book and I'll go back to it someday, but for now, I said "screw it" and went ahead to the book with Granny Weatherwax and Shakespeare and other such fabulous things. This is probably my favorite Discworld so far, simply because I want to copy down into my quotes notebook entire paragraphs of Granny Weatherwax thinking about theatre and words and art and truth.
Pride and Prejudice, adapted by Nancy Butler and Hugo Petrus. Another comic-book adaptation; this one was written before Sense and Sensibility, but I read it second. I found it the less successful of the two, but that may be because I know the source better. The intro talks about how Butler knew she'd be pilloried if she changed around Austen's story too much; me, I wish she had, to make it work better within the medium. Then she might have avoided the heavy reliance on captions and two-panel scenes and all the rest. (On the other hand, it could be a stellar case study in why a faithful adaptation is not necessarily a good one. If that sort of thing is useful to you.)
Witch Week, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Ovid, David Wishart. I nearly bounced off this on the first page because the first-century Roman narrator called the woman who came to hire him a "tough cookie." But it ended up being a nicely intricate (and well-researched) historical mystery -- "mystery" of the political sort, rather than the evidence-and-prosecution sort; it revolves around Emperor Tiberius' refusal to let Ovid's ashes be returned to Rome -- so if you aren't turned off by mythological and historical allusions rubbing shoulders with hard-boiled detective tropes, I do recommend this one. And there's more in the series, too.
The Magicians of Caprona, Diana Wynne Jones. Discussed elsewhere.
Journey to the Centre of the Earth, Jules Verne. I don't think I've ever read any Verne before, though I know of his work pretty thoroughly. This made for a fascinating read, in that you're 40% of the way through the book before they even start her descent; everything prior to that is a) discovery of the notion and b) the logistics of getting from Germany to an obscure mountain in Iceland. And then at that, they don't even make it all the way to the center of the earth! But it reminded me a lot of the Golden Age SF that came later, with its scientist-heroes and unabashed willingness to spend pages on the discussion of scientific theories.
His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik. Re-read, because I needed to get my brain into nineteenth-century-dragon gear early in the month, and then didn't finish it until the month was nearly over. It remains a very fun read, especially if you're fond of Patrick O'Brian and his ilk; the blending of the Napoleonic Wars (and the British naval mindset therein) with dragons is just cool.
Traveling for a chunk of this month, so I expect the next list will be shorter.
The DWJ Project: Mixed Magics
Like Sophie, I am remorseless, but my remorselessness lacks method: I failed to actually determine whether there was a particular subset of the short story collections I could obtain so as to cover all the short stories, with a minimum of duplication. As a result, I've already read two of the four stories here in Warlock at the Wheel, and technically I also read "Stealer of Souls" on its own, since I ordered the World Book Day edition of that before I realized it was in (and subsequently ordered) Mixed Magics.
Anyway. "Warlock at the Wheel" and "The Sage of Theare" I've reported on. As for the other two stories:
"Stealer of Souls" pleased me all out of proportion by answering the morbid question that's been lurking in the back of my head for years: what happened to Gabriel de Witt? If he still had eight lives left when Christopher was a boy, then it must have taken a heck of a lot of dying to get rid of him between then and Christopher's tenure as Chrestomanci. Turns out it's more or less like I thought, to whit, once you get old enough your lives just start slipping away via the same natural causes that everybody else suffers from. You don't get extended life or anything, just more chances to bounce back. And it makes sense to me that, being as old as he was, and passing in that fashion, he would abdicate and let Christopher take over. (So for a little while there, they had three nine-lifed enchanters around. Man, knowing that we'll never get any more of these books has apparently stuck my brain in fanfic gear, because now I want a story about the one time Gabriel, Christopher, and Cat had to team up to lay a smackdown on something.)
Oh, you want me to talk about the actual story? I liked it, though I kept being irresistibly distracted by the fact that the guy was calling himself Neville Spiderman. It was good to see some follow-through with Tonino, and the whole thing with the souls was suitably creepy. Not the most memorable, but not bad, either.
