Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 88

Some More Words about the 2017 Hugo Awards

I already wrote a short 2017 Hugo Awards reaction post on Friday night, but now I’m home here is a longer version:

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A display model of a 2017 Hugo Award in the WorldCon 75 exhibition hall.

This is an unusual Hugo year for me, for even though we had an excellent Hugo shortlist full of very fine works, only five out of eighteen of my first choices won, a much lower hit rate than in previous years. And while there is no Hugo winner this year that I really did not want to see win at all and consequently no awarded (which has happened in previous years – I don’t no award just puppies), quite a few of the eventual winners placed fairly low on my ballot. And when I discussed the winners with my Mom, there were some comments along the lines of “I really loved that one”, but also a lot of “I didn’t much care for that one.” But I guess this is what happens when you have a Hugo ballot full of actual good choices instead of one good choice and a load of puppy poo.

The disconnect between my personal ballot and the rest of the Hugo electorate is most notable in best novel, where I had an unprecendented three favourites that I really couldn’t decide between this year (I kept shuffling them around until the last minute). The eventual winner, however, was not one of these three. That’s not to say that The Obelisk Gate is not a worthy winner, for it absolutely is. However, the Broken Earth trilogy (which has been optioned for television BTW) are books I admire rather than love. And indeed, both my Mom and I enjoyed N.K. Jemisin’s story “The City Born Great”, which was a Hugo finalist in the short story category, a lot more than The Obelisk Gate.

Last I said in my last Hugo post, I did not expect The Obelisk Gate to win, because it was the second book in a trilogy and those rarely win and also because it was competing in a very strong ballot. In fact, I suspected that All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders would win (which also wasn’t one of my three top picks), since it already won the Nebula and Locus Awards (in the end, it came in second). I’ve been wondering how my predictions for this category could have been so totally off and I suspect that we’re seeing an effect at work here we often see with awards of any kind, from genre awards via general literature prizes to the Oscars, namely that more serious works focussed on serious issues tends to trump lighter works. Now both All the Birds in the Sky and A Closed and Common Orbit are lighter and more hopeful works, even though they do tackle serious issues as well. Coincidentally, A Closed and Common Orbit addresses very similar issues as The Obelisk Gate, namely who is viewed as a person and who is viewed as a thing or tool, but it handles these issues in a very different way. And due to a general bias towards more serious works that can be found in pretty much all awards, a darker book like The Obelisk Gate trumped a lighter and more hopeful treatment of the same theme like A Closed and Common Orbit (or the equally lighter and more hopeful All the Birds in the Sky). It was always pretty obvious that Death’s End and Too Like the Lightning were not going to win, since both were love it or hate it books, which leaves Ninefox Gambit as the other darker and more serious work on the ballot.

What is more, the US is going through a dark period of its history right now (which became even darker while WorldCon was going on), so maybe The Obelisk Gate was exactly the book American Hugo voters needed right now, because in many ways it mirrors the issues the US is facing right now. Of course, there were plenty of international fans at WorldCon 75, but I strongly suspect that the majority of Hugo voters were Americans, especially since several international fans I talked to at the con told me that they didn’t bother voting for the Hugos, either because of language issues or because they were unfamiliar with the nominated works. I have no idea how to fix this, since we can’t do more than make the Hugo voter packet available to every WorldCon member, which we already do. But it’s pretty obvious that even in years where WorldCon is outside the US and outside the English speaking world in general, the Hugos will still be determined primarily by US concerns and tastes. We see a couple more examples for this among the 2017 Hugo winners.

Two of those examples are Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire and “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El Mohtar, the winners in the best novella and best short story category respectively. Neither win was a surprise, since they also won the Nebula and Locus Award in the respective categories. What is more, both are worthy winners, but neither was my first or even my second or third choice in the respective category. Both stories are examples of the trend towards metafictional works that was really notable on this year’s Hugo shortlist, where we had plenty of works that were references to, reworkings or retelling of other works. Now these metafictional stories have one huge drawback, namely that they work a lot better, when you are familiar with the source material. Coincidentally, I was surprised that my Mom ranked The Ballad of Black Tom and The Dream Quest of Vellitt Boe fairly high, since both IMO hinge a lot more on H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction (which to my knowledge she hasn’t read) than Every Heart a Doorway hinges on Narnia or Oz or Neverland.

Every Heart a Doorway is Seanan McGuire’s take on portal fantasies. And indeed, I like the central idea of what happens to kids who went through a portal into a fantastic realm after they return. However, while Anglo-American children’s literature is full of portal fantasies, they are comparatively rare in German children’s literature. Not that the protagonists of German and North European children’s fantasy don’t have fantastical adventures – they absolutely do. They just rarely travel through magical portals to have them. Instead, the protagonists of continental European children’s literature are far more likely to come across a magical world that exists in parallel with our world (and coincidentally, my very first attempts at fantasy writing featured just such a scenario – a magical world that exists in parallel with our own, only that we can’t see it). The Neverending Story by Michael Ende is the only German example for outright portal fantasy I can think of. If you look a bit further afield, you could also include The Brothers Lionheart (where the alternate world is the afterlife, i.e. that’s one trip to a magical realm you don’t return from) and Mio, My Mio by Astrid Lindgren. However, regarding the big names of Anglo-American portal fantasies, I have never read either the Narnia or Oz books (though I did see the movie) nor The Bridge to Terabithia. I have read Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass, but I read them at university as a classic of English literature, when the effect is very different. Ditto for Peter Pan, though I loved the Disney movie as a kid. So for me, a novella about what happens to the kids who went through a magical portal after they return naturally has less resonance than it has for someone who grew up with portal fantasies. This does not make Every Heart a Doorway a bad story, quite the contrary, and I’m happy that Seanan McGuire finally got to take home a Hugo after so many nominations. I just didn’t love the story as much as many others obviously did.

This year’s Hugo winner for best short story, “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar, belongs to the subgenre of fairytale retellings and new fairytales, which has been very popular in recent years. It’s not a trend I particularly like, as detailed here, especially when it’s paired with a blanket dismissal of the original tales as irrelevant and hopelessly old-fashioned (well, you’re looking at at least two hundred years old orally narrated message fiction and cautionary tales, so of course they don’t address our current concerns, but those of a different time). Many fairytale retellings are also a lot less groundbreaking and subversive than their authors think. I can’t even count the times I’ve seen an author proclaim that they have written the first truly feminist fairytale retelling, which usually makes me roll my eyes and think, “It’s been done before, plenty of times, in anything from forty year old Czech children’s TV shows to Angela Carter novels”. Now “Seasons of Glass and Iron” is one of the better fairytale retellings and Amal El-Mohtar is a fine writer. Nonetheless, the story is highly predictable to the point that I could tell where it was headed from the blurb and I have no idea why this particular story is so beloved and why so many people claimed that it knocked their socks off.

Meanwhile, the Hugo winner for best novelette, “The Tomato Thief” by Ursula Vernon, was actually my first choice (and my Mom’s as well, though we didn’t have all that much overlap on our Hugo ballots) and a very fine story it is, too. The folk tales motifs of the US Southwest found in “The Tomato Thief” and “You’ll Surely Drown Here, If You Stay” by Alyssa Wong, another nominee in the novelette category, also worked a lot better for me than retellings of European folk and fairytales often do.

Regarding the new best series Hugo (which has passed the business meeting and is now a permanent fixture), the inaugural winner was – unsurprisingly and highly deserved – the Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold. The Expanse by James S.A. Corey (a.k.a. Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck) came in second, probably boosted by the eponymous TV show. On the other hand, I was surprised to see the October Daye series by Seanan McGuire come in last, since it’s a good series by a writer who’s popular with Hugo voters (and coincidentally, I voted the October Daye series a lot higher in its respective category than Every Heart a Doorway). But I guess that the twin anti-urban-fantasy and anti-romance biasses of the Hugo electorate struck again here, since October Daye is the most romancey of the three urban fantasy series on the Hugo ballot, though still less romancey than e.g. Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson and Ilona Andrews’ Magic series, both of which are hugely popular, were eligible and did not even make the longlist. Coincidentally, looking at the longlist for best series, I see a lot of bullets dodged in the form of series I either really don’t like such as the Laundry Files by Charles Stross or have neither read nor any intention to try. I’m also still not sure if the best series Hugo is really such a good idea, though the first year had a fine ballot and a most deserving winner.

