Victoria Janssen's Blog, page 19

My October Reading Log

Fiction:
Exit Strategy: The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells concludes the series, at least so far, and made me very happy, except I still want more. There is a lot more world out there to explore, and a lot more for Murderbot to learn about itself and struggle with. Once I was done reading it, and it really helped me a lot to have something like this to read last week, I re-read the whole series of four novellas in order, keeping in mind that this is a specfic escaped slave narrative.

This...

My 2018 Philcon Schedule

This weekend, I’ll be at Philcon, held in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. My panel schedule is below.

Saturday, November 17, 11:00 AM, Crystal Ballroom Three
“A Tribute to Ursula K. LeGuin”
Simone Zelitch [moderator], Victoria Janssen, Miriam Seidel, Susan Shwartz, Kim Kindya
A discussion of the life and works of this massively influential author, and a celebration of the 50th anniversary of her landmark Earthsea series

Saturday, November 17, 2:00 PM, Crystal Ballroom Three
“Marvel’s Next Phase”
Jay...

My September Reading Log

Fiction:
Hild by Nicola Griffith is a historical novel about a medieval woman who eventually became an abbess. There’s very little actual information about the woman, but Griffith did a ton of research and it shows, in a very very good way. The names of people and places, the social roles and constraints, and even the landscape all contribute to the feeling of reading about an alien culture. If you like writing about the natural world, Griffith excels at bringing medieval England to life in t...

My 2018 CapClave Schedule

I’ll be at CapClave this weekend, in Rockville, Maryland. The convention runs September 28-30; I’ll be there only on Saturday the 29th.

Saturday, 11:00 am – 11:55 am, Monroe
“Fan Fiction”
What we like to write; what we like to read. Honing one’s skills through writing fan fiction.
T. Eric Bakutis, Victoria Janssen [moderator], Steven H. Wilson, Alyssa Wong

Saturday, 1:00 pm – 1:55 pm, Monroe
“What Are the New Questions SF Should be Asking?”
SF in particular is meant to be a forward-looking ge...

My August Reading Log

Fiction:
Deep Roots by Ruthanna Emrys is second in the Innsmouth Legacy series, set only a short time after the previous book ends. Our heroes have to travel to New York City in search of a lost relative, and there they find more complications and dangers than they’d expected. It felt more internal and reflective than the previous book, adding complexity to the worldbuilding and giving Aphra more challenges both magical and emotional.

Neighborhoods shifted and blended–as they did in San Franc...

My July Reading Log

Fiction:
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse is post-apocalyptic dark fantasy/horror set in Dinetah, a Navajo nation that survives ecological disaster but has problems with monsters and supernatural creatures of the sort that want to kill and eat humans. The protagonist, Maggie, manifested clan powers after a traumatic event and was trained as a monster-slayer by a supernatural creature, who recently abandoned her. Because of how close she comes to evil, most people view her with suspicio...

My June Reading Log

Fiction:
The Flowers of Vashnoi by Lois McMaster Bujold is very Bujoldian, and I wish it had been longer. It takes place before Cryoburn. My favorite part was the speculative science of dealing with a heavily-irradiated landscape, and how to science the hell out of that, and what to do with one’s experimental results; I liked the sense of hope and possibility. The other part of the plot concerned people’s choices and lack thereof, and the duty of care humans owe other humans; I’m still thinki...

My Readercon 2018 Schedule

I’ll be attending Readercon 29 July 12-15, 2018 in Quincy, Massachusetts. My schedule is below.

Thursday, 9:00 pm, Salon 6
“Living in Material Worlds, Part 1: Fabric Goods in Fictional Settings”
In many post-apocalyptic landscapes and colony worlds, everyone has clothing but no one ever talks about where it came from. Who wove the cloth for that shirt, and who designed the pattern and cut and sewed it? What do station inhabitants feed their fabricators? This panel will dig into the influence...

My May Reading Log

Fiction:
The Black Tides of Heaven by J.Y. Yang is Asian-flavored science fantasy with a familiar plot, following the twin children of a dictator as they grow into their paranormal abilities and oppose their mother’s reign. Only one of the twins is a point of view character in this volume, which leads me to believe the companion volume/sequel features the other twin, the one with the more rare and powerful psychic gift. Neat stuff: gender is chosen when the child decides on it, and is then su...

My April Reading Log

Fiction:
River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey posits an extremely clever alternate American history in which hippo ranching took over the Mississippi Delta and other areas before the Civil War. Set in the 1890s, the plot follows an eccentric group of hoppers (hippo wranglers/riders) who are contracted to remove a herd of dangerous feral hippos and, incidentally, take care of some revenge. There is a non-binary character who is not white (possibly Asian?), and a bisexual English character who is not...