"Carol Oneir's Hundredth Dream" scratched the "so what happened with Oneir, anyway?" itch, though only tangentially. I liked it for its commentary on storytelling and creativity, and also for watching Christopher be a politely sarcastic bastard (which pretty much never gets old for me). I think I wanted it to be longer, so it would have more space to develop things, but what we got was pleasant enough.
Anyway. "Warlock at the Wheel" and "The Sage of Theare" I've reported on. As for the other two stories:
"Stealer of Souls" pleased me all out of proportion by answering the morbid question that's been lurking in the back of my head for years: what happened to Gabriel de Witt? If he still had eight lives left when Christopher was a boy, then it must have taken a heck of a lot of dying to get rid of him between then and Christopher's tenure as Chrestomanci. Turns out it's more or less like I thought, to whit, once you get old enough your lives just start slipping away via the same natural causes that everybody else suffers from. You don't get extended life or anything, just more chances to bounce back. And it makes sense to me that, being as old as he was, and passing in that fashion, he would abdicate and let Christopher take over. (So for a little while there, they had three nine-lifed enchanters around. Man, knowing that we'll never get any more of these books has apparently stuck my brain in fanfic gear, because now I want a story about the one time Gabriel, Christopher, and Cat had to team up to lay a smackdown on something.)
Oh, you want me to talk about the actual story? I liked it, though I kept being irresistibly distracted by the fact that the guy was calling himself Neville Spiderman. It was good to see some follow-through with Tonino, and the whole thing with the souls was suitably creepy. Not the most memorable, but not bad, either.
"Carol Oneir's Hundredth Dream" scratched the "so what happened with Oneir, anyway?" itch, though only tangentially. I liked it for its commentary on storytelling and creativity, and also for watching Christopher be a politely sarcastic bastard (which pretty much never gets old for me). I think I wanted it to be longer, so it would have more space to develop things, but what we got was pleasant enough.
August 1, 2011
Thirty, or rather Twenty-Nine, Days
I didn't want to steal any thunder from yesterday's announcement, so you get your Fate-related goodies today.
This time, it's the soundtrack! Just the listing thereof; I haven't had a chance to try and set up an iTunes mix. Also, the usual caveat applies, that although none of the track titles have outright spoilers, they do provide hints of where the story is going; read at your own risk.
But wait! There's more!
Backing up for a moment to Midnight Never Come instead, you can now buy a print of Avery Liell-Kok's portrait of Invidiana (as seen to the right, there) from her shop on Etsy. There's lots of other great art there, too, including some painted parasols (which might appeal to a few of you), so I encourage you to take a look through it all, and see if anything catches your fancy.
I'll be out of town when the next spot in the countdown rolls around (which will feature the last bit of the excerpt), so it may be a bit delayed -- not sure what my internet access situation will be. I'll try to get it up at something like the right time, though. In the meanwhile, enjoy!
July 31, 2011
And then there were thirteen.
I generally count a night's work as belonging to preceding day, even though the clock says otherwise, but in this case I wanted to be sure I finished before we technically passed over into August.
A Natural History of Dragons is done, at 86,174 words.
(God, I love writing a shorter novel for once.)
A Natural History of Dragons is done, at 86,174 words.
(God, I love writing a shorter novel for once.)
July 27, 2011
regarding Norway
Via
fjm
and Charlie Stross, a number that puts the tragedy in Norway into perspective: 80 people dead out of their population is the equivalent of 5000 out of the United States. (Though the final number may have changed since that was posted.) That's the scale of loss Norway has suffered.
And it's a very, very targeted loss. The "summer camp" was a political one, organized by the social-democratic Labour Party. The youths killed there were politically engaged, passionate about their cause. Some of them might well have been potential Prime Ministers, Members of Parliament, movers and shakers in the Labour Party's future. It's like killing thousands of the most committed Young Democrats, or Young Republicans.