The 2017 John W. Campbell Award goes, once again highly deserved, to Ada Palmer. I’m really, really pleased about this result and indeed Ada Palmer was also number one on my Campbell ballot. 2017 has been a very strong year for the Campbell Award in general, particularly after the shitshow of the past two years. Yes, there is a puppy on the ballot, but J. Mulrooney show more promise than many of the puppy nominees of the past two years and the rest of the ballot contains some excellent up and coming writers. However, Ada Palmer really stood out among those nominees, for even though Too Like the Lightning was flawed and also hampered by its rather abrupt ending (which is probably why it didn’t win the best novel Hugo, even though it was one of my personal top three), it was still so much more ambitious in style and scope than anything else on the Campbell ballot this year (even though Laurie Penny, Sarah Gailey, Kelly Robson and Malka Older are all very fine writers).

The Hugo Award for best related work goes, once more highly deserved, to Words Are My Matter by Ursula K. Le Guin. Ursula K. Le Guin is clearly the grande dame of our genre plus the first woman to win a Hugo Award in the best novel category and this may well be the last chance to honour her work, so I’m highly satisfied by this result. The Princess Diarist by the late Carrie Fisher came in second, probably because it was the last chance to honour another beloved figure of our genre.

The winner in the best graphic story is volume 1 of Monstress by Marjorie M. Liu and Sana Takeda and an excellent choice it is, too, even though my personal top pick was Saga. But then, fan favourites Saga and Ms. Marvel both already won Hugos, so it’s good to see a new comic series winning. I’m surprised that Black Panther finished so high, since I felt that while it was an ambitious work, it did not work very well and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ inexperience as a comics writer really showed at times.

On to the two best dramatic presentation categories. The Hugo for best dramatic presentation long form goes – unsurprisingly – to Arrival. Arrival really was the favourite to win in this category, since it is exactly the sort of serious science fiction movie, based on a beloved story at that, which Hugo voters tend to love. Though at the Alien Language in Science Fiction panel (which you can see here BTW), we all had our reservations about the movie, ranging from, “Well, it’s wonderful to see a linguist heroine, but linguistics don’t work that way, sorry.” to “Jeremy Renner’s character is an arsehole.” But then the vast majority of Hugo voters are not linguists (and apparently not annoyed by Jeremy Renner’s character) and Arrival is certainly a deserving winner. Coincidentally, the best dramatic presentation category long form also once more shows very clearly that there is a bias against comedic content, since the two comedic entries on the ballot, Deadpool and Ghostbusters respectively, both finished last, even though both movie do contain serious themes, cancer and what people will do to beat it in the case of Deadpool and how highly qualified women will still be dismissed and see less qualified men promoted ahead of them in the case of Ghostbusters. Interestingly, Hidden Figures, which tackles almost the same theme as Ghostbusters, though with an added racial dimension (on the other hand, there is Leslie Jones’ Patty in Ghostbusters who faces even more dismissal and discrimnation than her white teammates), but does so in a more serious manner, finished in second place.

The Hugo for dramatic presentation short form went to the “Leviathan Wakes” episode of The Expanse. Again, this was not an unexpected win, since The Expanse is a well regarded TV show and – unlike fan favourites Game of Thrones and Doctor Who – has never been nominated for a Hugo before, let alone won. Though my personal favourite in this category was the “San Junipero” episode of Black Mirror, which was a surprisingly touching story and a pleasant surprise, considering how much I normally dislike Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker. I’m a bit sad to see the album Splendor & Misery by clipping finish in last place, but then it was up against three juggernauts in a category where anything that is not a TV episode usually doesn’t even get nominated.

The winners in the two editor categories are Liz Gorinsky and Ellen Datlow respectively, both highly deserved. Meanwhile, everybody’s least favourite puppy lost to “No Award” for the fourth year in a row, also highly deserved. The Hugo for best professional artist went to Julie Dillon, while Elizabeth Leggett won in the best fan artist category, once again both excellent choices. Uncanny Magazine takes best semiprozine for the second year in a row and Lady Business wins in the best fanzine category. Both were my top picks in their categories BTW. The Hugo for best fanwriter goes to Abigail Nussbaum, while the delightful Tea and Jeopardy wins in the best fancast category, both again highly deserved.

That’s it for my reactions to the 2017 Hugo winners, so let’s take a look around the web at what others have to say:

Let’s start with the winners: Campbell Award winner and best novel nominee Ada Palmer shares her acceptance speech and talks about living, working and writing with an invisible disability, which flared up on Hugo night of all times. Meanwhile, best fanwriter winner Abigail Nussbaum shares her acceptance speech at Asking the Wrong Questions. The editors of Lady Business, winner in the best fanzine category, also share their acceptance speech.

2017 Hugo administrator Nicholas Whyte shares his experiences and all the work (from counting nominations and votes to physically assembling Hugo Awards) that went into making the 2017 Hugo Awards run smoothly in a two part post. It’s a fascinating look behind the scenes of the Hugo Awards. Nicholas Whyte has also put up more Hugo reports detailing the decisions he made as administrator during the nomination stage, the final rounds of counting nominations and how the points were distributed as well as measuring the impact of the EPH and the possible impact of the EPH+ nomination system. Coincidentally, I was on a panel with Nicholas Whyte and Kristina Knaving about how to adapt the Hugos to an increasingly digital world, which you can watch on YouTube here. Though I forgot MicroSFF (who shows up on the best fanwriter longlist under their passport name O. Westin) as an example for something that does not comfortably fit into any of the current Hugo categories.

ETA: Nicholas Whyte also shares this report from Hugo packet coordinator Jo Van Ekeren in which she details the challenges of putting the Hugo voter packet together. Again it shows how much behind the scenes work the WorldCon 75 team put into making WorldCon 75 and the Hugos a success.

At the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, Joel Cunningham points out something that I already noticed in my previous Hugo post, namely that the 2017 Hugo Awards were dominated by women. Women and writers of colour already dominated the Hugo shortlist (which caused some people to worry about the poor white men who were being shut out) and with the exception of the two dramatic presentation categories, all 2017 Hugos as well as the Campbell Award went to women or – in the case of best fancast and best semiprozine – to husband and wife teams. This is truly remarkable and also mirrors a trend that we have seen at the Nebula Awards the past two or three years, namely that both nominees and winners skew strongly female. This has some of the usual suspects upset. However, Joel Cunningham also correctly points out that the Hugos took until 1968 until a woman (Anne McCaffrey for “Weyr Search”) finally won in one of the fiction categories and she had to share her win with Philip José Farmer, too. And even as late as 2007, the finalists in the fiction categories were almost entirely male with Naomi Novik the lone token woman, though there also were a few woman artists and editors nominated and a woman actually won in the best related work category. So we have one female dominated year at the Hugos against more than sixty male dominated ones.

At The Guardian, Alison Flood also points out that the 2017 Hugo winners are overwhelmingly female and that the Sad and Rabid Puppies seem to have been vanquished for good. Meanwhile, the CBC article about the Hugos focusses mainly on the Canadian winners, namely Amal El-Mohtar and Denis Villeneuve, director of Arrival.

At Kirkus, Thea James, Hugo finalist in the best semiprozine category for The Book Smugglers, declares that after two years of puppy shenangigans, the 2017 Hugos sent a message of empathy, tolerance and hope, which is more important than ever today. I can only agree with her.

At the Kaedrin Weblog, Mark Ciocco has mixed feelings about the 2017 Hugo results, particularly since he is not a fan of the Broken Earth trilogy and not happy with the direction towards more literary works that Hugo Awards have taken in the past few years. He also wonders whether the second win in a row for N.K. Jemisin is not a reaction against the puppy activities of the past two years. As pointed out above, I think larger political forces than a few disgruntled rightwing fans play a role here and explain why the Broken Earth trilogy resonates with so many fans.

So how decisively did the puppies lose anyway? All of the blatant slate picks were no awarded, while “hostages” such as China Mieville, Neil Gaiman an the Deadpool movie easily cleared the “No Award” hurdle. Jason Sanford has now set himself the task of analysing the slow death of the rabid puppies. As noted before, they had around 80 votes at the nominating stage and around 30 during the voting stage.

Camestros Felapton also dedicated himself to analysing the Hugo short- and longlist and particularly the effect the new EPH system has on the finalists, using the best fanwriter category, where Camestros Felapton are on the longlist themselves (as am I), as an example. It’s a good analysis and well worth reading. Coincidentally, Camestros also comes to the conclusion that the rabbid puppies had around 80 votes, maybe less (since not all of them voted consistently and the occasional puppy nominee might have picked up an organic vote or two), at the nomination stage and 32 at most at the voting stage. So not much of a menace anymore, besides EPH did its job. BTW Camestros Felapton would make an excellent fanwriter nominee for 2017 – hint, hint.

