Helen Lowe's Blog, page 156
March 24, 2015
Big Worlds On Small Screens & Fantasy/Sci-Fi Films You’ve Probably Never Heard Of: Rebecca Fisher Discusses “Another Earth”
~ by Rebecca Fisher
Directed by Mike Cahill and starring William Mapother and Brit Marling, perhaps the most notable thing about independent sci-fi film Another Earth is how limited its budget was. Shot around the director’s hometown so that he could call in favours from his friends and family, and using his own childhood home as the main character’s house, a number of innovative ideas were utilized to keep expenses down. One particular shot, which required a character to exit a prison, was a...
March 23, 2015
The Tuesday Poem: Refeaturing “Cathedral of the Poor” by Frankie McMillan
Gaudi watches his father tend bees,
draws the shape of hives,
the pillars of Sagrada Familia
smoke pours
from a wooden box, his father rises
around his neck are baubles
seeds from the magnolia tree
Is there any better structure
than the trunk
of a human skeleton ?
But look
here is the four armed cross
the breath of the glassblower,
the ceramicist, ironmonger
Here is work, long as the prayers
of a Bavarian priest
Here are the trees that grow in the nave
the helicoid colu...
March 22, 2015
What I’m Reading: “The Doubt Factory” by Paolo Bacigalupi
It’s “onward onward” with the reading, still working my way through the stack I posted on January 22.
On Wednesday I posted my thoughts on Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life and I’m already getting into Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Doubt Factory.
As those who follow “…on Anything, Really” may know, I have been a fan of Paolo Bacigalupi’s writing since his first novel, The Windup Girl took the SF world by storm in 2009. His first YA novel, Ship Breaker, also in the “biopunk” class of SF, followed in 20...
March 21, 2015
Living Fictionally: The Final Instalment Of “Ithaca”
On Sunday March 8, I commenced getting fictional with the first instalment of a “legendary history” short story, Ithaca.
Ithaca, was originally published in JAAM in 2008 (the same year my first novel, Thornspell, was published), edited by Tim Jones.
Since the “getting fictional” commenced on International Women’s Day, it seemed fitting to feature my take on one of the great legendary stories, told from the point of view of the woman at the heart of the tale.
The first two instalments are here...
March 20, 2015
I Post On SF Signal: Fantasy Heroines That Rock My World
It’s been quite some time since I’ve dropped in on the folk at SF Signal — too long in fact, so this week I have kicked off a new post series close to my own Fantasy-writing heart:
As I say in the introduction to this week’s debut post:
“I am keen to shine the spotlight on Fantasy heroines who have rocked my world: revealing both who they are and why I feel they kick butt and take names as characters. The focus may skew a tad toward fictional friends of lon...
March 19, 2015
Ruffians & Roughnecks: The Henchman
credit: PJ Fitzpatrick
In the Ruffians & Roughnecks post series I’ve been taking a word that describes some variant of “bad guy”, e.g. ruffian or rogue, or alternatively a “rough diamond”, such as a roughneck, and matching it with a character from my novels.
As in the A Geography Of Haarth series, each entry is accompanied by a relevant passage, which could be drawn from one of the two Wall Of Night series novels currently published, or my Kids/YA standalone, Thornspell.
The definitions are t...
March 18, 2015
Something About London & The Realms Fantastical
I’ve decided there must be something about London and the realms fantastical.
After all, there’s Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, which features a dark, wild, alternate London Below.
There’s also the fantastical Un Lun Dun in China Mieville’s novel of the same name.
To complete this triumvirate we have Simon Green’s Nightside, also a dangerous magical alternate London accessed via the Underground system…
What do you think? Is there something special about London that lends itself to imagining conjoi...
March 17, 2015
Just Finished Reading: “Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson
You know those times when you finish a book and think: “I’m not sure I know what that was about, really…”
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson is one of those books. I also liked it a lot.
In an attempt to convey some idea of what sort of story it is, as opposed to what it’s about, I shall first refer you to the back cover:
“What if you had the chance to live
you life again and again, until
you finally got it right?”
Which of course begs the question as to what “right” is, exactly. Be warned, the...
March 16, 2015
The Tuesday Poem: I Am Guest Editor On the Hub, Featuring Frankie McMillan
Today I am the guest editor on The Tuesday Poem Hub and have chosen to feature not one but two poems by fellow Christchurch poet, Frankie McMillan, starting with:
“Hour glass
she was a corsètiere
threading whale bone
through cloth
placing herself close
to the ocean
became lucrative
when whales surfaced
she saw
bustles, derrières…”
Artist: Nichola Shanley
To read the poems in full, click on:
“Hour glass” and “at night my dead mother appears wanting soup”I look forward to seeing you on the Hu...
March 15, 2015
SF Lineage: Le Guin Through Cherryh To Leckie
On March 4 I reported back on my reading of Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, which might fairly be said to have been the SF book-de-jour of 2013-14 in terms of awards and accolades.
And I, like many other readers and commentators, “mentioned with approval” the way the book plays with our notions of gender by:
“…the Radch Empire’s universal use of the personal pronoun “she” and the gradual realization that all the “she’s” I was meeting could equally well be female or male. After a while I got u...