As most people know by now, Breivik is not an Islamic terrorist (contrary to the utterly unfounded assertions made by various media figures, at least in the United States, immediately following news of the attacks); he is a self-identified right-wing Christian who opposes multiculturalism and the spread of Muslims in Europe. This post, and this quote from it, sums up the inequality of the reactions based on who's to blame:
"[T]hey're now pleading for the world not to do what they've spent their careers doing — assigning collective blame for an act of terror through guilt-by-association."
And this one . . . this one just makes me want to punch people in the face.
But you know what gives me hope? A quote, whose source I have now lost, from (I think) the Prime Minister of Norway, to the effect that "the proper response to an attack on democracy is more democracy." Amen. I hope the Norwegians don't surrender their ideals because of this terrorist's actions.
fjm
and Charlie Stross, a number that puts the tragedy in Norway into perspective: 80 people dead out of their population is the equivalent of 5000 out of the United States. (Though the final number may have changed since that was posted.) That's the scale of loss Norway has suffered.And it's a very, very targeted loss. The "summer camp" was a political one, organized by the social-democratic Labour Party. The youths killed there were politically engaged, passionate about their cause. Some of them might well have been potential Prime Ministers, Members of Parliament, movers and shakers in the Labour Party's future. It's like killing thousands of the most committed Young Democrats, or Young Republicans.
As most people know by now, Breivik is not an Islamic terrorist (contrary to the utterly unfounded assertions made by various media figures, at least in the United States, immediately following news of the attacks); he is a self-identified right-wing Christian who opposes multiculturalism and the spread of Muslims in Europe. This post, and this quote from it, sums up the inequality of the reactions based on who's to blame:
"[T]hey're now pleading for the world not to do what they've spent their careers doing — assigning collective blame for an act of terror through guilt-by-association."
And this one . . . this one just makes me want to punch people in the face.
But you know what gives me hope? A quote, whose source I have now lost, from (I think) the Prime Minister of Norway, to the effect that "the proper response to an attack on democracy is more democracy." Amen. I hope the Norwegians don't surrender their ideals because of this terrorist's actions.
In which I pretend to be a statistician
Since there's recently been another round of discussion about gender balance (or imbalance) in SF/F, I thought it might be a nice time to collate a bit of data I've been wondering about for a while.
Generally people tend to perceive a particular group as being gender-balanced when it's about 25% female, and if you get up to 40%, they think it's dominated by women. So it's useful to ask myself: if my instinct is that a short story market -- in this case, Beneath Ceaseless Skies -- publishes a lot of women, am I right?
This data covers all seventy-three issues of BCS, from the start of the magazine. Each issue includes two stories, but there are seven stories that were long enough to be split over two issues, and two anniversary issues with four stories each, so the total number of stories is 143. Two stories were co-written by a pair of authors; of those four people, one also published a story on her own. The total number of authors is 102.
Because there are only two co-authored stories -- one written by a pair of women; the other by a man and a woman -- I'm going to simplify my math by disregarding those two. That brings our stories down to 141, and our authors down to 99 (since one of the women also wrote a story on her own). With those aside, and drawing gender conclusions based on the pronouns used in the authors' biographies on their stories, the breakdown is:
Female authors: 56 (57%)
Male authors: 42 (42%)
Unknown: 1 (1%)
So right off the cuff, it turns out that BCS publishes more women than men -- about a third more. But we can look at it another way: how many of those 141 stories were written by women?
Female-authored stories: 83 (59%)
Male-authored stories: 57 (40%)
Unknown: 1 (<1%)
Pretty close to the numbers above, but skewing slightly more female. Now let's tackle the fact that some people have multiple stories and ask: what's the average number of stories each gender publishes in the magazine?
Number of stories per female author: 1.48
Number of stories per male author: 1.36
Number of stories per author of unknown gender: 1
Or, from yet another angle:
Number of women multiply published: 14 (25% of all female authors)
Number of men multiply published: 10 (24% of all male authors)
So, men and women have about equal chances of being multiply-published in BCS.