Steve J. Wright also offers a detailed analysis of the Hugo winners as well as the long- and shotlist at his blog, including the final ranking of the finalists.

At The Beat, Torsten Adair also analyses the Hugo finalists as well as the longlist, using the best graphic story category as an example, since The Beat is a comics site.

So what about the puppies themselves? The sad puppies have largely disintegrated and most of both puppy groups and their offshoots such as superversive science fiction and pulp revolution seem to have moved on to the Dragon Awards who are welcome to them. Though the claims from the puppy camp that the Dragon Awards represent the true voice of fandom, unlike the Hugos, are hilarious, considering that at this point in time, all the Dragon Awards represent are authors eagerly campaigning for a nomination with a few generally popular choices thrown in, many of whom don’t want to be there.

As a result, we get resounding silence from the major puppies as well as the minor ones I bothered to check (I can take only so many puppy blogs before I need brain bleach), which confirms that we seem to have shoved that particular genie back into its bottle. However, rabid puppy in chief Vox Day cannot resist offering his commentary on the 2017 Hugo Award winners. Apparently, destroying science fiction, WorldCon and the Hugos by making sure that a lot of awesome women writers and writers of colour, including N.K. Jemisin, win Hugos was his great plan all along.

In that case, mission accomplished. And now go and play with Dragons, while we enjoy the current awesomeness of SFF.

Comments are off, in case any stray puppies feel like pooping here.

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Some Videos of my WorldCon Adventures

I’m still working on my more detailed Hugo post, but in the meantime, here is a little video I made about my WorldCon adventures.

It’s basically a jazzed up slideshow, assembled from some of the photos I took at WorldCon 75, but I really like how it came out:

Two of the panels I was on were also recorded. Here is the Digital Hugo panel, featuring Kristina Knaving, Nicholas Whyte and yours truly:

And here is the Alien Language in Science Fiction panel, featuring Lawrence M. Schoen, David J. Peterson, Stephen W. Potts, Heather Rose Jones and yours truly. Coincidentally, I’m the only person with only two names on that panel:

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Back from Helsinki

I had a great time in Helsinki, both at WorldCon 75 and in the city in general. I got back home yesterday evening and spent most of today unpacking, refilling the fridge, etc…

I took lots of photos, both of the city (which has a lot of beautiful Art Noveau architecture) and the con, so over the next few days there will be several Helsinki posts, both about WorldCon as well as general photo posts. I’ll also offer some more Hugo analysis and see if I can catch up on the Dragon Awards who went and had themselves a scandal, while everybody was at WorldCon.

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A Very Few Words on the 2017 Hugo Awards

I’m still in Helsinki with a very slow computer and WiFi connection, so this is only a short Hugo reaction post. Detailed analysis will follow sometime next week.

Even though I am at WorldCon, I didn’t catch the ceremony in person, because I had a panel on alien language in science fiction (which was a lot of fun) which ran right up to the beginning of the ceremony. BTW, I think someone recorded the panel, so it may eventually show up on YouTube. And given the well documented overcrowding issues and the fact that I was hungry, I headed back to the hotel for dinner and wound up sitting in the hotel restaurant with my phone by my side, following the Hugos and occasionally surprising fellow diners with spontaneous outbursts of “Yeah” or “Huh”. No outbursts of “no, no, no” this year, because even though a lot of the winners were not my first or even my second choice, I’m not unhappy with any of them.

The full list of winners as well as photos from the ceremony may be found here. I’m particularly happy about Ada Palmer winning the Campbell, Lois McMaster Bujold winning the brand new best series award (even though that was to be expected), Ursula Vernon’s “The Tomato Thief” winning in the novelette category, Lady Business, Tea and Jeopardy and Uncanny winning in fanzine, fancast and semiprozine respectively.

The Hugo for best novel in a very strong field went to N.K. Jemisin for The Obelisk Gate, following her win last year for The Fifth Season. I honest did not expect The Obelisk Gate to win, because a) it was a very strong year and b) sequels rarely win the Hugo, if the first book in the series won. I think the last time that happened was Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead. I also confess that The Obelisk Gate also wasn’t my first or even my second choice, but I’m nonetheless very happy for N.K. Jemisin.

I’m also very happy that except for the two best dramatic presentation categories, every single Hugo award plus the Campbell went to women (two Hugos, best fancast and semiprozine, went to husband and wife teams).

The full voting and nomination statistics are here BTW. If you look at the voting stats, you’ll see that all puppy nominees except the shields placed under “No Award” (fourth year in a row for Vox Day and sixth time altogether for John C. Wright). We can also tell that there are roughly 85 rabid puppies left, going by the number of nominations the puppy candidates received.

And if you look at the nomination stats, you’ll find my name right near the end with 25 nominations. So thank you, 25 people who nominated me, whoever you are.

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In Helsinki

I made it safely to Helsinki.

From what I’ve seen so far, it’s a lovely city with lots of stunning art noveau buildings, which is great for me, because I love art noveau. Even my hotel is an art noveau building, a converted warehouse by the harbourfront originally built in 1910. It’s directly opposite the ferry terminal. From my room window, I can see the ferries.

Photos will have to wait, because my aging netbook is too slow for that, though I’ll be tweeting some pics through the day via my smartphone.

Worldcon 75 doesn’t start until tomorrow, but I already spotted at least four folks clearly headed there in the plane from Amsterdam to Helsinki. The “Helsinki in 2017” shirt was a dead giveaway, as were the t-shirts from various other cons.

Meanwhile, half my Twitter timeline already made it to Helsinki or is currently somewhere en route.

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Cora goes to WorldCon 75 in Helsinki, Finland

[image error]Next week, I’m off to Finland for WorldCon 75 in Helsinki. I’ll be leaving on Monday and am really looking forward to the experience.

So there will be light to no blogging next week and plenty of photos and con reports and Hugo discussion (come on, you know there’ll be Hugo discussion) once I get back.

In the meantime, the Speculative Fiction Showcase and the Indie Crime Scene will still be chugging along, including (somewhat truncated) link round-ups.

But should you find yourself in Helsinki for WorldCon 75, say hello to me.

You can also find me and several other fine folks on the following panels:

 

Alien Language in Science Fiction

Friday, August 11, 2017, 6 PM – 7:30 PM
Messukeskus – 208
Moderator Lawrence M. Schoen | David J. Peterson | Stephen W. Potts | Cora Buhlert | Heather Rose Jones

As easy as a Babel Fish is, usually alien languages are handled differently in science fiction. The panelists discuss various alien languages and how they are understood.

 

Digital Hugo – How Do We Adapt the Hugo Categories to an Increasingly Digital Reality?



Saturday, August 12, 2 PM – 3 PM
Messukeskus – 208
Moderator Kristina Knaving | Nicholas Whyte | Cora Buhlert | clipping. 

The Hugo categories are based on paper publishing. With more and more writing and art ending up on the internet, in shapes not constrained by publishing houses, shipping, printing and paper, the categories are getting less and less relevant in the light of what is created and what people actually read.

Do the Hugo categories need to change? Do the categories reflect what you read and watch? How do we create a set of categories that get enough nominations and votes, but still mesh with the historical traditions?

Do we need to rethink the traditional fiction formats based on length? How about Best Related Work, which used to be called Best Non-Fiction Book, but now is used to nominate among other things internet platforms, larps, pods, scientific papers and internet essays – do we need to split it into (at least) two? The recent influx of non-fictional future speculations in blogs, articles, TED talks and lectures: are they relevant and pervasive enough that a future category should be discussed? Why do the zines categories assume periodicals with issues? Where is art published – does it need to appear in print?

Unless we think about change now, the future could take us by surprise.

  

The State of Machine Translation



Saturday, August 12, 6 PM to 7:30 PM
Messukeskus – 101d
Moderator Greg Hullender | Marek Pawelec | John Chu | Cora Buhlert 

What is the current state of machine translation? The rough-n-ready web page translation provided by Google, the apps you speak into, film dubbing/sub-titling, and translating SF books themselves all present unique technical challenges. If machine translation is commonplace, will fewer people learn English (or Chinese) as a lingua franca, and will the American cultural steam-roller’s effects be reduced? We’ll also look at the risks and benefits of translation making foreign countries less foreign to visitors.

  

Book Blogs



Sunday, August 13, 2017, 10 AM to 11 AM
Messukeskus – 207
Moderator Cora Buhlert | Shaun Duke | Teresa Nielsen Hayden | Thomas Wagner  

Blogging/vlogging about books has caused some recent controversy. Some authors have claimed bad reviews in book blogs have resulted in poor sales. Book bloggers and authors discuss the importance and power of book bloggers/vloggers.

 

The full program schedule for WorldCon 75 may be found here, BTW.

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Some Comments on the 2017 Dragon Award Nominees

Before everybody is focussed on Worldcon and the Hugos next week, the Dragon Awards have managed to present their 2017 nominees. The link goes to File 770, because the official Dragon Awards website hasn’t even been updated yet and is painful to read, too. ETA: It has been updated now, but is still painful to read.

The 2017 Dragon Awards nominees are a mix of popular authors and/or books with notable fan followings (Becky Chambers, John Scalzi, N.K. Jemisin, Liu Cixin, Faith Hunter, Sarah J. Maas, Rick Riordan, A.J. Hartley, Claudia Gray, Beth Cato, Cory Doctorow, James S.A. Corey, China Miéville, Victor LaValle, Allison Littlewood, Charles Gannon, Dan Wells, Eric Flint, John Ringo, Larry Correia, many of the film, TV, comic and game nominees), popular indie authors (Amy J. Murphy, Pippa DaCosta, Richard Fox, David VanDyke and B.V. Larsson), authors affiliated with the sad and rabid puppies or various puppy offshoot movements (Vox Day, John C. Wright, Declan Finn, Brian Niemeier, Jagi Lamplighter Wright, Jon Del Arroz, Lou Antonelli, Kai Wai Cheah), authors puppies happen to like but who aren’t puppies themselves (e.g. horror author Allison Littlewood who has since withdrawn) as well as a couple of complete unknowns, at least to me, with some overlap between the different groups. Coincidentally, Mark, a regular commenter at File 770 and Camestros Felapton’s blog, has traced some of the unknowns to Inkshares.

All in all, the shortlist looks better than it did for the inaugural Dragon Awards back in 2016 (for my comments on that, go here). I even found something to vote for without teeth gnashing in every category save the gaming ones (not a gamer, therefore I can’t evaluate them). Though for an award that has positioned itself as the populist SFF award, the 2017 Dragon Awards shortlist is still an odd mix between massively popular works/authors with big fan followings and works which appeal to various niches and can must enough of a following to gain a nomination, but are little known outside their respective niches.

There are also some notable omissions. For example, the most notable alternate history novel of the year, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, a huge bestseller endorsed by Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama among others, is conspicuous by its absence. But then, The Underground Railroad has already won the Pulitzer Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award and is up for the Man Booker Prize, so Colson Whitehead really doesn’t need a Dragon Award. Coincidentally, I’m surprised to see another work of literary SFF, American War by Omar El Akkad, nominated in the post-apocalyptic category, since the Dragon Awards crowd (or rather crowds) don’t strike me as the sort to care for more literary SFF at all.

So how big was the influence of the sad and rabid puppies and their offshoot movements like Superversive SF, Pulp Revolution or Happy Frogs (at least the name is funny)? Mike Glyer at File 770 offers a colour-coded breakdown here, which suggests that there was less puppy influence than in 2016, though it’s still quite a bit. Commenter Nick Pheas also noticed huge discrepancies in the numbers of Goodreads ratings between books nominated in the same category. For more Dragon Awards neepery, Camestros Felapton offers a two part analysis of and baseless speculation about the 2017 Dragon Award nominees. At The Verge, Andrew Liptak also offers some background and commentary on the 2017 Dragon Awards nominees.

From the puppy camp, we mostly see cheering that they and/or their choices have been nominated. Though Brian Niemeier, who won last year in the horror category for a book that’s not even a horror novel and who is nominated in the science fiction category this year, can’t resist making a crack against John Scalzi and complain that the dreaded social justice warriors (that would be everybody who’s not a puppy) are flooding the Dragon Awards with nominations to destroy fun SFF or some such thing. Uhm, the Dragon Awards are specifically open vote, so anybody can vote or nominee, and that includes people with very different taste than the puppies. They’re not the puppy awards, even if it sometimes looks that way. As for why John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire (or The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin or A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers or Babylon’s Ashes by James S.A. Corey or anything else that the puppies don’t like) were nominated, maybe because they’re popular authors with big fan followings.

So how are the Dragon Awards doing in their second year? A little better than in their first, though many problems still persist. The official Dragon Awards website is badly maintained, the nomination system is intransparent and easily gamed via using multiple e-mail addresses to nominate/vote and whoever is behind the Dragon Awards still hasn’t released the voting figures for 2016. What is more, the Dragon Awards are very little promoted by Dragon Con itself to the point that most of the info you can find about the Dragon Awards online can be found in the blogs of authors campaigning for one. So as of 2017, the Dragon Award still does not really look like the populist SFF Award it claims to be and may yet become some day.

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The July Short Story Challenge 2017 – 32 Short Stories in 31 Days

Yes, you read that correctly. I wrote a bonus story for this year’s July short story challenge, so there’s actually 32 stories to come out of the challenge this year.

But let’s backtrack a bit. In 2015, Dean Wesley Smith announced that he was planning to write a short story per day in July. It seemed to be an insane writing challenge, but nonetheless I decided to play along, at least for a week or so. So I wrote a story and then another and I kept it up throughout the entire month of July, as chronicled here. I found the experience incredibly rewarding and illuminating. What was more, in the end, I had 31 brand new short stories, most of which are published now.

Fast forward a year to 2016. July rolled around and Dean Wesley Smith announced that he was going to do another story per day challenge and that he was also aiming for 200 stories per year. The latter wasn’t doable for me, but the former definitely was, especially since I had done it before. So I decided to play along once again and write a short story every day in July. Dean Wesley Smith himself eventually dropped out, when he was assaulted by an idea for a novel (as novel ideas are want to do), but I kept it up, wrote 31 stories and blogged about my experiences here.

Doing something twice is almost a tradition. And so, when July 2017 approached, I found myself thinking about doing another July short story challenge, even though Dean Wesley Smith has switched to challenging himself to write four novels per month in one of his established series this July. He still does short story challenges on occasion, but in different months.

Still, since I had already designated July as my “story a day” month, I decided to just run with it and see where it takes me. And guess what? Here I am, 31 days and 32 stories later, exhausted (because let’s face it, writing a new story every day is exhausting) and very happy about the progress I made.

As in the last two years, the vast majority of the stories I wrote were some flavour of science fiction, fantasy and horror (my first love) as well as crime fiction (my second love). So let’s take a look at the genre/subgenre breakdown:

Post-apocalyptic science fiction: 6 stories
Space opera: 5 stories
Epic fantasy: 4 stories
Horror: 4 stories
Dystopian fiction: 3 stories
Alien invasion/aliens: 3 stories
Men’s adventure/pulp thriller: 2 stories
Crime fiction: 2 stories
Spy fiction: 1 story
Steampunk: 1 story
Time travel: 1 story

Once more, the subgenres do tend to blend into each other. For example, I wrote space operas or post-apocalyptic stories that were also alien invasion stories. Meanwhile, dystopian and post-apocalyptic stories do tend to run into each other. Pretty much all of the space operas I wrote have romantic elements. Once more, the horror stories all had an undercurrent of dark humour, since I still seem to be incapable of writing straight horror. The pulp and spy thrillers are also crime fiction. The Steampunk tale is also a spy thriller. One story is a crime thriller in a dystopian setting. Several of the stories feature plenty of action and adventure. Several are also romances.

The story lengths range from 650 words for the shortest to 5400 words for the longest. Three stories are flash fiction length, i.e. under 1000 words. Meanwhile, seven of the stories are longer than 3000 words, while the vast majority is in the 1000 to 3000 word range. Altogether, I wrote 73000 words in July 2017, i.e. almost one and a half NaNoWriMos.

Dean Wesley Smith always wrote a lot of stories in established worlds or series for his short story challenges. Meanwhile, I tend to write more standalone stories. In 2015, not a single story to come out of the challenge was in an established world or series. In 2016, five stories were part of established series. This year, four and a half stories are part of an established series. There is a new Hallowind Cove story, a new Silencer story as well as two new In Love and War stories, so fans of these series can look forward to new installments. The “and a half” story is an edge case, a crime story where Detective Inspector Helen Shepherd shows up at the end to arrest the criminal. It doesn’t fit into the Helen Shepherd Mysteries, because the Helen Shepherd Mysteries are narrated only from Helen’s POV, whereas this one is narrated from the criminal’s POV and Helen is only a supporting character.