Now, the interesting question to ask is what the gender balance is for submissions. Does that roughly map to what we see in the magazine, or does that stage of filtering favor one gender over the other? I don't know, of course. Somebody with access to the BCS slushpile would have to answer that for me. We know that the magazine favors fantasy stories that focus on worldbuilding and character, rather than, say, hard science fiction; given the norms of gender socialization, that may mean that women are more inclined to write the kinds of stories that BCS is looking for, which could affect both who submits there, and whose stories are more likely to be picked up.
So what's the takeaway from this? Well, to begin with, my perception turned out to be roughly accurate. I wasn't smart enough to write down a guess at what the percentages would be before I did all the counting, so I can't say how close I would have been -- whether I would have pegged it as more than it was, or less. But BCS definitely skews female, though not overwhelmingly.
If that sounds good to you, then read it, support it, talk about it to your friends. You know me; my sweet spot for fantasy is pretty squarely where BCS has positioned itself. As far as I'm concerned, this is just another reason to give them a thumbs-up.
Generally people tend to perceive a particular group as being gender-balanced when it's about 25% female, and if you get up to 40%, they think it's dominated by women. So it's useful to ask myself: if my instinct is that a short story market -- in this case, Beneath Ceaseless Skies -- publishes a lot of women, am I right?
This data covers all seventy-three issues of BCS, from the start of the magazine. Each issue includes two stories, but there are seven stories that were long enough to be split over two issues, and two anniversary issues with four stories each, so the total number of stories is 143. Two stories were co-written by a pair of authors; of those four people, one also published a story on her own. The total number of authors is 102.
Because there are only two co-authored stories -- one written by a pair of women; the other by a man and a woman -- I'm going to simplify my math by disregarding those two. That brings our stories down to 141, and our authors down to 99 (since one of the women also wrote a story on her own). With those aside, and drawing gender conclusions based on the pronouns used in the authors' biographies on their stories, the breakdown is:
Female authors: 56 (57%)
Male authors: 42 (42%)
Unknown: 1 (1%)
So right off the cuff, it turns out that BCS publishes more women than men -- about a third more. But we can look at it another way: how many of those 141 stories were written by women?
Female-authored stories: 83 (59%)
Male-authored stories: 57 (40%)
Unknown: 1 (<1%)
Pretty close to the numbers above, but skewing slightly more female. Now let's tackle the fact that some people have multiple stories and ask: what's the average number of stories each gender publishes in the magazine?
Number of stories per female author: 1.48
Number of stories per male author: 1.36
Number of stories per author of unknown gender: 1
Or, from yet another angle:
Number of women multiply published: 14 (25% of all female authors)
Number of men multiply published: 10 (24% of all male authors)
So, men and women have about equal chances of being multiply-published in BCS.
Now, the interesting question to ask is what the gender balance is for submissions. Does that roughly map to what we see in the magazine, or does that stage of filtering favor one gender over the other? I don't know, of course. Somebody with access to the BCS slushpile would have to answer that for me. We know that the magazine favors fantasy stories that focus on worldbuilding and character, rather than, say, hard science fiction; given the norms of gender socialization, that may mean that women are more inclined to write the kinds of stories that BCS is looking for, which could affect both who submits there, and whose stories are more likely to be picked up.
So what's the takeaway from this? Well, to begin with, my perception turned out to be roughly accurate. I wasn't smart enough to write down a guess at what the percentages would be before I did all the counting, so I can't say how close I would have been -- whether I would have pegged it as more than it was, or less. But BCS definitely skews female, though not overwhelmingly.
If that sounds good to you, then read it, support it, talk about it to your friends. You know me; my sweet spot for fantasy is pretty squarely where BCS has positioned itself. As far as I'm concerned, this is just another reason to give them a thumbs-up.