There are also two potential series starters among the stories to come out of this year’s July short story challenge. One is the Steampunk story, whose two main characters, an airship captain and his aristocratic fiancée, clearly have other adventures in them. The other is an adventure story inspired by the cover of a 1950s men’s adventure magazine (found in this fabulous art book, which is a treasure trove of inspiration for me, both for the covers and the ridiculous headlines). The protagonist Todd Donnovan is an adventurer and freelance troubleshooter who is hired to locate and rescue a missing botanist and tangles with a drug lord and a pit full of venomous scorpions. The story was really fun to write and Todd could easily have further adventurers. Should I ever write another story about Todd, I’ll be calling the series Two-Fisted Todd.

The July short story challenge relies on quickly coming up with characters and story ideas. Using an established world or series is ideal for this, because the world and the characters have already been built. I know how the world works, I know how the characters react, how they talk, how they think. All I need to do is jump back in. Coincidentally, this is also why Helen Shepherd shows up in an otherwise unrelated crime story, because I needed a police officer and Helen was ideal for the part. However, the fact that I already know the world and the characters can also be a disadvantage during a challenge like this. Because established characters also have history and their share of baggage. Two-Fisted Todd Donnovan has no established supporting cast and nowhere to go after his adventure, but the Silencer will go home to Constance, kitten Edgar and baby Kenny, the newest addition to the household (introduced in St. Nicholas of Hell’s Kitchen). Anjali and Mikhail from In Love and War will banter about Anjali’s love for soap operas and be reminded of their respective lost families in a way that brand-new characters probably wouldn’t. Hallowind Cove is a bit of the exception here, since it’s more of a shared world type series than a character focussed series, which is probably why I’ve found myself writing new Hallowind Cove stories during the July short story challenge two years in a row.

As in the previous two years, I found that the stories I wrote tend to cluster around certain themes: As in 2016, there is a cluster of post-apocalyptic and dystopian stories (I foresee volume 2 of After The End – Stories of Life After the Apocalypse in the medium near future). I suspect it’s because we’re living in dark times and they haven’t exactly become better since last year. Another mini-theme – probably related – was subverted horror, i.e. stories which put a twist on such horror tropes as summoning a demon or the entire hordes of hell, changelings and monsters stealing babies and mysterious, shadowy stalkers outside the window. There’s also a related theme of epic fantasy clichés subverted.

A third mini-theme was aliens. I’ve recently noticed that though I write a lot of science fiction, I rarely write aliens. The In Love and War universe is entirely human and while the Shattered Empire universe does have sentient aliens, we only meet them in a single story. The alien saucermen in The Day the Saucers Came are never seen and the focus is entirely on the human characters. Indeed the point of the entire series is that various more or less mundane dramas are interrupted by a 1950s B-movie style alien invasion. And while there are aliens in several of the stories in Bug-Eyed Monsters and the Women Who Love Them and Operation Rubber Ducky, none of them are remotely serious.

I’m not sure why I write so rarely about aliens. I suspect it’s partly because the depiction of aliens in SF is so often a cliché. The evil insectoid/reptilian aliens the manly space marines can shoot without any remorse, for they’re evil because they’re evil. Humans with latex masks and bumps on the forehead. Aliens which only exist as an allegory for some aspect of human nature. I find most of these approaches boring. Not that there aren’t excellent depictions of aliens – from the very human to the very alien – in contemporary SF. But for some reason, that’s not what I write. My subconscious pounced on this realisation and started producing story ideas about aliens. So I wrote three not entirely serious stories about aliens on Earth (since I apparently still have problems taking aliens seriously) – a thwarted invader, an ordinary alien just trying to make a living and a trio of aliens just looking for a good time.

I also noticed that about 99 percent of the space opera and military science fiction categories at Amazon consists of stories about humanity locked in a mortal struggle with evil aliens (who are of course either insectoid or reptilian or – if we’re going to be really original – a Cthulhu knock-off) and only Captain Manly McMannerson and his ragtag crew of misfits and outcasts can save humanity. A lot of the time, the blurbs read like something that might have appeared in Astounding Stories or Amazing Stories in the 1930s to 1950s. My reaction to such novels is usually “been there, read that and besides, Heinlein did it better”, but apparently there is a huge and hungry audience for such stories, since they are inexplicably popular. So I wondered if I could write a very traditional humans vs. evil aliens story and did. Don’t let it be said that I can’t write to market at least once.

So let’s talk about inspiration: Where on Earth do you get inspiration for 32 stories, one for every single day? As in previous years, I used writing prompts (Chuck Wendig’s are always good), random generators (particularly name generators are a godsend, because you’ll have to come up with a lot of names for 32 stories) and images – mainly SFF concept art, but also vintage magazine covers – to spark story ideas. By now I have a whole folder on my harddrive which contains inspirational images – basically my own catalogue of concept art writing prompts. Other sources for inspiration were a call for submissions for a themed anthology, a Pet Shop Boys song I heard on the radio, 1980s cartoons that were basically glorified toy commercials, an article about dead and deserted shopping malls in the US, a news report about a new system to prevent the theft of cargo from truckbeds, a trailer for a (pretty crappy by the looks of it) horror film, the abominably bad Latin used during a satanic ritual in an episode of a TV crime drama, a short mystery where I found the killer (the least likely person, of course) a lot more interesting than the investigation. In one case, googling a research question for one story, namely whether there it’s actually legal to shoot looters after a massive disaster (it’s not, though there have been cases where law enforcement personnel was given carte blanche, with predictably terrible results) led me to the story of a man who bragged that he had shot more than thirty alleged looters after Hurricane Katrina (thankfully, it seems he was lying or at least massively exaggerating) and who amazingly was not arrested as a serial killer. This made me actively angry, so I wrote a post-apocalyptic story where a shooter of looters gets his comeuppance.

Especially towards the end of the challenge, different sparks of inspiration also combined into new ideas. A piece of concept art of an armed man walking down a moss-overgrown escalator combined with a news article about dying shopping malls in the US led to a post-apocalyptic tale about a scavenger exploring a shopping mall after the apocalypse. A call for submissions for a themed anthology and a piece of concept art sparked a story idea, while two different pieces of concept art combined to spark a story. Every day, we are surrounded by dozens of potential story ideas. One of aspect of the July short story challenge is that it forces you to grab those sparks of inspiration and run with them.

Coincidentally, one of the best aspects of the July short story challenge is that it gives you room to just experiment. Want to try out a new genre, a new POV, a new kind of protagonist or a new technique? No problem, it’s just a short story and you’ll write another tomorrow. During the July short story challenge, I wrote two second person stories (and I almost never write second person POV), a confessional “tell-all” type story and an epistolary story among others. I also experimented with genres I rarely write such as horror and men’s adventure. What is more, I don’t particularly like writing blow by blow action scenes (I much prefer dialogue), but nonetheless I found myself writing street fights and shoot outs, an ambush at a mountain pass, fights against aliens, scorpions and crocodiles and much more.

Another positive aspect of the July short story challenge was that I learned a lot of new stuff. During the course of the challenge, I found myself researching the nuclear blast shadows of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leprosy, Antarctic research stations, scorpions, crocodiles, dairy farms in Upstate New York, 1930s trucks, demon summing rituals and much more.

Once more, I found myself writing a huge range of very diverse characters with very different backgrounds, ranging from a 10-year-old boy in post-apocalyptic Kenya via a Swedish scientist in the Antarctic, a teenaged sniper in the far future and a scriptwriter for toy tie-in cartoons in the 1980s to an old lady in the Bavarian Alps. Nine stories have female POV characters, seven stories have POV characters of colour, five have non-human POV characters (two aliens, a robot, a demon and a dragon respectively), one story has a gay POV character. Even a story set in the Bavarian Alps, a setting that’s about as white and German as you can get, features a gay man and a Pakistani immigrant as supporting characters. So really, there is no excuse for defaulting to straight white Anglo-American men as main characters for such a challenge.

For the third year in a row, I’ve found the July short story challenge an incredibly rewarding experience. Will I do it again next year? Probably, if I find the time.

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Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for July 2017

[image error]It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some June books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have urban fantasy, paranormal romance, science fiction romance, post-apocalyptic fiction, space opera, military science fiction, hard science fiction, science fiction mystery, alternate history, Norse mythology, horror, vampires, elves, ghosts, valkyries, FBI witches, space outlaws, unicorn killers, murder in space, intergalactic slavers, haunted prisons and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

[image error] Victorious Dead by Marie Andreas:

The galaxy was in for a world of hurt—chaos unseen since the violent, sadistic Asarlaí ruled. For the first time in her life, Vas doesn’t know if she can fight hard enough to stop it.

Vaslisha Tor Dain was a simple sort of mercenary starship captain. She fought hard, drank hard, and killed people when all else failed. Those were the good days–blown to interstellar dust when a band of crazed monks tried to resurrect a race of long-dead homicidal rulers: the Asarlaí.

Vas and her crew defeated the first wave but at great cost, both professional and personal.

Now lying low, she’s been taking tedious recovery jobs with a new ship, a new second-in-command, and a galactic government that has gone into hiding but is still on the hunt for her and her ship. But there are noises in the distant corners of the galaxy that the Asarlaí have found new allies and another way to come back from the great beyond. A painful and brutal way that will destroy worlds.

In the darkest night of deep space, if she sits too still and thinks too long, she still misses her former ship, scattered in pieces across the universe, and Deven, her former second-in-command, also scattered in pieces across the universe.

When what should have been an easy job with easy money backfires in her face, the cosmic conspiracy engulfs her again. The ghost–make that ghosts–of her dead lover appears, as do the deadly, long-gone Asarlaí who want their empire of worlds back, never mind that other beings live there. And Vas realizes lying low was never a possibility, not for the Warrior Wench, and never for her.

Death is final. Except when it isn’t.

But the righteous in battle are always

VICTORIOUS DEAD.

[image error] Strangeways by Robert J. Brunner:

SINNERS IN THE HANDS OF AN ANGRY GOD!

Thomas Griffin has heard the legends about Strangeways Federal Penitentiary — tall tales and whispered rumors.

Ghost stories.

Now a guard has died, and the FBI agent is summoned to the century-old prison to investigate.

Inside the massive stone walls, Griffin finds a drug-fueled madhouse of violence and hate. He kills a man in self-defense only to see him rise from death and murder an innocent. Inmates commit horrific suicides using the only weapon at hand — the prison walls themselves. The trail of grisly deaths lead Griffin to the greatest threat — not just to body, but to soul — the disciples of an ancient, blood-thirsty cult.

[image error] The Gate at the Grey Wolf Star by M.D. Cooper:

In the Age of the Orion War…

After nine long years of searching the Inner Stars, Jessica and the crew of Sabrina have finally found the president’s brother, Finaeus Tomlinson.

Now Finaeus has convinced them to take a shortcut through a jump gate–a new technology none of them have ever used before–located at a secret dwarf star mining operation.

But a mysterious group within the Transcend Space Force, known as the Grey Division, has orders to intercept and capture both Jessica and Finaeus.

Trapped at the bottom of a steep gravity well and surrounded by enemies, Jessica and the crew of Sabrina must find a way out of the Grey Wolf System and deliver the crucial information Finaeus carries back to New Canaan before even their allies are forced to turn against them.

[image error] Selling Out by Zen DiPietro:

Begin a fun, exciting epic science fiction series that spans an entire galaxy. Selling Out continues the Dragonfire Station universe with Cabot’s story.

It’s all just fun and games unless a profit can be made.

Cabot Layne is a trader, through and through. Some might call him a pirate, but he never breaks the law. He only bends it. One thing’s for sure–he’s certainly no hero. Except a certain BlackOps officer seems to think he is, and sends him off on a mission only a trader can pull off.

That only a very good trader can pull off.

War is good for business.

Cabot’s not concerned with the safety of an allied planet, or even the PAC itself–everyone knows guys like him are privateers who only care about themselves. But if he can save the planet and make a profit too…well, that might not hurt his reputation too much.

Sometimes a shady guy needs to play good guy.

[image error] Piper Deez and the Case of the Winter Planet by M. Fenn:

Detective Piper Deez, newlywed but still hardboiled, is a solar system away from home investigating murder and thievery on Alta-na-Schell, the Winter Planet. Who can she trust? Who should she trust? Why didn’t anyone tell her monogamy was going to be this difficult? Eye of the Storm, a domed city riven by clan rivalries and corruption—with only fingerlengths of shielding protecting its denizens from certain death—may hold some answers and, perhaps, even the end of Piper Deez.

If monogamy doesn’t get to her first…

 

[image error] A Magical Reckoning by N.R. Hairston:

By Any Other Name

Rye must risk her life to save her best friend and fellow Scope agent from the drug runner bent on draining him of valuable skunk oil. Having skunk DNA herself, she’ll do anything to shut down the illegal operation and get her friend back, but putting her trust in a stranger may lead to an unexpected tryst, as well as the ultimate betrayal.

I Was Asked to Kill Him

Delia is a pacifist who never wanted to kill her boyfriend, Greg. In a world full of powerful beings, she only wants to stay under the radar. She paid her debt to society and only wants to get back to a quiet life – but Greg isn’t finished with her yet.

Pear Town Ruckus

A game of Spades is all that stand between telekinetic Leah and paying her rent this month. When fellow card player, Xavier offers to be her partner, she’s delighted, that is until she finds herself fighting for her life in Pear Town, a place even cops dare not enter.

Belle of the Ball

All Kerry wants is to go home. Swept away from her hopeless existence into a life of strange luxury in an alternate universe, Kerry isn’t convinced her luck has changed. As she discovers the ugly truth buried under the world of opulence and indulgence, she also discovers that she may not be as helpless as she thought, which is good, because what they have planned for her is a fate worse than death.

A Gathering of Succubi

In a race against the clock, Kia only has twenty-four hours to discover which of her fellow Succubi is killing humans. All supernatural beings are under the rule of the powerful First Families, who have laid down their mandate – find the killer, or all Succubi will suffer the consequences.

[image error] New Wings by N.D. Iverson:

Anahira Clarkson. Dating app addict. Problem drinker. Supernatural newbie. Screw up.

When mauled bodies start piling up in Calypso City, Anahira and her crew are hired to hunt down the rogue werewolf responsible. No mercenary could refuse such a fat pay check. Too bad word spreads. With the Magistratus breathing down her neck and competing mercenaries hot on her heels, the case is messier than the werewolf’s meals.

If that’s not enough, her crew is being picked off one by one. Screw money, now it’s personal. Anahira has no choice; it’s time to woman up and track down the killer before her friends and co-workers become puppy chow.

[image error] Beacon’s Fury by Jim Johnson:

DEFENDING THE VEIL

Rachel Farran returns in the third book of the POTOMAC SHADOWS series! When the evil Spinner begins an all-out attack on Rachel and everything she holds dear, Rachel must draw on all the resources at her disposal to defend herself and her allies. Can she survive the challenge or will she be doomed to haunt the shadows alone for all time?

Beacon’s Fury is the third book in POTOMAC SHADOWS, a paranormal fantasy series set in the Washington, DC metro area.

 

[image error] Deal with the Devil by Eugene Kirk and Garan Mad:

She may be just an actress, but Shay the Savage She-Wolf’s out to prove her bark is nothing compared to her bite . . .

With her career as a bio-augmented E-tainment superstar making a rebound, Shay’s hopes and dreams finally seem to be taking form. But when a brush with urban violence leaves one of her neighbors shot and another kidnapped, her life is abruptly thrust into turmoil once more.

With the cops set to do nothing, Shay sets out to find her neighbor and rescue him before the unthinkable happens. But when the trail leads to one of the biggest drug lords in Miami, Shay quickly finds herself in over her head.

Now, she’ll have to use her brains as well as her genetically enhanced brawn to navigate Miami’s seedy underworld and find her friend before it’s too late.

But to do so, she’ll have to make a shaky deal with a devil she knows she can’t trust.

[image error] Sagitta by Ruby Lionsdrake:

Dr. Tala Matapang thought the most challenging part about getting kidnapped by slavers from another planet would be escaping, not butting heads with the obstinate Star Guardian captain who rescued her. She’s been working in his sickbay, and it’s refreshing not having to deal with the politics and bureaucracy she faced as a surgeon back home, but Captain Sagitta is as infuriating as he is handsome. He’s got this crazy plan to take her and the other women home against his government’s wishes, and he didn’t even consult them about it first.

Captain Sagitta “Sage” of Dethocoles believes in doing the right thing. That’s why he’s defying his government to take Tala and the other Earth women home. Unfortunately, he has a couple of problems. First, his government is sending a surprisingly aggressive pursuit after them. Second, he’s having a hard time imagining dropping Tala off and never seeing her again. She’s a capable doctor and is doing an excellent job heading up his sickbay. More than that, he’s attracted to her and is starting to care about her. Too bad he’s better at barking orders than sharing feelings, and he seems to argue with her every time they speak.

With trouble stalking the ship from behind and obstacles blocking the route ahead, Sage and Tala will have to form a bond and learn to work together, or neither of them will see their home worlds again.

[image error] Revenge by Dominique Mondesir:

When the entire universe is determined to destroy you…

With a ship accrued and allies on hand, Phoenix Jones believes his life is finally ready for some smooth sailing. But Holger Portendorfer has other plans as he launches an all-out war against Phoenix.

As Phoenix fights back with every ounce of his being, old enemies resurface, forcing him to question who he trusts. While battles are won and lost, Phoenix’s friendships crumble.

Against all odds, in a David and Goliath tale told like never before, can one man and his motley crew defeat a space lord and his armada before more innocent people get hurt?

How many pieces of your soul could you give up, to do what’s right.

One man and his crew, are about to find the answer to that very question.

Night of the Unicorn by T.S. Paul:

Someone is killing Unicorns and the Magical Division of the FBI has been assigned to stop it. Special Agent in Charge Agatha Blackmore has an edge to solving this new case. Her familiar and friend Fergus is a talking Unicorn. But he doesn’t want to help, even if it’s his own Herd he’s be saving. Sacrifices don’t come back is all he will say. The team has to track down a killer while dodging Blood Magick and more Godly interference along the way. What is a Witch to do?

 

 

Young Parisians by P.J. Post:

Ten years ago, the world ended.

Ten years ago, a handful of orphaned kids were infected with a bioweapon virus. They called themselves the Pixie Girls.

Ten years ago, raging fires ended the Battle of Freemont; half of the Pixie Girls escaped to the river.

Ten years ago, the others didn’t.

The Pixie Girls refuse to give up hope, and as they come of age, searching for one another, they transform from terrified refugees into ruthless seasoned warriors: Wanted, dead or alive.

Surrounded by Bounty Hunters and Slavers, by zombies and mutating lands, the Pixie Girls remain honor bound and vigilant, committed to finding their sisters, to protecting each other, and no matter what, to living to fight another day.

But after ten years, hope is becoming liability.

Frigga’s Lost Army by Juli D. Revezzo:

In the winter of 1943, Benjamin is just a grunt and Army cook—until he finds himself captured, along with his unit, taken prisoner by Mussolini’s troops after the Battle of Tunisia.

Transported to a POW camp in Italy, Benjamin is plagued with intense visions of the Norse Goddess Frigga and her retinue of Valkyries, berserkers, and other magical beings.

When he encounters a woman bearing an uncanny resemblance to the goddess, he wonders if he hasn’t been entangled in a battle between the natural and the supernatural—a battle for the present and the future.

[image error] Equality by Alasdair Shaw:

Harry Robinson lives an idyllic lifestyle. A brilliant computer engineer, he made his fortune pushing the limits of android design. When a neighbouring planet is hit by a global nuclear strike, he feels compelled to help. A chance encounter with a group of offworld soldiers launches him on the trail of the perpetrators.

Prefect Olivia Johnson leads a Legion of disillusioned soldiers from both sides of the civil war. She blames herself for failing to prevent the attack. Now her mission is to hunt for its architect. But first, she must reclaim their adopted home from a different enemy. An enemy who won’t even talk.

The Indescribable Joy of Destruction is Johnson’s best friend and closest ally. Despite the lives they have saved, artificial intelligences are still the victims of fear and prejudice. The shadowy warship fights to defend the first place it felt accepted, and for equal rights for its kind.

[image error] First Love by Aria Sparke:

Lily Winter has never had time for boyfriends. All she has ever wanted is to be a doctor, but her life is unraveling. With the death of her father and her life coming apart at the seams, she and her mother move oceans to the watercolor world of Wicklow. In the midst of her pain, she meets Flynn Cooper—intelligent, handsome and caring. Their attraction to each other soon proves overwhelming and undeniable. Flynn’s wealthy and ancient family hide dark secrets and Lily finds herself ensnared in their strange world. After meeting Flynn’s charismatic and hypnotic father, her life becomes increasingly complicated leaving her to question everything about the universe she held as true. When the Ruberios call upon her to help their family, Lily discovers her decisions can’t be undone, entrapping her in a terrifying web.

ONSET: Blood of the Innocent by Glynn Stewart:

A war older than the nation

An enemy with agents at every turn

An ancient foe with an offer of peace

The alliance with the Elfin Warriors has allowed the United States Government’s supernatural forces, the Omicron Branch, to hold the line against the demons and take the war to the Vampire Familias, defeating them in battle and reclaiming their resources.

Victory against the vampires, however, leaves David White with a moral dilemma as he captures an entire convoy of freshly turned vampires: beyond saving, but innocent of their species’ crimes. Duty only allows one fate for them—but then an ancient vampire arrives to negotiate for their freedom.

Letting them go drags David into the middle of a political nightmare as the Omicron branch must decide which is more important: Omicron’s authority and revenge for their dead, or the very Constitution and people they are sworn to defend…

[image error] Virago One by John Triptych:

Virago: the codename for a top secret project between ACE Corp and USAF Space Command. Its goal is to deploy the first fusion-powered battleship to ensure American domination of any potential conflict in space.

There’s only one problem: Virago has been stolen.

The world is now at the brink of war as the hijacked spacecraft forges a path of destruction across known space. The task to intercept and retake this dangerous adversary falls on corporate troubleshooter Stilicho Jones and NASA Special Agent Darian Arante, who must overcome their mutual distrust and antagonism just to survive. This time the stakes are higher, the price of failure too catastrophic to imagine.

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Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for July 2017

[image error]Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some June books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, craft mysteries, small town mysteries, science fiction mysteries, romantic suspense, police procedurals, psychological thrillers, crime thrillers, military thrillers, men’s adventure thrillers, serial killers, terrorists, murder in amusement parks, museums and zoos, crime-solving dogs, the FBI, the Chinese mafia, adventures in the Caribbean and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

[image error] Broken Blue Lines by Ariadne Beckett:

Nick Aster is a felon. He’s also one of the FBI’s most valuable consultants, and Agent John Langley’s best friend and partner. When Nick is arrested and brutally assaulted, he must bring down some of the most powerful and corrupt men in the NYPD in order to survive the fallout…. and Agent Langley must defend the man he’s come to love from the system they both serve.

They say the bond between law enforcement partners can be as strong as the one between couples. Agent Langley is straight and married to the love of his life. But when nursing Nick back to physical and emotional health brings the partners closer than ever, John and Nick realize they don’t just love each other; they’re in love.

Can an apple-pie wholesome FBI agent with a traditional marriage, a dog, and a perfect career adapt to the concept of another man joining the family? And can one man change the entire NYPD and erase a stain that has destroyed thousands of innocent lives?

[image error] Celebrities and Chaos by Cindy Bell:

A new TV show is filming on the beach in Garber and Dune House is full to the brim with crew members and celebrities. Suzie and Mary are run off their feet trying to keep up with the demanding guests. But that turns out to be the least of their concerns when someone is found murdered.

Chaos erupts as Mary is the prime suspect and Dune House is out-of-bounds because it is a crime scene. Suzie and Mary join forces with Paul to try and weed through the web of suspects to find the killer. They are in a race against the clock to clear Mary’s name and get back to business as usual at Dune House.

Will the murderer be found before Mary lands up behind bars and the reputation of Dune House lands up in tatters?

[image error] Shanghai Tang by Mick Bose:

A betrayed assassin is thrust into the secret life of Shanghai’s underworld

Dan Roy, ex Black Ops legend, is becoming a new legend in the infamous blood fight tournament called Kumite, in Hong Kong. He is carving himself a new life, when disaster strikes his loved ones back home. He gets a phone call, and he cannot deny Kimberly Smith’s plea for help. Not only is Kim’s life endangered, the rumbles of discontent have reached the White House…

A devastating secret lurks inside the glamorous night life of Shanghai. Political interests are involved, and soon Dan finds himself in a ruthless and twisted struggle for survival. He gets help from Xiao Wei-Ling, A Chinese woman who is on the run herself. An ambitious Triad boss is making a bid to over rule the whole of Shanghai, and Dan Roy has become a thorn in his side. The Triads have help from the police, and all eyes are on Dan – alone in a foreign land.

Get prepared for a white knuckle ride from Hong Kong and Shanghai to the corridors of power in Washington, as we follow Dan on a terrifying adventure that could be his last.

Will Dan meet his nemesis in the murky underworld of Shanghai? Or will he fight to live another day?

[image error] Child of Mine by V.J. Chambers:

A teenage girl found murdered.

Lorelei Taylor’s autistic son, Simon, is a suspect. But he didn’t even know the girl. Did he?

Simon is sixteen, vulnerable, and diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Lorelei knows her gentle son could never harm another person.

But then she finds Simon’s camera full of photographs of the murdered girl, and her certainty begins to waver.

As the police circle in on her son, Lorelei has only one choice—to solve the murder and exonerate Simon. But does she know her teenage son as well as she thought she did?

[image error] Piper Deez and the Case of the Winter Planet by M. Fenn:

Detective Piper Deez, newlywed but still hardboiled, is a solar system away from home investigating murder and thievery on Alta-na-Schell, the Winter Planet. Who can she trust? Who should she trust? Why didn’t anyone tell her monogamy was going to be this difficult? Eye of the Storm, a domed city riven by clan rivalries and corruption—with only fingerlengths of shielding protecting its denizens from certain death—may hold some answers and, perhaps, even the end of Piper Deez.

If monogamy doesn’t get to her first…

 

[image error] Final Check Out by CeeCee James:

When Maisie takes a day off from the hotel business to visit a popular amusement park, the last thing she wants is to trip over a dead body in the Maze of Mirrors. The only witness to the murder is a park employee dressed in a princess costume. ??

Things take a turn as Maisie watches the princess run off and nobody seems to know who she is. And the Federal Marshal who was first on the scene has disappeared, too. ??

As Maisie follows the twists and turns of this not-so-funhouse, she hits one dead end after another—until she discovers that the person she should have been chasing has really been chasing her all along.?

[image error] Steele on a Roll by Chris Lord:

Death can come on the next roll for Ashley Steele, when you gamble searching for a killer!

Ashley Steele’s compassion causes him to land his plane The Good Fortune to save some refugees in the waters off of Cuba. The rescue gives him a friend he couldn’t have guessed in his quest to save Ella. Everyone you meet could be a friend, and every friend has connections. Some good. Some bad.

Captain Juan Diaz of the Cuban Naval Intelligence seems to be someone who becomes a friend to Ashley in his hunt for the ex-husband of the woman, Ella Fair, the only woman he loves” Ella’s ex-husband, Roderic Wright, and her brother, Donovan Walker work with the terrorists the S.I.A. and are the only two things standing between him and the safety of Ella.

Using the resources of his plane The Good Fortune, and the antiquated ship of Captain Diaz, The Cuban Queen, Ashley has a chance to catch Roderic Wright, a slim chance of getting out of Cuba alive, and an even slimmer chance of seeing Ella again.

[image error] Penguins and Mortal Peril by Ruby Loren:

When the penguin keeper is found dead at the bottom of the penguin pool, zookeeper Madigan Amos is determined to find out what happened to him… even if it means apprehending armed intruders, getting caught in the middle of a terrorist attack, and sparring with a machete wielding murderer.

The police struggle to conclude whether or not the death was accidental, but it’s not the only recent, unexplained happening at Avery Zoo. Since the tragic, avoidable death of a serval, animal rights activists have plagued the zoo. Activists with a reputation for extremism. Do they have something to do with the penguin keeper’s demise?

Madi also has her suspicions about two new zoo employees, but what exactly do they have to do with the goings on? Are they activist spies, or do they have their own scores to settle?

By the time Madi figures out things are not as they seem, she’s already in too deep. Someone has a hidden agenda, and they’re willing to kill to keep it a secret.

[image error] The Rushing Noise of Death by Gretchen Mullen and Phyllis Jobe:

“It was almost midnight on New Year’s Eve. Martha Leland poured herself a drink, her labors worthy of celebration. She stood before the mirror and toasted her reflection. The clock began to strike and the big fireworks on the bridge behind her reflected their lurid blossoms in the glass. The great booms began and when the bullet struck dead center at the back of her skull, she might have seen the blinding splintered light of the finale, she might have heard the great white rushing noise of death.”

On New Year’s Day, Oklahoma Detective Hiram Flagg is called in to the Bliss County Court House by the newly installed Chief of Police. Initially, Flagg feels that he must, for the first time in his career, ask to be relieved from a case. He and Martha Leland have crossed paths before. Ultimately, however, he knows he must see this case through to the end.

Suspects begin to emerge from Martha Leland’s immediate family and close circle of friends: the daughter, Anna Leland, and alcoholic undergoing psychiatric analysis with a secret wish for revenge; the son, Walker Leland, hungry for easy money and running with the wrong crowd; the ex-husband, Jack Leland, and his new young wife Margo, bitter after the messy divorce and quick remarriage; Martha’s sister, Shirley, and her husband Jim Boyd, harboring a painful secret; portrait artist Gordon Grimes, motivated by greed and a desire to elevate his standing among the wealthy matrons of the town; and gigolo Jeff Sinclair, friend to Martha’s son Walker, claiming to be Martha’s most recent “love” interest.

With the discovery of a second body, the pace quickens and subplots converge during the lakeside memorial service of Martha Leland, when all suspects are present the identity of the murderer is revealed through the attempted murder of yet another victim and a surprise twist at the end.

[image error] Murder at the Museum by Melanie Myers:

She’s used to dealing with ancient bones, not fresh corpses…

In sleepy Chowan Cove, a seaside town in Maine, an exciting day for local museum curator Maree Lilley is one where her favourite cafe owner makes fresh cinnamon buns.

So when she finds her boss’ body in her office, less than an hour after arguing with him, Maree knows it’s not going to be just any normal day. Trained as an archaeologist, Maree has always been about unravelling puzzles, especially when it turns out she’s the main suspect in her boss’ murder.

With her best friend Abby’s help, Maree sets out to solve the case and clear her name, despite the local police chief being less-than-enthusiastic about Maree’s involvement.

But as she delves deeper into the investigation, Maree finds herself in the murderer’s crosshairs. Will she be able to solve the case before she becomes the next victim?

Murder at the Museum is the first book in the Museum Murders series. A light cozy mystery with a dog-loving amateur sleuth, her quirky artist best friend and a small-town setting.

False Signs by Travis Starnes

Retired Special Forces Sergeant John Taylor is hiding from the world. Still dealing with his captivity by terrorists and a near fatal collaboration with Federal law enforcement, Taylor has sworn off any future heroics. A call from a friend inside the FBI and the pleas of a desperate mother force Taylor to change his mind and end his self-imposed exile.

A National Guard armory has been destroyed in west Texas, and all eyes have turned to a possible terrorist attack by a missing corporal. The agents in charge of the investigation refuse to listen to claims of innocence by the soldier’s mother, forcing her to turn to Taylor and hope his first-hand experience with terrorists and past success with the Bureau can help clear her son’s name.

Granted access to the case but saddled with a beautiful yet stern Bureau baby-sitter, Taylor runs head first into the FBI’s refusal to look beyond their preferred theory of the crime. As he digs up clues of a frame-up and hints of a much more sinister motive behind the explosion, Taylor races to stop a dark conspiracy hiding in small-town America.

[image error] Murder in Crimson Velvet by Karen Sue Walker

What’s worse than an actress who’s a diva? A dead one!

Max Walters, a talented bridal consultant, is called upon to help with the costumes for Romeo and Juliet just days before opening night. When an actress confesses that a psychic told her she would be murdered, Max doesn’t take her seriously until the actress ends up dead. Is it a tragic accident as everyone is meant to believe, or is it really murder? With her friend and assistant Keiko, Max searches for the truth. Will she find it? Or will a murderer go free?

 

[image error] Icy Stares by Cyrus Winters:

Twenty years ago when she was just a young girl, a man abducted Nadine Shields for twelve hours and has been in her nightmares ever since. In spite of her childhood trauma, Nadine forged ahead bravely and left the past behind, establishing herself as a crime solving specialist within her state’s city precinct.

But tonight Nadine’s inner strength will be tested in ways it never has before. The monster who abducted her all those years ago has inexplicably reached out, wanting to draw her back into his sick world of terrifying mind games and abuse.

With the lives of innocents threatened and time running out to save them, Nadine must work with her colleagues to solve the one crime she never wanted to face – the crime that had been committed against herself.

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